Lafayette, Where Are You? Obama Needs You Now!

As we become ever more aware of the miasma descending on the land because of our seemingly helpless dependency on fossil fuels, one solution stands out that would be singularly effective in contravening our current energy malaise. And that is nuclear energy, a solution to which Barack Obama has given only the most lukewarm support -- "we have to explore all options" -- while John McCain, at a speakers forum only this Thursday past at the Aspen Institute came down four-square pledging a major commitment to nuclear energy: "thirty-five new nuclear plants by 2030," he promised, signaling his focus on nuclear power as a cornerstone of his energy program.

This, while Obama and his fellow Democrats render lip service support to the nuclear energy solution without any visceral commitment. Here is an issue that has vast implications for the nation's national security, its economic health, and its deepening concerns over both global warming as well as the impact of biofuels on the world's food chain. An issue that has even found the support of such people as Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, the environmental watchdog group, who has written in defense of nuclear power plants (please see "Color Nuclear Energy Green." 06.01.06)

This Sunday's New York Times ("France Reaffirms Its Faith In Future of Nuclear Power") had an illuminating article on France's experience over the past 50 years, when Charles De Gaulle set his nation on the road that has made France the premier nuclear powered country in the world with nuclear facilities providing 77 percent of its electricity. That compares with 19.4 percent in the United States.

In France, unlike the United States, plant design is based on the "closed fuel cycle" whereby plutonium is recovered from reactors and reused, thereby limiting significantly the mass of detritus requiring waste disposal. The "closed fuel cycle," even after decades of successful and safe application is not permitted in this country (are those the oil and gas lobbyists lurking in the corridors of the Senate Office Building?).

Of course, there are lingering doubts about nuclear energy in France as elsewhere, but a senior staff member of France's Ministry of Ecology was quoted, "our system of security is extremely responsive and transparent, and the media and public needed a training period to understand how the system of nuclear security works in France." The result being that 67 percent of the French considered it vital to their national interest to maintain nuclear power in their nation's energy mix. Coincidentally, while 27 percent of the French considered nuclear energy to be an issue of concern, 50% considered global warming to be the most worrying.

France's President Sarkozy has taken an active role in propagating the expansion of France's nuclear energy base, forcefully using the bully pulpit of his office. To quote him, "each E.P.R. [European Pressurized Reactor, the name designating its latest nuclear power plant design] that replaces a gas powered electricity plant saves two billion cubic meters of gas each year, and each E.P.R. replacing a coal plant means cutting 11 million tons of CO2."

Lafayette, your time has come again! This America you helped create has rarely seen darker days. Our independence, the very sustainability of our environment is being sold to oil interests both here and abroad by a craven Congress and an oil-besotted administration, and perhaps before too long our liberties as well. Please come back and teach our young candidate that there are issues over which we can no longer equivocate. That real solutions must be found that are beyond party preferences. They require leadership, and as you have shown in the past, heroic valor!

Comments

[shaunb]

If you think the French nuclear security system is up to anything I recommend that you stand on the main autoroute between Cherbourg and Paris on a monday or tuesday morning around 7.00am where like clockwork you will see two white trucks (not armoured) passing by with two gendarme cars and police outrider. This is how every 7-10 days, every year AREVA moves 140kg of plutonium oxide 1000 km through France - they have commercialised the use of direct use nuclear weapons material - but are not prepared to maximize security (it would still be vulnerable). A 3000Gw reactor program by mid-century (even if it was possible - which its not) - touted as necessary for offsetting 20% Carbon emissions would have to be based on this so called closed cycle - the breeder reactor that has never been successful after the last fifty years - just on the issue of security risk alone it would require hundreds of tons of plutonium on public highways every year - comment on nuclear power from an informed position but with no commercial interest in its development and the conclusion will always be the same - too expensive, won't work, too late - and they give you the bomb !

[Robert59]

My money is on solar thermal. From the NY Times,

On sunny afternoons, those 10 plants would produce as much electricity as three nuclear reactors, but they can be built in as little as two years, compared with a decade or longer for a nuclear plant. Some of the new plants will feature systems that allow them to store heat and generate electricity for hours after sunset.

