Comments on: Nuke power not so clean or green

Longtime activist Helen Caldicott sees no silver lining in a nuclear energy renaissance.

[Work Out Freak]

Sick Of Greenies

I am so sick of all of these greenies and their doom and gloom. This is a cult meant to guilt Americans. We all need to take a minute and look back at history to realize that the earth has gone through heat and cold cycles long before the internal combustion engine was invented. Bad hurricanes really did occur long before the white man laid foot in America. Northern Europe made excellent wine centuries ago. This particular activist seems to be doing to the environment what Jesse Jackson has done to race relations. Notably, nothing.

[Manhattan2]

Solar Power will be the answer but not the current Solar Energy Program!

Solar power is what created all that fossil fuel in the first place. Research the amount of energy that hits the planet every day from the sun! We wont be able to wait millions of years for the low solar efficiency of plants and animals to decay. We must capture the most direct energy from the sun with the least amount of material cost and GHG expenditure to create this solar net. Don?t rush out and put solar panels on your roof. That would be a mistake that could cost the planet in the long run. The million solar roofs program is not the answer. SolarTransfer is the answer but only when done the right way.

[ahzzmandius]

just look at comanche peak in Texas

When COmanche Peak power plant was built it was festooned with sensors everywhere. WHen the day cam eto test those sensors the engineers couldn't get them to stop going off continually. Interestingly enough there wasn't a single grain of radioactive fuel at the plant yet! This baffled the engineers to no end for a while. Finally someone got smart and realized that the COAL PLANT UPWIND was releasing enough radioactive material to exceed the federal safety limits placed on all nuclear reactors in the USA!!!!

The lesson? Coal is far nastier radioactive material release wise than a nuclear plant.

Yes nuclear plants produce radioactive polution, but it's recycleable.

Yes nuclear plants are dangerous, but there's been only a couple accidents so far, caused by gross incompetance. 3 mile island released LESS radioactive material than coal plants do in a single day.

solar, wind, tide, etc.... unfeasible until we improve the technology cost wise compared to nuclear plants.

Am I saying just drop these "green" sources? No! Build them as fast as we can! Use Nuclear plants as a stop gap measure to eliminate fossil fules for now so that we have to time to build the truly renewable energy sources over time.

[PotatoPanMan]

Caldicott is no expert.

Helen Caldicott has dedicated her life to attacking all nuclear technology. In my opinion she would twist any issue and exaggerate any risk to accomplish her purpose. But she has no training in and only very limited knowledge of radiobiology, radiation safety, nuclear physics, radiochemistry, or environmental biology. She seems to think that radiation risk is a medical issue and she can speak about it because she has a medical degree. She will go to any extreme, make any scary claim, and pretend knowledge to accomplish her purpose. I do not believe that she is a reliable source of information about radiation risks or the comparative effects of energy sources on the environment. CNET News did a disservice by publishing this melange of mis-information.

[TxTodd]

She thinks she ENDED the COLD WAR!!!

Referring to Ronald Reagan ...."And I think retrospectively I did influence him. He started to say nuclear war must never be fought and can never be won. And he did then work cooperatively with Gorbachev to end the Cold War."

This lady really is nuts.

[suyts]

There are so many

people that try to either take credit for or deny credit to Ronald Reagan for the cold war ending that I lost count many years ago. This is just another history revisionist that hates to except reality. Reagan had the opportunity and the will. He did what no one else could or would.

