Thursday, October 20, 2016

Modular Reactors: A Bad Idea


The Guardian is pushing modular nuclear reactors by promoting the misinformation that nuclear power plants emit no emissions:
Debbie Carlson. 16 October 2016. This new technology could save the troubled nuclear power industry. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/oct/16/safer-small-nuclear-reactors-power-plant-technology

... Nuclear power plants emit no emissions, but existing designs have become too costly to be a popular solution for climate change. The new technology has gotten significant funding from investors such as Bill Gates…
The entire uranium fuel cycle is VERY carbon intensive (i.e., polluting) and produces vast amounts of waste that we cannot manage. Additionally, nuclear power plants produce vast amounts of heat and contaminate the atmosphere with tritium and Krypton-85. In fact, the EPA is planning on regulating Krypton-85 emissions from NPPs:
Silverstein, Ken (2014, June 13) EPA Hits Nuclear Power With Kryptonite. Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/06/13/epa-hits-nuclear-power-with-kryptonite/

See nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen's video here describing why nuclear is NO SOLUTION for global climate change:  http://www.fairewinds.org/nuclear-energy-education//smoke-screen-montreal

The Guardian article's author is misinformed. However, the author of the article, Carlson, does offer an alternative view point to the otherwise approving discussion of modular nukes:
Mike Pasqualetti, senior sustainability scientist at Arizona State University’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, isn’t convinced the world needs this technology.
These new plants may be cheaper to build in theory than conventional nuclear projects, but it delays the transition to a more sustainable future in which 100% of the US’ electricity needs come from renewable sources and energy storage, he said.
“Small scale nuclear has advantages to it, but there’s still waste. Are they safer? Probably. Are they cheaper to build? Probably. Do we have any experience doing it? Not really,” Pasqualetti said.
As Dr. Pasqualetti points out, small scale nuclear reactors simply delay transition to a more sustainable future and are an inherently risky endeavor.




6 comments:

  1. Insanity knows no bounds

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great Britain is becoming a raionucleide saturated island. A big island. So is France as a nation.

    The genotoxin and neurotoxin accumulation on their crazy little island state has been going on for 60 years. It is about to catch up with them in a bad way. Somehow it does not seem like anyone will be able to maintain any modular reactors or rather, radionucleide dispersing death pods once the shtf in Britain. People in Britain are sliding into radionucleide insanity like they are in a lot of places now.

    ReplyDelete
  3. https://dunrenard.wordpress.com/2016/10/20/testing-of-seawater-off-fukushima-daiichi/
    MENU

    Testing of Seawater Off Fukushima Daiichi

    Japan, Nuclear, Radiation



     

    Results of seawater testing off the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant by Tarachine

    the Mother’s Radiation Lab & Clinic of Iwaki, Fukushima

    Item measured: Cesium 137 (method by treatment with phosphomolybdic acid)

    ReplyDelete
  4. We are witnessing the collapse of the largest industrial conglomerates in the world. They are in Japan. They are intertwined with huge international corporations in The United States like Westinghouse, GE, Boeing, even pharmaceutical companies. That is how Japan became the third largest economy in the world. Multinational corporations in China, Japan, the United States , Korea are so intertwined now that as Japan falls, from fukushima so goes the the world economy. Westinghouse and Toshiba cannot even make decent pipes for nuclear reactors anymore.

    https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2016/10/19/toshiba-westinghouse-ap1000-new-nuclear-power-station-piping-defects-appear-never-ending-any-part-you-want-as-long-as-its-defective/

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dangerous and Toxic. Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
    https://nuclear-news.net/2016/02/01/dangerous-and-toxic-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/

    ReplyDelete
  6. Small modular
    Reactors
    http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5653378

    ReplyDelete

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