Comments by Rod Adams Subscribe

On Nuclear Energy: Arnie Gundersen Going International

Anja - one more thing. I wrote a post on Atomic Insights in response to your post quoting Robert Alvarez.

http://atomicinsights.com/2011/06/why-does-anyone-trust-robert-alvarezs-...

A while after posting that, I received a message from a reader who worked with Alvarez while he was at the Department of Energy. He told me that I had generously credited Alvarez with holding a PhD in musical studies when the truth was that he was a "nondegreed music major".

I find it interesting that you call him a scholar instead of a more accurate title of "activist" or "politician".

On Nuclear Energy: Arnie Gundersen Going International

Anja - that is an awful lot of personal accusations that condemn a lot of very fine and hard working people who care deeply about their responsibilities to provide safe, clean and reliable energy. You know little about those of us who proudly call ourselves "nukes". I will admit up front that the industry is not perfect, that human beings are not perfect, and that engineers can make errors or poor assumptions.

I have lost a lot of sleep during the past three months worrying about the long term effects of the tsunami and earthquake. My first concern is for the 20,000 people who lost their lives in the immediate aftermath and for all of the survivors who are now dealing with the loss of loved ones, the loss of everything they owned, and the loss of the physical infrastructure that provided sanitary services, fresh water, shelter and food.

Then I worry about the people who are improvising, adapting and overcoming at the Fukushima nuclear station. So far, they have done an admirable job in very difficult circumstances to contain the effects of the accident. They have made mistakes, but they are working in difficult and unanticipated conditions. It is really easy to armchair quarterback, but remember, their power station AND its surrounding area was overrun by a massive wall of water carrying a lot of destructive force that put a lot of obstacles in their way.

Yes, the plant equipment did not perform well in the situation of being underwater. Yes, the hydrogen explosions caused far more damage to the secondary containments than what should have happened if the hydrogen could have been properly vented. 

The fifty year old design - which would not have been built even 10 years later - did not hold up as well as we would have hoped. However, the basic strength and resiliency of light water reactors with thick pressure vessels and thick containments has failed slowly enough to give time to save everyone's life. The vast majority of all of the core material remains inside the pressure vessel, though essentially all of the gaseous and water soluble isotopes have escaped through some penetrations and cracks through which some water leaked. I remain doubtful that very much of the core will be found outside of the containment. That is one of the reasons that I discount the hot particles theory - exactly what isotopes is Arnie claiming have escaped? As far as I can tell from digging through his material, he never says.

The whole notion of a "prompt criticality" in a used fuel pool is hard for me to comprehend. In other words, I think that Arnie is making stuff up because it sounds really scary.

Not to make this a secondary concern, but I could not figure out how to write this response and put all of my concerns in the first paragraph, but I am also very concerned about the people who have lost access to their homes and livelihoods as the result of the radioactive materials that escaped and as a result of the world's poor understanding of the real health effects of low level radiation. Our current rules are incredibly conservative and add huge burdens of fear that are unjustified by science. I have written a lot about this, quoting some real experts in the field.

http://atomicinsights.com/2011/04/fear-of-radiation-is-killing-people-an...

It is fine to raise health and safety concerns, but you have to be willing listen to the answers to the questions. If you raise the concerns and then tell those of us who try to answer them that you simply do not trust us to tell the truth, what is the next step? How can we communicate?

You accuse the nuclear industry of secrecy, an accusation that has some historical basis in fact. Please understand that some of the secrecy has been imposed by elected government officials - heck, for the first 10 years after World War II, politicians (not scientists or engineers) made it illegal on penalty of death for us to share information outside of very carefully bounded programs. That heritage is difficult to overcome, but the commercial nuclear industry has been working hard for many years to be as open and forthcoming as they are allowed to be. There are a number of nuclear energy experts who have decided on their own to operate blogs and other forums. They engage with the public on a regular basis. Even the industry itself is operating a blog at NEI Nuclear Notes.

I care deeply about humanity. I want a far greater portion of humanity to live more comfortable lives with greater access to the services that reliable energy can provide. I have had a lot of conversations with other nuclear energy professionals and believe that we share some common motives. This is not an industry that attracts people who are in it for the money. The paychecks are pretty fair compensation for hard work, but there are not very many ways of getting rich quick in this business.

I have been fortunate to have always lived in places where electricity comes with the flip of a switch, but I have also been able to visit many places where such a capability is just a distant dream. I know a lot about making clean water, providing refrigeration, enabling lights and computers, providing labor saving devices, and enabling local climate control and understand how much that changes life for human beings. I recognize how little time our fossil fuel endowment will last if we keep consuming it at the present rate. I understand the long term effects of continuing to dump fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere.

