Gwyneth Cravens,”Power to Save the World”
September 17th, 02007 by Stewart Brand
Nuclear Footprint
In the early 1980s Gwyneth Cravens was one of the protesters against the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant on Long Island, and also participated in ban-the-bomb rallies. After 15 years of deepening familiarity with nuclear power, she says she still would ban the bomb, but she now regrets that the Shoreham reactor was shut down.
Who changed her mind was a nuclear expert at Sandia Labs in Albuquerque, D. Richard Anderson, known as “Rip.” “Here was someone who thinks in thousands of years…
Read the rest of Stewart Brand’s Summary
This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 8:45 am and is filed under Seminars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Posted on September 17th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Thanks Stewart for the review. It sounds like it was a good discussion. The question on future staffing was particularly timely. While nuclear engineering schools are gearing up a bit to meet it, the majority of the engineering work at nuclear plants is in the electrical and mechanical fields, and I’m not sure for the moment that nuclear work in these areas is very competitive compared to other industries. Nuclear plants tend to be in somewhat isolated locations which aren’t particularly attractive for a lot of budding professionals. Also, the public and political expectations for cheap electricity, coupled with the need for a sizeable staff to address not only physical issues but regulatory ones, means that there isn’t a lot of money floating around for high salaries for nuclear plant professional staff. The fact that its a 24-hour industry means the working hours can often be long and unpredictable as well.
There. If that isn’t a great recruitment pitch, I don’t know what is.
For those who would like an insider’s view of the US nuclear industry, I’ve be working in it over twenty years, and have written a technothriller novel that covers the basics of electricity generation (baseload!) and the real world of nuclear power, which is often far different from what pundits, politicians, academics and the press might imagine. There’s plenty of mayhem within “Rad Decision” as well. Its available at no cost online at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com and in paperback at online retailers. (I get no royalties.) Mr. Brand was kind enough to say of it: “I’d like to see Rad Decision widely read.”
Posted on September 17th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Are we expecting the laws against reprocessing of waste into fuel to change anytime soon? Is there a lobby or group that needs help in actuating this end?
Posted on September 24th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
I assume it is just a typo, but I believe that “…the effects of low radiation— the amounts below 10,000 millirems…” may be an error. When I worked in a rad lab, 10,000 millirem was not considered low level radiation, though 100 mR was getting there and 10 mR is low.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millirem
“… A rem is a large amount of radiation, so the millirem (mrem), which is one thousandth of a rem, is often used for the dosages commonly encountered,”
Posted on October 27th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Although it was an interesting seminar, the first thing that came to my mind while watching it was a Simpson’s episode where Homer was sent, together with a co-worker called Mindy, to a congress in order to defend nuclear energy.
But what made me uncomfortable was the way that Chernobyl was cited. “Only 60 people died, mainly firefighters,… “. Chernobyl is now a ghost city. Thousands suffered from the radiation and will die from the effects of the accident. Where are the statistics on those people ?
Posted on November 12th, 2007 at 9:42 am
It would be nice to hear someone one day talk about all the options open to mankind. I guess we will have to wait.
Without being an expert some obvious problems with what GC discusses are :
> GC discusses consumption forecasts and their implications for generation – but are these forecasts not on the table for discussion as well ? We are rampantly consuming our planet in every way, it is a declining picture and every natural system is in decline. Our consumption will have to be moderated if we are to survive, and I am disappointed that GC does not spend much more time on this.
> Baseload – because of our core baseload requirements another set of generation opportunities are removed from the discussion table. But why do we not challenge our assumptions about baseload – perhaps we do need to change our consumption patterns so they fit with available energy.
> Book launch – does GC’s financial motivation for this lecture put the independence of her views in question ?
> The Long View. Looking over thousands of years, is it not obvious that we are not as a species yet able to manage systems that last more than a few hundred years ? Should we then create a nuclear waste system that will last for tens of thousands of years – is it not far beyond our capabilities. We are a confident species – but are we able to respond to our limitations ?
