| September 22, 2006 Going Nuclear US, Alaska Interested In Revisiting Nuclear Age Part One of a Two Part Series by Brian Yanity, insurgent49 
A small community in rural Alaska may become the first
place in the world to use a new method of harnessing the interaction
between energy and matter in the atomic nucleus. Galena is a town of around 700 people, located on the north banks of the Yukon River about 270 air miles due west of Fairbanks, the nearest city. The community was established in 1918 near an Athabascan fish camp called Henry's Point. Named after the most common type of lead ore, the town became a supply point for nearby lead ore mines that opened in 1918 and 1919. The Galena Air Force Station, which operated from 1949 until 1993, now serves as the town’s public airport. Today, Galena’s economy depends on federal, state, and local government jobs, along with seasonal employment in construction or BLM firefighting. Local subsistence foods such as moose, salmon, whitefish, and berries remain important. The community has no connection to any power grid outside of the town, i.e. Railbelt energy sources, and is entirely dependent on expensive diesel fuel and heating oil. The town experiences a wide range of climate, with recorded temperatures ranging between 92º F and -70º F. The negative effects of climate change are already being felt in the region, such as increased river bank erosion due to loss of permafrost. In the past year, the local Louden Tribal Council passed a resolution on climate change, endorsing “renewable and alternative energy with a timeframe that prevents irreversible harm to public health, the economy and the environment.” The area surrounding Galena lacks any significant potential for solar, wind, or hydroelectric power, and there are no known geothermal or economical coal resources nearby. After looking around at different alternative energy options, the city government of Galena starting receiving presentations in August 2003 from the Toshiba Corporation for a small nuclear reactor design (the “4S”) which it is developing. In December 2004, Galena's City Council tentatively accepted a proposal from Toshiba to conduct a feasibility study of such a facility. The need for a non-petroleum source of energy is urgent in much of rural Alaska, as described by Galena resident Dean Westlake: "…with limited, and meager resources here in Rural Alaska, we have no alternatives but the unconventional. We are moving to cities, as they become our economic reservations. It's not a choice we want, but hardships dictate to us just what we have to do for our respective families. Our older folks are moving fast, and taking our histories with them. Like the potato famine in Ireland; we move not because the product isn't here, it's because government refuses to let us have access to our own resources. In the end, for our families’ well being, we do what is right and walk away from what is left. It leaves many broken hearts as we move; rather then guns to force us to reservations, we are in the enlightened age where laws are passed and we are literally left out in the cold. So, we swallow our pride, and leave our culture behind to live as guests on a land that at one time sustained us as a people. Nuclear power, zero emissions coal, wind, water, sun (when you can get it), burning turds, we don't care. We need cheaper heat and power." Barring a radiation leak or an accident involving radioactive waste, the generation of nuclear power emits no air pollution. The revived interest in the U.S. for nuclear energy is due to the increased cost and environmental concerns of burning carbon-intensive fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, or petroleum. Though not many Galena residents have voiced opposition to their town being selected as Toshiba’s ‘guinea pig’ to test a new reactor technology, such concerns are justified by this nation’s history of nuclear energy. A Brief History of Nuclear Energy As everyone knows, nuclear energy has a troubled past. After all, the world’s introduction to nuclear fission energy was the devastating bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Nuclear energy and weapons development has always been interdependent, as the boundaries between the military and civilian applications of atomic energy are often blurred. The main difference between the process of nuclear fission for electricity generation and nuclear fission for weapons is on the rate at which the fission reaction takes place. The U.S. Congress created the secretive Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1946, with the responsibility of developing both nuclear weapons and civilian energy technologies. The era of the “classical” nuclear fission reactors (those cooled by water) began in the early 1950s and continues to this day. Of the 104 commercial power reactors presently in operation in the U.S., 35 are boiling water reactors (BWRs) and 69 are pressurized water reactors (PWRs). PWRs are the most common type of