Kuznets-Speck

Ben Kuznets-Speck
Prof. Ed Caner
February 1, 2015
UNSA 288-C
On Nuclear Naivety: What we dont know and why its probably going to hurt us.
Weve all seen the headlines condemning nuclear power, lamenting its evils and the
dangers that lie within reactors, and calling on the people to do something about it, but what we
usually dont find in the blizzard of media coverage is the truth. Whether the topic is safety,
waste, cost or alternative fuel sources, if we simply take a look at the facts, its not all that hard
to realize that common misconceptions about nuclear power have twisted the truth beyond
recognition.
Lets start with the thought on everyones mind: what about the danger, the meltdowns
and the increased incidence of radiation poisoning and death that lie therein. These are most
likely the first thoughts to pop into ones mind concerning the topic of nuclear power simply
because they get the most airtime. Take Fukushima for example; before an earthquake took out
the power to three of the reactors in early March 2011, eventually causing a meltdown, most
Americans, and most Earthlings for that matter, hadnt the slightest clue of where Fukushima
was, let alone any fear of the power plant there. After the meltdown however, headlines
concerning Fukushima were plastered on almost every news station and paper in the world.
Although its true that a reactor meltdown of any size is cause for concern, the easiest reason for
Fukushimas prolonged coverage is that when people hear nuclear catastrophe, they get scared
and fear sells. The fact of the matter, though, is that nuclear power is not all that dangerous. For
example, on March 11, 2011, the day of the Fukushima meltdown, CBS news reported that the

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highest dose of radiation recorded at the site was 1000 millisiverts (CBSNEWS). Well that is
certainly cause for concern and mass panic, right? Not quite; in fact, that figure translates to 100
rem (the common unit concerning radiation), which wouldnt even be notice if exposed to it
(Muller 96). Followed by the fact that the radiation quickly dropped to below 600 millisiverts,
and that to this day apart from Chernobyl, no nuclear workers or members of the public have
ever died as a result of exposure to radiation due to a commercial nuclear reactor incident we
see that perhaps the media blew the Fukushima incident a bit out of proportion (WNA).
Furthermore, when we take into account that about 80% of nuclear mishaps can be directly
attributed to human error the question of whether America should continue her nuclear pursuits is
raised (WNA). On one hand, it seems like a future reactor meltdown is inevitable; on the other
hand, the percent of fatalities to terawatt year of power produced in nuclear plants is 48
compared to 111, 597 and 10,285 for natural gas, coal and hydro plants respectively (hydro
plants kill almost 215 times as many people, but we dont hear about them) (WNA). These
questions are important ones, and must be answered with facts, not anecdotes, for as the shift
from fossil fuels to alternative power comes to the foreground of Americas picture of energy, we
need to be able to objectively assess the risks of nuclear power.
Perhaps the most gaping misconception the public has about nuclear power is that
concerning waste. It may be common knowledge that nuclear plants produce radioactive waste
that must be disposed of, but this procedure is causing us more trouble than previously thought.
Because the spent fuel rods will continue releasing unhealthy doses of radiation for anywhere
between 100 million and 4.75 billion years (depending on the fuel type) after they go out of
commission, they need to be kept somewhere where they wont be in contact with humans and
their air and water supplies, somewhere with the capacity to handle the approximately 4000

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metric tons of waste per year, in America (Muller). Rebecca Lunn, professor of engineering
geosciences at the University of Strathclyde, says: Geological disposal of nuclear waste
involves the construction of a precision-engineered facility deep below the ground into which
waste canisters are carefully maneuvered. (Bell) Due to these constraints, it takes an average of
twenty years to find a suitable location before even beginning to discuss political and
commercial permissions. One only needs to look at the predicament both Great Britain and the
United States are in to realize the severity of the problem; both the proposed Cambria County
and Yucca Mountain (UK and USA respectively) waste sites, which were both well over a
decade in the works, were recently declined (Bell). Without large in ground facilities, we are
forced to store nuclear waste in shallow facilities which are more susceptible to natural disaster
and contamination, and are therefore not a viable long term option.
Another option for nuclear waste that has been drifting around the airways as of late is
reprocessing decommissioned fuel rods in an attempt to get some of the fuel back. Oh my; where
do we begin. How about the fact that under the non-nuclear proliferation treaty we (the United
States) dont allow other countries to reprocess their nuclear waste for fear of unwanted nuclear
weapons programs, and that we have had some very public disagreements with North Korea and
Iran in recent years concerning just this. Not only will the United States [not be able to] credibly
persuade other countries to forgo a technology it has newly embraced for its own use, but
reprocessing is far from becoming even close to economically or environmentally feasible
(UCS). Consider this: the 100 reactors in the United States generate substantial domestic
economic value in electricity sales and revenue$40 billion to $50 billion each yearwith
more than 100,000 workers contributing to that production which averages to about $45 billion
when considering salaries (NEI). Now take into account that the cost premium for reprocessing

