Millions of miles. Thousands of trips. And we're still making MORE nuclear waste? Are we crazy?

July 18, 2024

A few days ago Terri Sforza of the Orange County Register published a pathetic, poorly researched and highly biased article about the progress (or lack thereof) in getting the toxic nuclear waste, currently left in canisters on the beach after decades of operation at the former San Onofre Nuclear (Waste) Generating Station, moved away to "CIS" (Consolidated Interim Storage) somewhere. Somewhere they don't know.

I'll start with Sforza's apparent crush on the DOE's Paul Murray. She describes him as a "rock star" as he dares us to "judge [him] on it."

Fair enough: I judge him to be an ignorant and/or dishonest blowhard, shifty, and dangerous to our country.

But he's not ignorant: After being involved in making nuclear waste for 40 years (put another way, not nearly as long as I've been opposing its production) -- after making waste in the nuclear industry -- he moved into government and he's now "Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and High Level Waste Disposition." Mr. Murray came from Washington DC to SoCal to bamboozle the locals, and it worked on Sforza especially well.

The man with the "mischievous twinkle in his eye" (according to Sforza) lays out a "simple vision" that is nothing more than an impossible timeline built on hoodwinking some poor community...somewhere, into taking the nuclear waste. His "plan" has no substance, but Sforza says Murray brought "fresh energy and clear-eyed analysis" to what is, in fact, an impossible task at any price.

There are no countries, anywhere, that are making significant progress on storing the radioactive waste. The closest, in Finland, is an iffy project opposed by many, years behind schedule and still not open and many decades from being filled and ready for "permanent" closure. And then what? A million years from now it will still be extremely hazardous. Who will tell them not to dig there?

It's not easy to find a place to store something that should never have existed on earth in the first place. The reason no progress has been made on a permanent repository is NOT because of politics or lack of funds...it's because Yucca Mountain was the only, the last, the best place they could come up with, and it was technically, structurally and physically no good. It leaks. It shifts. It crumbles. And nobody in Nevada wants it.

There is no temporary site available because NOBODY wants this waste. Absolutely nobody. Bribery (or propaganda) might work, but nothing else will. And telling the whole truth about the dangers won't help hoodwink anybody into taking the waste. So that's the last thing the DOE's Murray will ever do.

SMRs -- if they ever exist -- are sure to be neither truly small nor truly modular, and for those and many other reasons, they will come mostly in clusters, if they come at all.

Which begs the question: Why do SanO's owners want to RUSH the destruction of the twin domes? Why not let the residual radiation decrease for, say, 1000 years or so? Knocking the domes down now instead of waiting a millennia (or two) WILL release a lot more radioactivity into the environment. (My guess is MUCH more than the ongoing batch releases, probably by several orders of magnitude, especially for the workers, but it's just a guess. It's very hard to get data to go on. The industry lies about everything, and the government backs them up!)

Instead of destroying the reactor domes, why not put anything that's radioactive that's outside the domes (and that's not in the dry casks) inside the domes? Parts of the turbines, for instance, are highly radioactive, and an enormous amount of piping, valves, condensers, etc. also are (none as "hot" as the reactor vessels themselves, of course!). What unlucky community will get all that stuff? Or will it be "recycled" into children's braces, car engines and whatnot?

Let SCE destroy the control rooms to prove these aren't "zombie" reactors to be restarted some day, like several other reactors around the country are trying to do (it would be much more expensive to restart SanO, but hardly impossible if you don't mind the risk -- or the waste. And especially if you can get state or federal subsidies to restart!).

The answer to why the rush to knock down the domes is, of course, that they want to put SMRs there while they have a favorable government and an ignorant populace. Solar and wind prices already make the whole idea of SMRs utterly absurd from a financial point of view (secret fact: SMRs will always be financially utterly absurd, let alone have many other problems).