I do live in a dream world - one that is haunted by the memory of being able to operate a powerful ship full of people sealed underwater, not consuming any fossil fuel and not allowing any waste to enter the environment. That ship used less fuel than my body weight while operating for 14 years. My dream is for more of the world to be powered by that kind of fuel source - long lasting, abundant, affordable, reliable, emission free. 

I'll ask one final question - where is the accountability for fossil fuel waste? The nuclear industry can account for almost every kilogram of its waste material produced over the past 6 decades; it is all stored in safe secure locations that are not part of the common environment. Our competitors are constantly dumping their waste for free into our common environment.

On Fukushima Comparable to Chernobyl [Robert Alvarez]

@Rod Walton - 

Uranium fission energy competes in the same market for reliable energy production as coal, oil and natural gas combustion. Those four fuel sources share about 95% of the energy market around the world. Large scale hydroelectric power is the ONLY substantial alternative source of energy that does not need any fuel in order to operate. Windmills and solar panels are mere decorations or toys that need constant injections of mandates and operational subsidies in addition to capital investment subsidies in order for them to be built at all.

Are you blind enough to think that the corporations that produce the commercial nuclear fuel are making more people more wealth than those oligarchs that extract, transport, refine, and market coal, oil and natural gas? 

A large nuclear plant can displace about 200 million cubic feet per day of natural gas. If used instead of coal, it reduces sales for that fuel by about 4 million tons per year. The 435 nuclear plants operating around the world produce the energy equivalent of 12 million barrels of oil per day, which is the equivalent of the energy output of BOTH Saudi Arabia AND Kuwait combined. None of that output comes from countries that attend OPEC meetings to agree on production levels designed to keep energy prices at a level that provides maximum profits to the dictators and the multinational oil companies that dominate the oil and gas market.

Those folks hated it when France, Taiwan, Japan, the UK, Germany, the US, and a few other countries started replacing oil fired power generators with nuclear plants. In those markets, oil was virtually pushed out of power generation and had to find other customers - a process that took about 15 years worth of very low prices (1985-2000) in order to seduce people into using as much oil as they could produce.

Post Fukushima, the oil and gas guys (including Gazprom which owns a number of German politicos) have been licking their chops at all of the money they will be making by forcing nuclear plant shutdowns and by slowing down the development of new nuclear plants. Did you pay attention to the number of "clean natural gas" commercials were running during all of the television coverage of the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami? Have you heard about all of the excitement among the oil and gas marketers for the coming "golden age in gas" helped out by stupid decisions to avoid using nuclear energy after an event where NOT ONE SINGLE worker or member of the general public has been exposed to any dose of radiation that will cause any measurable negative health effects?

Pay attention to the way the world works. The greed in the energy business is not coming from the nukes, who do not even bother to advertise their product.

Rod Adams, Publisher, Atomic Insights

On Fukushima Comparable to Chernobyl [Robert Alvarez]

In my line of work, people must accept responsibility for their actions and they must demonstrate their personal integrity and reliability. Their backgrounds are under constant review. There are fitness for duty program to ensure that they are as capable as humanly possible of performing their assigned duties.

I am a nuke. That is the Navy's familiar term for being a nuclear energy professional. I am no longer in the Navy nuclear power program, but I am still a nuclear professional.

My pride in what I do and what my friends and colleagues do to provide clean, reliable, affordable, emission free energy that has the very best safety record among all competitive energy sources is one of the reasons that I see red when someone tries to hold up a guy like Robert Alvarez as an authority on our technology.

The man holds a PhD - in musical studies. He served in a politically appointed role at the Department of Energy - at the same time that he was married to a professional antinuclear activist who was proud of her role in helping to organize "No Nukes" concerts. He was FIRED from his job when his daughter turned him and his antinuclear activist wife in for growing commercial quantities of marijuana in their home in Takoma Park WHILE he was serving in a high level government job, presumably with a sworn duty to uphold the laws of the land. That does not say much for his personal accountability or his personal integrity. It certainly demonstrates that he cannot be trusted - we are not talking here about youthful indiscretions, but about purposeful actions of a presumably mature adult.

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-618540.html

Give me a freaking break and stop trying to use this kind of source for information about nuclear technology!

Yes, this is an ad hominem attack, but when the man continues to use his former position at the Department of Energy to establish his credibility, "the rest of the story" about his job performance is clearly relevant information that MUST be shared as well.

Rod Adams,

Publisher, Atomic Insights

Commander, USN (ret)

On Why Is Renewable Energy So Expensive, While Molten Salt Reactors will be So Cheap?

