Nuclear Power - Seen and Unseen - Part 1

Each red dot above represents a nuclear power station usually with several reactors.

If I were a believer in conspiracy theories (I'm not), I might suggest that the entire global warming crisis was concocted to revive a moribund nuclear industry. Why would I say that? The nuclear power industry received body blows a generation ago after Three-Mile-Island and Chernobyl. The fear associated with those events justifiably curtailed the building of nuclear power stations worldwide. That fear has since been replaced by the fear of global warming consequences, and of course nuclear power stations don't produce greenhouse gases. Unfortunately we have been reminded that nuclear power stations do produce something besides electricity.
 As I write this, a radiation cloud is still wafting over Fukushima Prefecture and surrounding regions in Japan and out to sea. The population of Northeastern Japan has endured a magnitude 9.0 earthquake followed by a very destructive Tsunami, followed by a nuclear accident. "Accident" does not seem adequate, this was an accident that was waiting to happen, it was just a matter of time. The event was almost as predictable as earthquakes in Japan; they happen, they happen often, and in a country that has 55 commercial nuclear reactors (third largest number on earth) an earthquake related nuclear disaster was almost predestined - Murphy's Law.
In the radiation cloud are radioisotopes like Xenon and Iodine each with a relatively short half-life, and Caesium, with a half-life of just over 30 years. The dispersion of this cloud may be visualized on this website.

For those of us who live in Eastern North America, where there are many, many nuclear reactors (see the map above), you may feel safe that magnitude 9.0 earthquakes and tsunamis are very unlikely. The simple truth about the Fukushima disaster is that the partial core-meltdowns (or worse, it's not over yet) were caused by an interruption in the cooling of these reactors. The cooling pumps stopped because of a power outage and an inability to restart the pumps due to the tsunami etc. The back-up systems had failed, first the generators then the batteries, the power station was in a blackout, which continues on 4 of the 6 reactors at this writing.

Can blackouts happen here? Absolutely! On the afternoon of Aug. 14th, 2003 a major blackout caused the automatic rapid shutdown of 9 US reactors and 7 reactors in Ontario (see Chapter 8, pg. 111 in that report), all of them operating at high power levels because of the heatwave in the region on that day. Fortunately for us, the cooling systems of these reactors were maintained, but the reactors in the Toronto area were offline until sometime between Aug. 22 and 25, more than a week later. This had significant economic consequences to Ontario and the region. Tragically the situation in Japan is offering us a glimpse, a lesson, at possible futures.
    
My purpose here, is not to scare anyone, the levels of radiation in Japan are relatively low, and you may do your own assessment of that using this radiation dose chart online from this blogpost. My purpose is to continue a discussion on the use of nuclear energy. There are at least 104 commercial nuclear reactors on 64 sites in the United States, with an additional 34 research reactors at Universities across the US, and an estimated 272 military reactors. In Canada there are at least 23 commercial reactors (plus two are planned), and 19 research reactors at research centres and Universities across Canada. 

Since 1952, when the first nuclear reactor came online, their have been at least 100 significant nuclear accidents around the world. While fatalities have been low, that real number is difficult to calculate given the slow rate at which radiation-related health problems occur. Look at the map of nuclear power stations above again. Do you live near one of those red dots? Probably, even if you don't, a radiation cloud from an accident can be carried quite a distance. If you live in Ontario where prevailing winds from the west and southwest are common, well, you can see what I mean? So what kind of pollution would you prefer, the radioactive kind, or just plain old air pollution and carbon dioxide (which is not a pollutant really)? I know what I prefer.
See part 2 soon.

Global warming and energy production

Anyone who has read this blog knows that I am a global warming skeptic. Not so much that I don't believe warming is happening, I just don't believe efforts in Canada, the United States or Europe will make any difference to mitigating warming (and why would we want too?). I don't believe that forcing people to alter their lifestyles by having them pay huge price penalties for carbon dioxide production is moral, regardless of the supposed noble cause (saving the planet!?). I also don't believe that the models presented by the United Nations or any other group could possibly be accurate (given what we don't know) or that there is any risk in just doing nothing (my preference).
Lately I have been involved in researching electric power generation because of its implications for the next election in Ontario. Our current provincial government has already set Ontario on a course that is supposed to reduce our "carbon footprint" but at great expense to  the population, and to Ontario's competitive position among its neighbours. Two-thirds of Ontario's future electricity production is forecast to be nuclear or non-conventional (wind, solar).
Well, nuclear power has been in the news of late, and I will have much more to say about it soon, but I found it refreshing to watch the video below from a global warming believer who is actually trying to get the science right. Richard A. Muller, a retired physics teacher from UC.Berkeley speaks about:

> why our efforts to reduce our CO2 emissions may be futile because of developing nations 
> the exaggerated rhetoric used by the IPCC and other warmists
> the exaggerated data about ice cap melting, glacier melting, sea level rising, hurricanes etc.
> the "Climategate" scandal and the facts about the fraud committed by scientists