And everyone knows those domes are eyesores and constant reminders of the nearly catastrophic failure that caused them to be shut them down permanently. (That might be the BIGGEST advantage of the too-expensive SMRs: They supposedly are small enough to be discretely placed anywhere.)

Maybe they want SMRs in California because they want the spent fuel for future nuclear weapons, and SMR nuclear fuel (both before AND after use in the SMR) is much more highly enriched with the things they want for nuclear weapons than the "junk" in SanO's dry casks.

There has been NO progress regarding moving San Onofre's nuclear waste because that's virtually impossible to do if one criteria is that somebody, somewhere, actually wants the waste. Someone fairly warned, not bamboozled. Not bribed.

No state wants it. No community. No honest politician. Nobody.

And there's been no progress because moving all that waste is no small task, especially with nowhere to put it. Surely if anyone who already has nuclear waste wanted it (Humboldt or Rancho Seco, for instance), a lot of it could have already been shifted from hither to yon, and probably we'd be hither and someone else would be yon.

But that's no solution. That's just pushing the waste around. The ONLY solution is to stop making more waste -- nationally. At Diablo Canyon. And not allow SMRs anywhere. Then at least we can face the problem of handling the toxic left-overs honestly. Right now, moving the waste away from SanO will accomplish only two things: First, it will invite SMRs. And second, it will make the entire nuclear industry pretend there IS a "solution" to the waste problem, even if it's supposedly "only a temporary solution until a permanent repository is found." And they'll keep on making more waste.

One problem with WIPP is that it was never designed to take "high level nuclear waste" but of course, what it will take seems to have drifted up and up and up over the decades: At first it was only going to get the lowest classifications of waste, and -- at least this is what we were led to believe -- no plutonium, at least not in "significant" or "high" or whatever they called it -- quantities.

And the opposition to WIPP remains strong in New Mexico, let alone New Mexico's strong opposition to becoming the nation's "temporary" repository. The proposed Texas site nearby also faces stiff opposition and will probably be dropped from the list. (It's currently blocked by a federal court decision that's been upheld on appeal.)

No one wants the waste.

Dan Stetson has no business being on SCE's Community Engagement Panel, let alone leading it, while claiming ANY progress has been made -- but I'll admit the last guy was even worse (or at least seemed that way). In any case, SCE's hand-picked CEP has never had more than one half-way reasonable person on the panel at a time, and usually less than that.

So what can be done? The real problem is that no solution is WORTH THE MONEY. If it's going to bankrupt the nuclear industry, they don't want it. And the entire industry wants to pretend it's a solvable problem, when it simply isn't. Not safely, quickly, and permanently. And certainly not cheaply, either.

So anything even slightly approaching an adequate solution is NOT available. And never will be, unless we shut down the entire industry, as we must. As the whole planet must, because we can't afford to do anything else. The future health care costs alone, after one more accident after another...and another...and another.

Renewables are cheaper in every way.

In the meantime, the nuclear industry wants America to spend the money that was set aside for a permanent repository on THEIR problem storing the nuclear waste THEY MADE -- much of it long after they KNEW Yucca Mountain was never going to open. Why are WE paying THEM? Who let that happen? The same politicians who now claim a real solution is just a matter of finding a community that wants to take the waste "temporarily" which means for their lifetime, and probably several more lifetimes.

But it won't be a safe place, that's why it's "temporary."

Why are we still making more nuclear waste if "temporary" storage is still the best we can do to get rid of the waste we continue to make?

Yet Sforza's star-glazed eyes see Murray say: "the only thing stopping us is public trust" and believes it. Believes the simulations such as crashing an empty cask into a (non-reinforced) concrete wall, or shaking a NEW "real" dry cask with "simulated" nuclear waste as if in a simulated earthquake -- not a cask that's decades old and highly embrittled (which can happen in less than two decades, so some of ours might have hidden cracks already).

