That's correct.
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2011 3:32 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION'; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: Harry, I'm grateful that we had the first generation of nuclear reactors after WWII because the plutonium weapons it produced enabled peace to be held between the US and the USSR. Without the threat of catastrophic mutual destruction then they'd certainly have gone to war in the traditional tank warfare way. America would surely have survived it economically but Europe, still recovering after WWII, would have been set back a century. What's bothersome is that it has continued since that period. It doesn't matter how much you try to reassure me or anybody else that nuclear power is relatively safe the fact is that the general public are very unhappy about past accidents, the ongoing secrecy, and the permanent potential for immense catastrophe far above any other industry. You say that little insurance has been paid out so far but it's still the case that no commercial insurance company will take the risk on. Keith At 09:52 22/03/2011 -0700, Harry wrote: Keith, Sorry about that but I misled you. However, you reminded me that there is as much radioactivity in coal as in nuclear fuel for the same production of electricity. However, it is spread over thousands of tons of waste and is not significant. The danger in coal burning is not radioactivity but air pollution. The estimate I noted of premature deaths from coal instigated air pollution was an annual 80,000. That was probably 50 years ago. We have made great strides in air pollution over the years so perhaps the lethal effect of coal burning is much less now -- but I bet it's significant. Certainly, every time a new nuclear plant is built it cuts into the human cost of coal. Nuclear supplies us with 20% of our electricity. Coal pollution kills and the transport of coal also kills. At the time I did my original calculations all those years ago some 200 railway workers a year died. As coal was half the freight carried, I pro ratas that to lay 100 deaths to coal. The union leaders assertion that there were 500,000 cases of Black Lung I've never checked. I assume it is higher than the actual number because he was making a point. No doubt there are a large number of cases. I assume that everything is better now after 50 years but suspect the death and disease consequences of burning coal are still unacceptable. Yet, not having coal to burn would no doubt consign people -- particularly the poor -- to bouts of pneumonia or something, like those UK Old Age Pensioners face in winter. Are there likely to be civilian nuclear accidents? Of course, but the only serious one we had was Three Mile Island some 30 years ago. This produced no cancers (Windscale was estimated to have caused 200 additional cancers. Of course at Three Mile there were claims of cancers but this happens (particularly in the US with hungry trial lawyers) whenever a deep pocketslike the government or a large corporation is involved. However, extensive independent testing found no dangerous levels of radioactivity. This, though they even harvested deer tongues all around the plant -- finding no increased levels. Nevertheless, less than $100 million were paid out in compensation for interruption of business, and suchlike. The cost of fighting cases is now so much that it is often cheaper simply to pay out. One point I noticed was that when things began to go wrong, workers properly carried out procedures. Unfortunately, the laid down procedures were deficient. If we are really worried about casualties, we could simply ban all road traffic. That would reduce US deaths by some 40,000 a year and heaven knows how many injuries. But of course we can't do that can we? Should we ban US nuclear power even though there are probably no nuclear deaths? (Normal accidents, including death may take place in a variety of non-nuclear incidents in any factory or plant situation.) The nuclear insurance fund is over $12 billion from which perhaps a couple of hundred million has been paid out over the years. This was government policy and the nuclear firms drove a hard bargain with deep pockets. Had the advancement of nuclear power been left to private companies -- obviously with government safeguards -- perhaps we would have reached the present state of nuclear know-how 50 years ago. I particularly like the idea of the self-contained nuclear plant which cannot be entered. Apparently, they can be buried and will produce electricity untouched until the fuel runs out. I understand an Alaskan town faced by uncertain electricity supply in the winter months, has applied to have one buried nearby so electricity supply will be certain. Also, the fail safe models where the control rods are power lifted out of the core look good to me. If power cuts off, the control rods fall into the core and turn the reactor off. Had they been present in the Japanese reactors perhaps all would have been well. As I understand it, the reactors withstood the 9.0 jolt. It was the tsunami that caused the trouble by cutting off electricity. With fail-safe equipment, perhaps the tsunami wouldn't have been a problem. Our newest reactor is now 39 years old though most, or all, have had upgrades through the years. But they are basically ancient. I note that Germany is decommissioning 7 reactors built before 1980. Well we, and Germany, can always go back to coal! I was interested in your mention of DNA. Plants