When people think about the incoming Trump-Vance administration’s plans to unleash domestic energy production, they likely start with oil and gas drilling, and policies governing fracking and clean coal. Yet nuclear energy has a critical role to play in expanding our domestic energy resources, while also protecting the environment. We shouldn’t let antiquated misperceptions about nuclear production stand in the way.
Support for nuclear energy is at an all-time high in the United States—with 56% of Americans supporting it. Yet this support is lopsided with 70% of men having a favorable opinion of nuclear energy compared to just 44% of women. Women are likely skeptical of nuclear energy due to memories of Soviet-era nuclear mishaps and the notorious Three Mile Island incident, as well as modern fearmongering from the media and radical environmentalists. But nuclear energy has come a long way since then and is now among the most promising technologies in terms of efficacy, safety, and environmental impact.
The incoming Trump administration can appeal to women’s eco sensibilities by highlighting facts about nuclear power as a reliable and environmentally friendly option. Women care deeply about clean air and water conditions, and want natural resources to be stewarded responsibly.
Nuclear energy is the most efficient power source available today. 94 nuclear reactors already supply 18.6% of current U.S. electricity generation. Nuclear, like natural gas, will be essential to meet rising global electricity demand. Unlike intermittent energy sources, like wind and solar, nuclear operates nearly 24/7. It produces near zero emissions while boasting a small environmental footprint compared to utility-scale solar and wind facilities, requiring just a mere square mile of land to accommodate a 1,000 megawatt (MW) power station operating 93% of the year. By contrast, solar and wind function at a fraction of the capacity that nuclear does and require 75 and 360 times more land, respectively, to generate the equivalent amount of electricity. In other words, nuclear power is more dependable, more efficient, requires far less land, and releases negligible carbons—far outpacing renewables on all these measures.
Understandably, women are concerned about the safety protocols and safe storage of nuclear waste (or used nuclear fuel). In the last 60 years, there have only been three significant accidents at nuclear plants worldwide. American nuclear power plants are among the safest in the world and are built to minimize accidental radiation release and meltdowns. Additionally, reactor operators undergo rigorous training and must be federally licensed to supervise these plants. Our Energy Department reports that U.S. facilities pose the least harm to people and the environment due to “safety procedures, robust training programs and stringent federal regulation.”
And while fear about nuclear waste storage is understandable, today there are new and better solutions than ever before. Today, most used nuclear fuel is stored safely at on-site dry casks, and the Trump Energy Department can continue to improve here by prioritizing permanent disposal of nuclear fuel.
When Americans envision nuclear facilities, most start with giant steaming towers like those operated by Homer Simpson. Reality is quite different. In fact, among the most promising developments is the development of small modular reactors (SMRs). These reactors aren’t simply functional; they are aesthetically pleasing and modern.
During his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, President-elect Trump said he liked nuclear power, but claimed conventional facilities are “…too big and too complex and too expensive.” That’s where SMRs can fill the void.
There are 80 SMR prototypes currently in development. SMRs are capable of producing upwards of 300 megawatts (MW) per module. Used nuclear fuel from bigger reactors is even repurposed to power them.
Two companies are expertly combining functionality with aesthetics—a surefire way to appeal to nuclear-skeptical women. Here in the U.S., the Oklo Aurora powerhouse prototype at the Idaho National Laboratory—slated to go online in 2027—has been lauded for its sky chalet design. Incoming Energy Secretary Chris Wright is a board member for Oklo, a publicly traded nuclear SMR start-up, and can lean on his expertise to get his future boss on board. And across the pond in the United Kingdom, luxury car company Rolls-Royce—unlike competitor Jaguar—is smartly diversifying its portfolio with SMRs. Their prototypes occupy about two soccer fields and are capable of powering about one million homes.
President-elect Donald J. Trump pledged to “unleash energy production from all sources”—including nuclear energy—in a second term. The first Trump administration had 11 major accomplishments pertaining to this reliable power source, including the elevation of the first (and highly qualified) woman, Dr. Rita Baranwal, to oversee the Office of Nuclear Energy.