Sforza believes the tests that indicate how far the casks can fall and what they might land on are adequate. But the criteria were utterly insufficient! And the DOE knows that! Murray undoubtedly knows it too. They know far worse accidents can happen that they will not be able to handle. They know terrorists can overwhelm their security -- with airplanes, with drones, and with missiles launched from nearby buildings. They know a dry cask fire in a tunnel could be impossible to reach.

They're just willing to make you, me and everyone else take the risks they see as minimal, despite the fact that thousands of casks all over the country must travel thousands of miles over our pot-holed old highway system. They completely ignore that a bridge can fall ONTO a traveling dry cask, or the fact that a lot of bridge's roadways are far higher than the DOE's test drop height test.

In the 1980s, for a while I traveled every day over the Mianus River Bridge in Connecticut, but fortunately mine was not one of the vehicles -- two tractor trailer trucks and two cars -- that suddenly fell ~80 feet along with a large section of the bridge (three people were killed and three injured). But it wasn't really so sudden: I heard the bridge screeching at least once a few days before it fell, as a poorly anchored pin holding the girders underneath was being sheared whenever a heavy truck passed over it. I followed the truck for several miles to prove to myself it wasn't the truck I had heard screech (so it had to be the bridge!). Local residents had already tried to get the state highway department to investigate for weeks by then. And then suddenly the bridge section fell.

We'll already have to crisscross the country thousands of times, covering millions of miles, to put all the nuclear waste we already have somewhere -- if we ever decide where, and how.

And yet we're still making MORE of this stuff? Are we crazy or something?

Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA

This essay is available online here:
https://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2024/07/millions-of-miles-thousands-of-trips.html

Addendum: There is another potential option, full of its own pitfalls and not a reason to keep making more waste. That is NEUTRALIZING the waste. It's hardly a perfect solution, but the worst of the waste -- the plutonium and some of the uranium -- can be converted to shorter-lived isotopes, to some extent, so that most of what remains is "hot" for tens of centuries rather than thousands of millennia. But of course, it's sure to be expensive (at least to set up, but it does generate heat as a "waste" product). And worst of all it would make MORE of the short-lived, most dangerous (in some ways) isotopes. And an industrial process has not been established (although the neutralization idea has been patented already). Perhaps the best advantage of neutralization is that it destroys the ability to use the nuclear waste to make weapons or to reprocess it for reuse in nuclear reactors.

Additional information about the nuclear waste neutralization process, its advantages and disadvantages, is available in an essay I wrote in 2017:
https://acehoffman.blogspot.com/2017/11/what-is-spent-nuclear-fuel.html

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Article in the OC Register July 14, 2024:
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https://www.ocregister.com/2024/07/14/progress-on-san-onofre-spent-nuclear-fuel-tests-and-boring-results-help/

NEWS Opinion Columnist
Progress on San Onofre spent nuclear fuel? Tests and boring results help
Column: DOE official wants to instill public confidence in nuclear waste storage. Paralysis costs taxpayers more than $2 million every day.

The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station as seen from Trail 1 at San Onofre State Beach south of San Clemente on Tuesday, August 27, 2019. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Teri Sforza. OC Watchdog Blog.

By TERI SFORZA | tsforza@scng.com | Orange County Register
UPDATED: July 14, 2024 at 8:28 a.m.

Take a last look: Those iconic twin domes should be gone by mid-2027.

“Final backfill” at what was once San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is slated for 2028.

And the highly radioactive spent fuel that has built up over so many decades — now encased in steel and concrete on a bluff over the blue Pacific — could begin exiting by 2040 to one of, say, five temporary storage sites.

“I hope I laid out a really simple vision for where we’re going,” said Paul Murray, the rock star of the recent SONGS Community Engagement Panel/Spent Fuel Solutions meeting. “Judge me on it. We have to make progress.”

Murray has a divine British accent, a mechanical engineer’s practicality and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. He was a bigwig in the nuclear industry for more than 40 years and is now the U.S. Department of Energy’s new “Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and High Level Waste Disposition,” bringing fresh energy and clear-eyed analysis to what has seemed a doomed and quixotic exercise: figuring out what to do with America’s commercial nuclear waste.

