By Kelvin Kemm.
Nuclear power will be the future. There is no doubt about it. Nuclear is the cleanest, greenest, cheapest, safest, energy source ever. There is no doubt about that, no matter what anyone says. Also, just look at the energy density of sugar, coal, petrol, and uranium. Sugar contains about 20 megajoules per kilogram, coal 25, petrol 50, but uranium is 76,000,000. What this tells you is that you can carry your lifetime supply of electricity in a shopping packet, if you’re carrying uranium.
Let us face it, coal is going to be a primary energy source of the world for years to come. Stopping coal use is like shooting yourself in both feet with a machine gun. As time passes, rather rapidly, there’s no doubt that coal will give way to nuclear, for purely economic reasons. Certainly nothing to do with the myth of anthropogenic CO2 causing increased global warming. Meanwhile the Chinese are building new coal plants faster than the Western world is decommissioning theirs. The Chinese know what they are doing, and they are chasing their goal… of economic dominance.
Don’t burn banknotes
As coal gives way to nuclear power in the production of electricity, we should not stop using coal, but we should no longer burn it. Coal is composed of very valuable chemicals, so why burn them? Burning coal is something like burning banknotes instead of wood, to keep warm.
In South Africa we have the SASOL Company, which converts coal to petrol and diesel. About 1/3 of South Africa’s petrol and diesel comes from coal. The coal chemicals are also used to produce ladies’ cosmetics, aspirin, high-quality waxes, and more.
The ultimate answer is to use small nuclear reactors to drive the coal conversion plants.
The world’s consumption of electricity doubled over the past 25 years, and is set to double again in the next 25. In fact, it will double faster because more people are getting connected to electricity, and more and more electrical devices are coming into existence. So, forget about green extremist goals of reducing world energy consumption.
The most sensible route for doubling electricity consumption, on a world scale, is via nuclear. Electricity consumption is directly proportional to GDP, which in turn directly affects the take-home pay of citizens. Citizen wealth changes the nature of society.
Another Revolution is coming
Cast your mind back to the Industrial Revolution, of around 1760 to 1840. Abundant coal was linked to the development of steam engines, and iron production. Energy and engines led to deeper mining, mass textile production, and a host of other advances. So, the Industrial Revolution burst onto the scene and changed the world. A large adoption of nuclear power, together with AI, electronics, and massive scientific development will also change the world.
But let us return to nuclear, and the relentless anti-nuclear campaigns waged by the slogan-chanting greenies. One of their themes is; ‘what about the nuclear waste?’
Nuclear waste is no problem. Really. If you want a good night’s sleep, you can take a sleeping pill. If you take the entire bottle of pills, you will sleep really well, and never wake up. But people don’t usually do stupid things like that. Yes, without doubt a lot of nuclear radiation will kill you, if you are stupid. But small amounts of nuclear radiation are perfectly safe. Large amounts of nuclear radiation are also safe, when handled by professionals in a professional manner.
Why do the public somehow think that the Army can handle artillery ammunition in a safe, professional way, but somehow professional nuclear engineers can’t handle radioactive materials?
Does the Glacier worry you?
The radiation of concern is called Gamma radiation. It ‘shines’ like a light. Gamma rays are exactly the same as light, radio waves, X-Rays, or microwaves in the kitchen microwave oven. But the Gammas carry more energy than X-Rays, and so they can cause harm. The kitchen microwaves are safely contained inside the ‘box’ which is the microwave oven. When a radioactive object is put into a lead box the Gammas are safely contained in the box, and you can safely sit next to it and eat your lunch.
For long-term storage you put the box underground, and leave it there. Note that by international convention, no nuclear waste is ever dumped or thrown away. It is stored, like the gold bars at Fort Knox. The principle is that you can move the radioactive material at any time in the future. So, worrying about a glacier advancing in 100,000 years’ time is silly. When you see the glacier coming you have decades to move all your boxes.
A highly useful property of all radioactive materials is that they constantly advertise their presence. It is like a cricket in his hole in the lawn. His chirping tells you where he is. With a Geiger counter, even a radioactive pinhead is easy to find in your lawn. It calls you. But a lump of Arsenic is extremely difficult to find, because it hides. There is arsenic in advanced solar panels, but nobody panics about that.
Insignificant volumes
One huge advantage of nuclear is that there is so little nuclear fuel, so the resulting spent fuel is extremely small, unlike coal ash. The spent fuel is called High Level Waste (HLW). It is the really dangerous material, if you walk up to it. Then there is Intermediate Level Waste (ILW), which is things like pumps, pipes, and so on, which had radioactive material flowing through them. Finally, there is Low Level Waste (LLW) which is paper towels, lab coats, and items which were used in a radiation designated area, and could conceivably have some radioactive dust on them. All of these categories are packaged into drums and safely stored underground.
Nuclear waste is better handled than any other waste in the world. This is a positive spin-off legacy from all the exaggerated scare stories which have been generated by the anti-nuke lobby.
Nuclear people worldwide are very proud of what they do, and how they do it, and they do it well.
The big scare which has always been splashed in news media is if something explodes, then some of the radioactive material can be reduced to dust and scattered into the atmosphere. It then acts like any other dust, and blows with the wind, and then settles out. But remember the crickets in the lawn. If it were not radioactive you would not know where the dust was. You would not even know it was there. But even the dust ‘chirps’ its presence, and so the ‘chirp’ can be used to scare the public. Note that during the infamous Fukushima incident, not one single person was killed or injured by nuclear radiation. Yet the popular news was full of scary stories of radiation spreading everywhere.
The nuclear waste repositories of the world are all perfectly able to safely store any radioactive material for centuries, just like Fort Knox stores its gold.
Dr Kelvin Kemm is a South African nuclear physicist who has been a CFACT Senior Advisor for over two decades. He is Chairman of Stratek Holdings, a nuclear project management company, and is past Chairman of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa). He has given both Congressional and Senate briefings in Washington DC. He has been guest speaker at over 20 US