Everything we do impacts the environment, but solar thermal's impact is less than nuclear, coal, or oil.

As for transmitting that power long distances the Europeans are already looking at putting solar thermal farms throughout the Sahara and running power lines along the bottom of the Med. They can transmit that power with minimal loss all the way to Norway.

We can do the same here.

Another plus of solar thermal is using it to desalinate water. We could transform even more areas of the world into breadbaskets.

[TRYKER]

If we can build enough wind farms to supply our energy needs in 10 years without any of the hazards that nuclear presents and not anywhere near the cost, why are we talking about nuclear? Because they want the "govt guaranteed loans" in the billions that gives them money by the bucket-load and as usual, with No guarantees...you know those "private contractors" the rethugs love so much.
We want CHANGE from the old to the new way of doing things, lets go wind and solar and algae-bio-fuels and stop the nonsense.

[xcrunner77]

One question: what do the French do with the waste from their nuclear plants? They don't exactly have vast deserts in which to store it.

[SamEllison]

That's a good question but easier to answer than global warming.
God did make Russia for something, let them store it. Without oil profits we would have many volunteers.

[KillTheMessenger]

For one thing they don't generate much because they have a closed fuel cycle. The US has been opposed to that because plutonium is being generated in large amounts and has to be transported. We have a very risk averse political culture around this material (not so much in a technical as in a political sense). And if I may make an educated guess, the Uranium mining industry in the US has probably heavily lobbied behind closed doors against fuel reprocessing because it limits their earnings severely.

[PioneerKing]

The nuclear solution is wonderful as long as the waste gets spread around each and every state.
Share the clean nuclear energy waste in every neighborhood especially the ones where people who make over 5 million dollars a year live.
Nuclear is great.

[joebhed]

Let's be glad that our favorite social model, the French, have developed their publicly-owned and controlled nuclear power program with one of those "closed" nuclear fuel cycles.

So many of nuclear power's problems are related to the kind of unending, and dangerous so we hear, "open" nuclear fuel cycle.
All we ever hear about is nuclear waste, nuclear waste - and then, of course, nuclear weapons proliferation FROM nuclear waste.

CLOSE the fuel cycle, and voila, the end - case closed.
I think.

I was wondering though.
Is it still a nuclear fuel "cycle"?
I mean, if it's CLOSED and everything?

I thought that stuff was dangerous for like a thousand years.

Why don't we address the reason why the United States, with it's private, free-market nuclear program, decided NOT go back into that nuclear fuel bundle to process out the plutonium, enriched uranium, etc..

For some reason, I don't think that the cognitive decision we made was based on the theoretical thermal abundance of irradiated nuclear fuel.

Because, we all agree. It's HOT.

So, let's discuss what happens to the proliferation-sensitive materials that are present in the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.

Does the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel open up the nation to greater availability of more nuclear weapons grade materials?

Are they in a more readily usable form?

Who would own them?
Could private nuclear entrepreneurs sell the materials through the supra-national Nuclear Suppliers Group?
Is this a business decision?

Does it matter?

[plafayette]

I bear the Lafayette name and DNA, however I was never allowed to reap any of my forbearers knowledge, wealth or priviledge. Even with that said I stand ready to do whatever I can to support the CHANGE Candidate Barack Obama so that America can indeed grow to be great. This time we are working to include the aspirations of ALL Americans in the Dream of a great and mighty nation of people who can breathe free from all forms of oppression....including slavery. OBAMA 08

[mjt218]

I never understand the logical leap from reducing carbon impact from electrical power generation to oil use. The US barely uses oil as a source of power generation. It's almost entirely used as a transportation fuel.

Arguing for transformation of transportation fuels from oil to electric is a separate and mutually exclusive issue from power generation. We may need more power generation, or local power generation to go to electric vehicles. However, how we expand/change our power generation is a separate issue.

I also don't understand a link between oil and gas executives lobbying congress and the lack of proliferation of nuclear energy. The lack of Nuclear power proliferation in the US seems to be entirely due to the release at Three Mile Island in the 80's. Sure, gas-fired turbine generation was proliferated during the 1990's. However, many of these plants have sat idle for large portions of the last five years due to high natural gas prices. I don't think there's been a serious argument, from anyone besides utilities, turbine manufacturer's or Aussie's, for expanding Nuclear for quite some time.