Why, exactly, is the U.S. the only Western nation — besides Ukraine! — that has no permanent repository program underway, despite nearly 75 years lead time and billions spent on moribund Yucca Mountain?

“It wasn’t a consent-based process,” Murray said flatly. “We basically forced Nevada to take the repository.”

Under the guidance of the US Department of Energy, the Sandia National Laboratory used the Large High-Performance Outdoor Shake Table at UC San Diego on June 12 to demonstrate the performance of dry storage systems under simulated earthquake conditions. (Courtesy Southern California Edison) Nevada doesn’t have any nuclear power plants, and clearly, coercion doesn’t work. Nations with repository programs underway worked hard to get consent from host communities — and the DOE’s reborn effort is committed to doing the same.

“The only thing stopping us is public trust and political will to actually do it,” he said.

Gaining the public trust is vital, he said, detailing “performance demonstrations” where waste canisters can crash into bridges, drop from on high, endure showers of dead chickens — or whatever it takes to prove that they’re “robust and nothing is going to happen” when the time to transport waste to disposal sites finally comes.

To that end, a canister from San Onofre was recently taken to Sandia National Labs, loaded with dummy fuel assemblies, then placed on the shaker table at UC San Diego — one of the two largest earthquake simulators in the world — and subjected to myriad quakes to test their soundness.

“It was a bit underwhelming,” Murray said. “Nothing happened. But we will do this to help build public confidence that these systems are safe in an earthquake.”

Dan Stetson, chair of the volunteer Community Engagement Panel, agreed. “Yes, it was kind of boring,” he said. “Which was good.”

Muscling forward
Paralysis on the waste disposal front is extremely expensive.

U.S. taxpayers — whether they’ve reaped the fruits of nuclear energy or not — are forking over more than $2 million every day to reimburse utilities for the costs of babysitting — er, we mean, storing — this spent fuel. That’s some $800 million every single year.

Why are taxpayers on the hook? Because the federal government was contractually obligated to start picking up commercial nuclear waste for permanent disposal in 1998. Utility customers paid billions into the Nuclear Waste Fund to cover those costs. That fund has $47.7 billion, and earned about $1.7 billion in interest last year — but the feds still haven’t accepted an ounce of commercial fuel for permanent disposal.

Taxpayers stand to shell out another $35 billion to the utilities for storing this waste before an interim site (or sites) opens. Some say that liability could exceed $50 billion.

“The federal government has to take title to the fuel,” Murray said. “The only way to stop that liability is to take title to the fuel.”

Dry storage of used fuel rods at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station on Thursday, December 16, 2021. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG) Here at San Onofre, dry storage cost some $300 million to build and $20 million a year to run, Stetson said.

Murray has lots of ideas on how to muscle temporary storage forward.

There are 20 sites like San Onofre — shuttered reactors stuck with millions of pounds of highly radioactive waste. Might any be willing to host waste from other reactors until a permanent repository is built? “I want to explore this option,” he said. “It could save money overall.”

U.S. industry is working on repositories with governments overseas; Murray wants to mine that expertise and bring it home.

And why, he wonders, does everyone look past America’s one and only deep geologic repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico? It’s been operating for 25 years, disposing of waste from the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons programs, in salt beds thousands of feet below the earth’s crust. “How can my program collaborate?” he asked.

(Murray didn’t mention the two accidents at WIPP in 2014 that shut the program down for three years, but lessons have allegedly been learned and there hasn’t been much drama there over the past decade.)

Anyway, the DOE’s consent-based siting consortia is in the “Planning and Capacity Building” stage right now, trying to earn the trust of local communities and encouraging “mutual learning” and understanding of how nuclear waste management works. That’s slated to wrap up next year.

It’ll be followed by the “Site Screening and Assessment” stage, where DOE examines potential sites hand-in-hand with those communities (figure another 4-7 years here), wrapping up with the final “Negotiation and Implementation” stage, where agreements are struck with “willing and informed host communities, with licensing, construction and operation activities to follow” (another 4-5 years).