nuclear reactor in use in the word today, and are expected to continue to dominate the nuclear power industry for the next two decades. Both PWRs and BWRs use ordinary water for cooling, as opposed to heavy water (containing deuterium). The heavy water coolant is used in other type of commercial power reactor is the pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR), which have the advantage of using natural (un-enriched) uranium as fuel. The only commercial type of PHWR in use is the CANDU reactor developed in Canada. Today, there are over thirty CANDU-type reactors operating in the world, 18 of which are in Canada and 14 are in India. The USSR was the first nation to connect a nuclear power station to the electric power grid in 1954, followed by the United Kingdom (1956) and the United States (1957). The first nuclear submarine was the U.S.S. Nautilus, launched in 1954. Soon to follow were the first nuclear-powered icebreaker ships and aircraft carriers, and even a handful of civilian cargo ships. In Shippingport, Pennsylvania, a Westinghouse reactor designed for use in submarines became the first U.S. reactor to generate commercial electricity in 1957. Utility regulations at the time and the AEC’s federal subsidies encouraged the executives of electric utility companies to start jumping on the atomic bandwagon. During the four-year period between 1964 and 1968, the AEC licensed 38 large nuclear power plants in the U.S. By the end of the 1960s, plutonium-powered long-range space probes were exploring other planets in the solar system. From the end of the 1940s and into the mid-1960s, nuclear energy captured both the public’s fears and imagination, with the U.S. and Soviet governments making outlandish promises of nuclear energy being ‘too cheap to meter.’ The so-called ‘religion of nuclear’ was largely the result of the fact that the dangers of nuclear technology were kept secret by the governments of both superpowers. Therefore, during this period virtually all of the public information about the topic was positive spin, leading to such overenthusiastic proposals such as nuclear-powered wristwatches, home appliances, SCUBA gear, and automobiles. In 1958, Ford announced a nuclear-powered car concept that never materialized, the Nucleon, with a promised refuel range of 5,000 miles. Billions of dollars were even spent on nuclear aircraft and rocket engines to no avail, before such research was cancelled in 1961. Operation Plowshare, led by the physicist Edward Teller, was devoted to the “peaceful” uses of thermonuclear fusion (hydrogen) bombs such as excavating civilian construction sites, digging out deep navigation canals, or ‘liberating’ underground reserves of natural gas or oil. Teller even proposed damming the Strait of Gibraltar with fusion bombs, in order to turn the Mediterranean Sea into giant freshwater lake. In practice, Plowshare consisted of 27 explosion tests from 1961 and 1973, and every one of its projects proved a failure. The first proposed Plowshare experiment was to be Project Chariot, which would have used several hydrogen bombs to excavating a deep-water port on the Chuckhi Sea near Point Hope, Alaska. The project was cancelled in 1962 after protests by local residents. Project Chariot Plans
 Throughout the Cold War’s ‘nuclear heyday’, both Soviet and Western planners also hoped that nuclear energy would make the Arctic blossom with prosperity. Around the time of Alaskan statehood, the Atomic Energy Commission promised that small Alaskan towns could create unlimited warmth and light from miniature nuclear reactors. From 1962 until 1972, the U.S. Army operated small nuclear power plants both at Fort Greely in interior Alaska and at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. On the icecap of northern Greenland, a similar miniature nuclear reactor powered the army’s scientific-military station Camp Century from 1960 until 1966. Closer to Alaska in the Russia Far East, a small nuclear station at Bilibino, Chukotka (with four reactors totaling 48 MW) provides both heat and power for a gold mining complex. The facility started operating in 1974, but the land surrounding Bilibino was already heavily contaminated with radioactive leakage by the 1980s. Because it is only 700 miles from the coast of the western Alaska, the U.S. Navy is helping with radiation-monitoring and clean-up programs at the site. Today, the Russian government has plans to build small ‘floating reactor’ systems on barges, similar in size to the proposed Galena facility. Nuclear Safety and Cost Concerns Any facility handling radioactive materials such as nuclear fuel has inherent risks of an accident. The danger lies not in a large explosion like a nuclear weapon, but with the possibility of a sudden release of highly radioactive material into the environment. Until 1979, the U.S. government kept secret early nuclear accidents and related deaths from lung cancer afflicting uranium miners and those in the southwest living downwind of