User profile: Ardent

Okay all of you anti-nuke environmentalist Yucca haters, I'm going to say it again:

What Harry Reid endlessly refers to as "the deadliest substance on earth," i.e., plutonium, is indeed deadly. But is it in fact "the deadliest"? How does one quantify it?

The environmentalist fringe is fond of telling us that the current inventory of plutonium, if distributed equally and ingested, is capable of killing 10 billion people. Wow. That sounds deadly indeed. One would think that the amount of plutonium originally destined for Yucca Mountain would be more than enough to kill the entire population of Las Vegas, if not the state of Nevada.

But wait a sec: If official stats are to be believed, we produce enough chlorine gas to kill 400 TRILLION people. We produce enough phosgene to kill 20 TRILLION people. We produce enough barium to kill 100 BILLION people (ten times more than plutonium could kill).

Hey, but isn't barium widely used in medical procedures?

Anyhow, at least we're not exposed to chemicals such as phosgene, and the stuff it's used to make, like methyl isocyanate.

Oh, but wait: Wasn't it methyl isocyanate that leaked out of a plant in Bhopal, killing 6,000 people in 48 hours? Don't some estimates say the eventual death toll was 20,000, with an estimated 250,000 suffering adverse health consequences?

Good thing they don't make that stuff here in good ol' Home Town USA.

What? We produce about 4 million kilograms of methyl isocyanate in the U.S. every year? About 2 million tons of phosgene worldwide every year?

Nah, that couldn't be, or else the same environmentalists who try to scare us about Yucca Mountain would be warning us about the risk of chemical plants right in our own backyard. (Where's your NIMBY now?)

@atdleft:

Holy cow! I just read your breathtakingly absurd belief that nuclear power requires coal- or gas-fired electricity to generate electricity! I can't believe I just wasted time formulating a thoughtful response to one of your other posts. You are truly a lost soul: what I consider the flip side of the Birthers, Truthers, and other Reality Deny-ers whose beliefs and assertions become more and more irrational when confronted by truth.

@pmmart:

I hesitate to address your ill-informed commentary as well, for the same reason I gave to atdleft. Waste of time, like a giraffe trying to communicate with a monkey. Two different species: Rational and fact-bearing versus irrational and myth-bearing.

In any case, you need to read a credible study about reprocessing, for you have surely got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Frank von Hippel wrote a good article on reprocessing for Scientific American, and you might consider looking into the French study done by Mycle Schneider and Yves Marignac.

That "five percent" figure is deeply deceptive, for reasons you may be unable or unwilling to understand. Reprocessing actually increases the volume of radioactive waste by separating out the elements of the spent fuel. It's true that around 90% of the unused uranium is separated out and recovered, along with the small percentage of plutonium produced in the reactor. But the process to accomplish this separation leaves behind the rest of the byproducts in liquid solution, millions and millions of gallons of it (see Hanford).

The difference is, some of this solutionized radioactive waste byproduct can be "reclassified" downward as intermediate-level or low-level waste -- as opposed to our "once through" system, in which spent nuclear fuel is used once and then stored. It remains, in other words, high-level nuclear waste and is subject to the much stricter regulation regarding its handling and storage. In France, by contrast, which uses reprocessing, the byproducts in solution are stored in carbon steel drums at places like Marcoule. In the late 1960s, the French even dumped thousands of these barrels into the sea!

Long story short: radionuclides in solution are far more mobile, and therefore far more dangerous, than radionuclides in solid ceramic pellets. I don't care if you separate out the most dangerous elements (U and Pu) and solidify them for reconditioning into new nuclear fuel. Apart from the risk of having tons of relatively intert, safe-to-handle weapons-grade plutonium lying around, the consequences of dealing with the byproducts in solution are too dire at this point without a viable breeder reactor program.

@atdleft:

You should be deeply ashamed of yourself for suggesting that Helen Caldicott is a credible scientist. Your own credibility just suffered a fatal blow for even using her name in the same sentence as the word "trusted." She may be trusted by the profoundly irrational neo-flat-earther fringe of the environmental movement, but survey after survey of her peers (radiological health physicists who are actually qualified) ranks her scant body of work in the absolute basement of credible research. She is, in short, a bad joke in a discipline where scientific consensus and peer review are everything.

