Nuclear Power & Ireland

by Shane OCurry - wsm - Personal Capacity Wed Mar 07, 2007 14:13

(I don't suppose anyone is opposed to it per se). My opposition to it stems not so much the risk of major accident (which I think is quite small with the right technology) but largely from what I believe to be the huge unresolved question of what to do with the waste. I also have a sense that some of the 'economy' of Nuclear power touted by its advocates is false because the calculation is done without factoring wha are in effect state subsidies and that nuclear power generation in places like the UK effectively recieves subsidies from defense who buy up plutonium (a waste by-product) for use in war-heads, which suggests that nuclear energy would only be 'cost-effective' in countries where there is a weapons programme running alongside.

However, my knowledge is admittedly very sketchy and I would really appreciate some informed debate, citing sources and so on.

by madmike Wed Mar 07, 2007 15:53

I don't see any great push to build a station here as with the developing interconnecters the "energy gap" will be filled by importing current. Some of that power will of course be nuclear but I doubt anyone will be able to spot the nuke from the non nuke!

by MichaelY - iawm Wed Mar 07, 2007 16:05

Jasper's piece comes straight from the Newsletter/Fact Sheet of the nuclear industry.....its message is clear its objective crystal. My worry is more related to some of Shane's comments.

To start with, there are many many people, some activists and some not, who are opposed to nuclear power p e r s e !! Both in its military version but also in its so-called c i v i l usage. As one of the people who was very active in the large mobilisations around the attempt of firstly Fianna Fail (O'Malley was then Minister of Industry) and then Fine Gael to impose a nuclear power station at Carnsore Point I would consider myself as one of the per-se opponents. The purveyors of nuclear power, including the heads of the ESB, and a number of TCD based 'neutral' intellectuals were defeated by peoples power - this, for the younger users of Indymedia was in the period 1976 - 1982!!
The economy was going to the dogs without nuclear power we were told - it was perfectly safe, our watches carried more radioactivity we were told - Garret Fitzgerald in the Late Late made a quip that he would not have any problem living in a house perched on a nuclear power station - this was a a couple of weeks before the Three Mile Island accident in the US- no, Jasper I will not mention the holocaust in the Ukraine. There some of the stalinists which went with different names told us that nuclear 'under workers control' was grand!! Some of them are around still in the Labour Party these days. Others....lets leave it at that.
The issue of waste was no problem - we would export it and store it under granite in deserted spaces where it would live happily for a million years or so - that was another story..... Electricity would be cheap we were told.....there were no emmissions - no risk of cancer - if fishes were growing two and three heads in the Channel because of the Le Havre reactor ...those were quirks of nature.....yes, the irish Sea was really radio active but wasn't X-rays good for human kind....what were we complaining about......alternative energies were pie in the sky dreams - who would want to rely on wind or the sun for his or her fridge and cookers - bio fuels came much later.

So debate is good - lets have it. Now that most people are aware that the system in place is destroying the planet - let us have a debate. The more the better.

Finally, a small PS for Shane - there are some very good experienced comrades in the WSM who were there during the Carnsore anti-nuclear days. Ask them to set up a debate....only good can come out of that.

by Jasper Wed Mar 07, 2007 16:58

Just a quick word...I'm not suggesting the piece is good, bad, accurate, inaccrurate etc. I just put it in as a discussion piece having seen an article that suggested that 27% would be ok with nuclear power in Ireland.

Don't be tied to the article or let it shape your posts, per se. I just wanted to see a general discussion on nuclear power.

by Jasper Wed Mar 07, 2007 17:09

On the waste management issue, look at the proposed facility at Yucca Mountain. Although it would appear, and there are very little arguments to suggest otherwise, it's the perfect site for storing waste. The geoligical containiment, the engineered capsule and the fact that it's nowhere near a water basin and so on. Interesting case study.

by MichaelY - iawm Wed Mar 07, 2007 18:56

Jasper,

Hassles I see on the horizon. The US Energy Department unveiled legislation yesterday, Tuesday March 6th, to spur construction of a national nuclear waste dump in Yucca Mountain,Nevada, and increase its capacity. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, immediately vowed to b lo c k the bill.