> We should also reflect on the fact that nuclear fusion generation (much cleaner) may be available in 50 years or so, and our nuclear waste legacy produced in these few decades before clean nuclear emerges will trouble the planet and mankind quite selfishly. Is responsibility off the table as well ?
I don’t feel comfortable with a discussion which – in the first 5 minutes – removes most of the available options from the table.
Posted on November 12th, 2007 at 10:14 am
Another informative comparison between coal and nuclear can be found in PRIORITY ONE: Together We Can Beat Global Warming by Allan Yeomans. (Available through Amazon or any bookseller; see biospheremedia.org.)
America’s current dependence on coal for baseload power has been an unfortunate consequence of the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s. The concerns and questions people have about nuclear power are seldom applied to coal.
Posted on November 14th, 2007 at 1:50 am
An interesting talk, but…
Does safety of the nuclear wastes depend upon continuing civilization? Or even just competent government. The errors cited at Chernobyl were a result of lack of competent oversight. On a one-off incident Chernobyl might have been a worst case scenario. But what if a government that oversaw many power plants to simply fall into incompetence. If plants and their wastes abandoned, what would the long term effects be?
Also, does the safe maintenance of wastes require perpetual oversight?
Posted on November 21st, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Good day Sir/s:
I don’t know if you are aware of the so called “Rad-waste-problem” or not. I submit to you that there is no problem. A while back I found out that these rad-waste containers or “casks,” constructed around old reactor cores, have a skin temperature of 350 degrees. This is more than enough to boil water It seems plausible to me that a boiler, or steam generator could be constructed using the type of heavy tanks that are currently being used to transport liquefied propane that are mounted on semi-trailers that make large deliveries. These casks that are piling up all over the United States, and the rest of the world for that matter, which at the moment, nobody wants, could be configured into a low cost giant electrical power plant, or used to heat large buildings directly. It seems obvious to me, that making an attempt to re-use these old cores would solve several problems at once….. Consider:
1. Cost of reprocessing rad-waste.
2. Solving the rad-waste burial problems.
3. Providing “spot energy” for small users, as these units could be thought of as large water heaters.
4. Using rad waste casks to manufacture fresh water from salt water, in Death Valley.
4.1. Generating hydrogen gas, which can be tanked and stored as an energy reserve.
5. Reducing the amount of transmission towers, and related problems of maintaining them.
6. Can be constructed with off the shelf items.
7. Billions of dollars in savings.
8. As safe or safer than a pebble bed reactor.
9. Are those cooling towers on nuclear plants really needed?
10. A word about coal fired plants.
Item number 1. The United States no longer reprocesses rad-waste to any great extent.This is because of bad planning, bad engineering, and human blunders that damaged and contaminated the processing plants, and made them unusable. Also, the liquid radioactive waste that has leaked out of on site storage tanks hasn’t helped matters much either. Overall, these problems were caused because the amount and types of radiation that is given off from freshly discarded cores, was greatly underestimated. This is because of the “daughter” elements that are created by the fission process. Some of the elements are short lived. For example, the polonium 210 that was used to kill the Russian reporter has a half life of only thirty days. The only way you can you can obtain this element, is to mine a reactor core. At any rate, if the cores are allowed to “cool off” for ten years or so, most of the hard radiation will be greatly reduced. I submit that by creating a “middle step” of harvesting heat from these cores, instead of burying them, will drastically reduce the cost of reprocessing spent cores. Another item that is not widely known, is that between ninety five to ninety seven percent of the energy of the original core is retained in the spent cores. This is what produces the latent heat output. With the price of nuclear fuel rising, it would make a substantial cost savings to reuse old cores.
Item number 2. Solving the rad-waste burial problems. As far as I know, not one single cask of rad-waste has been safely “buried” anywhere in the United States, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. Over a billion dollars has been spent on the Yucca mountains project, and has went nowhere. Also, the amount of rad-waste that has been created up to this point would more than exceed the tunnel space that has been excavated so far. By the way, have fun trying to convince all the people in the area, that it’s a good idea to live down the street from a high level rad-waste dump. Reusing high level rad-waste would solve this problem. The Yucca mountains people, might not have an objection to having “low level” waste being put into tunnels. Low level waste being, boots, gloves, clothing, respirator masks, and small quantities of short lived rad-waste products, such as hospital rad-waste discards.