Keep in mind that this push for temporary storage is just a stopgap until a deep geologic disposal site (or sites) is built. It will require Congress to make changes to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to allow money to be spent on the effort, and Murray insists that the U.S. must have a dedicated office for nuclear waste disposal — and serious funding — to keep the process on track over what will literally be hundreds of years of work.

If temporary storage opens in 2040, and the oldest fuel is moved first from the nation’s reactors, it’ll take some 50 years before it’s all there. Expect a half-century to get a permanent repository open, and 100 years until it closes. That puts us at about 2300.

“This is a multi-generational project,” he said. “Slow but steady progress to build public and political trust. … Strong engagement with tribal representatives. … A simple vision everyone can understand. We’re moving, we’re making progress. Everyone can see it.”

Southern California Edison’s projected work schedule for San Onofre
Rallying
It’s with cautious optimism we note that things do seem to be moving forward.

The U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy, Climate and Grid Security held a hearing on “American Nuclear Energy Expansion; Spent Fuel Policy and Innovation” in the spring. Stetson was there, testifying about the importance of interim storage because it can get waste moved off-site decades earlier than deep geologic repositories. San Onofre, of course, is in an earthquake zone close to some 10 million people; not an ideal place to store nuclear waste.

“I was really surprised and felt good after the meeting,” Stetson said. “The amount of bipartisan engagement really surprised me and warmed my heart. I left feeling very optimistic.”

Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley and San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond recently trouped to Washington D.C. to stress the urgency of dealing with the nuclear waste conundrum upon congressional leaders and other federal officials. In Sacramento, Joint Resolution 18 was introduced in May by Assemblymember Laurie Davies, R-Laguna Niguel, and Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, urging Congress “to prioritize fulfilling the federal government’s legal and contractual obligation to provide a home for spent nuclear fuel within California and 33 other states across the nation.”

U.S. Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, has made the issue a priority since arriving in Congress, helping forge a bipartisan caucus on the issue and shepherd through the funding to restart the consent-based siting initiative.

“I want to be clear-eyed,” he said. “It took years to make this mess, and it will take years to fix it.”

On July 1, the DOE issued a request for information “to identify industry partners interested in contributing to the development of federal consolidated interim storage facilities for the management of spent nuclear fuel. DOE is also seeking information from parties interested in providing engineering design, project management, integration, and other services needed to build and manage consolidated interim storage facilities.” Folks must submit responses by Sept. 5.

That feedback will inform a competitive request for proposals for the engineering design of an actual, real federal consolidated interim storage facility.

“While it may appear to be glacially slow,” Stetson said, “we are making progress.”

RELATED LINKS

Concerns about San Onofre are real, but experts debate level of risk
King tides, groundwater rise: Threats to nuclear waste at San Onofre?
Big changes underway as San Onofre nuclear plant comes down
Nuclear Regulatory Commission finds two violations at San Onofre, but no safety threat
Feds hand out $26 million to help find home for nuclear waste
Originally Published: July 14, 2024 at 7:00 a.m.

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Three reviews of books about nuclear weapons and nuclear war

Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen
(reviewed June, 2024 by Sharon and Ace Hoffman)

“Nuclear War: A Scenario” (pub. March, 2024) by Annie Jacobsen forces readers to contemplate the incomprehensible: A global war that begins with a nuclear first strike: A “bolt-out-of-the-blue” as nuclear strategists call it.

The book considers one specific triggering event to illustrate the start of a global disaster that would harm or kill every living thing on the planet. At the same time, Jacobsen makes it clear that many different triggering events could lead to the same catastrophic results. It won’t matter which country fires the first shot, or why. It won’t matter precisely how many nuclear weapons each country has or even which country is the target of the initial strike.

