Nuclear Power on the Rise & Foraging for Your Food
October 20th, 2009
Nuclear power proponents are pushing for new giveaways in the climate change bill that’s currently before the U.S. Senate. We hear from Dr. Helen Caldicott the author of Nuclear Power is Not the Answer on the dangers of nuclear power. Dr. Caldicott joins the discussion with host Daphne Wysham and Michael Mariotte, the executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. More information about the rise of nuclear power in the US Senate can be found at Mother Jones magazine. The report Dr. Caldicott mentions is Carbon Free Nuclear Free.
Then we talk about foraging for your own food with author Langdon Cook. He’s the author of the book, Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager.
Image used with permission by C. Tyson Photography via Flickr. All Rights Reserved.
Our theme music is Baladi by Tony Anka, Bellydance Superstars vol. 2.
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October 23rd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
You should ask Caldicott more penetrating questions. Her claims are outlandish. Take the one about how they don’t consider money when it comes to medical care in Australia. “Cost doesn’t even enter the equation…” she blathers on. In Oz, they spend 9% of GDP on health care, while in the US it is 16%. The way you end up spending only 9% is to keep an eye on costs, whether that’s by paying the doctors and nurses less, cutting out bureaucracy, or rationing treatment to cases where it will do the most good, and that is just reality.
In Caldicott’s fantasy world, Stephen Chu doesn’t understand. John Holdren doesn’t get it. Kerry is “scientifically illiterate”. Obama needs to spend 1/2 an hour with her, and only then will he find out. Funny thing is, after listening to her on two of your shows now, the clearest impression I have is this woman is the one who doesn’t know.
She tells us Einstein said technology can’t supply the solution to the problems technology has produced, who knows what Einstein actually said, I think we can count on it not being that, but she advocates all manner of technology to solve the problems technology has caused, from solar and wind power to solve the problem of fossil fuel technology, to advanced drugs that she uses to treat her patients in their cost free wonderland of Oz.
As she describes 5 – 15 tons of plutonium “melting down” with the sodium coolant in her fantasy catastrophe, “you will get a massive nuclear explosion that could be seen from the Moon or maybe Mars”. Sure. I wonder if anyone else in the world will state that a way to generate a nuclear explosion is to start with the Argonne breeder reactor design even if you do your best to cause it to melt down.
The continent of Europe is only partially radioactive, she says, as if it wasn’t radioactive at all until Chernobyl deposited radioactive material on some of it. She is peddling a preposterous idea that radiation is not surrounding us at all times, emanating from the rocks we stand on and coming from the sun and space. If she talked of a nuclear accident increasing the background radiation in an area, you could believe she wasn’t deliberately trying to mislead in order to magnify whatever alarm she thinks she is sounding.
James Hansen, we are told by Michael Mariotte, doesn’t understand what he is talking about on nuclear power. If you want to read what Hansen says about nuclear try his website – look up “Trip report” a letter in the older postings section. Here is a quote:
“Some of the anti-nukes are friends, concerned about climate change, and clearly good people. Yet I suspect that their ‘success’ (in blocking nuclear R&D) is actually making things more dangerous for all of us and for the planet. It seems that, instead of knee-jerk reaction against anything nuclear, we need hard-headed evaluation of how to get rid of long-lived nuclear waste and minimize dangers of proliferation and nuclear accidents. Fourth generation nuclear power seems to have the potential to solve the waste problem and minimize the others. In any case, we should not have bailed out of research on fast reactors.”
Again, your interview subject claims he knows Hansen doesn’t understand what he is talking about, but after listening to your guy, and rereading Hansen, it seems clear that Hansen does understand what he is talking about. Hansen recommends a book by Tom Blees, “Prescription for the Planet” where Blees advocates his vision, which is based on breeder reactor electrical power.