Item number 3. Providing “spot energy” for small individual users, as these core units could be thought of as large water heaters…. Another twist to the concept of reusing rad waste, is that believe it or not, you do not have to use the radioactive material in the old cores to generate electricity. A nuclear power plant, once you remove all the bells and whistles, is simply a giant water heater. The reason why a reactor has to be refueled, is not because it will no longer boil water, its because it will no longer boil water at the design rate of the reactor. Putting it another way… A reactor may have a 5 megawatt design rating. Over time, the power output will fall below this rating as the fuel decays. At some point after this it must be refueled to stay at the 5 megawatt power level. At this point the spent fuel is removed, and placed in a cooling pond separate from the main reactor. This is why most reactors are located next to a river, large lake, or ocean. There is so much waste heat generated, that to cool the reactor in an emergency, any municipal water source would be inadequate and overwhelmed. In the old days, the spent rods cooled for a time, in these ponds, and then were shipped to a reprocessing plant. As stated earlier, this proved to be a disaster. As a result, spent cores are now gathering dust, so to speak, at nuclear power plants all over the United States, as there is no longer a place to put them The same river water that helps cool the reactor, cools these rad waste core ponds. The result of this whole mishmash, is that much useable energy is being wasted heating bodies of water instead of large buildings.This whole situation could be resolved if the rad-waste was containerized and used at factories or large buildings to provide heat. One other example come to mind. As everyone knows, ethanol plants are springing up all over the United States. These companies use energy to separate alcohol from water. The boiling point of alcohol is about 175 degrees fahrenheit. This is all the heat you need to complete the processing of ethanol. There are over one hundred ethanol plants in the U.S. alone. Currently, most of these ethanol plants use natural gas to provide the heat input. This not only uses valuable natural gas, it also adds to the overall cost of the ethanol. Using the heat from rad-waste however, changes the situation 180 degrees. In other words, motor fuel can be manufactured at a lower cost, using the casks of rad-waste that nobody else wants.
Item number 4. Using rad waste casks to manufacture fresh water from salt water, in Death Valley. According to all the unsubstantiated gossip I have been hearing over the years, the state of California is a drop or two short of fresh water, among other things. Seeing as how Death Valley is 198 feet below sea level, it would be a matter of simple physics to run a pipeline from the Pacific ocean to the valley and fill it with sea water. No pump would be needed, as gravity would provide all the siphon action that would be needed. A solar powered desalinating plant could be built at the site to provide distilled water to the rest of the state, and neighboring states. Also, a turbo generator could be placed in the pipeline to generate electricity as a by-product. It would be a simple matter to use conical mirrors to generate all of the heat that you would want, to boil all of the water that you would want, to obtain all of the distilled water that you would want…. And at night, the rad waste casks would take over in place of the sun.
The reason why the desalinating plant should be built in Death Valley, as opposed to a plant on the west coast of California, is because it is located in a much safer area than on the coast. You see, there are no hurricanes in this area, as sometimes occur on the coasts. You may remember the oil rigs that were destroyed off the coasts by destructive tidal waves and hurricanes. Also, the tree-huggers who live on the coast, would have just one more reason to complain about the scenery. Since few people live near, or visit Death Valley anyway, and it is already on government land, and has an Army base on it, I would say it would be in a safe location to re-use rad waste, or build structures.
One other thing to be considered, is that the whole concept of flooding Death Valley with water can be made as variable proposition. The entire valley does not have to be flooded, for the system to work. As little as fifty feet of water would fill the bill. And before the adformentioned tree-huggers complain that diverting sea water to Death Valley would somehow be destructive to the environment in that area, please have someone in their gang explain to the general public, why the National Public Radio group, caused a documentary to be made about Death Valley, in which several tree-huggers were shown in a low lying area complaining that there wasn’t enough rainfall in the Valley to support the native fish population! No kidding folks! To prove their statements, the camera showed several shots of dying fish flopping around in very shallow water. It seems that not one person in that group could solve that problem!
