No Nukes Is Good Nukes

Once despised as the symbol of everything bad the atomic age stood for, it is now rehabilitated and is the symbol of the path to energy independence. It was potentially blamed for everything from mutant reptiles and insects, to melting down into the core of the earth and out again to China, to an explosion that would destroy millions of people, major cities and contaminate vast areas of the planet forever (as in Chernobyl). Now its image has been refinished and it shines as a cheap, safe, reliable source of the electric power we need to become free from our addiction to oil. Yes it’s the once never popular but now ever popular nuclear reactor power station. Forget the problem of a Three Mile Island, Nukes are now the solution. Or so says some of the common wisdom being tossed around by candidates of both parties, some scientists, lots of business people (especially those in the nuclear power plant business) and a few other fools who haven’t looked past the potential popularity and profits to the long term and deeply disturbing problem of nuclear produced power.

Whether you say; newclear, nucular, newcala, no matter how you mispronounce it, nuclear power generation has one very big drawback; nuclear waste. The “used up” fuel from reactors is still very radioactive and will be for about a hundred thousand years. The big problem obviously is what to do with it. In the early days we dumped used fuel from our atomic submarines in the deep part of the ocean. We don’t know exactly how it might have effected the marine environment, but we pretty soon figured out that dumping wasn’t a real good idea. From that day to this, all we have done with most of the used (but still radioactive) fuel it store it “temporarily” some where and moved it around from one temporary storage place to another. We sorted of decided we would put all of it inside a huge cave dug in Yucca Mountain, about a couple of hours from Las Vegas. But we’ve had second and third thoughts and feelings about this plan, and although we are still digging we aren’t really sure it’s the right place or even big enough. The true bottom line is; nowhere is the right place! No one wants it near them because they think something that is radioactive for tens of thousands of years can’t be kept secure and safe virtually forever. It might leak, explode, be shot into the air by earth movement, get stolen or even forgotten until someday it comes back and bites us from behind. Some say the current crop of waste can be further reprocessed into safer forms and less volume of radioactive material. They even claim a use for the reprocessed material may eventually be found. But the recycling of nuclear waste process is expensive and has all of the dangers incumbent with still having some radioactive waste material at the end albeit of a lesser volume. The nuclear powered power plant is not a very attractive option, even if we think things are getting desperate, energywise!

However if we look at the goal and try to find a solution, the situation becomes a lot less desperate. What we want is a safe, clean, reliable, non petroleum based, large power plant to produce inexpensive electricity, with minimal environmental impact, either now or later. No problem! The cleanest, surest, cheapest, safest way of making electricity is by having water spin turbine generators. It is proven technology that has and is working well all over the planet. And it can be done without damming rivers and ruining ecosystems. The largest flow of water power anywhere on the planet is the tides that roll in and out, like clockwork, all along the shoreline of this country. The total amount of energy in the tides of our nation’s shoreline in one day is the amount of energy required to power our country for a whole year. Yep that much! So we don’t need to use very much shoreline to get the generating power we need. The plants would be built in areas of the shoreline (near major population centers) that should not be used for conventional development and are not real good for recreation either. The plants would be built down into the shoreline, with minimal exposure to make them neither an eyesore nor subject to damage by storms or surges. They will be the product of home made materials like steel, concrete and U.S. of A. high tech knowledge and skilled labor, creating millions of good jobs right now, many of which will be sustainable as we fix, upgrade and enlarge the infrastructure need to have a more electric, less petroleum future.

The water in the tidal power plants goes out unchanged from the way it went in. Nothing is added and the only thing taken away is some its energy. It just spins the turbines going in and out. Its power is there all the time and free. Now we have plenty of cheap electricity for all the of coastal and close inland America which is the bulk of our population. But heck no we didn’t forget about heartland America, where they need clean cheap power as much as any coastal American. But how can we ship electricity all the way to Kansas, doesn’t it attenuate (suffer a large drop off of power) over distance? Yep, unfortunately it does. The answer is we don’t ship electricity. We ship gas hydrogen to be specific. The beauty is two fold. First, at the waters edge we have lots of electricity and plenty of water. We use the electricity to split the water into its two constituent parts hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is useful in many ways. The hydrogen gets shipped inland through the infrastructure we already have for shipping natural gas from inland to the coast. But what about the natural gas you ask? We won’t need very much natural gas shipped anywhere, because we have cheap, clean electricity and natural gas makes the dreaded Carbon Dioxide we don’t need no more of. When the hydrogen gets to where we need electricity, we burn it with plain old air to make steam (which is recycled) to spin turbines to make the electricity and we get one more bonus, the only result of burning hydrogen and air is water. Yep, good clean water inland on the plains and deserts where we also happen to need it for drinking, flushing and irrigation. No need to drain the Colorado River or the Great Lakes dry. A complete system of energy production with virtually no negative ecological impact, and the solution to several different environmental problems at once.

If this system is so darn simple and effective, how come no one is doing very much talking about it. Mostly because it is expensive, although much less expensive than nuclear which has all the same electricity generation and transmission requirements, plus a nuclear reactor and fuel to build, maintain and deal with. However the few companies in the nuclear reactor field have little competition, foreign connections and potential for a great deal of government subsidy. Conventional water powered plants are simple, proven, old school concrete and steel technology which many competent companies could handle and hence much more potential for transparent competition and less opportunity for fleecing the taxpayer and pilfering the national treasury. Not much incentive for our so called “leaders” to look to tidal generation considering it lacks the potential for as much money grubbing by our politicos.

There is even the possibility it could be done as a private enterprise and a public works project on a cooperative basis and end up as a licensed monopolies providing power at both a low rate and fair profit. That’s a good for everybody concept we perhaps aught to revisit for major industrial and infrastructure projects in general. If the public good and a fair and reasonable profit were the only considerations, things would get done, faster, better and cheaper! It’s worth a try I think! With un-corrupted government involvement helping to ease the way in which the parts of the shoreline to be used is chosen, which and where infrastructure need be upgraded, and supervising to make sure all Americans were getting the benefits of a new and improved power grid, I believe there would be strong public support for this kind of government involvement that really provided some wide spread good for our money. Ultimately we would get our investment back from our share of the fair profits, we would even make money down the road and still maintain our commitment to inexpensive power which would fuel large scale and real growth in every segment of our economy and opportunity for every citizen who wants to work to make their and everyone else’s life better. The well off and those less well off would all benefit from inexpensive power, a cleaner, safer environment, a more productive economy with greater employment opportunity, and a sense that we can, together control our own future and make it work better for all Americans.

So let’s ask our putative leaders if they are willing to cast off the economic control of corporate contributions from the petrochemical industry, the nuclear industry, the financial industry that manipulates the markets, etc. Let’s ask our leaders to truly represent us and work for our general welfare as the constitution of the U.S. requires. With our support real leaders can not fail. We have the vote, which no amount of private money can buy from us if don’t let it, and that is the real key to power now and for the future.

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