LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” #471 (12/05/2023)
”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity"
LLAW’s COMMENTARY:
I continually get so emotionally tired and heart-sick over the media’s irresponsible headlines such as this one today from Time Magazine (Posted in its entirety below( — especially so when the absolute opposite of the headline and leadline is the reality. The article is basically factual and very well written; pointing out many of the nuclear industry’s ongoing major difficulties and immediate problems. But it is fundamentally dead wrong about being a necessity for the future.
However well written, the overlying difficulties of nuclear power will only get worse if more nuclear power plants are brought on line. And keep in mind that the decade or more that it takes to bring a single nuclear power plant online means that the heavy doses of greenhouse gasses continue to be emitted into the atmosphere and collected in the warming waters of the oceans as well.
We see the danger here, but we excuse it or ignore it. So the headline becomes a huge misnomer, supporting the nuclear industry and the industry knows that most of the text, if not all, will never be carefully considered or even read by the everyday public. The industry and its propaganda machine (including many nuclear industry financed “Think Tanks”) are misleading the general public about the cost, productivity, safety, and health and welfare of nuclear energy. In fact, “all things nuclear” are by far the most dangerous products on planet Earth . . .
To say that “Nuclear Power is the only solution” is entirely irresponsible, and also the statement that the world “has to embrace nuclear power in order to solve the climate crisis” is flat-out wrong. The reasons are right in front of our faces and even alluded to in the story itself.
But yet there is another far more simple solution, and that is to outright ban all power generation except for wind, solar, and hydro, thereby forcing the industry to do without any fossil fuels (which, I will add, except for some slight relief from emissions from nuclear power plants, that nuclear produced energy is the most dangerous of all to mankind and other life because the process uses radioactive fuel (highly enriched uranium) that easily outdistances other fossil fuels in terms of degree of danger to life.
Solar energy, with technological development has far greater future power production, and the natural steam of volcanic calderas around the world could provide enough energy to allow us to stop worrying about not having enough — perhaps forever. The Yellowstone Caldera is ultimately capable, all on its own, of providing clean energy with absolutely no greenhouse gasses nor radiation for the entire North American continent with plenty left over for others continents and countries as well.
Finally, what I want to say is that we got ourselves into this mess by the very industry that is pushing more of the same, but wrongly looking at non-fossil fuel as industry competition when it should be, by now, well into the concept of conversion to non-fossil fuels entirely. Always remember that uranium is not only a fossil fuel, it is also a radioactive fossil fuel, and that makes it doubly dangerous for the current condition of providing electrical power for the world. More nuclear power plants would only increase our already disastrous rapidly approaching the 6th Extinction.
And, thankfully for you, the reader, I haven’t even mentioned the “threat” of nuclear war — and that nuclear power plants, should WWIII become a reality, will become a nuclear weapon of mass destruction just like its radioactive brother - the nuclear bomb. ~llaw
Nuclear Power Is the Only Solution | TIME
Time: The world has to embrace nuclear power in order to solve the climate crisis.
Nuclear Power Is the Only Solution
IDEAS
DECEMBER 4, 2023 3:14 PM EST
Jayanti is an Eastern Europe energy policy expert. She served for ten years as a U.S. diplomat, including as the Energy Chief at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine (2018-2020), and as international energy counsel at the U.S. Department of Commerce (2020-2021). She is currently the Managing Director of Eney, a U.S.-Ukrainian decarbonization company.
COP28 is underway and grand commitments to triple nuclear power by 2050 are recognition of the following reality: There is no way, absolutely none, that the world’s energy transition away from fossil fuels can be achieved without a massive increase globally of nuclear power. Yet, western governments and companies are failing to get new nuclear technologies and projects off the ground. Outdated anti-nuclear opinions, massive initial capital costs, risks that governments haven’t found a mechanism to share with the private sector, and a crushing and irrational regulatory framework are all holding the industry back.
Wedged between energy crises and climate change natural disasters, there is no longer the luxury of choice. The industry has responded by seeking to develop new technology that can assuage public concerns about safety. Some are designing micro reactors or SMRs. Others are working with new materials or techniques, such as replacing water in cooling systems with molten salt, or using boiling water instead of pressurized water to make the NPP more efficient. Still others are working on new safety systems, or fuel fabrication innovations, or new approaches to storage of nuclear materials. In the U.S., top tier research outfits like the Electric Power Research Institute are finding their expertise in demand all round the world, creating something resembling nuclear diplomacy. The U.S., U.K, Canada, and South Korea are leading the pack on investment in nuclear.