One last word on the tree-huggers: On one hand they complain when the farmers or other landowners fills in a acre or two of land with clean fill to improve crop yield, or control mosquitoes, and then also complain when other developers going about normal earthmoving activities, create lowlands that retain water from time to time. Along these lines, I propose creating wetland credits, similar to the carbon credits relating to the so called global warming problem. For every mosquitoes infested swamp that is filled in by governmental or private agencies, an equal portion of Death Valley could be flooded as a counter measure. How does that sound? Also please describe a place anywhere on the planet, where a body of water is somehow destructive to the environment. I haven’t found such a place yet!
By the way, here is an added bonus…. And a riddle. When I said the water could be delivered to neighboring states, this could be done for free, ignoring the pipeline costs, by using gravity, and ram pumps. Do you know what I am describing? I don’t think too many people know what a ram pump is.
Item number 4.1. Expanding on the last concept, it would be possible to generate hydrogen gas at the same site. According to a Wall Street Journal article, issued on October 13 – 14, 2007, under the title — Solar Miracle, on page A10 in the opinion page, Congressman Nick Rahall introduced a proposal in Congress for a pilot program to create “strategic solar reserves” on federal lands. These solar reserves would be created along the same lines as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which stores oil for future use. The article goes on to state that, and the following statement was copied from the Wall Street Journal — Last we checked, however, storing solar energy was a slightly more difficult scientific proposition. “I have no idea how that would work,” says University of Maryland physics professor Robert Park. “This is our greatest single problem with energy — figuring out how to store electricity.
Personally speaking, this is a no-brainer as far as I am concerned. You do not have to store electricity directly. You can use the entire Death Valley area as a giant solar collector, to generate electricity, and use it to manufacture hydrogen gas. In Indiana, natural gas is stored in caves. I thought that everyone knew this. I guess not. At any rate, on this concept, it is possible to go two ways at the same time. The Death Valley power generating area, could create hydrogen gas that could be burned directly in power plants, and it could be mixed at the ratio of ten percent with natural gas, which could be used immediately in american homes. For those of you who wonder why I used the ten percent figure on the hydrogen-natural gas mix, I read this from a science report. According to the natural gas industry, one hundred percent pure hydrogen gas cannot be used in a “standard” gas stove without modifying the gas jets. By the way, this is a minor issue. If you lift the top of your gas stove, and look at the back end, you will find another set of jets. These jets are for liquid propane gas. The only further change that would have to be made to the same type of stove, is to include a second set of jets for nearly pure hydrogen gas.
Item Number 5. Reducing the amount of transmission towers, and related weather and maintainance problems to them. As you well know, it costs big bucks to transmit power from one place to another. A large amount of this power is used to keep buildings warm in cold weather. Centrally located bundles of rad waste casks could be located near cities to pipe steam to large buildings. This would reduce the loads on large transmission lines. Variations of this concept have already been tried. For example: The Ford auto plant in Detroit had its own coal fired power plant. In emergences, the plant was able to supply the city with power, when the city had power problems with its own power systems.
And while I am at it, the power companies could do a better job in designing high voltage transmission towers. It seems to me that with a slight design change, the same transmission towers could also support an anemometer type of windmill. For those of you who don’t know what an anemometer is, it looks like three ping pong balls cut in half on three rods, rotating on a vertical axis, turning a generator. In other words, it would be very easy to build transmission towers to move power from one place to another, and generate power at the same time. Why haven’t the power companies thought of this?