[ul_h]

Another Luiddite

Its fearmongers like Caldicott that have stimied alternative energy development.
Why is gas so expenisve? Nuts like Caldicott prevent new more efficent gas refineries from being built. No new refinery has been built in 30 years.
Why is oil so expensive? Nuts like Caldicott prevent drilling offshore or in wastelands like ANWR. They'd rather our troops die in Iraq than a moose or polar bear get moved. We've got tremendous oil reserves and we're not even touching them because of these kooks.
Why is our national power grid becoming unreliable? Because Nuts like Caldicott prevent new generators, nuclear or otherwise from being built. Meanwhile our population is growing and we're moving toward cleaner forms of energy for transport, yet our powergrid infrastructure can barely handle current demand. We need Nuclear power, and we needed it fifteen years ago. France gets the majority of its power from nuclear energy, and has anyone heard of a French Chernobyl or 3 Mile Island? No. Is nuclear energy dangerous, yes it is. But so is fire. And we've been using that for 30,000 years. But I bet there were kooks like Caldicott trying to ban fire 30,000 years ago.

[Rod Adams]

Financial motivation for Luddites

I like to remind people that the original Luddites were skilled weavers who were afraid that mechanized looms were going to take their jobs and reduce their income.

I think we give the "greens" a pass if we do not dig into their sources of funding and political support. I have done so for many years and keep finding pointers to the fossil fuel industry.

By keeping a real competitor like nuclear fission down - by spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt - the "greens" help increase the profits of fossil fuel providers. Have you ever noticed what happens Exxon-Mobil profits if "gas is expensive" or if their refineries have to operate at full capacity in order to supply the market demands?

IMHO the relationship is no accident - fossil fuel interest groups know full well that the law of supply and demand is one where actions can be taken to restrict supply and that those actions can be very profitable.

Even when "greens" protest new oil exploration, they play into the hands of the current suppliers by slowing capacity growth or by preventing a new supply from replacing an existing supply. (Please do not focus on my strawman of Exxon-Mobile - Russia, Saudi Arabia, West Virginia, Ashland Coal, Norfolk Southern Railroad, and many others have similar motivations to restrict new energy sources like nuclear fission.

[wmlundine]

God(dess) bless Dr. Caldicott

And thank you c|net for hosting this discussion. I am a huge fan and have been for many years.

[migswell]

fine, you idiots go live next to a reactor.

NO way in hell am I ever going to believe that nuclear power is good thing. The technology might be efficient and cheap, but there is no good way to clean it up. Accidents happen, things go wrong, I would not ever risk the safety of my family by supporting nuclear energy. So far we know that industries that produce toxins in mass levels do not clean up after themselves. Why the hell would I trust a nuclear power company to give a crap about the health of my family. This thread is full of ill intent and it is a shame to see that so many smart people are so easily convinced that nuclear power is 'clean.' It does not take a ranting woman to convince me that nuclear power is dangerous, it only takes common sense. The science you are supporting here will only get you short term profit before it destroys us. Maybe that is what you all want. I hope you sink in a pool of radioactive waste.

[jfekendall]

I did

As the subject line implies, I did live next to the Davis Besse Nuclear Plant in Oak Harbor, Ohio for 7 years with no ill effects.

[PzkwVIb]

Stop feeling

and start thinking, this country is mired in a morass of people incapable of rational thought. Unless you actually study the science talking heads like Caldicott, will jerk you around using your fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

You get more radition working in a building with marble facings then you get living right next to a nuclear power plant.

[suyts]

I'm living just

south of Wolf Creek in Kansas. Still good. Enjoying the power. No freak babies. Things are cool. Scare mongers are rarely correct in any assertations they provide.

[GGGlen]

Ummm, I did

I spent YEARS living onboard a nuclear powered submarine.
At no time, due to the physical layout of the boat (Easy math,
she was 360FT long, reactor in the middle, both ends capped by
ballast tanks), could I get more than a hundred odd feet from it,
and during all that time, I received LESS radiation from the
reactor than I did from outside sources.
"Idiots" like me, who attented Naval Nuclear Propulsion School,
who were trained and equipped with dosimetry devices must be
really stoooopid compared to people like you, who haven't a clue
in the world as to what they're saying, right?
You're so wrapped up in self-righteous hatred of things you
know nothing of... it's really just sad.
Anyways, hate on! It's what the ill educated are best at.

