Orinda Academy CIF 2008 Benchmark 3

Critical Issues Forum

Benchmark III

Nuclear Renaissance: Benefits vs. Risks

Orinda Academy

Contributors

Editor: Xochi Edgerton-Benitez

Citations/Bibliography: Omran Al-Mesned

Writers: Alex Dopkin

Chris Sarmiento

Kevin Almestad

Zack Scheffler

Omran Al-Mesned

Table of Contents

Title page: P. 1

Contributions page: P. 2

Nuclear Technology and Health P. 4-5

Fears and Effects of a Nuclear Disaster P. 6-9

Energy as public Resource P. 10-11

Nuclear Power Regulations P. 12-13

Nuclear Storage P. 14-15

Bibliography P. 16-17

Nuclear Technology and Health

By definition, a free market is a market in which any individual may exchange their products or services by competitive bidding, open to all, without constraint[1]. In other words, it is possible for anyone to sell a particular product without having to worry about the government doing anything about it. However, in a free market, there are certain goods and services that are enforced and regulated by the government. For example, in order to prevent any money problems, the government decided to limit services such as electricity, water, and sewage to one provider for each (e.g. Pacific Gas & Electricity is the only provider for electricity). Nuclear technology is no exception – such technology should be controlled due to its effects on various issues. One such issue is the concern about human health, and how nuclear technology can alter one’s health for the worst.

It has been proven throughout the history of nuclear technology that such technology can affect the health of any human – healthy and unhealthy – such a state doesn’t matter in eyes of nuclear technology. According to a source, nuclear energy can cause “low-level radiation damages tissues, cells, DNA and other vital molecules. Effects of low-level radiation doses cause cell death, genetic mutations, cancers, leukemia, birth defects, and reproductive, immune and endocrine system disorders”[2]. In other words, nuclear technology is obviously not safe; at the very least, it can permanently affect your body, altering it for the worst. And, in the worst case scenario, it has the power to potentially kill anyone.

Even though nuclear technology is known to be dangerous, many countries use it as a form of power. More specifically, nuclear energy is used as a form of electricity to provide power for various cities throughout the world. However, there have been accidents because of the use of nuclear technology. According to a source, “Public concerns about reactor safety and environmental issues were especially heightened by the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and the much more serious accident in 1986 at Chernobyl in Ukraine.”[3] For those who do not know about the Chernobyl incident, it is worthy to note that at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, there was a reactor that exploded, which led to everyone near the reactor and the others in the calculated-affected radius (approximated to be 30km) to evacuate due to unsafe radioactive levels.

In conclusion, nuclear technology, even in the present time, is still very dangerous; there have been no absolute ways to make nuclear technology 100% safe to the public. In addition, if nuclear technology were to be used by the public, it could potentially fall into the wrong hands – it is possible for an individual or a small group of individuals to create something dangerous from nuclear technology. These two reasons alone are good enough to allow the government to control such a dangerous form of technology.

Fears and Effects of a Nuclear Disaster

The argument in question is whether Nuclear Energy should or should not have government regulations on its uses. The answer is that Nuclear Energy should absolutely have government regulations due to the huge risks that it poses in any type of meltdown or malfunction. A disaster could have such a mass effect on the people of the world, and could affect many countries. It should be regulated by government because governments are a direct institution of the people who are at risk of a meltdown. Those in danger should have the say. Private business control of nuclear energy power plants is an affair that the people don’t have direct control of; only company members have control; which is a small body of people. This would put people in a situation where they have no say of whether they feel it is acceptable to be at risk from a nuclear reactor. Nuclear energy affects too many people to be controlled by only a few individuals and needs to be controlled by the government that represents those people. Chernobyl is a very extreme example, and Three Mile Island is a less severe example of a nuclear meltdown. Both of these meltdowns were extremely dangerous. These two situations show the mass effects of a nuclear meltdown and the risk in which nuclear energy poses to a country and its people.

Chernobyl was a nuclear power plant, located in what is now Ukraine. It was designed and built during the time of the Soviet Union and had the meltdown during the time of the Soviet Union as well. This meltdown is still currently the worst industrial disaster in the history of the human race. The explosion of reactor unit 4 in Chernobyl spread radiation for 125,000 square kilometers, or even more. In this contaminated area, there were 7 million people living there at the time, and 5.5 million who stayed in the contamination zone. The entire area of this contamination zone contained radiation exceeding 1 curie per square kilometer.

