Nuclear Power Vs the Energy Crisis

[Blackmage]

This is my paper for my English 191 class that's due Monday. It'll probably be revised a few more times before turning it in. If you would like to argue any of my points with me please do, I enjoy the debate.


Nuclear Power Vs the Energy Crisis

There are many misconceptions about using nuclear power and its role in helping with the ever prevalent energy crisis. Nuclear power is great because it does not emit pollution into the Earth’s atmosphere like fossil fuels and it provides a far larger and a far more stable supply of energy than renewable resources. The two main misconceptions are reactor safety and waste disposal and safety which are then countered by the benefits of being a cheap, clean, and safe source of power.

Hydrogen, the most abundant fuel in the universe, is the primary fuel for fusion. Fusion is a process that joins two smaller atoms to form one larger atom and also releases a small amount of the original mass into a form of pure energy. Fusion reactors are still in the experimental phase and have been since the 1950s. The next generation fusion reactor called the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is expected to make 500MWe (ten times the power input to start the fusion reaction) and is slated to go online in late 2016 according to ITER’s website (“ITER”).

Fission is the splitting of atoms and the energy from the reaction can be harnessed in a nuclear reactor; for a reactor to be efficient it needs a fuel that can remain critical for long periods of time. Contrary to popular belief a reactor being critical is a good thing; it means that the fission reaction in the core is self sustaining and stable. There are two main fuels for fission in commercial reactors and they are uranium 235 and plutonium 241 also thorium is being tried as an experimental fuel. Unlike all natural elements on Earth uranium 235 splits when bombarded by gamma radiation and neutrons instead of becoming the next heaviest element. Plutonium is a byproduct of nuclear fission and in nature is extremely rare element found in uranium ore from natural fission that occurs in uranium ore deposits. Thorium is being experimented with in a type of nuclear reactor called a breeder reactor; the thorium absorbs neutrons and radiation from the fission reactions of uranium 235 and becomes become uranium 233 another fissile isotope (an isotope that can use low energy neutrons for fission) (Thorium).

Around the world there are several different types of nuclear reactors; in the US we use second generation type reactors and they are the pressurized water reactors and the boiling water reactors. Pressurized water reactors or PWRs rely on two cooling circuits; a pressurized primary circuit cools the core and never boils that is then linked to a secondary circuit. When water in the secondary circuit comes in contact with the hot pipes in the steam generator it forms high pressure steam which then goes through a steam turbine to generate electricity. The water is then cooled down by an external water source in the condenser and returns back to the steam generator to start the cycle all over again ("The Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR)"). In Boiling water reactor or BWR there is only one cooling circuit. This cooling circuit starts at the core where the water is boiled into steam and then goes to a steam turbine. After the steam turbine the water is cooled in the condenser and then returns to the core to complete the cooling and power generating cycle ("The Boiling Water Reactor (BWR)"). As technology progresses every generation of reactor is more fuel efficient safer that the previous. Currently being used are Generation III+ reactors with Generation IV reactor technologies being currently developed.

Even before Three Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents the biggest concern with nuclear energy has always been the chance of a meltdown. Three Mile Island happened on March 28, 1979 and it was caused by both human and mechanical errors. During this incident a harmless amount of radioactive gas was released into the atmosphere and the core was later found to be half melted. According to several government and academic sources including the NRC report on the incident there were no fatalities or reports of cancer related to the release of the radiation. April 24, 1986, seven years after Three Mile Island, the events that would change the world were set in motion. On April 25 the worst nuclear disaster in history would happen, during a test that was supposed to happen the day before, reactor number four had a meltdown and which then caused a chemical explosion and fire that blew radioactive gasses and particles all over Eastern Asia and Europe. The meltdown occurred during an experiment in which operators failed to follow proper safety procedures and had cut off all of the safety subsystems. 31 people died in the incident and its after math and numbers ranging from several thousand and several hundred thousand may be at an increased risk of cancer because of the incident (Newton 29-36).