The nuclear industry has been riding high on a wave of enthusiasm for a few years. In recognition of the cost savings of “going nuclear,” smart companies are already making plans to transition to nuclear power. This includes Microsoft, which announced in September that it will use nuclear plants to power its artificial intelligence operations. With electrification the foundation of any coherent energy transition plan and grids struggling to balance themselves with an abundance of non-dispatchable renewables, nuclear is increasingly acknowledged to be the solution. Just as apex science fiction writer Isaac Asimov fantasized in his 1940-50s Foundation books, nuclear energy may save humanity.
And yet, recent headlines have revealed some major setbacks. Small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) company NuScale, once lauded as the leading SMR developer and despite receiving almost $2 billion in U.S. government support, has cancelled its flagship project due to rising costs and mismanagement. It is now facing investor lawsuits for fraud. TerraPower, Bill Gates’ SMR company, was delayed several years by the Russian invasion of Ukraine—Russia was the only country that produced the nuclear fuel needed for TerraPower’s SMR design. X-Energy has walked back its plans to go public. The U.K.’s Rolls Royce SMR is plagued by financial problems. France’s EDF is posting record low power outputs and financial status reports. Others are also delayed, struggling, or facing bankruptcy.
Read More: Nuclear Energy Could Hold Key to Green Future
Setbacks are normal for new technologies and emerging markets, but for nuclear power such bumps in the road have outsized potential to disrupt because many people are still hesitant or downright hostile to nuclear power. The Chornobyl, Fukushima Daiichi, and Three Mile Island catastrophes loom large in the imagination. “Meltdown” itself has entered idiom to mean falling apart rapidly and irrationally and beyond control. The world’s preoccupation with Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhye nuclear power plant (NPP), the largest in Europe, shows how gripped we can be by nuclear disasters. In keeping, a March 2023 Gallup poll found that although support for nuclear is increasing slowly, 44% of Americans still somewhat or strongly oppose it, down from 54% in 2016. Similar polls in Switzerland and the U.K. peg support for nuclear at just 49% and 24%, respectively. In Germany, despite still being in the middle of an energy crisis and desperate for additional power sources, 50% of people under 34 want nuclear power eradicated.
With the exception of France, which is 69% nuclear, many of the developed world’s leading economies and governments have been too scared of nuclear power to allow it to flourish. Germany was so spooked by Fukushima it completely phased out its nuclear power program, finally turning off its last three (of an original 17) reactors on April 15, 2023. Belgium and Switzerland decided not to build new plants and to phase out those existing, although the 2021-2023 energy crisis has forced a reconsideration. In the U.S. the trigger was the March 28, 1979 partial meltdown of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. No one died or even suffered negative health effects, in the aftermath dozens of planned NPPs were cancelled and almost nothing has been built in decades.
Unfortunately, unencumbered by popular opinions against nuclear, the Western world’s great geostrategic rivals are years if not decades ahead. There are sixty nuclear projects in various stages of construction around the world, and 22 of them are in China; and 22 use Russian technology, and 18 use Chinese technology, or technology China stole from other countries and rebranded. Some European countries, notably Hungary and Serbia, and some NATO countries, such as Turkey, are planning new NPPs using Russian designs and supply chains. Ironically, and tragically, even all four of Ukraine’s NPPs are Russian VVER models, entirely reliant until quite recently on Russian fuel. And Russia controls much of nuclear supply chains.
The Western world ended up so far behind because of fear. Governments around the world are now struggling to catch up, slowed by still-high public opposition rates and regulatory regimes that institutionalized fear of nuclear into licensing and permitting processes. In countries that never had nuclear power, such as Poland and Egypt, opposition is not baked into law, and so they can paradoxically move faster than some countries with longstanding nuclear programs.