That could spell more problems for the very troubled Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, already years behind schedule. The Energy Department official who heads the project warned that without new funding that's part of the bill, a 2017 goal for opening the dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas could not be met.

The new bill is similar to legislation the Energy Department offered last year that didn't advance. The political environment is even tougher for the measure this year now that Reid, an ardent Yucca Mountain opponent, is in charge of the Senate.

“This is just the department's latest attempt to breathe life into this dying beast and it will fail,” Reid said. “I will continue to leverage my leadership position to prevent the dump from ever being built.”

The bill doesn't specify how much more than 77,000 tons of nuclear waste should be allowed in Yucca Mountain, though federal environmental impact studies have estimated the dump could safely hold at least 132,000 tons.

And more :

There's already more than 50,000 tons of nuclear waste piling up at nuclear power plants in 31 states with nowhere to go, something that's threatening taxpayers with mounting liability costs since the federal government was contractually obligated to begin storing nuclear utilities' waste starting in 1998. Should Ireland become no.32?

Reid's solution is to leave the nuclear waste at the sites where it already is, put it in dry cask storage units and allow the Energy Department to take ownership of it onsite to eliminate the problem of liability to utilities. He and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., introduced their own legislation Tuesday to make those changes.

In recent years Reid has also succeeded in cutting President Bush's budget request for Yucca. The project's 2007 budget, at $405 million, is nearly $150 million less than the administration wanted, which Sproat said is forcing project managers to put various initiatives on hold, including work on a rail line to transport the waste.

by Jasper Thu Mar 08, 2007 13:15

Hmmm...I can't remember looking at the exact quantities but more in terms of the infiltration rate of the rock above and below the container that the waste would be stored in. It was such that no water should reach the capsule, for want of a better term, and if it did, the contaminated water wouldn't be able to go far enough to pollute anything. The site is on the edge of the old Nevada test site and the only water basin that's anywhere near the site isn't connected to a water supply nor would it ever be.

I may be open to correction because it's been 2 years or more since I looked at the case study.

by Marlboro man Thu Mar 08, 2007 13:33

There is still far too much stigma attached to Nuclear Power to the extent that anyone who even suggests exploring its merits within all the parameters concerned are beaten with the eco-stick. And wrongly too in my opinion.

I have had robust debates with Jasper on different issues and mostly from a polar opposite position but I agree with him on this issue. NP is a possible solution to the combined problem of energy conservation, Global warming and CO2 emmisions.

Modern reactors are a far cry from the antiquated cauldrons that have caused massive humanitarian crisis in the past. In terms of its Carbon Footprint it is attractive, It can also be deployed as a stop gap measure until renewables can be fully intergrated into the grid with the NP Station then phased out.

In addition huge investment in a multi-national endevour is underway in France to build a sustainable Fusion reactor.

by Mark malone Thu Mar 08, 2007 17:27

Nuclear energy, as has been pointed out by nmany contributors is a short sighted idea in terms of sustainability. the issue of climate change is be used as a smoke screen to futher the interests of the nuclear industry. Peak oil will soon be used to as an agressive argument to move forward with nuclear, with genuine public debate based upon a critical understanding of all the issues

Climate change and peak oil are serious issues that need to to looked at and tackled in a sysytemic way. In this regard Climtae changeand perhaps climate choas trumps peak oil for immediacy. The nuclear lobby porpose that nuclear energy needs to be upped to help achieve the change over to renewable and sustainable energy forms. Sounds resonable,(thats assuming that safety and waste are 'issues to be managed' by the state, not real social and political questions that we all should have a voice on). However this argument falls down by its own premises

the energy requirements,and carbon outputs involved, make nonsense of nuclear as a green energy. The sourcing extraction and transport of raw plutonium, is neather renewable or susutainable. It is extremely labour intensive using machinery that works on fossil fuels, ie diesel and oil. So does its transport and the transport of waste. The constuction of nuclear power plants are reqwuire massive amonts of carbon to be emitted to the air and again, is totally dependant upon energy intensive oil.

