Is Vermont Yankee green?
Is anyone else as troubled by Vermont Yankee as I am? Does the fact we produce high level nuclear waste offset the fact that this energy source doesn’t release carbon into the air? The issue is sometimes a tricky one for environmentalists.
Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace (he left the organization in 1986), came to my committee (House Natural Resources and Energy) on a zealous mission to promote nuclear power. He has been hired by the Vermont Energy Partnership - the owners of Vermont Yankee - to make sure that nuclear power remains a big player in our energy mix, at least for the next 20 years.
Moore said Vermont should be held up as an example of how greenhouse gases can be reduced, and that the rest of the country should follow our lead. “Vermont has the lowest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the United States for one single reason, your power supply,” he said. While Moore is right about Vermont having low per capita greenhouse emissions, his rationale is way off base.
Moore believes that there is literally no future without nuclear power. Many of us believe there is another way to create a sane energy future in Vermont. It lies with focused economic development related to conservation, efficiency, and new, renewable energy technologies. Rather than lauding our aging nuclear power plant, we would like to see Vermont play a strong leadership role in the renewable energy industry.
We need to retrain Vermont Yankee’s 300 employees (150 are from Vermont jobs, the other half are workers from out of state) to prosper in a new economy. The money used to subsidize nuclear power would be better spent on furthering alternative energy and retraining workers in time for the plant’s scheduled decommissioning (beginning 2012).
As a shameless campaigner for nuclear energy, Moore presented a wholly biased view to the committee. He neglects the danger of creating high-level nuclear waste. He claims nuclear power is cheap but fails to examine the total cost. He doesn’t mention the fact that the federal government has provided massive subsidies to the industry since its inception. Since 1974, the industry has received $47.9 billion, while $12.4 billion has been given to renewables and $11.7 billion has been devoted to efficiency. Imagine how it would be if those numbers were reversed.
February 8th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Regarding “Is Vermont Yankee green?” (2007-02-08), there is absolutely no need for nuclear power in the US because there is a simple mature technology that can deliver huge amounts of clean energy without any of the headaches of nuclear power.
I refer to ‘concentrating solar power’ (CSP), the technique of concentrating sunlight using mirrors to create heat, and then using the heat to raise steam and drive turbines and generators, just like a conventional power station. It is possible to store solar heat in melted salts so that electricity generation may continue through the night or on cloudy days. This technology has been generating electricity successfully in California since 1985 and half a million Californians currently get their electricity from this source. CSP plants are now being planned or built in many parts of the world.
CSP works best in hot deserts and, of course, these are not always nearby! But it is feasible and economic to transmit solar electricity over very long distances using highly-efficient ‘HVDC’ transmission lines. With transmission losses at about 3% per 1000 km, solar electricity may be transmitted to anywhere in the US and Canada too. A recent report from the American Solar Energy Society says that CSP plants in the south western states of the US “could provide nearly 7,000 GW of capacity, or about seven times the current total US electric capacity” (emphasis added).
In the ‘TRANS-CSP’ report commissioned by the German government, it is estimated that CSP electricity, imported from North Africa and the Middle East, could become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe, including the cost of transmission. A large-scale HVDC transmission grid has also been proposed by Airtricity as a means of optimising the use of wind power throughout Europe.
Further information about CSP may be found at http://www.trec-uk.org.uk and http://www.trecers.net . Copies of the TRANS-CSP report may be downloaded from http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/reports.htm . In case anyone is thinking nuclear power might be a solution, the many problems associated with that technology are summarised at http://www.mng.org.uk/green_house/no_nukes.htm .
February 8th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Thanks for the post Gerry. Very interesting. Have you heard about an effort to create power using tidal power? Click on this image for a NY Times video.
Former Prog Legislator, Dean Corren is involved in a project that’s starting to generate power in New York’s East river from the power of the tidal flow. The river is known for it’s strong tides and this system doesn’t block the river. It works sort of like an underwater windmill. Take a look…
February 9th, 2007 at 9:23 am
One of Rep Edwards’ committee mates wrote about the Moore presentation in the paper up here. One comment that caught my attention was Moore’s contention that nuclear waste isn’t really a problem, and that the rest of the world just “recycles” it. Any info from Sarah (or anyone in the know) on if that is bogus, and how to refute it would be great. I assume they are not recycling it into fleece jackets.
February 9th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Another word for recycling used nuclear fuel is reprocessing. Check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing
Several countries like Japan and France reprocess the used fuel so we can use them again in reactors. About 95% of the used nuclear fuel can be used again and reprocessing reduces the amount of used fuel substantially. Sounds like a very environmentally responsible way of handling waste.
As for energy subsidies, check out another blog post on the issue. Believe it or not, solar - photovoltaics have received the most government subsidies of any energy technology and only account for less than 1% of the U.S.’ total generation. Check it out here: http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2006/12/truth-about-government-subsidies-for.html
It would be nice to see some links to facts here especially on subsidies.
February 11th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Vermont Yankee does create serious emissins problems. The fossil fuels that are used from uranium mining, milling, enriching, transporting etc. are all healvily reliant on fossil fuels. Whether those fossil fuels are emitted in the Southwest where uranium mining has left 260 million tons of uranium tailings polluting Navajo lands or the leaking disintegrating barrels at the enrichemnt facilities using coal in Paducah, Kentucky where 38,000 cylinders of Depleted Uranium, DU, await disposal, it all contributes to Carbon Dioxide emisssions. And, since we live on the same planet with the southwest and Kentucky, we are affected by these emissions. It’s only by reducing our energy needs and shutting down Vermont Yankee that these uranium processes will stop. Hattie Nestel—Hattieshalom@verizon.net
February 11th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
I went to the wikipedia entry mentioned above. I only scanned the entry, but found this quote about PUREX, the system used to “recycle” waste:
“the PUREX process can easily produce separated Uranium and Plutonium, and also tends to leave the remaining actinides (like Curium) behind, producing more dangerous nuclear waste.”
