Electricity
Nuclear Power
- The San Onofre Nuclear Powerplant supplies about 10% of San Diego County Electricity
- Construction of this page is in progress - to be continued
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
Abundant, inexpensive fuel. Inexpensive electricity generation. |
Nuclear waste is hot and remains radioactive for a long time. |
| No Combustion byproducts or air pollution emitted. | No national agreement on where to store spent nuclear fuel. The problem is not technical rather political in nature. |
| Mature Infrastructure | Regulatory Complexity |
| No Greenhouse gasses (GHG) emmitted. | Population is fearful of radiation and industry safety assurances (note 2). |
| Large size powerplants supply power to large areas. | Large powerplants require large transmission lines. |
| Unparalleled saftety record (see note 1). | Waste fuel is stored in surface pools on-site in powerplants (note 3). |
| Waste can be reprocessed to make additional fuel (note 4). | Waste can be reprocessed to make nuclear weapons. |
| Spent nuclear fuel is small in volume | Security concerns about safe storage of waste (note 5). |
| Use of once-through sea water for cooling (note 6) |
Notes:
- Nuclear power has an examplary safety record. One notable exeption was Chernobyl, a powerplant in Ukraine built with no containment structure - an unconscionable Soviet way to disregard safety. The only notable accident in the US - Three Mile Island - prodced no casualties and no release of radioactivity during the event. The release of radioactivity after the event was intentional during clean up. The release did not appreciably add to background radiation levels (refernce 3). By comparison, hundreds of people have died in coal mine diseasters, petroleum processing accidents, and natural gas explosions.
- The US Goverment and the Nuclear Industry have themselves to blame for this problem. While the dangers were unknown during early nuclear power development - that includes nuclear weapons - the dangers were apparent very soon. Yet these were hidden and covered up while the population was assured and misled that nuclear power posed no dangers in the 1950's and 60's. This led to reckless irradiation of population centers and farm animals causing grevious harm to them. The resulting mistrust lingers and will be very difficult to overcome in spite of the spotless safety record (ed. opinion).
- The nuclear waste situation is worse than it appears. On-site storage at powerplants is feasible and relatively safe as powerplants are secure facilities. Additionally, however, nuclear waste is generated in hospitals and medical facitiles by radiation diagnostics and treatment. Thus nuclear waste is stored in practically every city in the US under varied (unkonwn) security conditions.
- Reprocessing is controversial. The US bans reprocessing to prevent making fissionable (weapons-grade) materials. But reprocessing would reduce waste and the need to mine more Uranium, thus would have positive environmental benefits. Other countries notably France, do reprocess spent fuel.
- Security of nuclear materials (weapons-grade or high-level waste) is a much bigger concern in the developing world and the former Soviet Union than in the US. Waste for terrorism purposes (such as 'dirty bombs" is much more likely to come from medical waste than powerplant waste. Dirty bombs, however, make poor terrorist weapons. They contaminate, but do not kill, thus do not contribute to terrorist's aims and have not been used for that reason (Reference 3).
- The environmental effect of cooling water is much less when cooling towers are used. These are expensive and the San Onofre plant uses sea water that kill fish, larvae, and locally warm the ocean environment. The State Water Resources Control Board decided to phase out once-though cooling at San Onofre and mandates a deadline of 2022 to install cooling towers. This decision will be studied and is not assured at this time (Reference 4).