The book forces readers to recognize that after the first nuclear weapon is fired, the precarious standoff that has prevailed since 1945 would quickly collapse. Once deterrence fails, it is almost inevitable that every nuclear state is going to execute its plan to destroy its enemies and therefore, the entire planet.

In Jacobsen’s Scenario it quickly becomes apparent that the response options available to the President of the United States and his military commanders allow little or no time for discussion, negotiation, or communication (other than military orders). Jacobsen explains that these limitations to a “rational” response almost certainly exist in the government and military of every nuclear nation.

In Jacobsen’s Scenario, the United States and Russia both make erroneous assumptions which have disastrous consequences. The decision makers acknowledge that their assumptions may be incorrect, and that the results of their actions could spell doom for millions of their own citizens. Nevertheless, both sides launch their entire nuclear arsenals as quickly as possible. Before the other side can destroy them.

The target of one nuclear missile in Jacobsen’s Scenario is a nuclear power plant (Diablo Canyon in California). Jacobsen vividly describes how the radiation released from the reactors and their spent fuel magnifies the destruction and suffering caused by a single bomb. Reading about the repercussions of bombing Diablo Canyon should give pause to everybody watching the ongoing military conflicts worldwide, especially around the Zaporizhzhia reactors in Ukraine, currently being held “hostage” by Russia.

Jacobsen also emphasizes the impact nuclear war would have on the electronic devices that pervade modern life by including in her Scenario a bomb specifically exploded to release a massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP) above the United States. The EMP causes planes to fall out of the sky, cars to stop (or fail to stop) regardless of driver input, and electric grids, sewage plants, and gas pipelines to fail. Communication reverts to a time before telephones, radio, television or the Internet.

Jacobsen gathered data from many different perspectives and talked extensively with people who have studied nuclear war scenarios for decades. The book cites interviews with political leaders including former U.S. Secretaries of Defense Leon Panetta and Dr. William J. Perry, as well as military leaders including General C. Robert Keller (former commander, U.S. Strategic Command) and Vice Admiral Michael J. Conner (former commander, U.S. nuclear submarine forces).

The final section of “Nuclear War: A Scenario” explains in horrific detail that the results of a nuclear attack are not limited to the combatants. An attack on a single country by a single other country would cause global devastation as fallout spreads and nuclear winter descends upon the Earth. Jacobsen’s description of a freezing world where nothing grows, clean water doesn’t exist, and radiation contaminates everything is terrifying.

“Nuclear War: A Scenario” by Annie Jacobsen explains why deescalation in nuclear war is highly unlikely, while unstoppable escalation is nearly inevitable.

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The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War by Fred Kaplan
(reviewed June, 2024 by Sharon and Ace Hoffman)

“The Bomb” (pub. 2020) by Fred Kaplan uncovers the complex history of nuclear policy in the United States. From Eisenhower to Trump, “The Bomb” explores the options the U.S. government considered and the decisions that were made.

Some presidents had goals for nuclear policy from their first day in office, but were unable to achieve those goals. Other presidents began their administration with one perspective and changed their minds as they learned more, and/or as circumstances changed. For example, President Kennedy came very close to using nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but Kaplan explores in depth why, when, and how Kennedy’s perspective changed.

President Reagan’s thinking about nuclear war began to change after he watched “The Day After” (a 1979 television special about the aftermath of a nuclear war). It took several more years and a change of leadership in the Soviet Union, but Reagan and Gorbachev negotiated a drastic reduction in nuclear arsenals. In the mid-1980s there were approximately 70,000 nuclear warheads globally. As of 2024, there are approximately 12,500 warheads in the arsenals of nine nuclear states (currently, the United States and Russia each have more than 5,000 warheads).

Each administration’s nuclear policy decisions involve a complex juggling act. Before announcing a new policy or even making a speech about a possible change in policy, the potential reactions from other countries – both allies and adversaries – must be considered. Conflicting priorities within the government can also impact whether a policy change is possible. For example: Will the Joint Chiefs and their Congressional allies support ratification of a treaty that reduces a specific type of nuclear weapon?

