William Tucker - Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Energy Will Lead the Green Revolution and End Americas Energy Odyssey

Terrestrial Energy

How Nuclear Energy Will Lead the Green Revolution and End Americas Energy Odyssey

William Tucker

Bartleby Press

Washington Baltimore

Copyright 2008 by William Tucker

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and articles.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tucker, William.
Terrestrial energy : how nuclear power will lead the green revolution and end americas energy odyssey / William Tucker.

Hardcover Version ISBN: 978-0-910155-76-2

Electronic Version ISBN: 978-0-910155-88-5

1. Nuclear energy--United States. I. Title.
TK9023.T85 2008
333.7924--dc22

2008028129

Printed in the United States of America

For the first time in history mankind will be using energy not derived from the sun.

Albert Einstein, spoken to Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, as he signed a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt, August 2, 1939

The book you see before you has taken a long time to get into print. It was bought and paid for twice by publishers that subsequently decided they could not go ahead with it, for opposite but identical reasons. Each found it could accept only one of the books two premisesbut found the other premise unacceptable.

The two premises are this:

a) Al Gore is right. In addition to worrying about the security of our energy suppliesa looming threat that could disrupt our entire economy and throw the whole world into a series of resource warswe also have to be concerned about putting too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Some of the alarms about global warming are undoubtedly exaggeratedSouth Florida is not likely to end up underwaterbut the problem of climate change demands our attention. As long as we continue burning fossil fuels, there is the possibility we may be modifying the earths climate in a way that could bring wrenching changes and be almost impossible to reverse.

b) The only way we are ever going to supply ourselves with enough energy while reducing our carbon emission is through a revival of nuclear power.

Soft, green, and renewable forms of energy are all worth pursuing. They will all go a long way toward alleviating the problem. But each has notable limitations. None of these alternative energy sources can address our core problem, which is producing electricity with coal. Only nuclear can replace coalas it does in France today. Once we have eliminated carbon from our electrical base, we can begin switching our transport sector to the electrical grid through electrical- or hydrogen-powered hybrid vehicles. This will go a long way toward reducing our dependence on oil as well. America should be leading the world in this technology, as we once did. Instead we are lagging behind because of exaggerated fears and misunderstandings.

Neither of these propositions are particularly controversial among scientists. The majority of those who have been polledand those I have interviewedagrees to both premises without much hesitation. In the political arena, however, a dichotomy has taken hold that says one cannot embrace both. If you believe in global warming, then you must be opposed to nuclear power. If you favor nuclear power, then you must think global warming is a hoax. The number of public figures willing to accept both premises is small, with the same names appearing over and overSteward Brand, founder of The Whole Earth Catalogue , Patrick Moore, one of the cofounders of Greenpeace, Christie Whitman, former director of the EPA, and James Lovelock, the venerated British biologist who proposed the Gaia Hypothesis, that the earth is a single living organism.

At one end of this bifurcated spectrum is someone like Richard Lindzen, a maverick professor of meteorology at MIT who has been one of the most prominent skeptics of global warming. After meeting Lindzen at a conference, I wrote him and asked to use something he said in an article I was writing about global warming and nuclear power. He said I could quote him but warned, Youre damaging the cause of nuclear power.

Just out of curiosity, I replied, how does promoting nuclear as a solution to climate change damage nuclear?

Because global warming will turn out to be a false alarm, he said. Nuclear should be sheltered from dependency on environmental hysteria and groupthink.

For the purists, even an association with global warming is discrediting.

Lindzen, by the way, is also one of those pessimiststhey are on both sideswho say the forces of nature may be overwhelming us. If man-made global warming is really happening, he says, its probably too late to do anything about it anywaywhich seems like stacking the deck in your favor. If we arent warming the planet, then obviously we shouldnt try to do anything to stop it. And if we are warming the earth, we cant do anything about it anyway. Heads I win, tails you lose.

At the other end of the spectrum is former Vice President Al Gore, who won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for two decades of passionate crusading about global warming. Even though he argues that humanity must stretch itself to the limits in order to avert the crisis, Gore has not bothered to learn even the basics about nuclear power. Testifying before the U.S. Senate in March 2007, Gore was asked if nuclear had a role to play. He responded:

I think its likely to be a small part of it. I dont think it will be a big part of the solution, Senator. Im assuming that we will somehow find an answer to the problem of long-term storage of waste. Im assuming that we will find an answer to the problems of errors by the operators of these reactors. But the main problem I think is economics. The problem is these things [nuclear reactors] are expensive, they take a long time to build, and at present, they only come in one sizeextra large.

Saying that nuclear reactors only come in one sizeextra large is woefully uninformed. Reactors can come in any size. Experimental reactors in laboratories and universities can generate 1 or 2 megawatts. (A megawattMWis the standard unit of commercial electricity, able to power about 1,000 homes.) Submarine reactors in the Nuclear Navy generate between 20 and 50 MW, and battleships run on 70 to 100 MW. When Admiral Hyman Rickover, father of the Nuclear Navy, beached one of his submarine reactors at Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1957 to produce the first commercial nuclear plant, it generated 60 MWabout 1/25th the size of todays.

Utility reactors grew to 300 and 500 MW and beyond, with the largest now reaching 1,500 MWwhat Gore calls extra large. This is because giant generators are the cheapest way to produce electricity . Coal plants are built to the same size, but this isnt the only way reactors can be built. The Russians are now powering Siberian villages with 80 MW reactors floated in on barges. China and Japan are building modular reactors of 150 MW to power small communities. There isnt any reason reactors cant be built to the neighborhood level, combined with hydrogen production or water desalinization. If we ever colonize the moon, it will probably be with transportable nuclear reactors.

The real problem is public fear of all things nuclear. In truth, nuclear power still terrifies people. It seems unnatural and diabolic, a bastard technology conjured up by guilt-ridden scientists trying to exonerate themselves for inventing the atomic bomb. For many peopleeven those most concerned about global warmingnuclear remains the embodiment of evil, the symbol of all that is wrong with the modern world.