Women will be essential to making American nuclear energy great again. Let’s hope the incoming Trump-Vance administration taps into this constituency.
Gabriella Hoffman is director of the Center for Energy and Conservation at the Independent Women’s Forum and host of the District of Conservation podcast. Follow her on X at @Gabby_Hoffman
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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I’m confused. In the text of this article you claim that there have only been three major nuclear incidents, but the reference you give states that there have only been TWO. Which is it?
Sept 1957
The Kyshtym disaster was a radiation contamination accident (after a chemical explosion that occurred within a storage tank) at Mayak, a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the Soviet Union.
Estimated 200 cancer fatalities
Oct 1957
Windscale fire at the British atomic bomb project (in a plutonium-production reactor) damaged the core and released an estimated 740 terabecquerels of iodine-131 into the environment. A rudimentary smoke filter constructed over the main outlet chimney successfully prevented a far worse radiation leak.
Zero direct casualties estimated 240 cancer fatalities.
March 1979
3 Mile Island Loss of coolant and partial core meltdown due to operator errors and technical flaws. There was a small release of radioactive gases.
Zero Casualties.
April 1986
Chernobyl a flawed reactor design and inadequate safety procedures led to a power surge that damaged the fuel rods of reactor no. 4 of the Chernobyl power plant. This caused an explosion and meltdown, necessitating the evacuation of 300,000 people and dispersing radioactive material across Europe.
28 direct and 34 indirect casualties (34 were cancer related).
March 2011
Fukushima Daiichi struck by a tsunami damaging the cooling ponds and back up generators leading to overheating with a buildup of Hydrogen gas And associated explosion Killing 1. 3 others died from accidents during clean-up.
All tolled, since 1957 there have been 28 incidents directly claiming 48 lives with an additional 470 cancer related deaths. (28 were Chernobyl and the remainder 27 claimed 20 lives)
With all the nuclear-powered ships and subs bouncing around the oceans since the ’50’s, there has been an equally impressive safety record among them. Considering their environment, maritime nucs make a strong statement about nuclear power safety.
The estimated cancer deaths use the totally discredited LNT (linear no threshold) method.
In reality the number of deaths was closer to 2 or 3 for all these accidents.
You missed a couple we’ve had in Canada with test reactors, and a number of serious incidents with medical and oilfield imaging sources in a number of countries.
https://thewalrus.ca/nuclear-accidents/
Not to mention the last Canadian MAPLE design was shut it down immediately after run tests in 2008 showed an unexpectedly high positive PCR, Power Coefficient of reactivity…in other words, on attempting to shut down, the core temperature wants to go higher instead of lower for some time period, which if too long….
I only included those that Google AI indicated were the worst accidents.
It should be noted that of those five, only three have anything to do with nuclear power produciton. Kyshtym and Windscale were the result of accidents from nuclear weapons production facilities and had nothing to do with electricity production.
As for Chernobyl, the principal reason for the RBMK reactors was to produce plutonium for the Soviet strategic weapons program. Electricity production was a secondary concern.
An excellent point👍
There were no injuries or fatalities with any of those events. Since MAPLE was never started up, it’s irrelevant to everything.
I remember the Chalk River accident; Where in naval Lieutenant James Carter was part of the response team, There was the discovery of an unkown waste product. Hence the origin of the the term CRUD = Chalk River Unidentified Deposit (probably apocrophal)
January 1961; SL-1 Nuclear accident; all three operators killed
estimated cancer deaths, no? Any stats on real results. Are such even possible?
Probably not possible hence only estimates
Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi. Several people died containing Chernobyl and thousands were evacuated. No one died at Fukushima but thousands were evacuated. At Three Mile Island, no one was hurt or evacuated. The amount of radiation accidentally released was about the same as a chest X-ray.
“the Trump Energy Department can continue to improve here by prioritizing permanent disposal of nuclear fuel”
But how? Any ideas? The stuff stays dangerous for thousands of years. It’s good to know that they have it in containers on site, but that is hardly the answer.
Yucca? Trump?