naturally include in their makeup poisons to defend against pests. They should kill us too, but they don't because we have a developed resistance to them. I recall that in experiments to increase plant resistance, scientists produced a potato that was absolutely untouchable by any pest -- a complete defense! Only problem was that if we ate it, it would kill us. Guess you can't win them all. Harry ****************************** Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 (818) 352-4141 ****************************** From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Keith Hudson Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 1:09 AM To: [email protected]; 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: Harry, There is hardly anything in you reply with which I would disagree. Nevertheless, you miss the point. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with the (admittedly rare) accidents at Windscale, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, together with the clam-like secrecy of the nuclear industry (yes, it's always a governmental or quasi-governmental affair) means that the general public are fearful of nuclear power and it's never likely to leave the collective memory while nuclear power stations operate. (Yes, the coal industry spreads much more radioactivity around the world than nuclear power stations but it nowhere remotely reaches, nor could ever reach, safety limits. DNA has evolved special mechanisms over hundreds of millions of years which are repairing thousands of times more mutational accidents than that produced by natural background radiation which is still higher than coal-produced stuff.) (Also we'd already have had a rash of cancer from the use of the mobile phone.) As to insurance and the fact that no insurance company will insure against floods in vulnerable places, then this is another instance of where governments (central and local) are not doing their job. If bureaucrats were carrying out their duty of care, then house-building in these areas should be outlawed (unless on stilts!) Keith At 14:13 20/03/2011 -0700, you wrote: Keith, Before the tsunami, most sources refer to three major nuclear accidents. Chernobyl, Windscale, and Three Mile Island. Three Mile was insignificant. Chernobyl sent out 7 million curies, Windscale emitted 20,000 curies, though I understand that has been reduced, Three Mile loosed 15 curies less than background radiation. Both Chernobyl and Windscale were military installations, producing plutonium. Windscale was a reprocessing plant. Im not sure we have that particular use under control. I havent spent much time on nuclear stuff in recent years, but some time ago when there was a chance we would build some new inherently safeplants I spent a lot of time on it. My memory is that reprocessing plants were risky propositions. Maybe ineptitude was a factor, too. Chernobyl produced plutonium. It had no containment vessel, was an ancient graphite type of plant that was not considered a safe choice. I understand that Europe has offered to build modern replacements for some East European countries if they would close their old graphite reactors. I understand that now improved graphite reactors are in the works, but we would probably have to ask Pete about that. The point is that the two major catastrophes before the present were military producers of plutonium rather than civilian power reactors. As far as I can gather the Japanese reactors survived the earthquake, but the one, two punch of the tsunami was too much. The tsunami may have caused some 15,000 deaths (including the 10,000 or so who are missing). Would you prefer to be on the north-east shore, or near the reactors when the tsunami hit? With regard to quality of personnel, youll recall that in the UK Dyson was unable to find 200 scientific people for his research labs. Dont know how he eventually came out, but it indicated a certain failure of UK education I rather think that knowledgeable people from academe or think-tanksare not good choices to offer opinions on a practical engineering problem. But, I suppose the initiating factor for the BBC was its innate academic snobbery. It would have been better to get some hands-on nuclear reactor engineers to contribute. Ive forgotten the twists and turns of nuclear reactor ownership in the UK. Are your remaining reactors owned privately, or by quasi-governmental entities? I once knew this but as I said I havent much been involved in nuclear discussion in recent years. Now, that may change. Mistakes at nuclear reactors may have enormous consequencesbut we havent seen much of these enormous consequences. Prior to the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, the only civilian disaster was at Three Mile Island. There, everything worked as it was supposed to and, as I said, the radiation released was less than background radiation. I would, however, submit that people died and were injured because of the accident. This was because they shut down the second reactor at Three Mile. Presumably, while it was shut down, more electricity was produced from coal a known killer. The deaths came because they kept the second reactor out of commission, but there you are. It would probably be an ongoing disaster to put those knowledgeable academics in charge of a nuclear plant. As I say, the plants need practical engineers and sensible workers even if they didnt get a first with honors at a university. The storage of spent fuel rods in tanks is a temporary measure while