The Nuclear Regulatory Committee was formed in 1974 from the Energy Reorganization Act. The NRC’s primary responsibilities from the act are to insure public safety from nuclear reactors, nuclear materials, and nuclear waste (“Our History”). With the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl the NRC has had several policy changes to insure public safety from nuclear disasters. Following the Three Mile Island the NRC made these following changes to prevent another disaster like Three Mile Island or worse:

* Upgrading and strengthening of plant design and equipment requirements. This includes fire protection, piping systems, auxiliary feed water systems, containment building isolation, reliability of individual components (pressure relief valves and electrical circuit breakers), and the ability of plants to shut down automatically
* Identifying human performance as a critical part of plant safety, revamping operator training and staffing requirements, followed by improved instrumentation and controls for operating the plant, and establishment of fitness-for-duty programs for plant workers to guard against alcohol or drug abuse
* Improved instruction to avoid the confusing signals that plagued operations during the accident;
* Enhancement of emergency preparedness to include immediate NRC notification requirements for plant events and an NRC operations center which is now staffed 24 hours a day. Drills and response plans are now tested by licensees several times a year, and state and local agencies participate in drills with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and NRC
* Establishment of a program to integrate NRC observations, findings, and conclusions about licensee performance and management effectiveness into a periodic, public report
* Regular analysis of plant performance by senior NRC managers who identify those plants needing additional regulatory attention
* Expansion of NRC's resident inspector program -- first authorized in 1977 -- whereby at least two inspectors live nearby and work exclusively at each plant in the U.S to provide daily surveillance of licensee adherence to NRC regulations
* Expansion of performance-oriented as well as safety-oriented inspections, and the use of risk assessment to identify vulnerabilities of any plant to severe accidents
* Strengthening and reorganization of enforcement as a separate office within the NRC
* The establishment of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), the industry's own "policing" group, and formation of what is now the Nuclear Energy Institute to provide a unified industry approach to generic nuclear regulatory issues, and interaction with NRC and other government agencies
* The installing of additional equipment by licensees to mitigate accident conditions, and monitor radiation levels and plant status
* Employment of major initiatives by licensees in early identification of important safety-related problems, and in collecting and assessing relevant data so lessons of experience can be shared and quickly acted upon;
* Expansion of NRC's international activities to share enhanced knowledge of nuclear safety with other countries in a number of important technical areas.

(“Fact Sheet on the Three Mile Island Accident”). After the accident at Chernobyl the NRC reviewed all of its rules and regulations and concluded that “U.S. reactors have different plant designs, broader shutdown margins, robust containment structures, and operational controls to protect them against the combination of lapses that led to the accident at Chernobyl” (“Fact Sheet on the Accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant”).

Nuclear waste is the other big concern most people have about switching to nuclear energy because the waste can be radioactive for billions of years. Nuclear waste can stay radioactive for days up to billions of years. Nuclear waste is divided into three different categories, high level waste, low level waste, and transuranic waste. High level waste is spent nuclear fuel and waste from reprocessed fuel. A large reactor (well over 1GWe output) typically generates about 800 cubic feet of spent fuel a year which is the equivalent of a room that is ten feet long, ten feet wide, and eight feet high. Then to further reduce the amount of high level waste, spent fuel can be reprocessed into new fuel for reactors; reprocessing spent fuel reduces the amount of high level waste from down to nearly 24 cubic feet. These wastes typically stay radio active for billions of years and are stored in sealed barrels in spent fuel pools or in dry casks with inert gases waiting for a final resting place in the Yucca Mountains to be built. Low level waste is any waste that is not high level or transuranic. Low level waste comes from anywhere that radioactive materials are used; it can emit anything from low harmless levels of radiation or high dangerously levels of radiation. Low level wastes come from several sources besides nuclear power plants and uranium processing and reprocessing centers including places in the medical field, academic field, and industrial field. Low level wastes are buried at specific sites approved by the NRC and are buried in the ground at varying depths by the amount of radioactivity as guided by the NRC. Transuranic wastes are the leftover materials for nuclear weapons testing. They mostly are as radioactive as low level waste but will be radioactive for billions of years like high level wastes and are handled and stored by the government at a geological disposal facility (Newton 44-47).