Why dispose? Reprocess it, reuse it as fuel, and reduce the amount of high level waste and its half life. Sure it’s expensive, but so is a permanent repository. And the technology to reprocess spent reactor fuel and cores will certainly improve.
“reduce the amount of high level waste”
But to what level? Surely something remains.
Can we do it now, or is it something we might get better at in the future?
Why don’t you take the trouble to research it?
In general nuclear waste comes in three broad categories
None of this is rocket science. The pyramids have stood for far longer than any dangerous isotope will last, and frankly a concrete fuel pond would probably last a few hundred years without any issues. Non nuclear industrial waste that lasts forever is a far bigger problem. Think lead, cadmium, mercury…
There is no problem technically or economically with dealing with the waste. We know exactly how to do it.
The problems is with the shitstorm of ignorant panic the greens and others have stirred up.
Presumably in the pay of fossil fuel and renewable energy companies, even if they don’t know it,
Leo,
You might not realise this, but your comments have a flavour in their expression that is negative, possibly as a result of decades of fear and danger spread by people against nuclear, usually without adequate qualifications to be heard. Examples: “Really nasty fizzy stuff.” Nothing much has proved to be really nasty because next to no people have been harmed by it. Take the mains electricity of 240 or 110 volts or whatever that exists in nearly every household. It has large potential danger, so high it is used to kill people in electric chairs. There are much higher voltages as well. But home electricity is not referred to as “really nasty fizzy stuff” even though it can fizz while killing – nuclear radiation does not fizz, it is silent. Starting to see the indoctrination problem?
You write moderately nasty shit that is also biologically active.” Why use a crap word that is automatic, volunteered negativism? Why mention “biologically active?” Apart from death by impact damage, most other deaths like illness and poisoning and age are biologically active. Nothing sinister, quite natural, very common, yet you use the term to make sinister overtones. No need. Snake bites that kill are biologically active, but this is immaterial because people know to keep a distance between self and snake. Same with radioactivity, don’t get too close to it. Yes, accidents can happen in both cases, but we don’t have a “Union of Scientists Concerned About Snake Bites.”
Next, you write that there is no problem economically or technically in dealing with the waste. It need not be termed “waste”. “Used fuel” is more accurate because it can be and sometimes is processed to extract valuable remaining materials. This could be done more widely but economically it is not, because of high costs, some of which have been made overly high to help combat opposition to nuclear. So, don’t call it waste and do admit that economics is slowing nuclear.
I could go on, but you get the drift. Geoff S
Ah, the words of rationality.
+ 11,000 Geoff.
Quite right. But beyond all that, Stokes is ignoring the fact that existing dry storage technology has a 100% perfect safety record everywhere in the world where it’s been deployed.
“So it only is a danger for a couple of hundred years.”
Even that embraces a lot of history. Suppose Napoleon had left a lot of nuclear waste, still lying around Europe during WWII?
But there are dangerous isotopes of longer half-life. They may be minor fractions, but they won’t go away. Pu-240, for example, has half-life 6500 years, and is produced on a large scale. A lot of effort is put into separating it, but that doesn’t destroy it.
“the shitstorm of ignorant panic the greens and others have stirred up”
Worries about nuclear waste long precede the greens.
By definition, high level waste has a very short half life. Store it on site for a couple of years, then throw it away since it isn’t dangerous anymore.
The planet contained all that radiating material to begin with, before human use.
There was no plutonium, no Sr-90, no Cs-137 etc. Anywhere.
It can, and must, be done. No matter what tech stuff we can pull out our collective hats, we will still have a Trumpian YUGE nuclear waste problem. We have so much now, being “temporarily” stored in the back 40 of most facilities, used and mothballed, worldwide, that we have no choice. Here, it’s a matter of luring – not mandating – a geologically/geographically suitable US state to accept it. I thought that Granholm* at DOE had an RFQ out to attract such a candidate, but I haven’t heard an update for years.
The Europeans seem to be stepping up, and we should do so as well. Yes, we should never have started, giving the blatantly irresponsible notion that we could guarantee the tens of thousands of years of stewardship required. But here we are, and we won’t be much that further screwed by bringing in extra waste, later.