The arguments Mariotte made were weak. According to him, what Hansen doesn’t understand is that breeders are just a pipe dream, and hence many decades from deployment. But that is exactly what Hansen understands, as he directs people to read Blees who is calling for accelerated deployment to avert global catastrophe from climate change. Mariotte might have made a similar argument that the US ought to surrender to Japan after Pearl Harbor because aircraft carriers take so long to build. Mariotte is calling out for action because of a great threat he sees, then argues that others don’t understand that their ideas are wrong because in a business as usual world where no one sees a great threat there isn’t enough time to do what they are advocating. But what if people woke up and realized something had to be done? The US ramped up military spending from 2% of GDP in 1938 to more than 36% by 1944, poof, like that, as it realized it was in a war for survival.
Mariotte just talked about renewables as “low hanging fruit”. But the advocates for a new look at nuclear, such as Stephen Chu or Hansen, are thinking about baseload power. I’d like to hear the plan for all renewables for the entire baseload after we shut down all the coal and nuclear. Why don’t the all renewables people include in their cost estimates the cost of the all new smart grid that would be necessary to implement their plan?
October 23rd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I think a good description of the worst nuclear waste problem in the US was made by Oak Ridge National Lab in 1982: “a typical power plant annually releases 5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of fissile U-235, used in both power plants and bombs) and 12.8 tones of thorium. Total US releases for 1982 came to 801 tons of uranium (containing 11,371 pounds of U-235) and 1,971 tons of thorium.”
What Oak Ridge was talking about is what comes out of US coal fired power plants in the way of ashes.
October 23rd, 2009 at 12:30 pm
A transcript of Dr Chu and Senator Corker exchanging views on nuclear power at Dr Chu’s Senate confirmation hearing:
“Sen. Corker: …It’s my understanding, based on what I’ve heard here today, you mean pursue nuclear now, in spite of the – some of the issues that we have regarding waste. Is that correct? All out now – loan guarantees – let’s move ahead. We have 104 plants today, probably need 300: let’s move on. [my note: he sounds at this point as if Chu's approval would start construction of a few thousand reactors right there in the hearing room ]
Dr. Chu: Yes because I’m pretty – I’m confident the Department of Energy, perhaps in collaboration with other countries, can get a solution to the nuclear waste problem.
Sen Corker: Okay. Perfect. So you’d move ahead while that was being solved.
Dr. Chu: I think, uh, certainly, the first several plants uh that we talked about, to use the loan guarantee, uh, to start them going. [ my note: Chu is obviously not ready to start building the first few thousand plants right there in the committee room] Just also, as you well know, Senator, I think this is a complicated economic decision by the utility companies that will invest in these plants. So it’s partly loan guarantee, it’s partly the rates…
Sen Corker: Right
Dr. Chu: … that utility companies will allow. But it – you know, but there is certainly a changing mood in the country because nuclear is carbon free…
Sen Corker: Right.
Dr. Chu: … that we should look at it with new eyes.”
October 27th, 2009 at 7:09 am
I hope Earthbeat Radio will interview someone less hysterical about nuclear power some day, maybe someone who’s an actual physicist and isn’t looking at the issue from her perspective. Her perspective seems to be nuclear power is evil and physicists aren’t much better. She strikes me as hysterical and emotional, full of hyperbole, and insulting of people in the Obama administration I respect. She lied about the carbon neutrality of nuclear power. She doesn’t sound like someone to trust on this issue at all.
I’m not sure why you have interviewed her twice now, once was enough!
November 11th, 2009 at 9:43 am
The UK government has just announced the go-ahead for ten new nuclear power stations. Seven will be replacements for current ones nearing the end of their lives. It sees nuclear as a way of guaranteeing energy supplies while meeting carbon emission targets. Although it doesn’t envisage the renewable sector being able to plug the gap, some companies in this sector, such as SolarUK, are experiencing more and more interest in their energy solutions: a technology such as solar hot water is looking increasingly cost effective in the face of rising oil and gas prices (it is this volatility which has pushed the government towards nuclear power – they don’t want us to be dependent on Russia or other countries for our energy supplies.
December 13th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Anyone proposing the construction of more nuclear plants must say, in specific detail, how much nuclear waste will be produced and how it will be disposed of. These are questions that must be answered now, not after nuclear plants have been built.