[Ushiikun]

I DID

I grew up less than 10 miles from 3 Mile Island. I was only 3 months old when the accident happened. There is not a thing wrong with me that can be traced to it.

In fact, they had the same housing boom in the area that everyone else enjoyed over that past couple of years.

Because of what happened back in '79, I've been told that 3 Mile Island is now one of the most closely regulated reactors in the country.

I have no problems living near it, makes the houses cheaper due to all the FUD about the dangers of a nuclear reactor.

Of course, I buy plane tickets on airlines that just had accidents too, because the FAA has just inspected 100% of their planes to ensure that it wasn't a maintenance error.

[fafafooey]

Let's face it - liberals want us all living naked in caves

They long for the stone age, when everyone lived in nature and life was generally miserable for everyone.

Nukes - nope. Oil - nope. Coal - nope. Gas - nope. Wood - nope. Wind - as long as it is not in their backyard (see Ted Kennedy's fight) and no little birdies get killed.

That's what liberalism has become - since everyone can't be happy and prosperous, there must be shared misery for everyone.

[PzkwVIb]

No that's the Lunatic Fringe

You are describing the lunatic fringe of the left. They are just as ridiculous as the Lunatic Fringe on the right.

[Nicholai Tesla]

This woman is an idiot!

Scare tactics, polution, blah, blah, blah. Not a single person has died from radiation emitted from a nuclear plant. Thousands of babies die each year from malpractice by pediatricians. Who is the real danger to our society???

[jeroneanderson]

work for one?

you want to work with nuclear material? there are plenty of jobs... and lots more cancer among those working in them than in other jobs.......

[alexei_roudnev]

The whole article is a lie

1) Uranium production don't produce much greenhouse gases. It produce gases only because of, after such articles, USA use coal plants to produce energy (while other countries such as Russia or France, use nuclear energy).

2) There was not ANY (any!) accidents with water based nuclear reactores for many years. In reality, if industry is well regulated as in France (standard reactors, safety measures, well trained personnal) it is safer then even coal plants.

3) Full lie about medicine. Plutonium is dangerous, true. But _the pound of plutonium kills the whole life_ is 100% lie. In Chernobyl, tons of plutoneum was released (Chernobyl used RBMK reactor, which combined dangerous properties of all possible reactors, and spilled about 30% of it's load into the air). It did not killed life EVEN in local area - (moreover, wild life exists all around the accident site, to the overall surprise of biologists). And don't forget, Cernobyl-like reactors are prohibited today and was prohibited in 1986 in most countries, just because physicists knew that they are dangerous.

4) It is lie that solar and wind energy can replace atomic energy. They are very limited, and producing solar batteries require enegry (== green gases) as well as productig uranium ore.

We have not much choices in reality:
- conserve energy keeping usage the same as today or lower it a little (plug in cars for example, heat pumps for heating, and so on);

- use solar and wind as a complimentary energy, including solar batteries on the roofs (but it works for some areas only. It don't work for nothen territories at all).

- use gydro power plants when reasonable (but they change the earh face and are opposed by the same people);

- use coal (carbot in the amosphere) and oil (depleted supplies) or gas (depleted supplies);

- use nuclear energy in new effective reactors (unlimited supplies);

- use fusion energy when it became possible (not yet).

Here are our choices, and if we oppose nuclear energy, we just bring more coal plants and put ourself behind the other countries (so that we wil end up in buying nuclear reactors from Russia).

[migswell]

chernobyl is still contaminated

hey you seem to know a lot. You must work for the KGB with a name like that. You must be a nuclear engineer or a lobbyist. I can not believe you took the time to write all this. Amazing, unless you copied and pasted. Ill drink a vodka to your name commie!

[Stufiano]

tons of plutonium?

The accident at Chernybl did not, and could not release tons of plutonium. Why? Because there isn't enough generated at the site.

Nuclear reactors use uranium, plutonium is a product. Both are in small quantities [<10 kg]

Nuclear power plants do not use "tons" of anything nor produce "tons" of anything.