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spent fuel would range from 0.4 to 0.6 cents per kilowatt-hourcorresponding to an extra $3 to
$4.5 billion per year for the current U.S. nuclear reactor fleet, and that it would cost at least 20
billion dollars to build a single reprocessing facility, of which we would need two (UCS).
Furthermore, the public should not be fooled by the term reprocessing which commonly leads us
to believe that it is somehow better for the environment and therefore possibly worth the
economic inefficiency; in fact,
after reprocessing, the remaining material will be in several different waste
forms, and the total volume of nuclear waste will have been increased by a factor
of twenty or more, including low-level waste and plutonium-contaminated waste.
The largest component of the remaining material is uranium, which is also a
waste product because it is contaminated and undesirable for reuse in reactors.
Even if the uranium is classified as low-level waste, new low-level nuclear waste
facilities would have to be built to dispose of it (UCS).
So now we are dealing with a possibility that would require us to spend orders of magnitude
more on the entire nuclear operation only to produce an order of magnitude more waste than
before, not to mention the costs associated with decommissioning old reprocessing facilities and
building new ones. This possibility seems to be lying at the bottom of a very deep hole.
The call for alternative reactors, such as thorium, by the media is also misconstrued.
Long story short, many have been pitching the idea that thorium nuclear reactors are the solution
for long-term nuclear power, citing that it is much more abundant in nature and produces less
harmful waste. On the surface, this proposition doesnt seem so ridiculous; after all, thorium, a
naturally occurring radioactive element, is four times more abundant than uranium in the earth's
crust (Rees). The truth is that if this discussion was happening 70 years earlier, proponents of

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thorium reactors would be right. This is because the real reason we use uranium over thorium is
a result of wartime politics. Cold War-era governments (including ours) backed uranium-based
reactors because they produced plutonium handy for making nuclear weapons (Hadhazy).
Because uranium was indisputably the go to element for nuclear power when the original plants
were being designed and constructed, they employ processes that are not compatible with
thorium. Since current uranium plants would take years to convert to thorium, at great cost,
and the best bet for a new thorium reactor would be in the form of a molten salt reactor, which is
still theoretical, far from optimized and would call for a tax subsidy hike of about an order of
magnitude, thorium cannot be considered an economically responsible choice (Hadhazy, Rees).
Furthermore, the hype about thorium being better for the environment is just that, hype.
Thorium cannot in itself power a reactor; unlike natural uranium, it does not contain enough
fissile material to initiate a nuclear chain reaction. As a result it must first be bombarded with
neutrons to produce the highly radioactive isotope uranium-233 'so these are really U-233
reactors,' says [Nuclear Radiologist, Peter] Karamoskos, which will still produce an abundance
of waste (Rees). These factors make the possibility of thorium reactors quite bleak.
The moral of the story here is not that nuclear power is this, that, or the other; it is that in
order to make informed opinions on it, one must be informed. The big questions that come with a
possible nuclear future are not just of concern to political leaders, but the public at large. When
voting on or debating whether to write an elected official about a nuclear project in your area, the
issues that come to mind should not be based in fear of meltdowns and mishaps, but on how long
the project will be running, how much it will cost and if there is a promising long-term waste
management solution. Not taking the ladder into account will most likely result in misplaced
funding and unhappy taxpayers in the long run.

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References
"Radiation Spike Hinders Work at Japan Nuke Plant." CBSNEWS. CBSNEWS, 16 Mar. 2011.
Web. 1 Feb. 2015. <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radiation-spike-hinders-work-at-japan-nukeplant/>.
"Safety of Nuclear Power Reactors." World Nuclear Association (WNA). WNA, 1 Dec. 2014.
Web. 1 Feb. 2015. <http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Safety-ofPlants/Safety-of-Nuclear-Power-Reactors/>.
Muller, Richard A. "Nukes." Physics For Future Presidents: The Science Behind The Headlines.
New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. Print.
Bell, Rebecca. "Nuclear Waste Must Be out of Sight, but Not out of Mind." The Guardian. The
Guardian, 1 Nov. 2014. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/01/nuclear-waste-underground-storage>.
"Nuclear Reprocessing: Dangerous, Dirty, and Expensive." Union of Concerned Scientists
(UCS). UCS. Web. 31 Jan. 2015. <http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/making-nuclear-powersafer/handling-nuclear-waste/nuclear-reprocessing.html#.VMa15ouprzI>.
"Cost & Benefits Analyses." Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). NEI. Web. 26 Jan. 2015.
<http://www.nei.org/Issues-Policy/Economics/Cost-Benefits-Analyses>.
Rees, Eifion. "Don't Believe the Spin on Thorium Being a Greener Nuclear Option." The
Guardian. The Guardian, 23 June 2011. Web. 26 Jan. 2015.
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jun/23/thorium-nuclear-uranium>.
Hadhazy, Adam. "Why Aren't We Using Thorium in Nuclear Reactors? The Answer Boils down
to Wartime Politics." Discover Magazine. Discover Magazine, 7 May 2014. Web. 26 Jan. 2015.
<http://discovermagazine.com/2014/june/3-ask-discover>.