nuclear bomb tests at the Nevada Test Site. The 1970s were also the decade that anti-nuclear movements gained momentum, and the U.S. nuclear power industry started having financial problems. Wall Street financiers started backing away from new U.S. nuclear plants primarily due to worries about the financial risks and a slowdown in demand for new electric power capacity. A typical nuclear power plant costs several times more than a thermal (coal, natural gas or oil) plant of equal capacity. These factors resulted in the cancellation of forty planned U.S. nuclear power plants between 1973 and 1979, and no new commercial power reactor in the USA ordered after 1973 has been built. Grassroots battles against nuclear power reactors began around the world, and in many U.S. states. The year 1974 saw the first ‘critical mass’ gatherings, which coincided with early anti-nuclear rebellions across the country. In 1975, a worker at a Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear plant in Browns Ferry, Alabama accidentally started a fire with a candle that knocked out all of the plant’s safety systems for a full seven hours. In 1979, the Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania suffered the worst accident in a U.S. commercial nuclear power plant. One of plant’s two reactors suffered a partial core meltdown after a loss of coolant made it heat up too rapidly. Though no one was killed or injured by the Three Mile Island accident, it released a small amount of radioactive gases into the air. This incident has been called the ‘Tet Offensive’ of nuclear power since it was the single event the most eroded U.S. public and political support for new nuclear plants. The worst nuclear power plant disaster of all time was the 1986 Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine. During a late-night test, one of the plant’s four reactors melted down when it heated up too fast, causing the reactor building to explode and release huge amounts of radiation into the open atmosphere. Several thousand people exposed to the radiation released by Chernobyl have since died, and more are expected to develop cancer in the years ahead. The Chernobyl power facility was shut down for good in 2000, and today access is restricted within an area enclosed by a 30-km radius around the closed plant called the Zone of Alienation, where 120,000 people once lived. Serious discussion of nuclear power phase-out, or the large-scale discontinuation of nuclear power for electricity production, began in Western Europe in the 1970s. The nations of Austria (1977), Sweden (1980), Italy (1987), Belgium (1999), and Germany (2000) voted in referendums to oppose new nuclear power plants or to phase-out existing ones. Since 1987, New Zealand’s government has not permitted any nuclear-powered vessels or nuclear weapons within its territory. Nuclear Power Today Installed capacity of nuclear power generation worldwide is now about 370 GW in over 30 countries, up from 100 GW in the late 1970s. Although the installation of new nuclear reactors started declining in the USA as early as 1974, other nations around this time started installing improved power reactors, whose designers learned from the mistakes made by the early U.S. and Soviet nuclear power industries. Globally, more than 20 GW of nuclear power has come online since the year 2000, and around 22 GW is presently under construction. Nuclear energy is rapidly growing in Asia, particularly India and China, and India alone is in the process of building ten nuclear power plants. In total, about 440 nuclear fission reactors produce around 17% of the world’s electricity. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, 80% of these power reactors are more than 15 years old. Considerable investments are ‘sunk’ in nuclear fission energy around the world, especially in Europe, Japan, Korea and North America. For example, France has built 58 nuclear power reactors since the 1970s and now gets around 80% of its electricity from nuclear, the highest proportion of any nation. Nuclear energy provides about half of the electric power used in the Ukraine and Sweden, over one-third of the power used in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Armenia, Switzerland, and South Korea, and about a quarter of all power generated in Japan, Taiwan, Finland, the UK, and Germany. Relying on economy of scale, traditional nuclear power plants are what are known as ‘base-load’ producers, and cannot rapidly change the amount of power being produced. In areas of the U.S. heavily dependent on nuclear energy, such as the upper Midwest, the Middle Atlantic and Southeastern states, utilities find it most economical to run nuclear power reactors at full power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Even with its government subsidies, nuclear energy is most economical where no other fuel sources are easily available. In present-day North America, 103 reactors provide about 20% of the electricity used in the USA, while 18 