Item Number 6. Can be constructed with off the shelf items. The electrical power system that exists in the United States, is the worlds largest invention. The current costs and payments run into billions of dollars per year. What I am proposing, amounts to cutting costs with no layoffs to power company employees. No new equipment has to be designed, or no different type of metal has to be forged. All that has to be accomplished, is to place old rad waste cores in casks, and these casks placed in boilers to generate heat. The shell of the boiler can be made from the same liquid propane containers that are used to transport propane on large trucks. Another rather large advantage would be small size of such heat generators. Each steam or hot water generator unit would be self contained. It, or they could be placed in remote locations, with little maintainance.Each unit or cluster of units could be used to create live steam or electricity
Item Number 7. Billions of dollars in savings. First off, let’s stop the thirty years of worthless talk of burying the rad waste in the Yucca mountain area. That idea has went nowhere, and never will. According to Wall Street Journal articles on the subject, the amount of rad waste sitting around at nuclear plants, already exceed the amount of burial space created in the tunnels. The fact is, that this material generates enough heat, that it can be used for lower level heat sources. So why not use it!
Item number 8. As safe or safer than a pebble bed reactor. For those of you people that may have come to the conclusion that this article does not make any sense, what I am proposing is exactly the same thing as the new generation of nuclear reactors, called the pebble bed reactors. In the pebble bed reactor, softball sized uranium pellets are installed in a empty reactor vessel until the proper heat output is obtained. To explain further, in a “standard reactor,” uranium fuel rods are installed in the vessel, and the heat output is regulated, by raising or lowering the control rods. When the heat output drops below a certain level, the reactor has to be taken out of service until new fuel rods can be installed. In a pebble bed reactor, the softball sized spheres can be added until the heat output is at the design level of the reactor. As time passes, and the heat level of the spheres decrease, the old spheres can be removed, and new fresh spheres can be added, while the reactor is in operation. The big advantage of a pebble bed reactor, over a “standard” reactor is that the loss of coolant problem is eliminated. In a “standard reactor,” a loss of coolant leads to a meltdown, in a pebble bed reactor, a loss of coolant causes no problem, as the spheres do not cause reactor floor melting.
Item Number 9. Are those cooling towers on nuclear plants really needed? It seems to me that if there is enough “leftover”heat in the power generating process, that some of it has to be diverted to the atmosphere, there is enough left to generate more electrical power. One does not have to boil water to generate electricity. Other enticement can also be used. Freon, for example, can also be used. There are also other elements, such as propane, but for this example, freon is used. There are many different types of freon, and all boil at temperatures of less than 212 degrees. Freon “steam” can also be harnessed to generate electrical power.
Item Number 10. A word about coal fired plants. I haven’t the slightest idea why someone else in the power generation business hasn’t thought of this, but you can greatly reduce the amount of smokestack particle discharge by simply mixing the stack exhaust gases with spare steam. Without going in to great detail, the steam would remove the fly ash, and do an excellent job of cleaning the discharge gases. The same thing happens when crud in the atmosphere gets caught in a thunderstorm. The water vapor condenses on the dust particles, and falls to earth. If this were not true, all of the dust that been put into the atmosphere since the beginning of time, would still be there.
Thank you for your attention.
Steve Behling,
56270 Chapel Lane,
South Bend, Indiana, United States of America.
46619-1123
1-574-288-8354
stevex@michiana.org
Note: As of 10-31-07, The National Academy of Sciences has blocked my E-Mails, no explanation, no response, no debate. And here I thought a scientific organization, welcomed new ideas!
Posted on December 6th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
This was an very interesting talk. There are still a few nuclear power issues that I would require further persuasion on. On the economics end, I remain unconvinced that the nuclear industry does not take the long term cost of waste disposal into consideration. It should also have to compete in the market on it’s persent basis. It make no sense to make future predictions, as we could equally do this for renewables. Predict that PV cells will increase in efficiency 75%. I would love to see a space elevator that could jettison radio active waste into space, or a fusion reactor, but we must deal with present realities.
It was rumored that the accidental release of radiation from the Millstone nuclear plant in Lyme CT, may have been responsible for the now rampant Lyme disease. The disease was traced back to ticks that had an unusual genetic mutation. Now whether or not this is related to the power plant cannot be proved or disproved either way. For those inclined to see a correlation it suggests that even minimal radiation release can have far reaching effects.