*Maybe Chris Wright will take this on. Since Liberty Energy is tanking, he will have one less distraction.
Wind and solar function intermittently for maybe 10-15 years, and the pollution from their manufacture will remain or ever… and pollution from their disposal will remain for many more years, if they can find sufficient landfill. !
Wind and solar are never an answer.. just a virtue-seeking FAD.
Thorium nuclear will eventually become the mainstay. It can use old stored nuclear waste and the remaining the waste will be minimal.
I’m curious- what do nations other than the U.S. do with their nuclear waste?
They reprocess it. Last I heard, Japan even ships their waste to France for reprocessing, since their politicians won’t let them build any facilities in country.
That must be expensive. Does France then use it- or do they ship it back to Japan?
Most countries simply put it in dry surface storage. Britain closed its only reprocessing facility at Sellafield after the last of the Magnox reactors closed in 2015.
I don’t know why people are marking you down, it’s a valid question:
He is not asking out of a desire to understand, but because he wants to redirect the discussion to rebuttal of already resolved issues. It’s the most basic form of concern trolling.
He’s being marked down because he’s asked that question before and never listened to the responses. The answer to the issue he raises has been known for decades. Only people who wish to remain ignorant don’t know the answer by now.
Well, another valid reason is
‘because he’s Nick’.
He has a well earned reputation as a troll. He posts to get reactions, presumedly for his personal entertainment.
Typical Stokes. Used fuel rods still contain 95% of their original fissionable material. Rational people, like the French recycle that material. Demented fruitcakes like the thing that will not die, Jimmy Carter, and notorious crook Harry Reid, may he rot in pieces, run around screaming unclean! work of the devil! and prove they do not understand the most basic facts about radioactive isotopes — there is an inverse relationship between radiation intensity and isotope half-life.
After the recycling process, the quantity of long lived isotopes remaining is tiny — something like a soda can per reactor per year. This is a non problem.
Nuclear is the only scalable energy source that can run a modern economy without generating CO2. The strength of watermelon opposition to nuclear is a proof that they are fundamentally unserious and totally ignorant.
Until the ban, breeder reactors were used to recycle spent uranium fuel rods. The issue was the process produced weapons grade plutonium. So they banned breeders. The technology is there and multiple choices on how to proceed.
Nick, you might remember that Bob Hawke, a centre-left Labor stalwart, life-long trade union official and Australia’s 3rd longest serving Prime Minister, was a vigorous advocate for Australia to become the world’s premier nuclear power fuels source provider and spent fuel rods storage solution.
Hawkie proposed that because Australia was rich in uranium ore, and geologically a highly stable continent with vast minimally populated central desert areas, it was the best-placed developed country to dig huge security monitored
concrete-lined deep holes in the remote deserts as repositories for spent nuclear fuels from all around the world.
In answer to the predictably dumb objections from greenies that nuclear fuel materials would have to be transported across oceans and lands all over the world, Hawkie used to remind them that these logistics have been carried out successfully and safely since the 1960s, and under far less stringent standards of handling and disposal.
Bob Hawke pushed for the uranium export industry. The idea of taking back the waste was floated, but went down like a lead balloon.
Australia does have a reactor, used now for producing medical isotopes. So it produces a small amount of waste. What to do with it? A few years ago there was a proposal to bury it at Kimba, which is remote and near-desert. That also went down like a uranium balloon, especially with locals. No go.
At the CSIRO and the ABC I’m sure.
But like I said –
“the predictably dumb objections from greenies”
It was something Bob took up long after he retired. No political party would go near it. It never happened.
As I said, we can’t even get a facility to dispose of our own minuscule waste.
We easily could, except for “the predictably dumb objections from greenies”
No greenies in Kimba
Hawkie was thinking more in terms of siting the repository somewhere out in Len Beadell country, off the Gun Barrel Highway –
If we really want to lose the radioactive materials, instead of recycling it, then we have a readily available natural storage facility… right below us.
