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New Nuclear Power a bad idea for Pueblo

October 31, 2021 By Bob Kinsey

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-10-30/nuclear-power-climate-change

The past week lots of ink, including a full editorial support from the Colorado Springs Gazette, has been spread around supposedly new nuclear power plants to replace coal fired plants that are being closed (especially in Pueblo).   Some commendation must be given the Gazette for presenting a Pro/Con that is reprinted below.     Pueblo County Commissioners several years ago rejected a rezoning request to allow a private corporation to build a nuclear power plant there.   But now with the closing of its Coal Powered Commanche 3 power plant, they are being lobbied to replace it with nuclear.  The Gazette presentation is copied below.

It should be noted that the arguments for nuclear all suggest that newer safer nuclear tech is available for immediate application.  But it appears that just isn’t so.   One argument against nuclear power that doesn’t seem to get any ink is that the “nuclear waste” coming from nuclear power plants includes the more highly enriched uranium and plutonium that approaches bomb grade material.   Isn’t that just the argument being made about the Iranian nuclear program–that it leads to their possessing such material?    In any event I think Velma Campbell has produced a wonderful critique of this whole project whether in Pueblo or anywhere else.

Gazette Pro/Con

Should Colorado use more nuclear power?

  • The Colorado Springs Gazette
  • 31 Oct 2021
rep. Hugh Mckean

Point: Rep. Hugh Mckean  (R- Loveland) serves as minority leader in the Colorado General Assembly

We live in a world of energy. The days of candle lanterns and wood fires are largely gone, except for nostalgic trips to the family cabin. Now we have a need for readily available and relatively inexpensive electricity. Without it, our lives grind to a halt.

The number of solar arrays and wind generation units in the West speak to a changing world when it comes to generating electricity. The accompanying policy discussions speak to the difficulty of providing the amount and reliability of those sources when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t break through the clouds.

In part because of the market and policy discussions, the cost of energy produced by renewable sources has decreased and solutions to pollution from traditional energy sources have been explored. There has been a push to rely more heavily on wind and solar resources to supply power and, in turn, reduce carbon emissions.

One big issue: typical “green” energy sources such as wind and solar are not suitable for baseload. When the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, it’s hard to produce the necessary amount of energy being demanded by customers from those resources. Just last winter in Colorado, days of extreme cold led to energy companies begging customers to reduce their energy usage; wind and solar lacked the reliability Colorado families needed. Limiting energy production to just a few sources is not practical and is not in the best interest of ratepayers.

As a component of an allof-the-above power portfolio, nuclear fission is splitting uranium atoms, converting the energy release into heat, and producing energy. The electricity created from nuclear energy is the most reliable and steady form of emission-free energy available today.

Additionally, nuclear energy plants produce power at their maximum capacity over 93% of the time during the year, which is nearly double that of natural gas and coal units and up to 3.5 times more than wind and solar.

Unfortunately, nuclear energy has a bad reputation. This comes from a misunderstanding of risks involved and how much clean energy it produces. Modern advances in nuclear power plant design will lead to smaller-scale plants that are more cost-effective to build and safer to operate. Pueblo County is exploring small modular nuclear reactors as a replacement for the Comanche coal-fired plant that could close by 2040.

Today, nuclear energy makes up 20% of energy generated in the country annually and provides 52% of the clean energy. This helps to reduce 555 million metric tons of emissions every year, avoiding 470 million metric tons of carbon.

Additionally, nuclear energy is far more efficient. Nuclear fission releases greater amounts of energy, and requires less fuel to operate, meaning less waste produced. For comparison, one gigawatt of nuclear energy is equal to the same amount of energy as two gigawatts of coal and three to four gigawatts of renewable sources.

Wind and solar, traditional renewable energy sources, coupled with nuclear power, make a reliable and economical resource mix. Innovative products, like the new small modular nuclear reactors being developed by Nuscale and the Idaho National Laboratory, are designed to work alongside renewables and allow them to vary output as necessary to complement intermittent generation of renewables.

To meet the demands of today’s families and businesses, we need clean options. When it comes to power generation, Colorado ratepayers cannot afford to let the myths about nuclear sideline the resource. Let’s not get left in the cold. The science shows that nuclear power is a safe and viable resource that can help generate good, clean power for generations.