Are these potentials being properly considered? Can these potential dangers be mitigated?
Posted on January 2nd, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Stuart and Gwyneth you are naive. You have only begun your journey io learn about nuclear power. I suggest that your judgment has been affected by your desire. Your sincere and urgent desire for a solution to the climate crisis has allowed you to accept the promises of the nuclear industry without serious question. After reading The Revenge of Gaia I believe that James Lovelock has done likewise.
In the 1950s the nuclear industry said nuclear power would be “To Cheap To Meter.” Oh how boring boring boring. Everyone has heard this story before. Or have you? Do you really know who said this? Do you know when they said it? And most importantly why? This statement was made by the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and numerous other supposedly responsible individuals in the government and industry. This statement and others like it were repeated over and over and over again. The statements were meant to be taken literally. Of course the statements were absurd. They were not true. And… it is very clear that the people who made the statements knew or should have known they were not true whe when they made the statements.
This is only one example of the extrordinary hubris of the nuclear industy.
And today? Today they are saying “Nuclear Power Will Save the World.”
Posted on March 26th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
[...] Long Views » Blog Archive » Gwyneth Cravens,”Power to Save the World” [...]
Posted on March 31st, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Those interested in the real history and character of nuclear energy can consult my web site but would be srongly advised to read the scientific experts – physicists, doctors, engineers, etc. – who laid the groundwork for the anti-nuclear movement that curbed the building of American reactors in the late 1970s. As the initiator of the Shoreham Opponents Coalition in the mid 1970s I have no recollection of Cravens’ name. In any cas it is quite clear she hasn’t the most mimimal understanding of the facts about and dangers of nuclear power. Nor has she apparently shown any interest in consulting impartial or objective sources. Instead she has relied on self interested scientists involved in the technology. But even then she has no educated herself on the scientific details. For example, she makes an egregious error when she refers to the small volume of nuclear waste that has been produced, saying an individual’s share would fit in a Coke can. This is ignorance personified. It is not the volume that is relevant but the TOXICITY of the waste. By her criteria one teaspoon of botulin toxin would be safe. One could go on and on about the absymal misinformation in this book. Why she wrote it is a mystery. Perhaps her fiction writings were not selling well. Well, in this case she has simply added to her fiction output.
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 7:42 pm
“Instead she has relied on self interested scientists involved in the technology. But even then she has no educated herself on the scientific details. For example, she makes an egregious error when she refers to the small volume of nuclear waste that has been produced, saying an individual’s share would fit in a Coke can. ”
Well, yes. It’s not like fly ash from coal, after all. And 300 million Coke cans… that’d be a couple of good-sized warehouses… I think she’s a bit large on the individual amount, personally.
When it comes to trusting a scientist, I’d prefer one who’s actually involved in the technology myself. I wouldn’t go to a metallurgist for advice on pollution control, or a meteorogist for advice on mining.
I’ve never understood the blind fear about radioactive waste. THAT stuff is easily handled from a technological standpoint – and the more radioactive the stuff is the shorter its half-life and the faster it becomes essentially harmless. However, the arsenic in fly ash from coal power plants is going to be as dangerous 100 million years from now as when it comes out the chimney, and you don’t see the environmentalists hyperventilating about that…
Posted on July 21st, 2008 at 5:04 am
[...] the Long Now Foundation, in particular the talk given by Gwyneth Cravens & Rip Anderson on the “Power to save the world”. This broadly set-out the case on the need for substantive future adoption of nuclear power as one [...]
Posted on March 17th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Do you guys have a recommendation section, i’d like to suggest some stuff
Posted on January 21st, 2010 at 12:27 am
[...] Power to Save the World. Like me, she started as a skeptic, but guided by “Dr. Rip” [Richard "Rip" Anderson], a theoretical chemist at Sandia who’s a specialist in risk assessment and has been involved [...]