reactors provide 15% of Canada’s electricity. In the U.S., government and private sector spending on nuclear energy since 1945 has been estimated at around $800 billion. By the early 1990s, some U.S. reactors were beginning to be shut down. Examples of commercial nuclear power plants closed well before their design lifetimes include Rancho Seco (1989) and San Onofre Unit 1 (1992) in California, Fort Saint Vrain (1989) in Colorado, Trojan (1992) in Oregon, and Zion (1998) in Illinois. Nuclear energy in the USA has been heavily subsidized by the federal government from its inception, mostly in the form of research and development costs, but also in the form of accident liabilities. According to the Price-Anderson Indemnity Act, first passed by Congress in 1957, any claims resulting from a nuclear accident above $10 billion are covered by the federal government. Renewed several times, the law covers all non-military nuclear power facilities constructed the in USA before 2026. Without such federal subsidies, no private insurance company would ever insure a commercial nuclear power plant. Although conservatives like to blame environmentalists and government regulation for the demise of the U.S. nuclear power industry since the early 1970s, the real reason has more to do with the industry’s internal mismanagement and lack of “fiscal conservatism”. Today, private U.S. electric utilities are divided on whether or not nuclear energy is a safe financial risk. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by Congress, offers new nuclear power plants a generous production tax credit, credit insurance against regulatory delays, and federally-subsidized loan guarantees. The Bush Administration has been heavily pushing for new nuclear power plants for the past six years, but with little results so far. NuStart Energy LLC, a consortium of several large electric utility companies and nuclear equipment suppliers, has announced plans to build new nuclear power reactors at two sites: Grand Gulf, Mississippi and Bellafonte, Alabama. In total, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is presently reviewing 27 new reactor proposals across the country, including the Galena project. Decommissioning and Nuclear Waste Issues Decommissioning (shut down) costs of the present generation of nuclear power plants are unknown, but certain to be high. In the USA, there is not yet a single authorized and operational final disposal repository for high-level radioactive wastes. In fact, no nation in the world has yet implemented a permanent disposal system for radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants. Since the worst nuclear wastes remain highly toxic for 100,000 years or more, the preferred disposal method is geologic disposal, which is storage of the waste in sealed chambers deep underground. This approach has been studied for decades, and is generally agreed to be the safest long-term solution for storing nuclear waste. US Nuclear Waste Sites
 The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear disposal site in Nevada has been studied since 1978, but has not yet been formally licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Even if Yucca Mountain is approved, it is unlikely that the depository will begin accepting nuclear waste before 2015. In July 2006, the U.S. Department of Energy agreed to open the repository by March 31, 2017. Most people in Nevada, including the state’s leading elected officials and its huge tourism/gambling industry, are opposed to the project. Because Yucca Mountain is only 140 miles northwest of the Las Vegas metropolitan area (population 1.7 million), many worry that a single accident involving nuclear waste shipments, even if it is not very serious, would scare away hundreds of thousands of tourists. The technology needed for permanent geologic depositories is also being tested in Japan, China, Russia, and several Western European countries. These tests involve “prospecting” for area with drilling numerous boreholes and exploratory shafts and ramps in stable, low-permeability bedrock. A typical example of the expected timeline for such projects is the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant site, which is being studied as Finland’s national underground depository for waste from nuclear power reactors. Construction on the waste depository is expected to begin in 2015, with the first shipments of waste expected by 2020. Part two of this article will cover the proposed Galena nuclear energy project, nuclear fuel security and weapons proliferation issues. Nuclear Energy Links: www.ne.doe.gov www.nirsnet.org www.nv.doe.gov/default.htm www.ans.org www.nei.org www.alternet.org/envirohealth/18254 Brian Yanity is a graduate student at UAA, activist and freelance writer. He resides in an undisclosed location in Southcentral Alaska, and can be reached at byanity@insurgent49.com. |
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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