Nuclear hatchet job

A issue with working in the energy field is we get approached by people, who know nothing about the topic, trying to propose (on the basis of 5 minutes of google research) some cheap, easy solution that solves everything once and for all. And then we have to explain why that isn’t going to work. The water powered car is a common one, as I’ve discussed before. And yes, we do have to explain why this is a dumb idea more often than you think.

Here’s another example from Cleo Abrams and Johnny Harris regarding nuclear reprocessing. They attempt to argue that the US made a mistake by opting for once through processing of nuclear fuel, rather than the reprocessing methods adopted by countries like the UK, France or Japan. They even try to blame this decision on Jimmy Carter and hippies. And that apparently reprocessing can magically fix every problem associated with nuclear power.

Well actually the real answer is both a bit more complicated than they suggest, and also a lot simpler. Let’s start with the economics. Reprocessing of nuclear fuel is a lot more expensive than once through. I ran the numbers on this a while back. Using a tool provided by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, I inputted the actual costs and performance values from recent nuclear energy projects. Whether using the Fast reactor or MOX method, reprocessing is twice as expensive ($254-264 per MWh) compared to once through ($134 per MWh). And its about 4 times more expensive than using renewables (and that’s using 2017 data, renewable installation costs have fallen since then).

And this analysis is backed up by studies from MIT and Harvard, both of which concluded that reprocessing would only make sense if the price of nuclear fuel got a lot higher (of course that would push the overall cost of nuclear energy up even more, meaning nuclear would make even less economic sense). And for the record, there’s no shortage of nuclear fuel at present. Indeed the decline in nuclear energy use will stretch out reserves even further.

Back in the early days of America’s nuclear programme, it was split between a military programme (which built bombs) and the civil programme that made electricity and thus had to at least pretend to work in the real world. It was obvious even back then that reprocessing was going to be more expensive, so its no real mystery why the US went down the once through route with it civil programme.

By contrast, other countries such as France and the UK were a little slower to make this split (mostly because they wanted the Plutonium for their bomb programmes) and hence drifted down the reprocessing route. And they have been paying the price for it every since. Because not only is reprocessing more expensive, but also it trades a modest reduction in high level waste for a very large increase in intermediate nuclear waste. And btw, it doesn’t get you out of deep geological storage (contrary to what Cleo implies). The UK is looking into that as we speak, as are the French.

And that’s without even mentioning the many, lengthy delays, cost over runs and accidents (both minor and serious) at reprocessing plants. For example in the UK, there’s the time they “lost” 160 kg’s of Plutonium due to a leak (which was only discovered months later because the bean counters noticed their was a load of nuclear bomb juice missing). Or in Japan, the time they irradiated several workers in a criticality accident. Plus what made Fukushima worse is the large amount of nuclear waste stored close to the reactors in cooling ponds, rather in dry casks, as it was awaiting reprocessing.

And that’s before we even bring up the Kyshtym nuclear disaster, the 2nd worst nuclear accident in history, which occurred (drum roll), in a reprocessing plant. Which brings us to the other problem, reprocessing can be used for nuclear weapon’s production. In fact if one were cynical one would wonder if the R&D they showed in this video was more focused on weapon’s production (the US is in the process of refurbishing its nuclear arsenal) under the cloak of civilian nuclear research (so this pair of liberals are acting as unwitting spokes models for the military industrial complex).

Certainly it is true that America’s nuclear waste management policy is a bit of a mess, with lots of short term decisions made more on the basis of solving some short term political issue, with no thought to the long term consequences. For example, it was initially decided back in the 1980’s to store America’s nuclear waste under Yucca mountain. This decision was made by Congress, who concluded (after great scientific scrutiny) that Yucca mountain was in Nevada, where 80% of the land is federally owned and the state was mostly inhabited by gambling addicts and slack jawed yokels who always voted republican. I mean if the locals didn’t like the idea of a nuclear waste dump on the their door step, what were they going to do, vote democrat! LOL.

Well, demographic changes in Nevada since then (due to an expanding urban population) meant that by the late 2000’s it had become a swing state. And yes a lot of those new voters weren’t happy about Yucca mountain (given there had been no proper consultation over it). So in 2009, when a divided senate needed the votes of Nevada senator Harry Reid to pass various bits of legislation (including Obamacare), Congress decided to kick the can down the road. In other words decades of planning and billions dollars of work, which would have solved America’s nuclear waste storage problem for 100’s of thousands of years was thrown away, so Congress could sort out an internal mess of its own making for 2 years. Go figure.

Of course this is less of a nuclear problem and more an example of how US politics is broken. While other countries have resolved issues like abortion, same sex marriage, gun control and moved on, America is still deeply divided and unable to make a decision. While most Europeans (even those on the right) accept climate change and have begun the energy transition, the US lags behind. No magical technology is going to suddenly make the US congress more competent….although changing the voting system might. In fact the promise of reprocessing has been used by Congress as yet another excuse to kick the can a bit further down the road and do nothing.

And in any event, even if reprocessing was some easy fix for nuclear waste, that doesn’t solve all the other issues with nuclear power (that its much more expensive, that reactors take ages to build, public opposition, etc.). In fact it just makes them worse. So its a bit of a red herring. Deep geological storage is still the best option for America’s nuclear civilian nuclear waste (personally I’d just start stacking it up around Washington DC and you can bet they’ll suddenly sort it out very quickly!). Reprocessing it into fuel would just burn more money and leave the country with an even bigger mess that you eventually end up having to bury later.

Like I said, the reality is there are no easy solutions. If their were, we’d have solved all of our energy problems ages ago. And just because there isn’t an easy solution, doesn’t mean you get to fill in the blanks with whatever fairy story most appeals to you.