Fire lead-nosed, hydrodynamic missiles straight down into a subduction zone, deep under the sea. Maybe the Marianas Trench.
No-one could dive down and economically recall it. It would be gone. And as the centuries pass, the material would be drawn down to help keep our planet thermodynamically active.
Our nuclear waste could prolong life on earth, long after mankind has passed on.
Could be expensive. Per Wiki:
“The amount of HLW [high level waste] worldwide is increasing by about 12,000 tonnes per year.”
If we want women to support nuclear step one is incentivizing Nevada to want Yucca Mountain nuclear repository operating. The U.S. can be generous for such a worthy project. My idea copies Alaska’s paying all their citizens a share in oil royalty payments. How does $1,000/year per taxpayer sound?
We have a totally safe world class site for a partially spent nuclear storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Opening it has nothing to do with safety, it’s entirely politics. No state or community should be forced to accept any complex technological facility. Nearly every other major facility is won by the state and community that makes the facility most welcome. States and communities compete to get the tax base and jobs.
An EIS process for alternate sites would require more than 10 years. We’re locked into Yucca Mountain. Nuclear storage siting should have been handled the same competitive way that other major projects are awarded, but that’s history. How to get a state and community to want a nuclear storage site?
First off, no property taxes for perpetuity within a 50-mile radius. Secondly, a negotiated fee for every pound shipped to the facility paid into the state coffers. It’s in the best economic interest of the USA to maximize nuclear energy so the property tax and storage fees should be paid by the Federal Treasury not the nuclear generating station owners.
There is an additional problem – states are refusing to allow transporting spent nuclear fuel through their states. It is possible that an application of the Commerce Clause could fix that.
Spent nuclear fuel is transported in other countries, and in so far as I know, there has never been an accident.
I saw a report once on the tests that the casks used to carry the spent fuel went through.
Pretty much, the only way to break one of those things open, would be to use a tactical nuke.
Correct. As part of the testing they even do things like hit them with trains and run them into concrete walls on rocket sleds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mHtOW-OBO4
BTW, the military transfers nuclear material by truck and train all the time.
Your suggestion sounds fair to me. The people of your state should get something for the trouble.
Federal Treasury is filled with tax payer dollars. Either way we pay.
Rolls-Royce (the jet engine manufacturer), is nothing to do with the luxury vehicle brand, which I think is owned by BMW these days.
RR was in the aerospace business for a very long time. Remember the Merlin Engine that powered WWII airplanes. In the 1970s the company ran into financial trouble and was reorganized. The automobile business which was financially very small was sold on. Eventually Volkswagen bought the hard assets and the Bentley trademarks. The Rolls Royce trademark and IP was separately licensed to BMW, which built a factory to build new RR cars. The drive trains are BMW, which is just as well.
I think only one collapse is relevant, The Three mile Island one, but it did not leak any radiativity, in spite of rather primitive containment systems at the time, compared with standard security today. The two other were caused by poor design and still worse management!
TMI occurred in the days when computer systems were still quite primitive compared to today. Heck, Intel’s 8080 microprocessor was still the in thing for laptops.
If you walked into a power plant control room, you would see bank upon bank of dials and gauges.
It’s not to surprising that when things went south, the control team got over whelmed trying to figure out what was going wrong.
When in college I worked with a team that built one of the first graphically based control system. This was a decade before Window and even Apple was still text based.
The system I worked on took around 100 of these input signals and used them to generate graphical displays that were supposed to be easier to understand. We worked with psychologists and people from the universities new human engineering department to design how the displays should look.
The whole idea was the result of TMI and the goal was to make the data easier to understand.
I remember that there was a requirement to make the system bullet proof. Literally, bullet proof.
We had bullet resistant glass in front of the monitors and it was built out of 1/4 inch steel. We had to use the 3 ton crane in the loading dock to assemble the unit for testing.
As a co-op student, I didn’t get to work on it directly, my part was building the test rig. I ended up ordering two sheets of aluminum that were something like 6 x 2 feet. I then drilled lots and lots of holes, lined up as best I could with a hand drill, about an inch apart, vertically and horizontally.
