Nuclear power has some attractive qualities that resemble the qualities of renewable energy technologies like solar or wind: nuclear produces no greenhouse gasses, particulate pollutants, or ash; there's enough uranium on Earth to provide energy for some billion years; and per Watt-hour, and uranium is cheaper than coal.

But nuclear power also has some ugly features: nuclear plants have high costs for construction, startup, and safety; nuclear accidents are particularly frightening; and worst of all, used nuclear fuel is hazardous, difficult to transport, and needs deep, private storage for 300-1000 years. These problems are unlike the problems of generating energy from fossil fuels, but nevertheless put nuclear power the same class as other polluting, non-renewable energy technologies.

Members of this class enjoy the benefit of existing industry. So as global warming looms and fossil fuels lose favor, nuclear power remains the only easy choice for US and British politicians looking to avoid an energy crisis. Whether nuclear power is a sustainable, secure choice or not, it may soon replace a significant portion of coal-fired electrical capacity around the world. What's in the trade?

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Pollution

The US Energy Information Administration reports that a middle-sized nuclear plant produces about 23 tons of waste per year. This material comprises mostly uranium-238, which does not react like it's cousin uranium-235. Since uranium is very dense, 23 tons of waste amounts to one cubic meter, which would fit in the trunk of a car.

Thus, the problem of nuclear waste is not sheer volume but safekeeping. The European nuclear fuel cycle includes reprocessing, which extracts useful uranium and plutonium from spent fuel for reuse. This technique reduces further the volume of waste to be managed but does not eliminate it altogether. Over concerns of nuclear weapons proliferation, especially regarding plutonium, Jimmy Carter issued a directive to stop reprocessing of nuclear fuel in the US. President Bush has suggested that the US may begin fuel reprocessing. With or without reprocessing, countries like France and the US face not-in-my-backyard opposition to long-term waste storage. A comparable powered coal plant might produce 300,000 tons of ash in a year. About 99.5 percent of ash can be scrubbed from stack emissions, but this requires even greater quantities of limestone and water. The remaining half-a-percent of ash—the mass of the empty space shuttle—is allowed into the atmosphere along with copious carbon dioxide.

Under normal conditions, the public exposure to radiation from nuclear or coal power plants is minimal—far less than the dose from natural radiation sources like radon and cosmic rays, and less than the average personal dose from medical x-rays. But counterintuitively, the radiation dose from coal plants may be a great deal higher! Radioactive metals like uranium and thorium are relatively common in Earth's crust. Burning coal concentrates the metals within, which are then free to roam about the surface in dust or water. The US National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements estimates that the public dose of radiation from coal plants may be 100 times that from nuclear plants.

Costs

Coal and nuclear plants have comparable total costs, but different budget structures. Nuclear power achieves cheapness with uranium. The raw fuel is especially cheap to buy and because uranium is very dense and fission an energy-dense process, it is relatively cheap to transport. Enrichment of the raw fuel brings the cost per Watt-hour to about half that of coal. But nuclear plants require upfront capital to buy safety features like their all-important containment structures.

While coal is expensive to mine and to lug around, coal plants are cheaper to operate because they require fewer safety precautions and less regulation than nuclear plants. Similarly, they cost virtually nothing to decommission. However, the high cost of smoke scrubbers balances the total plant cost with nuclear.

Accident Risks

The two highest profile nuclear accidents have been Pennsylvania's Three-Mile Island in 1979, and Ukraine's Chernobyl in 1986. The pair illustrates a wide range.

The Three-Mile Island reactor overheated after its main coolant pump failed and the backup had been neglected. An emergency valve released excess steam pressure but failed to close, allowing radioactive coolant to spill throughout the reactor's containment structure. The reactor was hence unusable. Although a small amount of radioactive steam left the plant, the pressure release and containment structure averted a worse disaster.

The Chernobyl accident was far more terrible, releasing some 7 million times as much harmful radiation. The plant's reactor overheated and caused a steam explosion which spread radioactive fallout for hundreds of miles. Bad engineering of the reactor's control rods and disregard for safety caused the explosion, but much of the larger disaster belongs to the plant's failed containment structure. Where civilian plants like Three-Mile Island use reinforced concrete for containment, Chernobyl was big enough to breed useful amounts of weapons plutonium, and so big that a concrete roof was impractical. Therefore, the plant had a lightweight tin roof.

The deaths estimated to have resulted from Chernobyl's explosion vary wildly from about 50 through the hundreds of thousands. These numbers may not represent the risk of disaster posed by other, more modest plants built for safety, not bombs. Indeed, the Three Mile Island accident caused no deaths.

By comparison, eight major coal-mining disasters around the world have killed some 550 miners since 1970.

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France generates nearly 80% of its electricity from nuclear plants and has thereby produced the least carbon dioxide of all the Group of Eight industrial nations—in total and per capita. In 33 years of nuclear power, the French civilian nuclear program has not had a major accident. Reprocessing and reuse of spent nuclear fuel allows a French family of four to generate mere tablespoons of nuclear waste over the course of 20 years.

France's success with nuclear power may not be transferable to the rest of the world—the US demand for electricity is about 8 times larger—but it indicates that the problems of nuclear power may be at least more manageable than those of burning fossil fuels.

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