The effects of the Chernobyl accident are routinely overstated by the anti-nuclear crowd (as they were here). The greatest impact was the result of irrational hysteria instigated by the same people who comtinute to oppose nuclear energy today, and are well funded by fossil fuel providers.

John Wheeler
Producer of This Week in Nuclear

Though it is possible to spin all kinds of scary stories about nuclear energy, people should remember that real choices must be made about energy supplies that do not include the use of a magic material called “unobtainium” that produces reliable energy for free without any negative side effects.

In the real world of human endeavor that includes our seemingly insatiable need for electricity, heat, light and transport, we need to build and operate equipment that runs on real fuels or that captures natural forces – when they are available. For thousands of years, humans have used fire and burned materials that are either fresh hydrocarbons (trees, grass, etc) or well aged and compacted hydrocarbons (coal, oil, methane). These materials produce a vast quantity of waste, they expose people to excessive heat and they sometimes poison them. However, we put up with the negatives so we can make use of the positives.

Humans have also gathered sunlight, solar heat, and wind with as much skill as possible, but we have found those diffuse, weather dependent forces to be unreliable and unavailable when needed. We have also figured out that gathering them takes far more material and time than we would like to devote to the endeavor (in other words, it costs too much).

In 1942, a small group of scientists finally proved what some had suspected for several decades – it was possible to create a self-sustaining and controllable reaction that released the massive quantity of energy stored inside heavy metal nuclei. Pound for pound, uranium fission releases about 3 million times as much energy as coal combustion. A tiny pellet that sits on my desk inspires me – it represents the size of a uranium dioxide fuel pellet that will release as much energy as 1 ton of coal, even with our current rather primitive nuclear technology. (With breeder reactors, that same pellet would release as much energy as 20-40 tons of coal.) That pellet, even with allowances for all of the refining and storage after use, costs less than 1/3 as much per unit of heat as “cheap” coal that is burned in a plant without any pollution control devices.

Chernobyl may be a loaded word that causes instant fright, but the WHO study showed that the total number of early deaths so far is less than 50, which is quite a bit fewer than the 3500 people that die in Chinese coal mines every year. The mass of used fuel material (about 65,000 tons so far in the US) that some call nuclear waste may sound impressively large until you find out that a single coal fired power plant will produce approximately 45,000 tons of uncontrolled waste every single day. It has taken us 50 years and 104 operating plants to produce that little pile of used nuclear fuel – all of which could comfortably fit on a single football field and not even bury the goal posts.

One final thought – the entities that benefit the most from efforts to slow nuclear development are those that are involved in finding, extracting, transporting, refining, marketing, advertising, and investing in fossil fuel development. Every time a new nuclear plant begins to operate, it removes a market for natural gas or coal worth between $200 and $800 million per year depending on the location and the market price of the substitute fuel.

Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast

Technological development is inevitable and the potential for its ill use is also. However, I think research should continue. Maybe someone will figure out cold fusion