[Stufiano]

Oh and...

!) One pound of plutonium will emit enough radiation to kill a person [and more].

2) Uranium and plutonium are both finite resources, not endless [you sound like you're speaking of oil 50 years ago]. Yes it will last a while but not nearly permanently.

Stop talking off your head and look it up before spewing crap.
Nuclear energy is the superior energy source, yet it is dangerous because of human error. I support nuclear energy, but not uninformed comments.

[PzkwVIb]

This the wrong venue

to post her hysterical propoganda. Hopefully the tech types that frequent CNet, are capable of seeing through Caldicott's junk science.

[CLiddle1]

New regulations state more not less...

The NRC has already issued regulations regaurding containment of new reactor buildings and their ablity to withstand threats. Simply put' new reactor buildings will be required to withstand impact of airplanes and other treats; old reactor buildings do not have to be upgraded to this new standard. Read => thicker walls

and
Thinner walls do not cause meltdowns as the fine medical doctor has told us. Walls equal containment.

[jfekendall]

They already are

The reactor housings on all nuclear plants in the United States were built to withstand an impact from a jet aircraft contemporary to the era in which they were built.

[Jim Satterfield]

A Misnamed Organization

Caldicott has the gall to call her organization the "Nuclear Power Research Institute". But research implies having an open mind towards the answers you might find. She has in fact already made up her mind and doesn't care how inaccurate her statements might be when she makes her arguments. In fact using helium provides a material that is less radioactive than the water in a standard plant. In addition her claims about plant design rely on certain proposals that are far from certain to be adopted. There are no final designs in place for a full scale commercial PBMR plant that has been accepted by the appropriate regulatory agencies. Somehow she and her supporters never manage to mention that. Frankly I don't think that she is capable of ever accepting any nuclear plant even if over the next five years, lets say, a solution to every objection she has brought up was discovered I think she'd just refuse to believe in it.

[landlines]

A reprint from 1966: Luddites were wrong then and wrong now.

Most of the world is using U.S. nuclear technology, including power plants and breeder reactors, with no significant problems. But this group of ill-informed 60's throwbacks is still spouting the same old slogans: wrong then and wrong now. Nuclear is as green and clean as it gets...same technology as the sun...and when used with modern breeder technology, there is very little waste compared to any other 24/7 reliable power source.

[WJeansonne]

Yes, just like the technophobes in Hollywood

Ignorant and stupid to boot. Let them power their mansions, yachts, SUVs, heated swimming pools with corn power, LOL.

[Clouseau2]

Breeders?

Please list all the commercially operating breeder reactors today.

Hint: it's a very SHORT list. In fact, as short as possible.

[Sanescience]

Quite the soap box

Opposing nuclear power is a great way to fear monger your way to a comfortable position of moral high ground. But much of the same group of scientists who believe in global warming also believe that nuclear power needs to be part of the solution.

As for integral fast reactor (IFR) development. They are designed to intrinsically shut down if cooling is lost. They also use as fuel all the waste that is being generated by our current old technology reactors. And transporting the waste is a policy issue, not a technology issue. The fuel that a fast reactor uses can stay on site until it is entirely used up. Only a small amount of short lived waste will be left over.

If we really want to help future generations, we will replace our old slow-neutron technology reactors that extract lest than 1% of the energy from uranium fuel and leave the rest as super toxic waste.

We should replace them with new technology fast-neutron reactors that have intrinsic safety features and consumes the toxic waste of slow reactors so that we don't have to bury it in expensive undergound vaults.

[Vonmaxx]

Windmills murder birds!!!

When you go to a wind farm look at all the dead birds on the
ground. Not very friendly to our feathered friends.

[Hoser McMoose]

Buildings murder birds

Modern wind turbine designs are little different then a similarly-sized building in terms of how many birds they kill. If that building is glass-sided then it's probably actually worse for killing birds. Certainly cell phone towers are known to be much worse than wind turbines in this regard.