In addition to investigating each president’s perspective and how it evolved (or not), Kaplan introduces many other people who have participated in nuclear policy decisions. For example, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and his Rand Corporation “whiz kids” were active participants during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and many of their ideas continue to impact U.S. nuclear policy.

Most people today would probably agree that ANY nuclear weapon’s use is “overkill” by its very nature, but historically it’s been a hard argument to make. As an example, Kaplan describes how Frank Miller spent decades investigating the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP, and yes, it’s pronounced the same as “psy-op”). Miller’s team eventually got access to data that showed that the SIOP involved firing multiple missiles at practically every target in the Soviet Union. Miller’s team finally convinced both the military planners and the government strategists that most of those missiles were redundant. (Perhaps that was the real psy-op -- but a very necessary one.)

A more than 80% reduction in nuclear warheads since the 1980s is certainly a huge improvement (even though it’s not nearly good enough). But it wasn’t easy or inevitable. Kaplan’s “The Bomb” explains how it happened.

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Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom by Elaine Scarry
(reviewed June, 2024 by Sharon and Ace Hoffman)

In this extraordinary book (pub. 2014), Elaine Scarry explains how nuclear weapons violate the social contracts upon which all societies and governments depend. Starting with the United States Constitution and its provisions for declaring and waging war, “Thermonuclear Monarchy” explores how the threat of nuclear attack leads to undeclared and illegal wars. Delving deep into the underlying principles that support all governments – whether ancient monarchies or modern democracies – Scarry shows that executive control of nuclear weapons is illegal because it undermines the fundamental right to live in safety.

“Thermonuclear Monarchy” emphasizes that it is the responsibility of citizens and their representatives to control the means for waging war, and that consent of the governed is the mechanism used to assert this control. Scarry shows the importance of consent by exploring its role in medical practice and other personal social contracts such as marriage. She points out that medical patients control the actions of their physicians by giving or withholding consent, and that citizens must be able to control the actions of their governments by explicitly withholding consent to use nuclear weapons.

Scarry equates the care a physician must take to treat each patient with compassion and expertise to the role of the legislature in carefully deliberating before declaring war. She emphasizes that legislative debate is an important brake on hasty decisions, and helps ensure that all other options have been exhausted first.

Most importantly, Scarry tackles the argument that the emergency nature of a nuclear response requires suspension of the normal rules. This dangerous argument has been used since the beginning of the nuclear age to usurp the requirement for declarations of war and to put control of nuclear weapons in the hands of a few people – whether chief executives such as the U.S. President, military leaders, or tactical military personnel such as bomber pilots, submarine captains, or those manning missile silos.

Scarry reminds us that in any emergency, people need a predefined plan that has been practiced and can be executed without panic. For example, by practicing CPR according to a well-documented plan, two people who have never met (and may not even speak the same language) can work together to save the life of a third person. Similarly, in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Congress did not abdicate responsibility for declaring war – instead the legislature considered the importance of the decision they were making and engaged in thoughtful – though urgent – debate.

“Thermonuclear Monarchy” explains that the arguments presented for giving up control of nuclear weapons in an emergency are actually the antithesis of proper planning. Instead of ceding control to the executive branch to react unilaterally to the emergency, both the government and the citizens should prepare for emergencies. Since planning for a nuclear war is impossible, citizens and their representatives must eliminate nuclear weapons and take back control over, and responsibility for, declaring and waging war.

Nuclear weapons keep the citizens of earth constantly at risk of sudden annihilation. “Thermonuclear Monarchy” by Elaine Scarry explains how utterly immoral that is.

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Response to this newsletter:

"I read Thermonuclear Monarchy years ago and tell people it is a meditation on the second amendment that has nothing to do with gun rights."
-- comment from Jan Boudart, secretary, Nuclear Energy Information Service (https://www.NEIS.org)

More than a century is enough to know there is NO solution to the nuclear waste problem.