In the U.S. the opposite is true; it keeps tripping over the fear-based regulatory regimes that govern its nuclear industry. Tasked by Congress in the 2019 Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act with liberalizing the licensing process to foster innovation and accelerate the commercialization of nuclear power, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2022 released draft rules and processes for consideration of new nuclear technologies that managed to take all the worst and most burdensome aspects of existing rules and, instead of reducing them, added some new hurdles and standards, some of which nuclear engineers say are scientifically impossible to meet. The draft is twice as long (1252 pages) as the one it was supposed to simplify. Many requirements, both old and new, shouldn’t apply to SMRs and other advanced nuclear designs. The result was decried by experts and companies as a complete failure that will continue to hobble the industry for decades, adding further time and expenses to the already billion-dollar licensing process. The Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group, said the proposal will “increase complexity and regulatory burden without any increase in safety and reduce predictability and flexibility.”
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category. There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in this Post. If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today.
(Just a reminder: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (12/05/2023) :
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
Companies say they're closing in on nuclear fusion as an energy source : NPR
NPR
It's all about trying to create nuclear fusion. Fusion is the act of sticking light elements together. For example, if two hydrogen atoms get ...
Former chair of Ohio's utility regulator indicted in nuclear bailout law scandal | WOSU News
WOSU News - WOSU Public Media
All Things Considered. Next Up: 6:00 PM Marketplace. 0:00. 0:00. All Things ... nuclear bailout scandal. The indictment of former PUCO Chair Sam ...
U.S. leads coalition to triple nuclear power by 2050 in effort to address climate change
CNBC
5 THINGS five-things-logo · logo · watchlive · logo. U.S. leads coalition to ... All Rights Reserved. A Division of NBCUniversal. Data is a real-time ...
Nuclear Power
NEWS
Nuclear Power Is the Only Solution | TIME
Time
The world has to embrace nuclear power in order to solve the climate crisis.
United States And Allies To Triple Nuclear Energy Capacity By 2050 | OilPrice.com
Oil Price
The United States and 21 other countries have pledged to triple their respective nuclear energy capacities by 2050, saying incorporating more ...
Focus turns to nuclear fusion as a source of clean energy - YouTube
YouTube
There is a strong focus on investment in renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. But for many, the “holy grail” of clean energy is ...
Nuclear War
NEW
The U.N. Nuclear Ban Treaty Is How We Will Avoid a Nuclear War | Opinion - Newsweek
Newsweek
The threat of nuclear war is widely recognized to be at its highest level since the Cold War. Two ongoing major conflicts involving nuclear-armed ...
Russian President Vladimir Putin watches 'nuclear button' as he observes recreated explosion
WION
... nuclear explosion at a Cold War bunker as nuclear war threat continues to loom amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Russia has already approved a ...
Cancelling the New Sea-Launched Nuclear Cruise Missile Is the Right Move
War on the Rocks
With the program's cancellation, advocates have pressed for limited deployment on attack submarines utilizing an existing warhead — the W84-4 — that ...
Nuclear Power Emergencies
NEWS
Oswego County Nuclear Power Plant emergency test scheduled for Tuesday afternoon
CNY Central
Current EAS stations and other important emergency planning information for residents, workers and visitors within 10 miles of a Constellation nuclear ...
Only one unit at Koeberg to be operational at a time over next 2 years - NNR - EWN
EWN
Koeberg Nuclear Power Station · National Nuclear Regulator · Energy emergency · Ntuthuzelo Nene | 05 December 2023 08:12. CAPE TOWN - The National ...
Nuclear War Threats
NEW
The U.N. Nuclear Ban Treaty Is How We Will Avoid a Nuclear War | Opinion - Newsweek
Newsweek
The threat of nuclear war is widely recognized to be at its highest level since the Cold War. Two ongoing major conflicts involving nuclear-armed ...
More investment in nuclear deterrence will not make Europe safer - SIPRI
SIPRI
... threat perceptions and was visible in its leadership's justifications for the war. The most significant source of NATO's deterrent power is the ...
Cancelling the New Sea-Launched Nuclear Cruise Missile Is the Right Move
War on the Rocks
... nuclear weapons. While Russia's war in Ukraine and reckless nuclear threats may provide some rationale to enhance existing deployed U.S. tactical ...
Yellowstone Caldera
NEWS
Eruption at Marapi in Indonesia Kills at Least Eleven Hikers | Discover Magazine
Discover Magazine
... volcano that is frequented by climbers and tourists. Marapi (not to be ... What Does a Year at Yellowstone Caldera Look Like? Planet Earth · Worst ...