Plutonium and other nuclear raw materials are finite. they can only ever be a stop gap towards a post carbon based society. what its proponents , mostly capitalists, see a a lucrative last gasps and power/profits grabs from an energy sector based on private ownership of resoucres and commons, of energy creation and profits.

by shane - wsm - Personal Capacity Mon Mar 19, 2007 22:53

Michael Y says: ".....My worry is more related to some of Shane's comments." but doesn't cite them! Instead he engages in a McCarthyite diatribe against me for having the temerity to say that I am not -per se- opposed to nuclear power. My understood implication being that I don't trust the state's arguments in favour of it, but can - hypothetically - conceive of circumstances when I would not be opposed to it. I am therefore not opposed to nuclear research, the idea of nuclear fusion and so on. I also wouldn't object to a nuclear power plant on the moon, if some rational reason were given for establishing one. What's wrong with that, apart from the fact that it offends the left's shibboleths?

Nor does MichaelY give us any information on the debate or directions to any interesting sources, which is what I asked for when admitting my lack of knowledge on the subject. I mean If I can't trust the state's sources of information, where can I go to find what I want?

I asked for hard science and information. What I got was the demented hectoring of a cult member exhilirated with the confidence of having the correct line.

I shall ask my comrades in the WSM where to go for the information, MichaelY, thank you. Your comment was very instructive about the ideological climate which pertains in the inner sanctum of the IAWM.

by MichaelY - iawm - per cap Tue Mar 20, 2007 09:29

Shane,

I must say I was taken aback by your message yesterday - responding to mine that was written 12 days ago!! I checked mine again, trying to locate evidence or even shades of "a McCarthyite diatribe against " you....sorry to say I couldn't find any!! Obvious - some may think!
Now a couple of points for your consideration:
1. My comments on nuclear power were shaped by my personal experience as an activist against Carnsore many years ago....they had very little to do, directly at least, with my participation in the iawm. So, inner sanctum or otherwise, your comments re: the iawm are badly misplaced.
2. I did say that I welcomed debate on nuclear power...and the signs are that a debate will be imposed on the anti-nuclear movement-in-formation. There is a pro-nuclear wind blowing in certain quarters at the moment.
3. As for more more data on the issue, try Google....it's a good starting point. Seriously

Fraternally

by pat c Tue Mar 20, 2007 10:09

I think Michael has a habit of putting IAWM after his name no matter what he is posting about. That would be all very well if IAWM was a party/political organisation, but when it is a one issue campaign its perhaps not always appropriate.

Without necessarily agreeing with Michael Ys analysis its worth pointing out that he has a lot of experience in campaigning against Nuclear Power in ireland. He played a leading role in the struggle which defeated the attempt to impose a nuclear power station at Carnsore. I reckon his opinions are his own and are not handed down by RBB or any of the other Demi-Gods in the IAWM.

by C Murray Tue Mar 20, 2007 10:20

these were published last year:-

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76951

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76680

The current administration is denying nuclear power will come to ireland, however
the SIB does provide strategic planning for 'core energy issues' - this was passed
by minster Mc Dowell through the Oireachtas on June 16th 2006 in the absence of
the taoiseach (who was attending Charlie Haughey's funeral)

The Irish examiner is one of the newspapers which would have an archive on the issue.
In the event of a long term plan for nuclear power the government would have to appoint
a nuclear board.

In the first link above , you can see that there is already an appointed committee to
investigate the issue.

by Shane OCurry - wsm - Personal Capacity Tue Mar 20, 2007 13:54

Michael
On re-reading the posts, I can see that my response was disproportionate and verging on the sectarian. So, in the spirit of fraternity, please accept my apology. After all, it's in all of our interests to "play the ball", not the player.