And bear in mind that this in not merely a matter of personal opinion. If you would bother to do a Google search, you would find ample criticism of Caldicott's scholarship, such as it is, which she has devoted entirely to anti-nuke propaganda. Compare, for example, her claims of the effects of low-level ionizing radiation against the results of the BEIR reports issued by the National Academy of Sciences, an independent and objective organization with an impeccable scientific reputation.

More generally, try reading some studies that contradict your own views before wasting your time and ours with empty, unsubstantiated rhetoric. I support nuclear power and I support the Yucca Mountain Project, but not only have I taken the time to read extensively on this subject, I have also read much material from the opposition, including Caldicott, Lovins, Sternglass, and many others.

I have EARNED my opinion, in other words, by attempting to test it against opposing views. I may not have done so as rigorously as I could have, and I may approach opposing views with a certain predisposition, but at least I have tried.

@DGM:

You should maybe try reading the article a little more closely. Magwood is astoundingly qualified: DOE NE, Edison Institute, and Westinghouse. Contrast that to, say, Bush's choice for director of FEMA. The Obama Administration, in fact, though I disagree with it on the nuclear energy/Yucca Mountain issue, has been pretty consistent in choosing qualified appointees.

@Nevada Scandalmonger:

You can trundle out TMI and Davis Besse and various other greenie fearmongering all you want, but you will ALWAYS be stopped short by one simple statistic: number of deaths attributable to nuclear power. Even if you factor in non-radiological accidents, nuclear power is orders of magnitude safer than any other form, not to mention the vastly greater danger from common CHEMICALS we live with every day without protest or even awareness.

To those who worry that Magwood doesn't share Harry Reid or Nevadans' views on Yucca Mountain:

You should be ashamed of yourselves. Think of what you are wishing for. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was created to be a non-partisan independent oversight agency. Its decisions are based on objective science and adherence to regulations, irrespective of what a particular politician or his constituents might want. The NRC is, in essence, the "High Court" on matters nuclear.

How many of you Democrats (and I am one myself) would want the Congressional Budget Office to be staffed by Republicans hired on the basis of their willingness to analyze proposed budgets through the lens of "Reaganomics"? The Republicans might say, "That would be great," but Democrats would howl and bleat and insist that CBO remain politically neutral. How would we, as citizens, get an unbiased and objective view of government spending if we didn't have an unbiased and objective CBO?

Well, NRC is supposed to function in the same manner, but Harry Reid left his characteristically corrupting fingerprints on the agency when he pressured the Administration to name his former aide and Yucca opponent, Greg Jazcko, as Chairman at NRC.

Again, do the math. Four-thousand acres of eyesore to generate a measly 242 megawatts under optimal conditions (i.e., no clouds or night). Contrast that with the nuclear plant 50 miles outside Phoenix: the Palo Verde station, which generates over 3,000 megawatts and occupies maybe a square mile. Moreover, the Palo Verde station is "always on," rather than intermittent like wind or solar.

Similarly, look into the risks created by solar power installations (an example of which one blogger mentions above); in particular, look at the environmental risks and the potential chemical consequences of "accidents" at solar installations. Beyond that, an economic comparison is worthwhile, too.

And yet, brainwashed Nevadans (except Nye County residents) reject all things nuclear (except, of course, the power it provides, which we import from other states) -- principal among them, the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain.

Even worse, however, are those who premise their anti-Yucca Mountain arguments on some poorly developed alternative energy fantasy. "We don't need nuclear (which goes double for Yucca Mountain); we have plenty of solar and wind. These will save our environment and get our local economy back on track!"

So saith the Greenies and their coincidental ally, Harry Reid. But anyone who has read the recent report put out by the independent Energy Information Administration (at the request of Reps. Markey and Waxman during development of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) will soon discover that ALL forms of alternative energy, including nuclear, are necessary to get us to our emissions goals without ruinous economic consequences.

It also bears mentioning that many proposals to build new wind and solar plants have been withdrawn recently: due in part to a nervous financing climate, but mainly due to vocal opposition by the NIMBY crowd, who when confronted with a proposed nuclear facility screams bloody murder and says, "We should be building solar and wind," and then, when confronted with solar and wind, shouts "NIMBY!"