[KillTheMessenger]

As far as the general public is concerned, the answer must be that interest groups like to spin two independent issues into one because they know that most people get easily confused and can not logically separate one from the other. This is even more true in discussions with 15 second sound bites which simply do not allow the majority to actually think about what they hear.

It is much more serious that this flawed thinking also permeates the majority of journalistic entries and blogs. Responsible energy experts, however, will usually discuss the two independently and point out the reasons why they need to be treated as two issues of roughly equal proportion and not as one.

Where they collide, at the focal point of electric transportation, there is a gaping hole in the US. It should be populated by high speed electric trains as in countries like France, Germany and Japan. Instead we have mostly diesel-electric locomotives, which make the US party like it's 1965.

Electric cars will close this gap quite quickly, as soon as they become available in quantity which can be expected to happen in 2015-2020. And then we will be very surprised by the devastating effects that can be expected from oil and electricity becoming one and the same issue, but not in the way we actually expected!

[KillTheMessenger]

According to

http://www.eia.doe.gov/ipm/imports.html

France imported approx. 1.8 million barrels per day in 2007. It was 12 million barrels/day for the US.

France has a population of 62 million people, so we can try to estimate how much they import per capita in comparison to us and it happens to be 10.6 barrels/person. I believe that is almost identical to their consumption because France itself has very little in terms of oil.

In the US we happen to consume about 21 million barrels a day, which makes a per capita consumption of approx. 25.5 barrels/year.

In other words, the French use only 42% as much oil as Americans.

Part of the discrepancy can be explained with better average fuel economy:

http://pdf.wri.org/automobile-fuel-economy-co2-industrialized-countries.pdf

8l/100km in France vs. 12l/100/100km in the US.

It further stands to reason that the French drive a lot less miles on average then Americans because they have much better developed urban and national transportation systems.

I kind of doubt that the French use less oil because they have nuclear power. After all, there are approx as many electric cars on French roads as there are on American. Both numbers hover close to zero for all practical purposes.

But if the French wanted to replace the energy equivalent of their oil imports with nuclear power, they would need an additional 75 1GW reactors.

[WilliePilgrim]

Considering where we are now, and how short-sightedness is partly to blame, we owe it to ourselves to look at solutions which previous would have been less desireable. Our understanding of nuclear physics and engineering has grown and matured since the old days of Eisenhower's "atoms for peace" days. While this is primarily regarding fission and the newer and inherently safer designs which have been developed since the US has been construction new generating reactors, there is a bit of excitement and encouraging news from the research involving fusion.
The path out of the mess we're entering will not be a single step and keeping ones perspectives aware of what's on the horizon is a good way to see that we find ourselves intact and in a better place from which to procede.

[joebhed]

Lots of good ideas.

A couple of problems about that nuclear "knowledge" thing though.

Actually, we long ago lost that edge.

The nuclear industry has been trying to get that nuclear engineering program going again
But it's going to be a long time before we have the experienced technical capability in the nuclear field to bring some of these new-fangled (read, nobody has built them yet) nuclear designs into a bonafide nuclear power plant.

It is going to be a long time, and it is going to be INCREDIBLY expensive.

We do not have the nuclear technical capability, either in our regulatory agencies or in our nuclear construction companies.
It will be ten years before NUNUKE-1 comes on line. Minimum.

So, that's 2018.
If we're lucky.

And, did I say expensive?

See this:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/16/amory_lovins_expanding_nuclear_power_makes

Moody's latest estimates are at $7,500 per kilowatt for nuclear.
It takes about 2 kilowatts per house, so think of it as $15,000 per household.
Would YOU lend money for that?

"A new nuclear plant, according to Moody"s, would send out electricity for about fifteen cents a kilowatt-hour, which is half, again, as much as the average residential rate.
And that doesn"t even account for delivering it to your house.
And I think if nuclear plants were built, which I don"t think is likely, you would see incredible rates shock and a big political reaction."
So says Amory Lovins.