I wasn't around for the Carnsore campaign but appreciate that it was the right thing to do, more than that, that it was an important victory for struggle. I therefore understand now that you have a lot invested in the issue personally as an activist. I hope you will agree that it was never my intention to belittle the importance of anyone's participation in Carnsore or any similar struggles.

My initial post was partly rhetorical, because I feared that the response to someone who took an actual pro nuclear position would be that they would be slammed for doing so without coming away from the experience any better informed, let alone be in a position to "stand corrected". The over all effect of your response was to confrm that fear, although I appreciate now that that was partly due to my interpretation of the spirit of it, rather than through any intention of yours.

My initial post was in a related way also partly motivated by a strong sense I have that the nuclear power question, because it is so hotly contested, is one where there is very little "substantial" debate about the core issues. This is because there is a tendency for people to -too unthinkingly - take their positions according to what "camp" they find themselves, in rather than working out their position from first principles.

I am concerned with this precisely because, as you pointed out, "There is a pro-nuclear wind blowing in certain quarters at the moment". A few months ago, as a usual suspect type anti war activist, I was contacted by Radio Foyle and asked did I want to respond to a local businessman's call for a nuclear power plant to be set up in Derry. What I feared the most was giving this quack's proposal any ill deserved publicity by rising to his bait and falling into a trap where I would be accused of giving an emotive but substance-less argument, or, worse still, be accused of being "anti science" because I didn't have all the facts at my fingertips, even though I wa confident that the majority of people in Derry would be opposed to a plant. So I declined the invitation, but was left with a sense that my own position on it needed to be thought through.

I am also still resentful at having to preface my arguments with a kind of "I am not pro nuclear, but..." tone which I now feel I have had to adopt. It shouldn't be like that. It was in this context that I made the "Maccarthyite" jibe about the spirit of your response to my original post. I realise that this wasn't helpful, so I withdraw it.

Yes, let's have informed, fraternal debate.

Thank you Mark, Pat and Michael for your subsequent posts which do have useful information.

in solidarity

by MichaelY - per cap Wed Mar 21, 2007 09:08

Good wind blowing,

Just to say a big thank you to Pat and Shane and CMurray for the very positive posts. I am absolutely suffocated today with work so I won't stay long here. Just to say we need to discuss openly and fraternally all issues - but particularly the issue of natural resources and its direct link to the issue of climate change.

Talk to all of you soon.

Fraternally

PS Thanks PatC

by sparky Wed Mar 21, 2007 15:59

Our neighbour France is currently generating about 80% of its electricity by nuclear fusion. This percentage is scheduled to increase slightly in the coming decade as more nuclear capacity comes on-line - and despite a very considerable projected increase in the use of renewables and wind-power, and an assumed continuing increase in overall electricity consumption. Fossil-fuel generation is set to plummet to less than 5% of the total by 2015. What is even better about this scenario is that by 2015 France envisages that 30% of her road-vehicles will run off electricity or a combination of bio-fuel and electricity. Some projections see France being in a position to outlaw vehicles using fossel-fuels by 2020.

None of this would be possible without nuclear power generation. If the most efficient wind-generators currently available were spaced at every 50m from Dunquirke to Biarriaz they would only be able to replace 50% of the nuclear power stations (leaving aside the consequences to navigation, tourism and amenity - and the weather-dependence of wind-power).

What about the nuclear waste, you ask? Well France has decided that it will just have to solve the problem as best it can and live with the consequences (which are considerably better than extensive coastal inundation and the desertification of the central and south-east). Since the fall of the iron curtain considerable resources - material and human - have transferred from the military deterrent to the civil nuclear programme. The sites at Marcoule, Pierrelatte, and Cap le Hague are now engaged in research on new or improved technologies in generation, safety, and waste disposal. These new technologies are already coming on-stream. Already, most high-level waste is being vitrified and fissionable waste is being recovered and reprossed for reactor fuel.