the government decides what to do with them. It has been temporaryfor decades while governments fail to come to a decision. I assume thats the case in Japan. As I told Natalia, I recall that one US plant got fed up with governmental inertia and built an off plant storage facility. As I recall (its been a long time since I interested myself in this) it looked like a row of brick garages and was built somewhere in the in the north central part of the US. Ill guess Wisconsin, but cant remember. They were offering storage space to other plants, as I recall. I also vaguely remember the spent rods were not immersed in water, but were separated in safe amounts. The spent rods in water tanks is a government folly not to be attributed to the plants. You say which is the way anti-nuclear power people treat the matter: We don't yet know whether or not large quantities of caesium-137 with a 30-year radioactive half-lifetime are yet to be spewn over 30 million people in the Tokyo region of Japan only 100 miles away -- or even to reach the coast of America. (If that were to happen I think you would soon change your mind about nuclear power!) We also dont know whether radiation leakage will be minor and relatively unimportant. But that thought isnt to be revealed. In the US, we have a saying about TV News the bleeds lead. In other words, they show the shootings, highway accidents, and other bleeds, before they get to the meat of the news. Blood grabs the audience. So, all the hypotheticals like Rays 40 million deaths get top billing. Sensible worries about a situation are downplayed. Your point about insurance is true. Now, would your insurance company like to sell flood insurance to the survivors of Japans north-east? Insurance of such large possibilities is not particularly welcome to companies even though they would have done well with nuclear insurance in the US. Nuclear plants contribute to an insurance pool that is now over $11 billion. Of this some $151 million has been paid out along with a Department of Energy (also covered ) payment of $65 million. Insuring the nukes would have been pretty profitable. (I think the nuclear companies are trying to get some of that money back but without much luck.) A tiny amount as I recall only a fraction of a penny per watt is added to the price of US nuclear produced electricity to pay for decommissioning. Many years ago, I recall that the decommissioning fund was enough to pay the costs if all the plants closed down next day. I surmise that there is much more in the fund now. Decommissioning is handled here. Dont know the situation in the UK. Getting a plant into operation is not an engineering problem but a legal problem as perhaps a $2 billion plant can sit unused while protests from anti-nukes drift through the courts. Terrible waste of money. Its a wonder any plants were built. But, once they are, these now ancient plants produce a sizable chunk of our electricity over decades of use. No fallacies involved from my end, but I fear a few from Devon! Harry ****************************** Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 (818) 352-4141 ****************************** From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2011 2:41 AM To: [email protected]; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: Harry, I am afraid that your complacency is quite wrong. Accidents to nuclear reactors may be rare -- but when they occur they are disastrous. I've tried to persuade you before that the standard of scientific and engineering personnel employed by the nuclear industry is way below what it should be. This is exemplified by the Fukushima disaster now going on in Japan. The Japanese have had to call in experts from America and elsewhere to help them. I've been watching BBC 24-hour News pretty closely during the past week. Altogether, the BBC called in about 40 or 50 experts to explain matter more clearly to the lay viewers. Not a single one of these has come from the industry itself -- UK or US or anywhere else. They've all been highly-knowledgeable people from academe or think-tanks. In the UK nuclear industry, the engineering and scientific personnel are drawn almost completely from one third-rate university with very low A-level (school) entry requirements. The UK Government Nuclear Inspectorate hasn't ever been able to recruit enough suitably qualified engineers and scientists, nor can it do so today despite offering high salaries. The long and the short of it is that, quite unlike any other industry -- repeat, any other industry -- relatively few engineers or scientists of sufficient intelligence and qualifications would dream of risking their careers to the day-to-day working of nuclear reactors. There are plenty of other career opportunities for people of such calibre. No matter how carefully nuclear reactors are designed, nor how well their equipment is made, some mistakes -- no matter how infrequent -- can have the most enormous consequences. The main unforeseen mistake in the current case is that once spent fuel rods are dunked in a tank of water and kept fairly separate then they are assumed to be of no possible danger afterwards despite their residual radioactivity. What was overlooked is that such spent fuel tanks oughts to have had double -- and eve triple -- fail-safe sources of water. We don't yet know whether they'll succeed in cooling down those fuel rods at Fukushima. We don't yet know whether or not large quantities of caesium-137 with a 30-year radioactive half-lifetime are yet to