Five Myths about Nuclear Power
Executive Summary
Van Snyder - van.snyder@sbcglobal.net

Only inherently-safe economical fast-neutron nuclear reactors can destroy nuclear waste and consume all fissionable materials in used fuel and decommissioned weapons.

• It's not safe (yes it is): Nuclear power is the safest-ever way to make electricity by a very wide margin: 43 deaths in the entire worldwide six-decade history, all at Chernobyl - a flawed design that will never be repeated. Although no municipal reactor outside the Soviet Union ever caused a fatality or disease, Argonne National Laboratory believed even safer designs than the best in service were possible. All loose ends concerning nuclear power were tied up in a single reactor and fuel processing system, called Integral Fast Reactor, or IFR, that was demonstrated to an invited international audience in 1986 to be inherently safe. The Clinton administration canceled the project in 1993 when it was an inch from completion, at more cost than completing it. Clinton pandered ``I know; it's a symbol."

• No one knows what to do about waste (yes we do): Used municipal reactor fuel, currently called nuclear waste, is sufficiently radiotoxic that it must be isolated from humanity for 300,000 years if nothing else is done. It consists of 5% fission products and 95% unused fuel. The unused fuel is the part that needs special custody. 9% of fission products require isolation for only 300 years, and the rest are less radiotoxic than uranium in nature before ten years. Argonne National Laboratory designed a fuel processing system called ``pyroelectric refining'' that is smaller, simpler, less expensive, and more effective than systems currently in service. It was used with the IFR prototype to separate fission products from unused fuel. The reactor consumed unused fuel. IFR could effectively destroy nuclear waste and nothing else can.

• It's too expensive (no it isn't): A 2009 MIT study concluded that municipal reactors could be built for $4 per watt and produce electricity for 6¢ per kilowatt hour (kWh). The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Generating Station produces electricity for 5¢ per kWh. The Palo Verde station was constructed for $1.79 per watt and produces electricity for 4.3¢ per kWh. A GE/Hitachi consortium estimated modular reactors based on the IFR design, called S-PRISM, could be built for $1-2 per watt, and would produce electricity for 4-6¢ per kWh. Municipal reactors' capacity factors are greater than 90%. Wind is less expensive but could not contribute more than about 15% of all energy. Solar ceall capital cost, amortized over 25 years at 5% discount rate, and deducting the four-plus year energy payback period, this is 11.7¢ per kWh. To provide firm power (99.97\% availability), 390-800 Wh/W would be required. At current prices (\$0.578/Wh for Tesla PowerWall2), firm power for a 1,700 GWe all-electric American energy economy would cost 4-8 times total GDP US EVERY YEAR. Operations, recycling, and grid changes to exploit diffuse sources add more cost. Hydro contributes 7% of electricity. No other sources except coal and gas can contribute enough to be relevant. Wind and solar cannot destroy nuclear waste.

• It leads to weapons proliferation (no it doesn't): Weapons proliferation is a red herring. No country's nuclear power stations or fuel reprocessing affect any other country's desires, decisions, or ability to acquire nuclear weapons. On-site reprocessing implies very few opportunities for diversion or theft. Plutonium in used fuel in an IFR-type system is in a highly-radioactive and therefore easily monitored state. Advanced industrial economies already have nuclear weapons, or have the means to make them much more effectively than from used municipal reactor fuel, which contains no weapons-ready material. Nuclear waste is the most difficult substance from which to make weapons. Only fast-neutron reactors such as IFR can consume all fissionable materials in used fuel and decommissioned weapons.

• There isn't enough uranium (there's plenty): An Australian mining consortium estimated enough uranium could be economically extracted at today's prices to supply the entire world's current electricity demand for 1,200 years. The situation isn't nearly so bleak. Today's reactors use 0.6% of energy immanent in uranium, but IFR-based designs would extract 99%. The contribution of uranium prices to delivered cost of electricity would be the same as in today's reactors (0.001¢ per kWh) if uranium prices increased 167 fold, making it economically feasible to extract from much lower-quality ores, or from seawater where there is estimated to be 1,000 times more uranium than could be extracted from land. Uranium is an effectively inexhaustible energy resource. The United States has 80,000 metric tonnes of used nuclear reactor fuel, and 700,000 tonnes of depleted uranium. In IFR-type reactors this could power an all-electric 1,700 gigawatt American economy for 450 years, without mining, milling, refining, or enriching any new uranium, thereby effectively destroying all nuclear waste.