More dangerous nuclear waste doesn’t sound like such a good deal…
February 12th, 2007 at 9:45 am
America abandoned PUREX reprocessing about three decades ago due to a series of decisions made during the Ford/Carter Administrations. Arguing against PUREX can’t be considered a serious critique of investigating new methods of recycling — especially when balanced against the apparent threat of carbon emissions.
As for Hattie Nestel’s claims about carbon emissions and nuclear energy, they’re just plain bunk. A number of studies on total lifecycle emissions — we’re talking about everything from construction to uranium mining to operations — peg nuclear as one of the lowest available. See the following page for a listing of studies:
http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=2&catid=260
March 3rd, 2007 at 5:38 am
Glad to hear it
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July 20th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
What most of these anti-nuclear comments seem to have in common is a genuine lack of scale or understanding of the problem.
Concentrated Solar, has anyone matched the output of these plants (around 10 - 30 MW) to the demand (GW range). I was told a while ago about the mature technology and to check out the latest solar plant in Spain 11 MW!! THAT IS WHEN THE SUN IS STRAIGHT OVERHEAD AND NO CLOUDS.
In the 1970’s we decided on gaseous diffusion. This is a highly polluting method for the production of enriched uranium, but for building a large arsenal of nuclear weapons it was preferred. The rest of the wold uses centrifugation. This process takes 5% of the energy that GD does and we (meaning European companies that didn’t have the commercial restrictions put on them be so called environmentalist) are building two GC plants that will replace the current enrichment facilities. The arguments associated with GD are going to be obsolete in two years.
Mining and milling. Per KW output this is about the same as manufacturing a windmill, erecting it, building access roads for maintenance, cutting of vegetation for transmission lines etc.
The only viable alternative to nuclear power at the present time unless you live in the land of oz with the lollipop gang is coal, hydro, and geothermal. I read on this page a so-called environmentalist call for the damning of rivers in Canada so that they could microwave popcorn. In the face of the perceived nuclear threat, this person would probably go spotted owl hunting if they thought it would help! It really comes down to burning more coal if you live on planet Earth and ever took a physics course. Picture this in your mind, with one simple fact (not bloody opinion, fact) energy can neither be created nor destroyed by conventional means; every time you change energy from one from to another you loose a fraction of it to heat. A modern coal plant with its supercritical steam transfer system is very efficient at turning thermal heat into electrical power. That is why we use them. A 1 GWhr plant consumes over 100 MILLION tons of coal a year. Last time I considered this it never crossed my mind that they did this for kicks or to pollute the environment. The do this to satisfy the required demand on the grid. They eat more than the mass of the Titanic a day in coal, powdered and blown like a jet into blast furnaces 24/7. That is a lot of joules of energy, I think… This heat is used to drive massive turbines. Now, think of all the sun light falling on a square mile of land, don’t imagine cloud cover or the sun at 5 PM to 9 AM. Think of a nice stiff breeze, make it a hurricane if you want. Even the best windmill is only going to convert a fraction of the energy into mechanical energy, and compared to a coal plant, there isn’t that much energy to begin with, when the wind is blowing.
Nuclear power does not require the mass of the Titanic of fuel that was probably obtained from the removal of a mountain top and its disposal in a near by valley and then transport of the above mentioned mass across the country. It requires a mass the size of a Hummer every 18 months. Hummers are mostly air an fuel assemblies are tight bundles if it helps. This replaces an equivalent mass in the reactor which is kept intact, ceramic pellets, inside of zirconium metal tubes in intact assembles. Unlike coal waste with its tons of mercury, uranium, thorium, arsenic, chromium, acid rain, microparticulates and carbon dioxide, it is contained and doesn’t show back up in your kids tuna sandwich. It can be sealed up. Reprocessing it would not make it more or less toxic in total, the more dangerous and useless components can be distilled down to an even smaller mass that can then be further fixed and disposed of by encasement that will easily last thousands of years. Bury it a mile down in old hard rock mines and it will be gone. We live on a massive Uranium/Thorium driven breeder reactor. None of the isotopes found in a reactor is new to the earth, most, but not all, of these naturally occurring examples are deep within the earth, so this disposal is not introducing anything new into the system. However, we will eventually burn all the actinide waste anyway, with technology that we will purchase from the French, Chinese and Japanese. We already have fuel designs that require some of them to run and require large quantities and AP1000 reactors produce 10% of the waste produced by VT Yankee on low enriched uranium fuel and on these new fuels will produce a third of that while burning down reactor waste plutonium. I propose that VT be closed down as soon as an AP1000 is built in the state to replace it. Actually, it should be built in MA or NH and all the power metered into VT transferring the tax base out of the state. VT could be just like Germany, which now is forced to buy 30% of its electricity from France who sells it to them at peak rates. California has rolling brownouts and high electricity rates. I drive around there in the summer and the windmills are just standing there, a couple drifting around every once in a while.
All I ask is that when you advocate against nuclear power, you look at what the real world consequences are, not some pie in the sky solution like concentrated solar. This is going to end up just like corn based ethanol.
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