Ireland will probably miss-out on the new nuclear revolution because of entrenched ideological positions conditioned by a decade of wasting millions in the futile political PR operation (aka the hopeless legal suits against BNF) against Sellafield. Ireland is destined to remain wedded to a large percentage of her power coming from increasingly expensive and anachronistic fossel fuels, while more and more of her coastline and mountain becomes despoiled by noisy low-density wind-generators. (wind-generators currently generate about 5% more power during their life-time than it takes to construct and maintain them. Offshore wind-generators, 5% less!).

Next time you enjoy a fine claret raise a toast to the very large nuclear-power complex which is happily situated right in the middle of the Gironde wine-producing region.

by Marlboro man Wed Mar 21, 2007 21:12

Nowhere in the world draws even 0.00001% of its electricity from Nuclear Fusion. Nuclear fusion reactors are still on the drawing board and no-one has yet built a sustainable nuclear fusion reactor, let alone use one to generate electricity.

The french are building with the help of a multi national consortium and experimental Fusion reactor that is hoped to achieve a positive economically viable yield within a decade.

Nuclear fusion should not even be mentioned even the same breath as its radio-active fission cousin in terms of eco-friendliness and energy conservation.

Fusion if viable, will provide a cheap abundance of power with very little by-product and virtually zero carbon emissions.

by Shane OCurry Thu Mar 22, 2007 11:07

Apart from the obvious and unfortunate confusion of fusion for fission and the politically loaded jibe about "pointless" legal action against BNFL, Sparky's argumentation comes across as fairly reasonable, at least on first reading. I am almost swayed.

This leaves me with a few questions:

What's up with vitrification as a means of waste disposal? What are the risks? & costs?

re-processing? - risks & costs?

What is France's record on accidents? sources? can they be trusted?
Why do I have the impression that France has a good record? Do they really have better technology? or are they just better at keeping accidents secret?

Is France's nuclear power generation cost-effective ? with or without an arms programme to buy up waste?

by shane Thu Mar 22, 2007 11:59

two things stood out for me in it:

The unresolved issues of waste disposal & decommissioning

The difficulty in calculating costs & central importance of state subsidies & state capital investment, includig the cost of decommissioning & waste disposal

by Paul Thu Mar 22, 2007 18:46

One of the things we shouldn't forget is that if we do built a nuclear power station we will no longer be able to complain about Sellafield because we will most likely be exporting our nuclear waste there or to one of the French facilities.

by sparky Thu Mar 22, 2007 20:44

Sorry for typing 'Fusion'. Fission is of course what I meant. We are at least 50 years away from a practical fusion reactor. It may be that a practical fusion reactor may never happen given how difficult creating a self-sustainable fusion reaction proved even in the extreme circumstances of a nuclear explosion. It may also be that fusion will only be sustainable with tritium fuel (which would have to be created by specially designed fission-reactors - a pointless exercise). The artificial creation of tritium by way of neutron bombardment of Li6 Deuteride (the main fuel in H bombs) is not a practical option in the infinitely lower neutron-flux of a fusion reactor.

France has a pretty good record running its civil nuclear programme, and EDF (the French ESB) seems to have been more competent in managing its PWRs than the Americans. France is an open society and it is utterly improbable that a significant accident in a French nuke would escape notice.

Nuclear waste is just something we are just going to have to deal with. The alternatives are to freeze in the dark or accept widespread innundation and desertification. Millions would be displaced. More millions would starve. Remember, Chernobyl, a paradignm accident (in an anachronistic reactor-design up-scaled from a first-generation military plutonium-producer). Chernobyl killed a very shall number of people - and (while not making light of the consequences) every succeeding study seems to show that the biological consequences are less and less than even the most middle of the road earlier projections. One thing is sure, a low-energy world would premise an economy which would hardly support the medical-technologies which buy the long life-expectancy we in the first-world have come to expect.