@RickEngebretson - why not try pixie dust or unobtainium? Both are about as well-proven and have roughly the same energy market share as the ideas you advocate.

On Why Is Renewable Energy So Expensive, While Molten Salt Reactors will be So Cheap?

@StephenGloor:

So, you think that a solar thermal with storage capability and biomass backup can generate electricity for a total operating and maintenance cost of approximately 2 cents per kilowatt hour? (That is the cost of existing nuclear power plants that are actually constructed and operating today.)

How much storage capacity do you think would be necessary to produce as much power as customers demand even if there are a few cloudy hours every day or a few cloudy days in a row?

What is your proposed heat exchange and storage medium? I spoke to one of our engineers the other day who was working on a solar thermal project under contract for Lockheed Martin before he joined our project. He indicated that the project collapsed under the weight of the math associated with figuring out how many truckloads of molten salt would be required to be trucked to the desert and also the math associated with supplying required quantities of cooling medium for the heat sink portion of the low pressure steam system associated with solar thermal power systems.

There was also an issue associated with keeping the mirrors clean and shiny and with determining how the whole complex array of material would be removed when the system became obsolete. 

As he told the story, the operating cost started approaching 20 cents per kilowatt hour - and that was with capital and land acquisition costs ignored because of the available subsidies.

On Why Is Renewable Energy So Expensive, While Molten Salt Reactors will be So Cheap?

@RickEngebretson - What renewable energy systems did Charles fail to mention? 

The focus on capacity factor is actually quite valid for any production equipment in any industry. The inverse of that number is what most analysts focus on - idle time. If equipment has an average capacity factor of 20%, that means that the capital invested in that equipment is sitting idle for an average of 80% of the time. 

The other problem with politically favored "renewables" as an alternative to fossil fuel is that they are not controllable. As you say, demand varies, but production has to BE varied in order to match that demand. If both production and demand are variables that are not within the control of system operators, you cannot design a stable system. Believe it or not, electricity is a product that MUST be stable and predictable in order to be useful. Our devices do not like varying frequency or voltage - chips, motors, and other devices do not respond well to rapidly varying input power.

The bills that you mention are not the responsibility of new nuclear product developers any more than the failed wind turbines at Altamont pass are the responsibility of new wind turbine developers. 

I do agree with your statement that smaller scale generation has some advantages. That is why I am a huge fan of small modular reactors and why I believe that it may soon be politically possible to build reactors that are small enough to power neighborhoods and industrial parks. Longer term, I want one in my basement. The technology for small reactors is well established, we just have to apply the economics of mass production to make them a widely available reality.

Rod Adams

Publisher, Atomic Insights

*moderated

On German Nuclear Power Politics: A Political Football

@David - you might get more converts if you would learn to stay focused and not produce such wordy comments.

The answer to the seeming illogical stance of the Greens can be found by interpreting "unintended", but predictable, results of ACTIONS vice listening to words.

The leaders of many Green Parties are too addicted to money from fossil fuel interests to accept the notion that nuclear energy could lead to a vast abundance and far lower prices. They and their sponsors have recognized a vital fact - if there is a reliable supply of lower cost, emission free power available, people will buy that instead of buying pricier, more polluting, and more dangerous fossil fuels.

The proof of that statement is the very high capacity factors associated with plants that can "burn" emission-free, low-cost uranium. Their owners run them at as high a power as possible for as much time as possible. They hate shutting them down because they can make money by generating and selling unsubsidized power - even at low overnight prices - because their fuel costs are minimal. Nuclear plant owners are not afraid of carbon taxes; they work work to make them a reality as long as they are not stupidly structured to also tax uranium (like the ill advised Clinton era proposal that would have put a tax of greater than 400% on commercial nuclear fuel by taxing kilowatt hours). 

The only other power suppliers that hate to shut down their systems when market prices are really low are the wind generators, but they are worried about losing their Production Tax Credit income of $21 per megawatt hour if they do not produce.

Efforts by Greens to shut down operating plants and to prevent new ones from being built are aimed at keeping cheap nuclear fission energy out of the market by restricting the supply of machines capable of using uranium and thorium fuels.

The relation of Green leadership to fossil fuel is best proven by the example of Gerhard Schroder's employment by Gazprom, but I can also show you examples from the US "Environmental" movement with videos of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Carl Pope extolling the virtues of "clean natural gas."