The causes of the accident were very difficult to determine because this was the worst industrial disaster in history. It is believed that the cause of meltdown is partly to blame on the nuclear power plant operators and mechanical errors or a combination of both. The error started with a test that was being conducted in the nuclear power plant, it was conducted at night, but it was the beginning of a huge disaster. The error in the reactor was based around the raising and lowering of the control rods. The power level of a nuclear power plant like Chernobyl depends upon the raising and lowering of the control rods. The fewer the rods placed next to the fuel elements allows the power level of the reactor to increase. To in a sense “put the brakes on a machine” was to raise the control rods and then place them between the fuel elements; the error in doing this was that the power levels would temporarily increase. In the emergency shutdown of Chernobyl, too many control rods were raised and lowered, causing the reactor to explode, spreading radiation all over the entire world.

This reaction spread radiation all over Belarus and the rest of Europe, such as into Finland, Norway and Sweden. In Belarus it is estimated that 1,800 children were poisoned by the radiation and contracted cancer in their thyroids. In adults, breast cancer and tumors have become twice as common as it was previously in Belarus. In the contaminated areas 84 percent of the 3 million people were registered as sick, due to the radiation. One million of the people registered as sick from the radiation were children. In countries that weren’t heavily affected the countries weren’t heavily researched for cancer or birth defects. There is still controversy on whether Chernobyl is related to the large amount of birth defects and “low-dose radiation” that were found in multiple countries believed to be unaffected by the radiation. There are still 50 people a year dying from the radiation of the Chernobyl explosion. This was the worst disaster in the history of industry.

Three Mile Island was another Nuclear Disaster that took place in the United States. This disaster neither had the same mass effects nor a reactor explosion as Chernobyl did. The error in Three Mile Island was caused due to a failure that was in a non-nuclear part of the power plant. The feed-water pumps stopped running, which stopped the steam turbine from removing the reactor’s heat. The pressure inside the reactor quickly started to increase, as no steam was being allowed out due to the turbine’s emergency shutdown. The safety measure to stop the increase in pressure was to open an emergency valve that would just let steam out of the reactor and lower the pressure. This back up measure worked well and decreased the pressure but it had one mechanical error; the valve would not close itself. There was no way to stop the steam from coming out of the valve, and soon the cooling water level in the reactor was decreasing. The water levels ended up decreasing so much that the reactor overheats. The operators were worried of a release of radiation slipping through the containment chamber and poisoning the environment.

The effects of the meltdown were mostly negligible, but radiation was released nonetheless. That radiation affected about 2 million people living within the area and exposed them to 1 millirem of radiation (there is 6 millirem of radiation in a chest x-ray). This was a tiny amount, but the people affected by this radiation were lucky that more radiation did not slip out of the containment chamber of the reactor. Had more radiation slipped out, there would have been a humongous disaster, and millions of people would have developed cancer or a tumor of some kind. The scary thing about this explosion was not that some radiation was released but that extreme amounts of radiation could have been released if anything in the containing of the reactor had gone differently.

In conclusion, we have to ask ourselves, “Do we want to put the power to affect millions in private hands, or in the hands of an institution run by the people affected?” The answer is obvious, and as shown from the Chernobyl disaster, if anything was to happen or there was a meltdown it could be catastrophic. This is unacceptable, but especially if the public and the people who are in the area of damage from it had no say to how it was being run. All in all, nuclear power plants need government regulations in order to give the people choice in how their nuclear plant is run, making sure that it is run smoothly and safely.