Counter: Velma Campbell  Md, MPH is a physician specializing in public health, particularly occupational and environmental health. She is the vice chair of the Sangre de Cristo Group of the Sierra club.

Nuclear power is not a solution for anything except perhaps the nuclear industry’s desire for taxpayer dollars. The nuclear industry sales pitch, such as presented to a largely invitation-only meeting in Pueblo on July 15, promotes “new nuclear” or advanced nuclear, the only thing new is the packaging of the reactors. Even that is still experimental and on the drawing board, with Nuscale working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on various elements of their design licensing. No operating commercial models have been built, and even if everything goes according to schedule, a pilot plant in Idaho is not expected to be completed until about 2030 — at a cost of 1.3 to 3.6 billion dollars, which they have received from us taxpayers via the Department of Energy. According to widely available statistics of energy costs, nuclear is still the most expensive generation source.

Nuscale corporation’s small modular reactors are, in fact, the same light-water nuclear reactors as used to generate power in other settings, using uranium as fuel, requiring cooling water, and generating the same radioactive waste products. To generate power at the level of the coal-fired Comanche 3 power plant in Pueblo County would require at least 12 of the reactors Nuscale is proposing. So instead of one large reactor, there would be twelve or more nuclear reactors, with a correspondingly greater probability of error or accidents.

For Nuscale as with other nuclear reactors, even if their more experimental proposal for air-cooled versus water-cooled generating capacity is accepted by the NRC, the waste extracted from the reactors every 12-24 months would have to be stored for five years per batch in a pool of cooling water, with the necessity of use and refreshment of this pool for the life of the plant. A corollary of the waste fuel handling is that each of the 12 reactors must be opened and the radioactive fuel transferred and replaced every 24 months at the least, again with a multiplied probability for accidents or errors.

Because there is no longterm national repository for high level nuclear waste, this waste will be stored on-site in the community where it was generated for many years. Because that waste has a half-life of more than 20,000 years (meaning at that point half of the radioactivity will be broken down), it will remain a burden to future generation for as long as any of us can imagine.

Although proponents present nuclear power as a ready, clean solution to the climate crisis, it is neither. The classic nuclear power plants with their iconic cooling towers are aging out of the system, following a long history of operational difficulties, environmental contamination, closure and clean-up issues, as well as the storage of radioactive waste essentially in perpetuity. The “new nuclear” is not new except for means to package it and is at least 10 years or more from even being ready for commercial construction.

The proponents, including Nuscale, want to put these plants into closed coal fired power plants, in communities often well within the zones of risk set by the NRC. Because that could rightfully raise community concerns, as well as increasing potential casualties in case of an accident, Nuscale is asking the NRC to reduce the zones of protection around their nuclear reactors and radioactive waste sites because of the claimed lower risk for their still-experimental multi-reactor units.

Is Colorado ready for an unproven energy “solution” that will not even be ready for testing for a decade? The answer is “no.” rep. Hugh Mckean (r — Loveland) serves as minority leader in the colorado General Assembly. Velma L. campbell, Md, MPH is a physician specializing in public health, particularly occupational and environmental health. She is the vice chair of the Sangre de cristo Group of the Sierra club.

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Disarmament Quotes

We seek the elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. 

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

Over the past 15 years, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.

Mikhail Gorbachev, January 31, 2007

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death. 

Albert Einstein, January 22, 1947

Viewing Trinity Test July 16,1945: "Now we are all Sons of Bitches"

Kenneth Bainbridge Deputy Director

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlister Kings Bay Protestor 2019

There are still thousands of warheads loaded on operational systems and standing on high states of alert on virtually hair-trigger posture. And you have to ask yourself: Why is that? Who is the enemy? What is the threat? 

U.S. General Lee Butler Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command in 1991-92

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight Eisenhower US President 1953-1961

It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth. 

Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not. 

Robert McNamara Former U.S. Secretary of Defense

[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

5-Star Admiral William D. Leahy Chief of Staff to President's Roosevelt and Truman, leader of Combined US-UK Chiefs of Staff during WWII

It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1995

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see... 

Mahatma Gandhi from The Essential Gandhi, Louis Fisher, ed.

Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival. 

Former President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford "The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal ... 

George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, January 4, 2007

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee Butler Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

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