Tag: nuclear power problems

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Publishing, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,

Where have I been all week? Researching and writing a new introduction for a book I originally wrote in 1979 (and which in turn was based on a book published by my co-authors in 1969.

Following the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, the Japanese publisher decided to bring my ancient book on why nuclear power makes no sense back into print. And the publisher contracted last Friday (one week ago) for a new introduction. My deadline wasn’t until the end of the month, but next week, I’m at a book-industry trade show.

So I shoved a lot of other stuff aside and got it done. It’s a piece of writing I can be proud of, that shows why nuclear makes even less sense today than it did back then (because alternative technologies have improved so much). It makes a strong case against nuclear not only on health and safety grounds, not only about the inability to safely store highly toxic waste for many millennia, but also on economic grounds (a case we hear far too little about).

The publisher gave me a maximum word length of 3500 words; I turned in 3499, not counting the 26 footnotes, many of which came from pro-nuclear sources.

I love coming in early with clean copy that meets the specifications, and I love that I was able to negotiate a much better arrangement than what was originally proposed. And I love letting the supporters of this inane technology demonstrate for me why it should be abandoned.

I’ll try to post an entry or two in the next couple of days before I go away again, and then be back on track the week of May 30.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , , , ,

Triple Pundit’s been getting lots of comments on a post questioning whether nuclear power plant decommissioning schemes can work in today’s economic climate, and stating that this is a reason NOT to build more nukes.

It’s shocking to see how many nuclear defenders have commented. Back in 1979, I wrote my first book about why nuclear power was a terrible idea, and I remain convinced that it is a terrible path. Decommissioning is only one of dozens of serious problems. Just to name a few:

  • Waste disposal that requires secure storage for a quarter of a million years
  • Enormous consequences in event of accident, and insurance coverage that won’t even begin to cover claims (thanks to a very dubious US law called the Price-
    Anderson Act, which both subsidizes the insurance premium and sets wildly unrealistic caps on liability    )
  • Poor safety record to date
  • Net power loss over the entire fuel cycle from mining through waste disposal (and transmission to end-users)
  • Susceptibility to terrorist attacks all along the fuel cycle (not just the heavily protected plants themselves)
  • Loss of liberty due to centralization of police-state force to protect the plants
  • Thermal pollution
  • Radiation leakage
  • Health effects…

    To those who say nonpolluting renewables are just as if not more expensive… 1. Take a look at the work of people like Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, who demonstrates over and over again that when you take a whole-systems approach to locally-grown solar and wind power, economies show up that conventional design and engineering miss completely–like the ability to eliminate a furnace. 2. Count the true costs of nuclear, without all the subsidies and hiding costs by moving them into other budget streams, and the picture is different.

    I put solar hot water on the roof of my 260-year-old farmhouse in cloudy Massachusetts and the system paid for itself in about five years. I admit that the pv system we put in a couple of years later has not performed as well, but I suspect some poor siting choices have much to do with that.

    But even so, solar is widely applicable, environmentally inoffensive, and, coupled with an aggressive program of conservation, could remove the “need” for many nuclear and coal plants. The days of centralized power generation and remote transmission to user sites are probably coming to a close; far too much energy is wasted in transmission.

    On the conservation side, I happen to have written a short, inexpensive ($9.95) e-book called Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life—With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle: – this is stuff you can put into practice immediately, and most of the tips cost nothing or almost nothing.

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