Built about half a dozen power supplies with various voltage outputs. Installed all of the dials and switches, then connected everything to the hundreds of terminal blocks on the back of the unit.
I think I remember it so well because the only thing I was given was a document with all of the signals that were needed and the voltage and current requirements for each. Beyond that, I was free to design it however I liked. I just had to keep the project manager in the loop as to what I was doing, and of course I had a deadline for finishing.
I also learned the value and the pain of proper documentation. I had to create a document that showed where the dial/switch for each test signal was located on the front of the unit and which terminal block on the back.
We also had several dozen sheets of E sized paper. We had to completely document each wire we were adding to the plant. All the way from the location we were getting the signal from, through each conduit and break out box on the way, to the final break out box next to where our unit was going. Anyone who has ever done any drafting, knows what a pain E size paper is. It completely filled a standard sized drafting table.
SMR’s that “produce upwards of 300 megawatts per module” are not small modular reactors. Modular implies non-custom construction. In other words, modular means built in a factory and shipped to the site for rapid assembly. That’s what, for example, the NuScale 50 or 77 MW reactor is. The 300 MW ones that GE and other legacy nuclear reactor contractors propose are not modular. They are smaller versions of their larger reactors. They are (massively expensive) custom builds, not pre-built modular reactors that are hauled to the site and quickly installed. Think mobile home versus a traditional home built on site, or a Toyota sedan built on an assembly line versus a custom-built Formula 1 race car or top fuel dragster.
The pedal bed nuclear running in China is 2 x 200MW units, and can apparently be built using modular principles.
They now know how to build them, so expect to see a lot more of them soon.
I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be pebble bed.
It might employ Uyghurs on exercise bikes.
Yes, no excuse except half a bottle of red with evening meal :-). !
Rolls Royce’s SMR are 470MW. They are still small:
You can argue over semantics, but these are the two salient features that make an SMR radically different, to build certify and operate, from larger reactors.
I believe the point you are raising is the apparent conflagration of small and modular.
Freudian slip?
Maybe the Donald could cast a vote on his good friend Sadiq Khan?
Currently…. 102,465. against
https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-knighthood-of-sadiq-khan?source_location=psf_petitions
Well, the Oklo design is impressive, and I hope it will be successful. We have certainly gone down the wrong path with wind and solar. This at least sounds promising. How economical they are, and how scalable remains to be seen.
Actually it doesn’t.
We know exactly how economical and scalable they are. And the short answer is they cost next to nothing to run, so they have to be made extremely expensive to build, for fear they would wipe out gas in the electricity and indeed many other markets. To that end the chosen tool of those who oppose them is regulatory ratcheting. Making it almost impossible to build one in less than 15 years.
SMRs designed for at most a 5 year build out will wipe the floor and circumvent the approvals process.
As far as scalable goes, you can have an SMR for every major town, eliminating most of the grid interconnections, No more massive pylons. Just small cables to balance the outputs of the stations
The cost of moving large amounts of electricity from remote wind and solar farms is immense. Far cheaper to build the generators near where the power is needed.
Technically everything is easily do-able, It’s the politics and propaganda that stand in the way of an all nuclear /hydro grid by 2050.
I hope you are right, but I remain skeptical. Usually, if something sounds too good to be true, then that is the case.
And across the pond in the United Kingdom, luxury car company Rolls Royce
Oh dear. Rolls Royce the car company was sold to BMW years ago. This is the Rolls Royce company that makes jet engines, gas turbines for power stations, nuclear reactors for submarines and control systems for nuclear power stations,.
Not cars.
It does make one wonder how much else of the article is lacing in factual content
99.99999%
But you knew that, didn’t you?
“All tolled”, with “pedal” beds and “lacing”, this thread is lacking in readability. And I didn’t even consider the 8080-based laptops that never existed. Even the first IBM PC was 8086-based.
8080 processors never got put into a computer. 8085 was in the PC Jr and was similar.
There were a few 8080 systems, but none of them sold at scale. Apparently the 8080 and knockoffs were reasonably popular in eastern Europe.
