Talk:Environmental effects of nuclear power

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[edit] Second Review of Article: Findings and List of Possible Points for Improvement

Theanphibian, I have moved the discussion regarding this article to this talk page. I felt prudent to do so since there have been significant changes made to this article since my initial WP:NPOV tag. See Difference between the article's original content and how it is now, as of 03:48, 17 November 2007. Since there have been multiple edits by multiple contributors, it is necessary to move the conversation here so that they may also pitch in and improve this article. I hope to see this article at least being promoted to a B-Class article.

  1. New lead needs to be rewritten. I feel that the statement is very scientific and as unbiased as possible, but I would like to see a citation so the lead does not fall under the category of "original research."
  2. "Chemical Volume Control System" mentioned in Environmental effects of nuclear power#Radioactive waste, AKA CVCS, is actually known as "Chemical and Volume Control System" in USNRC (See NRC INFORMATION NOTICE 96-65, under "Description of Circumstances".) I tried searching for CVCS in Wikipedia, but did not return any closely-related results. However, I do see a red link. Are you planning to write that article in the future?
  3. In Environmental effects of nuclear power#High level waste, reads "A comparatively small amount (perhaps a ton a year from a large nuclear power plant) of high-level waste is produced, and this poses a significant disposal problem.[citation needed] It can be expected to be dangerous for tens or hundreds of thousands of years (Taking 10,000 years to decay to activity levels below that of the original ore), so extremely secure disposal methods must be found.[citation needed]" Those, again, are almost written like it is biased. I'll work on possibly rewording this so this issue can be avoided. However, if you have basis or verified sources about what you're saying, it is definitely possible to just cite the source you retrieved these statements from and just call it a day. :-)
  4. Same section as above, "Currently, most such waste is stored in dry storage facilities...", did you mean dry cask storage?
  5. Environmental effects of nuclear power#Environmental effects of accidents should be reworded to something on the lines of Risk Factors. I believe that if you reword that, it should open doors for future editors to expand on the risks of operating nuclear technology and its effects. Also, this section should be placed after the Radioactive effluent emissions" section because of (the next point).
  6. Citing the acceptable range of radiation exposure in Environmental effects of nuclear power#Radioactive effluent emissions#Environmental effects of accidents: "After WWII and until 1969, the Hunters Point shipyard was the site of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, the US military's largest facility for applied nuclear research, which left many areas of the shipyard radioactively contaminated. from Hunters Point, San Francisco, California#History of the Shipyard, it is possible to also link the increased health problems and cancer patients living in that particular area of San Francisco. Diseaseville - Asthma, cancer, and other illnesses occur at higher-than-average rates in Hunters Point. Many residents blame the nearby Navy shipyard, one of the most contaminated ex-military bases in the nation; By: Lisa Davis; Published: August 27, 2003; SF Weekly. (By the way, this is just a suggestion. I'd try to find more concrete evidence than SF Weekly.)
  7. Environmental effects of nuclear power#Storm and Smith publication: "United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development" is not listed in Google or Wikipedia, but I did come up with a similar search result Commission on Sustainable Development. Is cites similar goals and topics as what you've mentioned. Is this what you wanted to cite instead?

I hope you don't take it the wrong way. I don't mean to hold your article to the microscope. It's just that I promised you that I would take a close look at your article. I hope this helps. Feel free to talk about this in detail.

Happy editing and I hope you have a great day! :-) - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 09:50, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

  1. Indeed, and I would like to see the same referenced text appear in Environmental concerns with electricity generation as I was saying before.
  2. I read they were interchangeable, so whichever's fine. And yes, Wikipedia needs an article on this.
  3. Yes, we all know that volumes have already been written on the high level waste, so I mostly agree with your suggestion, but a brief summary about its "environmental effects" in specific should be included IMO. Current text needs to be fully replaced.
  4. yes
  5. This is something I still have great internal debate on how to handle. Chernobyl is often called the "worst case scenario", so for the most part effects of nuclear power radiological accidents on environment = effects of Chernobyl on the environment. The risk of another such event could be addressed, but a treatment of the effects of such an event sort of goes back to the Chernobyl thing...
  6. This could be disputed as to weather it is about nuclear power or not. However, something could be written about the connection between military and national lab research to the maturing of nuclear power - thus showing a possible environmental side effect of nuclear power. Details of the accidents through such government nuclear research, I think should be (and hope is) covered somewhere else.
  7. Considering the that Commission on Sustainable Development appears to be a UN body, I would image so. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 19:52, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nuclear power and global warming

Many well qualified people have recently indicated that nuclear power is not part of the solution to global warming:

In 2007, Peter Bradford said:

But nuclear power cannot be a magic bullet answer to climate change. Even if it is scaled up much faster than anything now in prospect, it cannot provide more than 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the greenhouse gas displacement that is likely to be needed by mid-century. Not only can nuclear power not stop global warming, it is probably not even an essential part of the solution to global warming.[1]

In 2007, Dr Mark Diesendorf said:

Nuclear power in particular is rejected because of its substantial risks (proliferation of nuclear weapons, terrorism, waste management and reactor failures) and economic costs, and because within several decades it will become a significant emitter of CO2, mainly from the fossil fuels used in mining and milling low-grade uranium ore. Based on existing technologies, nuclear power is neither a long-term nor a short-term solution to global warming.[2]