As for costs, Frence consumers have among the lowest electricity tariffs in europe. They also export power to the UK through an interconnector.

by wageslave Sat Mar 24, 2007 12:09

France are always cited as a great example but they have their issues too.
For example this one.Not reported much but during the heatwave, they were 2 degrees from quite a serious problem.

http://www.underreported.com/modules.php?op=modload&nam...old=0

In theory in a perfect world with perfect environmental stability run by perfect caring people, Nuclear power, if using the latest safest technology and perfecttly designed flawless systems put in place to deal with any emergency and of course equally perfectly designed, logical and environmentally driven waste management systems put in place to last 100,000 years without any problem, would probably be worth "debating".

this is the real world:
http://www.nonukes.org/r01usnuc.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/031200-01.htm
http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/NUCSAF/HCleanup.shtml

But we all know that this is not a perfect world and nuclear plants would be run by greedy (possibly incompetent ) vested interests cutting corners to make more profit and externalising the waste problem on the local community or the third world to maximise profit. You only have to look at the US experience to see that the reality of dealing with nuclear waste issues is so much more disappointing than the dream.

I quote from one of the articles linked to above:
"Unfortunately, the American government has become a machine for the conversion of public assets into private profits, and a big machine for the conversion of private liabilities into public liabilities. The problem of nuclear waste is a very good illustration of the second feature"

That is the reality of nuclear power

and THAT is why I am against nuclear power.

Because humans are humans and they are pretty nasty pathetic self centred and incompetent creatures and when they see a profit it really brings out the worst in them and as such they cannot be left in charge of anything where they can find an angle without fucking it up in the longer term.

capitalism:
"The absurd notion that the most ruthless of men doing the most abhorrent things can bring the most good to the most people"

Nuclear energy is just another technology. not good or bad but with a particularly devastating potential to cause harm if not handled properly. Humans will not handle it properly.

In that perfect world I mentioned (which is a pre-requisite for discussing nuclear power), I'd consider a pebble bed reactor as a good source of power. However this certainly aint a perfect world. not by a long way.

We live in the real world, so personally I really don't want to rely on greedy corporate sociopaths to protect us and our children, for thousands of years, from the rather unforgiving nature of the laws of physics

interesting links:
http://www.nonukes.org/ngl.htm
http://www.sea-us.org.au/wastenot.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste
http://library.thinkquest.org/3471/nuclear_waste_body.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_modular_reactor

by pensioner Sat Mar 24, 2007 16:47

Note: The temprature of the incoming coolant was 2'C away from triggering a "shutdown".- not an accident. I presume that the designers of the control-systems set certain arbitrary parameters as triggers to alert the emergency systems as to potential problems. High incoming water temprature might in certain circumstances indicate a problem in the coolant loop. The engineers had not anticipated that the safety systems would be needlessly alerted by the consequences of freak weather-conditions. However, this incident shows just how precautionary the nuclear industry is.

Incidentally, since 2003 all power-generating reactors in France are of the doubly-contained light-water type. This type is inherently safe from a runaway reaction of the Chernobyl type because any interference with their coolant or geometry makes them less-reactive. The Three-Mile-island accident where the operators did just about everything they could to make the situation worse demonstrates how safe PWRs and BWRs are from accidents which might result in a significant release of radio-activity.

I would have thought that EDF, a publicly-owned utility, was just the sort of socialized industry that Indymedia types believe is the answer to all the world's problems.

Anyway I don't think for one moment that Ireland has the honesty to build a nuke of its own. PC rules here. We will just import nuke-generated power from the UK and beyond. The usual Irish solution to an Irish problem. Just like abortion.

BTW France had an accident with one of it's early graphite-moderated plutionium producing reactors in 1959 which resulted in three workers receiving an entire week's dose in a few minutes. The reactor was sealed and abandoned.