The 6800 and Z80 were the US mainstays before IBM came out with the 8088-based PC (and subsequent PCJr)
The enabling technology for laptops was the now ubiquitous LCD screen. There were quite a few “portable” computers using the 8080-derived Z80.
8088 rather than 8086, though closely related. Then onto the 80286 for the PC AT.
Ewe jus kneed to lern to reed gooda. 😉
I suggest painting a HUGE SIGN on every cooling tower, “Just Steam. Not Radioactive!”
Because … when the uneducated and unknowing see white “smoke” coming from a cooling tower they assume it is radioactive smoke from the reactor.
Just tell them there is a new Pope.
And if you change position so the white darkens, the it is CO2 (aka carbon)….
It’s worth repeating the tired but accurate old trope that: “more US citizens have died from sitting in the front seat of Ted Kennedy’s Oldsmobile than have been killed by radiation from nuclear power plants.”
Just seems odd to me that they have been putting nuclear reactors in subs and surface ships for a long time now, but they can’t seem to manage doing the same thing on land??? What’s up with that ???
The military doesn’t have to put up with civilian regulators.
The “misperceptions” aren’t antiquated, they are wrong and have always been wrong.
For the most part they are lies told by people don’t want the general public to have access to cheap and reliable energy.
There has been one nuclear accident that has resulted in deaths involving commercial nuclear power. That accident involved a design that had been rejected by the west as unsafe, but was adopted by the Soviets because it was cheap to build and could be used to create plutonium at the same time it was producing power. The construction team skipped building a containment structure, because those are expensive. Something that was completely against the law in the West.
Had there been a containment unit, the West might never have known about the accident since it would have been contained.
Beyond that, they were running a test that should have been run prior to certification. The test was skipped so that the construction team could get their bonus for finishing on time Because of delays, the test was being run in the middle of the night, by the least experienced crew using a skeleton staff.
The total number of people killed was a few dozen.
How many people have died in coal mining accidents over the last 70 years?
Or in gas leak explosions?
“Women are likely skeptical of nuclear energy due to memories of Soviet-era nuclear mishaps and the notorious Three Mile Island incident”
My 40 year old daughter was a toddler when Chernobyl happened in 1986. And TMI was 7 years before that. Anti nuclear opinions are popular among women. Most of the people who have memories of those events, are on social security.
Political opinions very largely derive from social connections. Very few people have thought through political and policy positions from first principles. It is lonely and difficult work, and it most certainly won’t get you admitted to the cool kids table in the school cafeteria.
Most people derive their political and policy positions from their desire to be accepted and approved by the social groups they are embedded in or want to join. In contemporary America a majority of women, especially young single women, want to be part of the Democrat party.
That party has become anti-nuclear because of the convergenceof various lines of interests, including fealty to old Soviet policy lines, subsidies from foreign actors, (Russian, Chinese, and Arab), and hostility to flyover state elites who derive their wealth from fossil fuels.
They were not reasoned into their position and they will not be reasoned out of it. The position is collapsing because the tech industry, which is a vital part of the Democrat coalition, is being forced to support nuclear to power their new AI machines. And, if there is one thing young women will not give up it is their phones.
Correct. The issue isn’t that women are against nuclear power, but that they are generally disposed to believe that collectivist ‘socialist’ ends are morally superior to individualistic ‘capitalist’ ends. Unfortunately, this causes many women to favor socialist means, two of which are CAGW and anti-nuclear energy.
young
womenNot just women, but the post was about women, so there is that.
Older women, other than childless cat ladies, are married and have children. Married women with children are conservatives. It is unmarried young women who have been ensorcelled by the Democrat party.
“Women are likely skeptical of nuclear energy due to memories of Soviet-era nuclear mishaps and the notorious Three Mile Island incident, ” The 3MI event is notorious for killing no one and showing no detectable long-term health effects. The Chernobyl event is more noteworthy.
The event at Three Mile Island happened in 1979, 46 years ago. A person would have to have been born by about 1966 to actually remember it. That means that 150,000,000 could not possibly remember it.