Rod Adams

Publisher, Atomic Insights

PS - I can explain the opposition of many "pro-nuclear" commenters to accepting AGW. Many engineers and scientists that understand nuclear energy well enough to know how beneficial it is also understand all of the good things that have come to human society from its ability to capture and use the heat from burning fossil fuel. Many of them have technical knowledge that allows them to move easily between working on nuclear projects and working on fossil fuel related projects. They work for companies or government agencies that use at least as much fossil fuel as they do nuclear fuel. Some of them are lifelong automotive racing fans or powerboat owners.

I know you are above such base economic arguments, but when you threaten people's paychecks, the paychecks of people they know and respect, and seek to vastly increase the cost of their fossil fuel consuming hobbies, you should expect resistance.

On German Nuclear Power Politics: A Political Football

Until September 2010, I worked in the office of the Navy headquarters that supplied funding for this project. All of the analysts thought it was a stupid expenditure on a mirage technology - the dreamer two-star kept putting the funding back in after we made a recommendation to zero it out. 

That particular rear admiral was also a fan of T. Boone Pickens and thought he really wanted to build wind turbines, not just sell more natural gas.

He also thought it was a fine idea to waste tens of millions buying algae based biofuels for fighter aircraft and ships - despite the fact that they cost more than $100 per gallon. He willingly moved money from operational accounts - by direction from a misguided SecNav - to pay for the frivolous experiment. It just so happens that the primary corporate interest in algae based biofuels is none other than ExxonMobil, a company whose annual revenues are 2.5 times as large as the entire US Navy's annual budget. 

High rank does not necessarily require technical expertise or a grounding in reality. It often, however, does require a fine sense of where the political winds are blowing. I could have remained on active duty until 2014, but decided that I had seen enough.

Rod Adams

Publisher, Atomic Insights (Commander, US Navy (ret))

On Arnie Gundersen: Fukushima Update

@David - Bernie Cohen wrote his book twenty years ago. Things have changed over time; politics and science are both more polarized now than they were then. 

Take a look at the New York Academy of Science and its decision to publish the book about Chernobyl that claims a death toll of nearly 1,000,000 people.

On Life On The Ground at Fukushima-Daiichi

@Anja

Why do you think that a non fatal accident that took place more than two months ago should still be front page news? There was a lot of damage to industrial facilities and there is a lot of boring work to be done to clean up the sites, but why should that be on the front pages? 

Did you even read a single front page story about the explosion and fire that rocked the Chiba refinery near Tokyo and burned uncontrollably for 10 days after the accident? Have you seen a single accounting of what happened to the workers who must have been on site when that visually impressive accident occurred?

In contrast, it was a world wide news story when a man in his 60s recently passed away due to a heart attack caused by overexertion just because that rather common event took place at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and the exertion was part of the effort to clean up the facility. 

This is the internet age. If you are deeply interested in what is going on at Fukushima, you are only a few clicks away from accurate, timely updates. It is NOT news and should not have taken up so much space even when it occurred because there was much more interesting information that should have been presented about what happened to the rest of the nation following a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

The nuclear story really should have been a footnote, but the establishment (probably supported by the establishment energy industries that were chomping at the bit due to increased market opportunities) pushed the nuclear story so hard that I am sure some misinformed people thought it had something to do with the tens of thousands of dead and missing people.

On Arnie Gundersen: Fukushima Update

@David - we agree on many issues, but your reverence for established, politically appointed scientific bodies shows a certain faith that I do not possess. I happen to agree that dumping 20 billion tons per year of CO2 into the world's atmosphere is causing dangerously negative effects, but I am not so sure that 10 billion tons per year would be so bad. I do not have the interest, the resources or the background to produce accurate models, but there is readily understood logic in the notion that there is a level of CO2 emission that natural systems can handle with relative grace and a level at which they can become overwhelmed.

I also tend to side with scientists like Jerry Cuttler, Don Luckey, and Myron Pollycove in opposition to the BEIR folks when it comes to the health effects of low levels of radiation. The first three have done the research with a questioning attitude, the established committees simply go along with the established line of thought because the bureaucrats who influence the selection process pick people who will not question their program.

Finally, can you tell me what Fukushima has really demonstrated about the dangers of used fuel pools? I am one of those TEC bloggers who issued a mea culpa for being too optimistic regarding their ability to withstand draining without catching fire. I did something I had never done before and removed a post that I wrote because I feared I had given out bad information. Though I have not yet found definitive results, I have seen indications that my retraction was too hasty. Apparently, the used (spent) fuel pool at unit 4 DID not burn and did not generate excessive quantities of H2. The videos taken underwater show that some debris fell into the pool from other places, but all of the elements that were visible in the pool were intact and showed no signs of serious damage.