Energy as Public Resource

Energy is a resource that affects everyone, thus energy is a public recourse. Most people, at some time, have turned on a light bulb, or used an electric oven, or used an appliance that runs off electric energy. But where does this energy come from? Who owns or runs these places? Is it and should it be monitored? Many questions arise. Energy can come from many types of power plants and types of generators, one of which is nuclear power plants. Due to the premises of free-market economy, a person has the right to start their own business without being controlled by government. However, this does

http://www.cameco.com/common/images/u101/electricity_costs05.gif

not apply to public recourses because otherwise, a privately owned company could take control of a recourse everyone needs. Nuclear energy is a relatively new source of energy, and can make the same amount of electrical energy as the leading other energy sources, for a lower price. The problem is nuclear power plants have very

high capital costs, and will be hard to run privately. Government should be able to control and monitor nuclear technology sales, to make sure that a) a company can pay for the capital cost of building the power plant. b) A company, or companies, doesn’t gain complete control or monopolize over nuclear technology sales (resulting in unstable, high-energy prices).

There are many risks and dangers in nuclear technologies, all of which would affect everyone in that region. To ensure that nothing goes wrong, monitoring nuclear power facilities is a necessity. A side effect of producing nuclear energy is nuclear waste, which cannot be disposed of in any safe manner, and can be used only for nuclear weapons. The power to make nuclear weapons should be in nobody’s hands, especially privately run and privately monitored companies. If something goes wrong, everyone is affected.

Nuclear Power Regulations

Nuclear Energy is one of the most promising energy sources to meet the world demand for energy. It is cheaper than fossil fuels, and contributes far less to global warming. The fossil fuels we have been using i.e. oil, natural gas, are become scarce. We will eventually need a new solution to the energy crises and Nuclear energy is one of the most promising candidates to solve the rising demand. However, we cannot simply let Nuclear Energy proliferation go on with out control. The dangers of Chernobyl and Three-Mille Island have proved that this technology is dangerous and if not used properly will create catastrophe. That is why we need government intervention. We cannot take a Free-Market approach to Nuclear Energy because the public is so greatly affected by this resource. If one company monopolizes the nuclear energy market, they could raise costs so that the public would have to pay a huge amount for their energy. The rising costs could create an economic bubble but eventually that bubble is going to burst without government control.

Regulation needs to place on Nuclear Energy in terms of their production, waste, proliferation, munitions, and trade of nuclear secrets to other governments or entities. Political stability depends on international cooperation. Because of the immense danger that nuclear waste products produce, international regulation is paramount to the successful storage, maintenance and use of nuclear energy. There are currently nine nations with access to nuclear weapons. They are the five permanent members of the UN Security Council i.e. the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia (former Soviet Union), and China. The other four nations are India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. In order for nuclear energy to succeed we have to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This requires international cooperation. In order to sustain peace and stability we would have to sustain the rights to privatize nuclear energy resources. Managing nuclear resources does not infringe upon a Free-Market economy because past events (i.e. the depression, the dot com bust, and the sub-prime mortgage crisis) have shown that an unregulated economy creates economic bubbles that can burst if prices are not controlled. Our modern free-market economy has several government controls set up by Roosevelt and his New Deal.

The New Deal introduced a mixed, Keynesian/Free Market Economy to the United States. The American capitalist economy is still considered Free-Market, but there are plenty of government controls on resources. If resources were completely privatized, companies could raise prices so that only the wealth had access to resources. Roosevelt’s New Deal had an aim to restore the American economy and make sure nothing like the depression could ever happen again. The rural electrification act of the New Deal guaranteed to provide electricity to rural areas much to the unwillingness of the electric companies. The same methods must be applied to Nuclear energy.

Taxes are the funds used to pay for Nuclear Power plants. The plants are so expensive to create and they take so long to build that no private entity can possibly pay such a large sum. Thus the government helps pay the capital cost of a nuclear power plant. Since government funds are tax funds, the government and its people have a right to regulate Nuclear power. If private companies were allowed to run the plants without close regulation, they could raise prices, neglect safety standards in order to save money and misuse the funds given to them by the government.

Nuclear Storage

http://www.nupec.or.jp/database/paper/paper_12/p12_plant/R12-05-45.files/fig3-3-2.jpg [4]

Nuclear weapon storage costs a lot of money. Each dry cask storage unit costs $700,000. Dry cask storage allows the used nuclear fuel that has been cooled in spent nuclear pools for at least one year. The Dry Cask surrounds the spent nuclear fuel by inert gas in the cask. These storage units are covered in concrete steel and are either welded or bolted shut. [5]