Prof. Muller injects a degree of uncertainty about the warmists' data that has been sadly lacking. He admits that there is uncertainty, unlike the Gores and Suzukis of the world that claim the science is settled. I disagree with Prof. Muller on the moral issue of coercing joint global effort to reduce warming, and I also disagree with him on China. He assumes that China will continue to grow into the future as it has in the past 20 years (10% per year). I find that difficult to believe as I've indicated before. A recent article in Canadian Business Magazine titled China's Coming Collapse (by Jason Kirby) details why China's apparent success may be just a mirage, much the same as the Japanese bubble of the 1980's that resulted in Japan's lost decade. Mr. Kirby can be heard on a podcast discussing this article if you prefer.
So here is Richard A. Muller, from UC.Berkeley speaking about Global Warming -- The Current Status: The Science, the Scandal etc:

   

Unbearable bullying

Amidst all the gloom in the news, more bad news, Knut the polar bear is dead, and he died young, aged only four. That is young for a polar bear, 20 to 50 years is typical in the wild. But zoos often don't agree with animals, as much as they try to mimic habitat, they frequently fail. Even animals prefer complete liberty, something quite rare now for humans in our society.
Fortunately Knut was not as cute at death, as he was when he first made news being rejected by his mother at the Berlin Zoological Garden.
While the cause of death is not yet known, PETA is speculating that his death could have been avoided and"that Knut was being “terrorized” by three female polar bears — including his own mother!" Bullying in bears too! Must be a sign of the times.

Suzuki's misguided war on fish farms

The West coast of Canada like the East coast, is dotted with fishing outports that provide Canadian and world markets with seafood. Despite strict government regulation and oversight by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) Canada, the entire Northern Cod fishing industry collapsed in 1992, creating unemployment and more economic hardship in the Canadian Maritimes (see graph).


The collapse of an entire population because of overfishing or overhunting is not new or unusual. The Plains First Nations culture that depended on the North American Bison was destroyed when overhunting decimated Bison populations in the mid-to-late 1800's. Many readers might think that this collapse was because of lack of regulation by government in the territories where the bison herds roamed. But you should ask yourself what might have happened if those bison herds were owned by ranchers? The bison story is more complex than that; as one libertarian blogger suggests in this, his first "Avatar post". Today, surviving bison herds are protected or managed and cultivated in farms.  My point is, that a food source fit for human consumption is often best managed if it was cultivated, and owned by a farmer.
Fish farming, the most common form of aquaculture, eliminates many of the risks posed by commercial fishing, namely overfishing, as in the cod example above, the risks to the fishermen themselves, and catching and killing the wrong fish, called by-catch. You would think environmentalists like David Suzuki would support fish farming, and you would be wrong. Over the years through petitions and other forms of activism the Suzuki Foundation has attempted to undermine this industry on the basis of flawed scientific evidence and fraud.
An excellent article in the Financial Post by Vivian Krause called Suzuki's fish story, is an attempt to set the record straight. The article points out that a scientific study in a prestigious journal in 2004 triggered a world-wide scare about toxic (cancer-causing) contaminants (PCBs) in farmed salmon. The study suggested that farmed Atlantic salmon had almost 8 times more PCB's than did wild Pacific salmon, the difference was between 0.0366 ppm and 0.0048 ppm. While that is an 8 times difference, the acceptable range is around 2 ppm, or 55 times more, well within acceptable limits for consumption. When the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) reported to the media that farmed salmon was 8 times more toxic than wild salmon and a co-author of the "study told the media that 'women should avoid eating farmed salmon at all, from the day they are born through menopause,' and that 'one should avoid farmed salmon like the plague. Our results indicate elevated cancer risk from one meal (of farmed salmon) or even less per month'." Well, that was a bad day for farmed salmon.
It turns out that the fears were all groundless and misleading, but much worse the entire story which involves influential people within the AAAS and the prestigious journal Science and their use of those outlets "to sway market share towards wild fish and away from the competition: imported, farmed fish." Millions of dollars were involved and the Suzuki Foundation is at the centre helping promulgate the lie and receiving funds while doing it. (read Ms. Krause' article)
Ms. Krause points out that this misinformation put out by the Suzuki Foundation may be negatively impacting newborns of "educated" mothers in the Vancouver area, who are not giving their fetuses sufficient omega-3 fatty acids because "Canada's most trusted environmentalist has been giving pregnant women faulty advice to avoid farmed salmon." 
Maybe Suzuki is getting the message, "....the Packard foundation paid the David Suzuki Foundation US$762,600 for Pacific Salmon Forests, a project that produced a brochure titled, Why You Shouldn't Eat Farmed Salmon." I did an online search for this brochure which I located in several libraries on the BC coast and this is what came up: "Not Found" (see below)

Again, if you are at all interested in David Suzuki and his work, you owe it to yourself to read Ms. Krause' article. Suzuki can and has made mistakes, are there others? I think so, just before I close let me point you to an interesting event that happened last fall in BC.
Much credence was given to Suzuki's war on farmed salmon because wild salmon harvests were falling along the West coast each year. Somehow this was blamed on farming (although I would have thought that to be counterintuitive), disease caused by farming, and global warming. Low and behold huge numbers of salmon returned in 2010. Why? That is not yet understood, but it's interesting.
For those interested in fish farming, here is a quick look.