be spewn over 30 million people in the Tokyo region of Japan only 100 miles away -- or even to reach the coast of America. (If that were to happen I think you would soon change your mind about nuclear power!) The second fallacy in your line of thinking -- correlated with poor quality of personnel -- is revealed by the fact that no insurance company in the world would dream of insuring a working nuclear reactor, nor would any nuclear construction company in the world dream of running reactors all through their lifetimes and of having to decommission them afterwards. Keith At 23:35 18/03/2011 -0700, you wrote: Thanks, Pete, I had forgotten about the CanDu reactors. It's a long time since I spent time on nuclear reactors. I suppose I considered the whole thing a done deal with little chance of much progress in the US. There is apparently one under construction, but I don't know where. Important is the use of fuel that in due course won't be plentiful. Do the CanDus use much of the fuel or only about a quarter? One day that will be important. (I bet Canada is loaded!) You seem to indicate they use most of the fuel, which is good. Also, your thorium point is something to watch for = very interesting. Do you know where the 'private' storage of spent fuel took place? I seem to remember it was in Wisconsin or one of those other central northern states. I also recollect they were offering storage space to other nuclear plants. Certainly something should be done about the storage of spent fuel rods, but the prospects aren't good considering how long the US government has been dragging its feet. Seem to remember that reprocessing plants don't have a good history. I think that Jimmy Carter stopped a US plant. Windscale - the second disaster after Chernobyl - was a reprocessing plant. Harry ****************************** Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 (818) 352-4141 ****************************** -----Original Message----- From: pete [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, March 18, 2011 2:21 PM To: [email protected]; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Question: On Fri, 18 Mar 2011, Harry Pollard wrote: > Ray, > > If Japan loses 40,000 people from this incident, it will be the worst. > > But the chance of that is small. > > Instead, spare a tear for the thousands of Japanese already lost from > the natural events. > > The workers in the plants are suffering and will suffer, but the > chance of further serious contamination of the civilian population is not great. > Anything might still happen, but the probability is that things will > be soon under control and the main damage will be economic. I don't > like the stories of spent fuel rods in temporary water tanks losing > their water, but that's a continuing problem caused by various > governments, including the US, fiddling around unable to provide them > a permanent home. At least one nuclear plant got fed up with waiting > and built above ground places (like a row of brick > garages) for spent fuel rods. But, everywhere, in the absence of a > safe place to get rid of them they sit in tanks of water. I would > prefer them to be processed (against the law) and then suitably > covered in concrete be dropped into the Pacific Trench > You don't want to either reprocess or dispose of spent fuel rods from pressurized light water reactors (the only kind in the US). These "spent" rods of enriched uranium contain 0.9% U235. Canadian "CanDU" heavy water reactors normally use natural, unenriched uranium, which is 0.7% U235. They can run happily with the "spent" light water rods, unreprocessed, in fact with a slightly greater power output than normal. And when rods are spent after running in a CanDU, they are really spent, but they can still be processed further by running in a thorium reactor (except, as a newly conceived technology, there are no commercial thorium reactors yet in existence), which will lower the radioactivity content even further. Upon final extraction from a thorium reactor, the rods can be potted in glass and nested in gravel beds in tunnels dug deep in the geologically inert canadian shield, at depths below the water table, and sealed in. These will essentially be returned to the rock from which they were mined. The existing CanDU reactors, by the way, are very close to the current benchmark of "inherently safe", even though the design is 40 years old. The low activity level of the fuel means it can only achieve criticality in a bath of heavy water, and while it does acquire residual heat from daughter product decays continuing after shutdown stops the fission chain, the larger size of the chamber reduces the heat density. Further more, the individual rods are accessible outside the heavy water envelope, and can be extracted one at a time to further dampen reaction. The spent rods are thus not in a fixed geometry matrix (unlike the rod packs in the GE design used in Japan), and thus are initially placed for cooling storage in a lower density array, further reducing the heat load generated during their cooldown period. The Old GE design in Japan is referred to as "engineered safe", which is PR-speak for "safe as long as all the engineered safety systems are working properly". These devices should have been retired years ago. -Pete _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/03/ Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/03/ Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/03/
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