Nuclear energy is a cleaner, safer, and more efficient source of power than fossil fuels. The most efficient fossil fuel is coal; it takes 1.5 tones of coal to equal the thermal power of a one centimeter pellet of uranium {Norman). Because of the increased thermal efficiency of nuclear energy it will always use less fuel and less waste than fossil fuels. Coal is the most thermally efficient but also the most pollutant of all the fossil fuels, but at the same time the amount of heat energy and carbon content from coal varies greatly. The variance in that changes how much coal is needed for a specific thermal output as well as how much CO2 and other pollutants are put into the atmosphere. For example one ton coal with 78% carbon content will release 2.86 tons of CO2 (Hong). The amount of coal needed to sustain a coal plant for one year producing 500MWe of power is 1.43 million tons of coal which will expel at over 3.5 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere ("How Coal Works"). The increased pollution caused by coal is attributed to over 10,000 deaths per year which is far more than all the deaths combined from the entire history of nuclear energy (Cohen).

Renewable energy sources are still sources we need to further tap even though at most they will only ever support six percent of our total energy needs ("Realism about Energy"). The problems with renewable resources are cost, reliability, and ecological destruction. Geothermal power’s biggest draw back is the initial installation and then maintenance of corroded parts; the cost of drilling to hot rocks can cost tens of millions of dollars just like drilling for oil. Solar and wind power have issues with dependability, it is not always sunny as well as it is not always windy. Hydropower is the most reliable source as water will always flow, but the dams that are built for hydropower cause sever ecological changes.

With our growing need for energy and our demand for a cleaner planet it is clear that nuclear energy is our answer. Nuclear reactor technology is now safer, more efficient, and cleaner than it ever has before. Only by embracing nuclear energy can we wane the need for fossil fuels and have a safer, cleaner planet.


Work Cited

"ITER." ITER. 22 Aug 2008 http://www.iter.org/.

Moens, John . “Unique Reactors.” Energy Information Administration. 18 August 2008 <http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_reactors/superla.html>.

"Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle." World Nuclear Association. August 2008. World Nuclear Association. 18 Aug 2008
<http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf04.html>.

Newton, David. Nuclear Power. Facts on File, 2006.

Norman, Paul, and Andrew Worrall, Kevin Hesketh. "A new dawn for nuclear power." Physics World 20.702 July 2007 25. 19 Aug 2008 <http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/30344>.

"Thorium." World Nuclear Association. July 2008. World Nuclear Association. 21 Aug 2008 <http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.html>.

"The Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR)." US Nuclear Regulator Commission. 14 Feb 2007. Nuclear Regulator Commission. 21 Aug 2008 <http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/animated-pwr.html>.

"The Boiling Water Reactor (BWR)." US Nuclear Regulator Commission. 14 Feb 2007. Nuclear Regulator Commission. 21 Aug 2008 <http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/animated-bwr.html>.

"Fact Sheet on the Three Mile Island Accident." US Nuclear Regulator Commission. 20 Feb 2007. Nuclear Regulator Commission. 21 Aug 2008 <http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html>.

"Fact Sheet on the Accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant." US Nuclear Regulator Commission. 20 Feb 2007. Nuclear Regulator Commission. 21 Aug 2008 <http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/fschernobyl.html>.

"Our History." US Nuclear Regulator Commission. 10 Jan 2008. Nuclear Regulator Commission. 21 Aug 2008 <http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/history.html>.

Hong, B.D., and E. R. Slatick. "Carbon Dioxide Emission Factors for Coal ." Energy Information Administration. Apr 1994. Energy Information Administration. 22 Aug 2008 <http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/quarterly/co2_article/co2.html>.


"How Coal Works." Union of Concerned scientists. 19 Sep 2005. Union of Concerned scientists. 22 Aug 2008 <http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/fossil_fuels/offmen-how-coal-works.html>.

Cohen, Bernard L. , Sc.D. . "Risks of Nuclear Power." ISU Physics. University of Pittsburgh. 22 Aug 2008 <http://physics.isu.edu/radinf/np-risk.htm>.

"Realism about Energy." World Nuclear Association. July 2008. World Nuclear Association. 22 Aug 2008 <http://www.world-nuclear.org/why/cleanenergy.html>.

[Terin]

/sold
-T