By Request: Nuclear Power and Nuclear Proliferation

Crust asks:

We're likely to see a lot more nuclear energy globally because of global warming and energy prices. What is the right way to reduce the proliferation risk?

This is easy (to answer, not to actually do) you need to multinationalize the nuclear fuel cycle:

You can also see "Multilateralism as a Dual-Use Technique: Encouraging Nuclear Energy and Avoiding Proliferation" by John Thomson and Geoffrey Forden for the Stanley Foundation which I've recommended in the past. I note that proliferation risk is one of several good reasons to hope that we don't respond to global warming with huge new investments in civilian nuclear power, but as at least some expansion of nuclear power seems inevitable it's important that we get this right from a security standpoint.

Comments

I agree that massive nuclear power generation expansion is not a great idea, but there aren't really any viable alternatives. The cost of electricity in the US is starting to rise very quickly as coal-fired plants are being denied environmental permits and the cost of natural gas rises. If you think the price of oil is dragging the economy down, just wait and see what happens when electricity starts going up.

The two options are coal or nuclear, pick your poison.

Posted by Mike | June 27, 2008 2:52 PM

I note that proliferation risk is one of several good reasons to hope that we don't respond to global warming with huge new investments in civilian nuclear power

Its the only really good one I can think of. What else, the threat of terror attacks or earthquakes, something like that? We've gone for several decades without either of these happening.

Posted by Jim W | June 27, 2008 3:01 PM

Nuclear is a mixed bag. There isn't enough fissle material in the average nuclear power plant to build an atomic bomb. The uranium is mostly U235 with tiny amounts of U238, not enough for a bomb. And, in America, the reactors are built to withstand the impact from a 747, so terrorism isn't really a big issue.

Really, disposing of the nuclear waste is one of the larger challenges, as well as safety. Nuclear plants must be 100%, because if they slip up the results get bad fast. 3 Mile Isle is just one example of radioactivity getting dumped into the environment; Fermi 2 in Monroe Michigan dumped several thousand gallons of radioactive water into Lake Erie years ago. And Fermi 2 is #2 because Fermi #1 had to be shut down because of construction defects. So because the margin for error is so small, they are a delicate, risky endeavor.

That said, they release less radioactive material into the environment than coal power plants, which tells you something. We as a nation better start ramping up our energy infrastructure now, before we start to really run into problems.

Posted by freddiemac | June 27, 2008 3:31 PM

Matthew, I think you're great but I have to disagree with you here. Nuclear power has a lot of benefits and the safety issues are drastically over-stated. If your concern is a future domestic terrorism problem than we've got a whole lot of vulnerabilities to some kind of inside job and effectively, nothing is safe. If your concern is foreign terrorism such as Al Quida, those assholes are simply not capable of breaching the security we have now, even with the Federal government we currently have thats so often asleep at the wheel. As far as "Internationalizing" our nuclear security, A: good luck getting such a bill through congress, B: what makes you think Europeans are so much better at this than we are and C: countries that need a nuclear bomb to validate their strength or simply show off are not going to follow the lead of an arrogant international body. The current organized anarchy we have is probably as good as it will ever get. Besides, I think we're still another twenty to thirty years away from regional nuclear war and nuclear terrorism. Enjoy these last years of the good times while they last.

Posted by Nathan | June 27, 2008 4:36 PM

The uranium is mostly U235 with tiny amounts of U238

Other way around.

Posted by Kolohe | June 27, 2008 5:07 PM

There was an excellent article on fast neutron reactors (which can mitigate the problems with today's pressurized light water reactors) in the December 2005 Scientific American. The only link I could find was to this .pdf file:

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NuclearFastReactorsSA1205.pdf

Posted by kafka | June 27, 2008 5:25 PM

Thanks for the reply.

Posted by Crust | June 27, 2008 5:30 PM

How about thorium?

It's non-weapon grade.
There's an article about it here:
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/348

Safe. It's sub-critical. And it can eat plutonium, so there's a way to reduce our nuclear waste. Since I read of it in August 2006 and blogged it

There are technologies behind thorium used in a reactor, one that “burns” plutonium, and another that powers accelerators to cause the nuclear reaction. The second one has a safety valve: No possibility of meltdown. If the accelerator shuts off, the fuel cools down.

Posted by Susan Kitchens | June 27, 2008 6:43 PM

I might point out that the Iranians are in favor of a multinational nuclear fuel cycle - provided at least one of the plants is on Iranian soil.

The bottom line is that countries who have already been bitten by Western interference in their internal technology development - like Iran - aren't going to be fully trusting of Western nations to control their fuel cycle.

Still, the risk that Iran will throw out the "multinational" part of the fuel cycle plant and start making bombs is pretty remote. Clearly, the surrounding problems making that a possibility need to be addressed along with the other arrangements to make the solution work.

The current approach to preventing proliferation - sanctions (the US and the EU) and illegal bombing attacks on sovereign nations (Israel and the US) - are not effective or legal.

The overall solution to energy needs lies in nanotechnology and space solar energy - at least until somebody figures out how to do safe, cheap fusion.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 27, 2008 7:47 PM

Advocates of nuclear power (and just about everyone else) fail to mention that energy efficiency is a far more potent and safe way of meeting our energy future than building hundreds of capital intensive nuclear plants. We all want to keep out personal cars and plasma TVs (energy hogs!) put the reality is that, in the end we will have to adjust to a lower energy culture. Guess what - we won't die.

Questions I have are:

Even if we develop an exotic technology to "burn" spent fuel, we are starting to see decommissioned cores being buried in South Carolina - good idea?

Is there enough uranium ore to provide unlimited energy for ever? How long and at what price?

Posted by Scott Ferguson | June 28, 2008 7:33 AM

Advocates of nuclear power (and just about everyone else) fail to mention that energy efficiency is a far more potent and safe way of meeting our energy future than building hundreds of capital intensive nuclear plants.

I don't think there is anyone who doesn't understand this, it's just that people are looking for an alternative to going back to the nineteenth century.

Posted by Glaivester | June 28, 2008 9:47 AM