The only wind turbines that have had any noticeable effect on birds are those from the Altamont Pass Wind Farms in California. They are an old design (30-year old technology, in the process of being phased out) that happened to have been placed in about the worst possible location.

[jeroneanderson]

true....

we need to try to distribute windmills away from migration patterns and us larger slower moving blades to help with this....but I would rather see interesting windmill designs and a few dead birds than die of radiation or pollution from coal.....

[not_crazy]

2 minutes is plenty of time

How many times did we come within 2 minutes of nuclear war ? To try and say that a disaster was within 2 minutes of occurring when discussing an operation controlled by microprocessors that can react to a situation within microseconds, and, a system that is probably, to get the best levels of efficiency and output running at 3 minutes from "disaster" is just FUD.

[migswell]

Surprised

For the record, I am not opposed to nuclear technology but I personally would not want to even live within hundreds of miles of a reactor... This is a personal choice. I see it like living next to an active volcano or in San Francisco and as long as I accept the possible consequences then I think it's ok. It is not a matter of 'if' and accident can happen, it's 'when' it will happen because by their nature accidents happen. This is not an outlandish point of view. Please dont reply with personal attacks, just respect the point of view.

By the way, I am surprised at how many people support nuclear in this particular forum. It is actually somewhat suspicious, but I will not make any more speculations about it. I guess cnet readers love nuclear.

[PzkwVIb]

It's not a matter of love

It is a matter of clear thought, some scientific training and a resistance to FUD. Most nuclear protesters have no clue how or why nuclear power works, and are just listening to some talking head telling them how dangerous nuclear power is.

Truth is, you get more radition from working in a building with marble facings, then you get living next to Three Mile Island.

[Hoser McMoose]

CNet is a tech site

The reason why you see a lot of pro-nuclear comments here is that this is a tech site. As such the demographics are going to favor people in technical fields, ie scientists and engineers. As such the people who post here are much more likely to actually understand nuclear power, which explains why they are more likely to be in favor of it when compared to people who are completely clueless about how nukes work (like, as an example, this Ms. Caldicott character).

As for living withing a few hundred miles of a reactor, I'm currently living within 100 miles of 3 separate nuclear stations with 16 active reactors (6 at Pickering Nuclear, 4 at Darlington Nuclear and 6 at Bruce Power with another 2 being refurbished).

I am MUCH LESS worried about them than I am about the 8 coal generating units operating at the facility a little over 50 miles away (Nanticoke Generating Station, the 4th largest source of air pollution in North America by some rankings). For that matter I'm more worried about each and every one of the 20 or so coal fired power plants that are within ~200 miles of where I live than I am about all the nuke plants put together.

I would MUCH sooner move next door to a nuclear plant than a coal plant. The chance of anything bad coming out of a nuclear plant is so close to zero it can't be measured. The chance of toxins and radioactive material being released form a coal power plant is 100%.

[Thought Police OMalley]

I guess somebody watches "The Simpsons" too much?

Got the nuclear power plant pegged as run by Mr. Burns with
Homer J. Simpson as the safety inspector who falls asleep at the
job and lets toxic waste into the environment as well as causes
nuclear accidents that release a lot of CO2 gas into the air.

Since Mr. Simpson is a laborer, and fellow liberal, we forgive him
for his mistakes and blame Mr. Burns and all of the nuclear
power plant owners for being unsafe, unclean, and contributing
to global warming.

Yes folks, the global warming people are referencing cartoons
now to prove that global warming is true.

[jfekendall]

and dont forget...

The Day After Tomorrow. It's really going to happen. They recalculated that the Day After Tomorrow is actually supposed to happen two days before the day after tomorrow. lol\

[Tomcat Adam]

One not representative of many.

She's a fringe woman, with her anti-nuclear crusade akin to the anti-gay crusade of the Phelps.

Most people who believe in man-made global warming (global warming is a fact, just like global cooling) want nuclear reactors as opposed to oil and coal.