Is Nuclear Power Green?

October 30, 2008

Rachel's Democracy & Health News #983
By Peter Montague

We are told that nuclear power is about to achieve a "green
renaissance," "clean coal" is just around the corner, and municipal
garbage is a "renewable resource," which, when burned, will yield
"sustainable energy." On the other hand, sometimes we are told that
solar, geothermal and tidal power are what we really need to "green"
our energy system.

How is a person to make sense of all these competing claims?

Luckily, scientists have developed two sets of criteria that we can
use to judge the "greenness" of competing technologies. The first is
called "The 12 principles of green engineering" and the second is
"The 12 principles of green chemistry."

Both sets of principles were developed by teams of technical experts
and published in peer-reviewed journals. They are now widely
understood and endorsed. Most importantly, they offer ordinary people,
as well as experts, a way to decide which technologies are worth
supporting and which ones should be phased out or never developed at
all. Even most members of Congress should be able to understand and
apply these principles.

You can find both sets of principles listed at the end of this
article.

In this short series, we'll apply these principles as a "filter" to
nuclear power, coal power, so-called "waste to energy" incinerators,
and finally to solar power.

These comparisons will not be exhaustive because the green principles
are just that -- principles -- and they clarify without requiring
great detail.

Nuclear Power and Green Engineering

So let's get right to it. Anyone can readily see that nuclear power
violates green engineering principles #1 (prefer the inherently
nonhazardous) and #2 (prevent instead of manage waste). Nuclear power
produces radioactive wastes and "spent fuel," which are are
exceptionally hazardous and long-lived. Just mining the fuel --
uranium -- has littered the western U.S. (and other parts of the
world) with mountainous piles of radioactive sand ("uranium
tailings"), which no one knows how to stabilize or detoxify, and
which continually blow around and enter water supplies and food
chains.

Furthermore, nuclear power violates green engineering principle #12
(raw materials should be renewable and not depleting) because it
depends on uranium for fuel and the world supply of uranium is finite
and dwindling.

Nuclear power also violates green engineering principles #9 (design
for easy disassembly) and #11 (design for commercial re-use) because,
after a nuclear power plant has lived out its useful life, many of its
component parts remain extremely radioactive for centuries or aeons.
Large parts of an old nuclear plant have to be carefully disassembled
(by people behind radiation shields operating robotic arms and hands),
then shipped to a suitable location, and "mothballed" in some way --
usually by burial in the ground. An alternative approach is to weld
the plant shut to contain its radioactivity, and walk away, hoping
nothing bad happens during the next 100,000 years or so. In any case
it's clear that nuclear power violates principles #9 and #11 of green
engineering.

Nuclear Power and Green Chemistry

When we compare nuclear power against the principles of green
chemistry, we can readily see that it violates #1 (prevent waste),
#3 (avoid using or creating toxic substances), and #10 (avoid creating
persistent substances) because of the great toxicity and longevity of
radioactive wastes. It also violates #7 (use renewable, not depleting,
raw materials) because the basic fuel, uranium, is not renewable.
Plans for extending the life of global uranium supplies all entail the
use of "breeder reactors," which create plutonium. But plutonium
itself violates green chemistry principles 1, 3, 4 and 10. The
scientist who discovered plutonium (Glenn Seaborg) once described it
as "fiendishly toxic." Plutonium is also the preferred material for
making a rogue atomic bomb, which is why the New York Times has called
the world's existing supplies of plutonium "one of the most
intractable problems of the post-cold-war era."[1]

Lastly, nuclear power plants produce what is called "spent fuel" -- a
misnomer if there ever was one. "Spent" makes it sound tired and
benign. There is nothing benign about "spent fuel." It is tremendously
radioactive -- so much so that it must be stored in a large pool of
water to keep it cool. If someone accidently (or malevolently) drained
the "spent fuel pool" that exists on-site at nearly every nuclear
reactor, the "spent fuel" would spontaneously burst into flame and
burn out of control for days, releasing clouds of highly-radioactive
cesium-137 all the while. Green chemistry principle #12 says our
technologies should be chosen to minimize the potential for accidents
such as releases and fires. By this standard, nuclear power does not
measure up.

On the face of it, applying a "green principles" test to nuclear power
would force us to conclude that it fails by any objective standard and
that we should be looking elsewhere for green energy.

Next installment: coal

The 12 Principles of Green Engineering

[First published in Paul T. Anastas and J.B. Zimmerman, "Design
through the Twelve Principles of Green Engineering", Environmental
Science & Technology Vol. 37, No. 5 (March 1, 2003), pgs. 95A-101A.]

Principle 1: Designers need to strive to ensure that all material and
energy inputs and outputs are as inherently nonhazardous as possible.

Principle 2: It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up
waste after it is formed.

Principle 3: Separation and purification operations should be designed
to minimize energy consumption and materials use.

Principle 4: Products, processes, and systems should be designed to
maximize mass, energy, space, and time efficiency.

Principle 5: Products, processes, and systems should be "output
pulled" rather than "input pushed" through the use of energy and
materials.

Principle 6: Embedded entropy and complexity must be viewed as an
investment when making design choices on recycle, reuse, or beneficial
disposition.

Principle 7: Targeted durability, not immortality, should be a design
goal.

Principle 8: Design for unnecessary capacity or capability (e.g., "one
size fits all") solutions should be considered a design flaw.

Principle 9: Material diversity in multicomponent products should be
minimized to promote disassembly and value retention.

Principle 10: Design of products, processes, and systems must include
integration and interconnectivity with available energy and materials
flows.

Principle 11: Products, processes, and systems should be designed for
performance in a commercial "afterlife".

Principle 12: Material and energy inputs should be renewable rather
than depleting.

The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry

[First published in Martyn Poliakoff, J. Michael Fitzpatrick, Trevor
R. Farren, and Paul T. Anastas, "Green Chemistry: Science and Politics
of Change," Science Vol. 297 (August 2, 2002), pgs. 807-810.]

1. It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after
it is formed.

2. Synthetic methods should be designed to maximize the incorporation
of all materials used in the process into the final product.

3. Wherever practicable, synthetic methodologies should be designed to
use and generate substances that possess little or no toxicity to
human health and the environment.

4. Chemical products should be designed to preserve efficacy of
function while reducing toxicity.

5. The use of auxiliary substances (e.g., solvents, separation agents,
and so forth) should be made unnecessary wherever possible and
innocuous when used.

6. Energy requirements should be recognized for their environmental
and economic impacts and should be minimized. Synthetic methods should
be conducted at ambient temperature and pressure.

7. A raw material or feedstock should be renewable rather than
depleting wherever technically and economically practicable.

8. Unnecessary derivatization (blocking group,
protection/deprotection, temporary modification of physical/chemical
processes) should be avoided whenever possible.

9. Catalytic reagents (as selective as possible) are superior to
stoichiometric reagents.

10. Chemical products should be designed so that at the end of their
function they do not persist in the environment and break down into
innocuous degradation products.

11. Analytical methodologies need to be developed further to allow for
real-time in-process monitoring and control before the formation of
hazardous substances.

12. Substances and the form of a substance used in a chemical process
should be chosen so as to minimize the potential for chemical
accidents, including releases, explosions, and fires.