In 2006, the Pembina Institute said:

The study finds that GHG emissions arise at each stage of the nuclear energy cycle, with power plant construction being the most significant source of releases. Further releases of GHGs occur as a result of the operation of equipment in the uranium min­ing process, the milling of uranium ore, mill tailings management activities, and refining and conversion operations. The generation of greenhouse gases from mining and milling operations would increase pro­portionally with the use of lower grade uranium ores, as larger amounts of ore would have to be extracted and processed to produce the same amount of ura­nium concentrate.[3]

In 2005, Dr Jim Green said:

There are significant constraints on the growth of nuclear power, such as its high capital cost and, in many countries, lack of public acceptability. As a method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, nuclear power is further limited because it is used almost exclusively for electricity generation, which is responsible for less than one third of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Because of these problems, the potential for nuclear power to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by replacing fossil fuels is limited. Few predict a doubling of nuclear power output by 2050, but even if it did eventuate it would still only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 5% – less than one tenth of the reductions required to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.[4]

In 2007, Professor Ian Lowe said:

Promoting nuclear power as the solution to climate change is like advocating smoking as a cure for obesity. That is, taking up the nuclear option will make it much more difficult to move to the sort of sustainable, ecologically healthy future that should be our goal.[5]

I think this material should be included in the article, but at this stage am not sure where the best place for it is. Johnfos (talk) 02:08, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I've read plenty of these, and provided that the argument isn't in the stormsmith and Helen Caldicott camp, who decide to reject life cycle emission analysis on the basis that those who provide them can not be trusted (which most of these are not, thank you), then they come down to these points:
  1. Construction costs and time frame limits worldwide penetration over 20 or 30 % at best in the near future
  2. Nuclear is only an electricity source, thereby not eliminating the huge chunk of emitters that are in transportation and other infrastructure
Please correct me if your opinion contains more arguments, but these all are basically criticizing the limited extent of nuclear power. These are doing nothing more than citing global warming causes that nuclear can't fix. That's not a societal or environmental detriment of nuclear power. If you want to argue that expansion of nuclear power stunts the growth of renewable technologies, then that's another thing, which could be construed as an environmental determent instead of an economic consideration, if other factors are introduced including weighing the environmental consequences of renewables vs. nuclear and the relative share each would have occupied without the other. But considering that the world is currently building natural gas and coal plants at an alarming rate, I hope you can understand my skepticism of this statement.
Economics of new nuclear power plants could by all means be linked to, but I'm not sure what you're saying should be covered here that's not covered there. Again, all of these above are talking about nuclear in relation to the displacement of other power sources, not the effects of nuclear power itself. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 02:59, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mining, Milling, Purifying and Enrichment

This article does not seem to touch on the environmental aspects of the mining, milling, purifying and enrichment of the uranium ores. It makes no mention of the impact of the mining except the carbon emissions. Mining uranium is a very dirty process. In many respects, uranium mining comes with similar problems as mining for other metals. But the effects of mining go far beyond the small area disturbed in the operation. A mine cannot operate in isolation. It requires the construction of roads, the transport of material and the disposal of wastes. It leaves behind tailing ponds, plumes of radon and uranium dust. The runoff water is contaminated with uranium, radium, and radon. As the grade of the ore decreases, the amount of waste drastically increases at the mine. The mill has similar problems - plumes of radioactive yellow dust containing more uranium, radium, and radon.

The most common purification process involves solvent extraction with tertiary amines in an organic kerosene solvent in a continuous process. This process needs lots of sulfuric acid and can remove maybe 80% of the uranium. However, the remaining waste contains uranium, radium, radon and many heavy metals. This waste often ends up in the environment - a big tailing pond. The runoff from the tailing ponds is very bad for the environment because it contains remnants of now radioactive kerosene. The initial separation and refining processes generate large volumes of acid and organic waste. The drying process vents the organic solvents into the air. For every tonne of uranium yellow cake produced, there are thousands of not tens of thousands of tonnes of waste.

The enrichment process also produces a lot of environmental waste. The yellow cake is mixed with nitric acid and hydrogen fluoride. The process gives off fluorine. The process also requires hydrogen. The process that makes hydrogen from natural gas produces carbon monoxide as its waste products. Kgrr (talk) 11:03, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I also think it's deceiving if someone only quotes weights for yellowcake or enriched Uranium. Putting the other factors in there, it still comes out to something like 100 or 1000 times less rock requirements than coal, otherwise
"In many respects, uranium mining comes with similar problems as mining for other metals."
Yes, it's practically the same. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 22:40, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] High-level waste

How can the high-level waste coming out of a nuclear power plant be only 1 ton per year, when a 1000 MWe plant requires 25 tons of enriched fuel? Where did the other 24 tons of material go? Aren't the fuel assemblies after they've been through the reactor also high-level waste? Does the entire volume of the casks they are put in not count towards high-level waste, or are the casks reused?Kgrr (talk) 16:20, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

25 metric tons is the right answer. I don't think I wrote that part. One ton would be like the size of my couch. -Theanphibian (talk • contribs) 22:41, 21 May 2008 (UTC)