Dec 1

Dec 1 Scuttlebutt: Nuclear Power

It has been a while since I have reminded us all what a terrible idea nuclear power is. In my musings I completely ignore the fact that we are creating dangerous radioactivity that threatens humanity for thousands of years. Our survival instincts are not geared to deal with a threat that lasts thousands of years, so most of us ignore this obvious fact. My arguments are all based on economics. The “too cheap to meter” power source will cost us billions of dollars for as long as your great-great-great-etc grandchildren are alive.

This month we look at only one of the dozens of remediation projects underway to clean-up our nuclear messes from both bomb making and power production.

There are three major facilities on the reservation at Oak Ridge Tennessee: the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Y-12 National Security Complex and the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP). Covering over 4000 acres the reservation is on the EPA National Priority List of Superfund sites and is the focus of one of the largest environmental cleanup efforts in the United States (and you thought it was Hanford, Washington- another huge mess).

The Y-12 site is of particular concern because of the massive amount of mercury there—a legacy of Cold War work on hydrogen bombs. Y-12 is Oak Ridge’s top environmental priority now that the National Laboratory is close to completing its own multi-billion dollar clean-up.

One near-term initiative for Y-12 is to reduce the concentration of mercury in surface waters, which remains out of compliance with the Clean Water Act. Jay Mullis, the manager of the Oak Ridge clean-up states, “There’s about 700,000 pounds of mercury that was lost to the environment over at Y-12”, contaminating soils, groundwater, and air at the East Fork Polar Creek in June 2018, which resulted in a large fish kill and continued over a multi-month period.

The new Mercury Treatment Facility will prevent contamination released by demolition on the site from entering the waterways. The demolition contract will cost $2 billion and $5 billion over 10 years. “There’s decades left of work here at Oak Ridge,” Mullis said.

Also required is a new dump, euphemistically called Environmental Management Disposal Facility, at a cost of $800 million. It replaces the near-by Environmental Management Waste Management Facility, which is expected to run out of space around 2020. Roger Petrie, a project manager with Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation states, “The landfill is proposed for placement of radioisotopes, mercury and other constituents that will be present through geologic time.” That is longer than humans have existed.

The new dump will be located near ORNL to be able to use the $20 million special haul road built to prevent trucks from using public highways. This will allow the disposal of another 2 million pounds of mostly low level radioactive material.

* The Obama era Recovery Act provided money to supplement the cleanup funding and to pay for special projects. The Oak Ridge office received hundreds of millions of stimulus dollars to demolish old buildings and fund dozens of other cleanup-related projects, such as removing mercury-contaminated sediments from Y-12’s storm-sewer system. That money is gone and Trump, a nuke supporter, has actually reduced funds available for parts of the clean-up.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates it will cost about $12 billion to finish the Oak Ridge cleanup work by 2046, the completion date DOE negotiated with environmental regulators. Naturally, we shouldn't expect that figure to increase over the next 26 years.

Don't get me wrong. I fully, but regretfully, support these expenditures. We have to deal with this mess. It is just unfortunate that we find ourselves in this situation, but still The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has released plans related to permit TVA to build and operate Small Modular Reactors (SMR) at the Clinch River site. What's that line about finding yourself in a hole?

Meanwhile, I looked at 5 of the largest solar arrays in the world. Averaging their costs and output, I see that 1GW of output cost about $1.7 billion to install. The 580 MW Topaz solar array near San Luis Obispo will power 160,000 homes, so if it were a 1 GW array, it would power roughly 276,000 homes. Using $1.7 billion per GW we find that $12 billion would supply electricity to nearly 2 million homes in the U.S. Instead that money will not go to produce electricity, but for cleaning up just one of the dozens of nuclear facilities scattered across the U.S.

Even the tiny King Salmon reactor is costing ratepayers a ton of money. Built on Humboldt Bay in 1962 for a mere $33 million and operating for only 15 years, the original estimate of $382 million for clean-up has ballooned to $1 billion. This is not really a “clean-up” in that there has been no significant leaks or problems there requiring it to become something like a Superfund Site. This is just the normal cost of decommissioning a small nuclear power plant.

In 1987 Congress designated the Yucca Mountain Repository as the sole site to receive some 77,000 metric tons of high level waste. It has been a battle ever since. W Bush started the licensing, but Obama stopped it. The fact that Democrat Harry Reid was Senate Majority leader and from Nevada pretty much stuck the knife the Yucca Mountain dream. Apparently no one in Nevada wants a highly radioactive dump in their state. Damn NIMBYs.

Trump actually requested $130 million to restart the licensing, but neither the House or the Senate would consider it. Warning: Sit down before reading the next sentence: I tend to agree with Trump on this one,

Since Congress refuses to re-consider the Yucca Mountain Repository or any other solution to this problem, nuclear waste sits where it was produced at 121 sites in 39 states at a cost to the government of $700 million per year. Right now we are on track to have that radioactive waste sit around at those sites for the next 24,000 years.

Photo: MetsikGarden from Pixabay