Today I'm going to talk about something quite concrete, but about which a lot of people understand very little. Today is a lecture on nuclear energy.
You see, nuclear energy has clear advantages over other forms of energy. It is cheaper to produce than most other forms, at least in its most basic form (the cost of regulation can make it comparable to other forms of energy). It can be built anywhere, unlike renewables such as wind power. It works all the time, or at least whenever we want it to, unlike renewables. And it doesn't pollute the way that things like coal do.
But you'll be quick to point out that it has drawbacks. Let me enumerate these, as well. There are three worries, as I see it. First, there is the risk of meltdown. Second, there is the waste. Third, there is the security issue of there being more nuclear material around, which could be used in weapons. I'd like to look at each of these in turn.
First is the risk of meltdown. To this I will say that advancements in technology, some going clear back into the 90s, have given us meltdown proof reactors. In short, designs exist such that you can't create release radioactive material even if you try, and others exist which make it hard for significant accidents to happen. On top of this, it should be noted that nuclear energy actually has a very good track record: there is one real disaster in the history books (Chernobyl), and one on which the jury is out (Fukushima). The other disaster people usually refer to is Three Mile Island, which did release radioactive gas and is therefore significant, however, it is also significant because the radioactivity was almost entirely contained in spite of a total meltdown, and I say that it doesn't count as a disaster because we've tracked cancer rates in nearby communities ever since, and there has been no significant increase. Actually, nuclear accidents are more common than we realize (though rarely are they a real meltdown), but most of them simply illustrate the same thing that Three Mile Island did: the safeties generally work. So even without recent technological advances, I'd say that nuclear energy has a good track record, and if you add in recent advances, I'd say that accidents shouldn't be a concern for building new plants.
Second is nuclear waste. This is a little trickier, as it has the potential to be a real problem. However, I say "the potential" very deliberately: it can be done right. First off, the only major concern is high level waste: low and intermediate level waste is fine within less than half a century, and anyway it's not even that radioactive, so we can certainly contain it as long as we need to. As such, I will only concern myself with high level waste. The second thing to realize is that uranium ore is over 99% U-238, which is not fissile, meaning it doesn't undergo fission when you stick it in a reactor. That means that you get 99% of your waste from the outset just from the fact that you're not using 99% of the uranium. However, there's a trick here: if you do stick U-238 in a reactor, instead of contributing to fission, it undergoes nuclear decay to become plutonium. Plutonium is fissile. This is the idea behind something called a "breeder reactor." A breeder reactor produces more nuclear fuel than it uses by converting useless U-238 into fissile plutonium. There's also reprocessing. Even fissile uranium isn't all used up in a reactor; at the end of the fuel's life cycle, it is "depleted," meaning that enough of the fissile uranium has been used up that it's not as effective and they throw it away. However, you can reprocess this fuel to increase the concentration of what you want in it, rather than throwing away the part of it that's useful. The end result of all of this effort, breeder reactors and reprocessing, would be that you get more than 100 times the fuel from the same ore, and as a result generate more than 100 times the energy for the same waste produced.
Of course, that doesn't completely eliminate the waste. The current scheme is to bury waste underground. Actually, this is the most reasonable course of action, as I see it. For one thing, the uranium ore is mined initially, and while the waste is actually more radioactive than uranium ore, it may be said that nature has done an awfully good job of containing it. An even better example is natural nuclear fission. Sites exist where, in earth's geologic history, enough uranium was gathered to one place to result in a nuclear reactor, most famously at Oklo in Gabon. The results of these reactors were naturally contained by the surrounding rock, to be discovered billions of years later by humans. On top of this, we can choose better sites to contain waste than Oklo: the Oklo natural reactor is contained in a bed of sandstone, a relatively porous rock that managed to contain the waste, but we never would have chosen it. Much better would be things like basalt, a volcanic glass which is extremely non-porous. For this reason, my grandfather (who was a civil engineer specializing in groundwater who worked a long time on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation's waste disposal), Bill Nelson, said that he would love to be paid to eat fish caught out of the Columbia and drink water from just downstream of Hanford, since even in the case of total containment failure of the waste disposed on the Hanford reach, material could leach no more than a few inches, and certainly would never get close to the Columbia River (he also noted that his water was the first to come out of the Columbia after Hanford, saying "I'm very careful at my job"). It should also be noted that he won a major award from a civil engineering society for his paper on the subject, so this isn't just my grandfather talking, this is expert opinion. Regardless, the real point is that the greatly reduced amount of waste generated by a good reprocessing and breeder reactor program could then be easily handled by careful thought for an appropriate location, and I wouldn't mind living near such a place (though I might take advantage and see if I could get some kind of compensation for nothing).
Finally, there's security. This one is the real issue. The truth is, there are countries and people I wouldn't trust with nuclear technology. Yes, there are differences between reactors and weapons, but it still seems dubious to leave uranium in certain hands. And it's kind of awkward to say, "Yes, we have nuclear technology, but you can't have it because we don't trust you." That can lead to strained relations. This, then, becomes a tricky issue. However, I believe that it's one that can be addressed. For one thing, even though the likes of North Korea have gotten nuclear technology, we haven't had bombs dropped as a result of nuclear energy yet. But that doesn't mean it can't happen. On top of that, an awkward situation doesn't imply that it's the wrong move, so perhaps it would be best to negotiate with some while using it in the developed world. Of course, this is the part that is most open to debate, but I think I've made clear that I, for one, am in favor of nuclear energy, and think it the only real solution to our long-term energy needs.
