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Re: News Advisory: Still Crazy After Oil These Years!



David Beorn <dbeorn@freenet.vcu.edu> wrote in article
<Pine.ULT.3.91.960725132735.7930C-100000@freenet.vcu.edu>...
> On Thu, 25 Jul 1996, Robert Smallwood wrote:
> 
> > From: Robert Smallwood <gbg1026@InfoNET.st-johns.nf.ca>
> > : And by the way, for those of you who might point to Chernobyl or TMI,

> > : these were HUMAN mistakes and TOTALLY preventable.  They KNEW what
they 
> > 
> > Who is in the nuclear industry if not humans?
> 
> Well, as long as the humans don't bypass the safeties that were designed 
> to prevent things such as Chernobyl, it won't happen.   

Hold on... 

Human error will happen in the nuclear industry, as in all inductries. If
people continue to build nuke plants, nuclear accidents will happen.

However, let's examine what that means. There are 442 nuclear reactors
(>500 MWe) in the world. The lifetime production of electrical energy by
these reactors up until August 1995 is in excess of 25,500 TWh. These
figures are from the Nuclear Engineering International 1996 Industry
Handbook. If we assume an average power reactor capacity of 900 MWe and an
average capacity factor of 80%, that is 286.1 reactor-years of operation.

The worst nuclear accident which has occurred as a result of the world-wide
nuclear program is the Chernobyl accident. The total number of deaths
attributable to this accident as of November, 1995, is approximately 50.
This includes those people who died of acute radiation exposure during the
accident (and the two who died during the accident due to non-radiation
related causes), the three children which had died of thyroid cancer (the
_only_ radiation induced health effect which has been found to have
affected any members of the general public), and all of the cancer deaths
in the "liquidator" population, even though the cancer rate in this
population is _not_ in excess of the expected rate.

In view of the fact that, in a coal mine accident a few years ago (not, by
any means the worst ever) which occurred in Nova Scotia, Canada, 26 people
died, and considering how many times such deaths are multplied throughout
the world due to fossil fuel use, I think that nuclear is the safest power
source which mankind has ever implemented.

Don't forget to include all of the people affected by fly-ash and
emmissions from coal plants.  Don't forget the impact of CO2 emmissions on
the global environment, which has led to speculation that some of the freak
weather in the past year may have been affected by human-induced climate
change. Don't forget that, in Canada, the total amount of spent nuclear
fuel (which has generated over 1250 TWh) could be comfortably stored in two
Olympic-sized swimming pools, and that, if that electricity had been
generated by coal, it would have resulted in the emmission of nearly one
billion tonnes of CO2, 80 million tonnes of ash (which would have required
50,000 swimming pools to store it, if we did that instead of just dumping
it into the ecosystem) and 32 million tonnes of SO2.

Nuclear power is the safest, most environmentally sound power source yet
developed by mankind which is currently capable of providing a large
fraction of the electrical power needs of the world. Avoidance of nuclear
power because of fears of radiation which are unfounded only harms our
planet and our economies.

Patrick Reid
pjreid@mi.net



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