Many (~50%) in the USA believe “irradiated food” is harmful, that is, radioactive. Figure out why that is, and you will go a long way toward solving the issue of anti-nuclear power.
Funny that they have no problems with microwaved (aka nuked) dinners.
Or diamond mining.
Because they have been indoctrinated to believe that anything that is associated with the words “nuclear” and radioactive”, is toxic and deadly. Which is why Nuclear Magnetic Resonance imaging became Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
If you control the language, you control the argument
If you control the argument, you control information
If you control information, you control history
If you control history, you control the past
If you control the past you control the future.
– Big Brother 1984
Nuclear reactors are tempting targets for terrorists. For public safety and peace of mind, small modular reactors would have to be installed in clusters within secure and well guarded facilities.
That is one concept.
However, consider if multiple reactors were colocated, a successful forced entry gets a smorgasborg of targets.
All electrical substations around here have tall barbed wire fences and alarm systems.
The big central ones have heavy duty triple barb fencing, intrusion sensors, and are permanently patrolled by armed guards.
They would be the ideal place for SMRs.. just plug them in.
Then and again, being in the Hunter Valley, an even better place would be the site of the old Liddell power station, all the distribution infrastructure is already in place, cooling lake etc etc.
I believe that is one of the first places on Dutton’s (conservative centre-right leader) nuclear power station list should they win the next election..
We can only hope and pray to get rid of the permanently clueless Albo and Bow-wow.
Trump Energy Department can continue to improve here by prioritizing permanent disposal of nuclear fuel
Very bad idea if “permanent disposal” means extreme unavailability of “used” fuel still containing well over 90% of it original energy. Research is (supposedly) continuing on utilizing a major part of that energy in new designs and there is reportedly enough energy in the current stash of “spent” fuel for several hundred years of electrical generation. Safe storage is important but “throwing away” is a cost much too high.
Luckily the “repository” at Yucca mountain is not really a permanent repository. It is designed to accept waste storage casks and park them on rail cars underground for 200 years before the tunnels are “sealed”. Someone realized that we might change our mind in 100 years and decide to reprocess all that “waste”. The only truly “permanent disposal” would be to launch it into the sun, but that has lots of other issues. Including lots of people who would protest “polluting the sun”.
Yucca Mountain was cancelled because (1) a resumption of spent fuel reprocessing in the US at some point in the long-term future is a near certainty; and (2) it makes no sense to use underground as an interim storage method given that underground is horrifically expensive and that one gets very little additional risk reduction benefit for all that money as compared with dry cask storage on the surface.
And so Yucca Mountain made absolutely no sense whatsoever even as an interim spent fuel storage solution. Which is why Congress ended funding for the project in 2010 with the silent concurrence of those in the Congress who had written the original NWPA legislation in the early 1980’s.
We build new steam power plants to meet demand. In the US and some other places, new nuclear power plants are not being built because the old ones are running longer than originally expected.
It is a business decision not a popularity contest.
KitP, it’s nice to see you back. Are you still traveling around the United States in your motor home?
A year ago, my wife and I were visting relatives who live and work in Austin, Texas. We took a trip out to the Johnson Ranch west of Austin where LBJ and Lady Bird are buried.
While we were there at the Johnson family graveyard, a motor home with Oregon plates pulled up into the parking lot. It was a retired couple from the Portland area.
We struck up a conversation with these people and told them we were from the Middle of Nowhere, southeastern Washington State.
As longtime residents of the Pacific Northwest, they knew just where that was.
Still full time. Currently 100 south of the Nevada Test Site. What a great place for long term storage.
My legal address is 5 miles west of middle of no place WA or 1 mile east of OR on US 730. A great place for sailing. I was there before the wind farms.
Very nice.
It appears that this discussion has devolved into quesions of waste disposal, esp nuclear waste, might I suggest a read of “Whose Backyard, Whose Risk: Fear and Fairness in Toxic and Nuclear Waste Siting” by Michael B. Gerrard. Available at Amazon and Barnes&Noble, among other sellers