April 18, 2024

by Ace Hoffman

Yesterday evening (April 17, 2024) the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held a live and online public meeting ("NOT a hearing" they reminded us at the start) regarding the possibility of restarting the Palisades nuclear reactor in Michigan, located only a few dozen miles from hundreds of thousands of people, along the banks of a source of drinking water and food for many millions.

Palisades was[/is] an old 800 Mw Combustion Engineering Boiling Water Reactor that opened in 1971 -- making it three years older than the Agency that regulates it. BWRs are the least efficient type of currently operating reactor (and that will remain true until/unless Small Modular Reactors come along, which promise to be even less efficient -- IF they ever come to fruition).

Palisades was shuttered in May, 2022. Later it was sold to a company that has been collecting decommissioned reactors all over the country, but which has suddenly decided to try to reopen Palisades and become a nuclear reactor operator. The NRC says this is the first time anyone has attempted to reopen a closed reactor, but is hopeful there may be more in the near future. For a variety of reasons, this is a terrible idea. For Palisades specifically, it's insane.

Generally yesterday's NRC meeting was horrible: It was poorly managed, and the NRC speakers were evading the real issues (the dangers, the risks, the costs, the alternatives).

But once the Q&A portion started, finally, there were some really terrific speakers opposing restart, especially the very first opposition speaker -- and it's a good thing she spoke early on, because she needed a bit more than the two lousy minutes the NRC was allowing each speaker. (And only one question per speaker, with no follow-up, unless they got back around to you (which didn't even come close to happening).)

Throughout the meeting it seemed as if the NRC was only there to defend themselves and the industry -- specifically Holtec (the current owner) and Entergy (the previous owner). Neither corporation was represented.

The NRC representatives had absolutely zero sympathy for anyone worrying about the mountains of nuclear waste that already sits at the Palisades site, which they are threatening to start adding to: "I sleep well at night" one NRC official said about that.

And as always, the NRC is completely ignoring how incredibly more dangerous "fresh" nuclear waste actually is, let alone the numerous and inherent dangers of an operating reactor. Both issues are, by themselves, perfectly good reasons to keep Palisades closed forever.

Since it closed almost two years ago, none of the waste currently stored at Palisades is "fresh" (recently removed from the reactor). Therefore, at Palisades, a considerable amount of the danger from spent nuclear fuel, if a breach does occur, has already subsided, because many of the most hazardous, short-lived isotopes have already decayed, at least somewhat. But it is still far from safe! And the NRC is also completely ignoring the fact that even spent nuclear fuel that is many centuries old -- and even many millennia old -- will still be extremely toxic, hazardous, useless, and difficult to contain.

Neither the NRC nor anybody else on the planet has figured out to safely manage nuclear waste yet and (spoiler alert!): They never will.

Perfect containment is an impossibility in this world, in this solar system, in this universe. Even a small asteroid impact can ruin your day -- and make the entire globe uninhabitable if it strikes a high-level nuclear waste dump such as currently exists at Palisades.

When one speaker mentioned that the previous plant operators had destroyed vital records, the NRC claimed they'd somehow recreated the data and therefore it wasn't a problem, never grasping the concept that destruction of records is likely to have been a systemic problem at the plant, not an isolated one.

And when another speaker complained that there had been numerous violations of NRC policy at the facility in the past, the NRC merely said their policy is not to let bad things happen, and if any company does anything against NRC regulations, they'll...give them a waiver after the fact.

Oh wait, they did say that, in essence, but they worded it differently, as in loudly saying: "They would be punished severely" then much more quietly adding: "...unless we applied a waiver." And they almost always can apply a waiver (after the fact) and when that's just not possible, the fine never fits the crime anyway.

The nuclear industry has had OVER 100 YEARS to figure out what to do about the waste problem. Nuclear promoters have known -- or could have known, if they'd wanted to -- how incredibly dangerous anything radioactive actually is, at least since the Radium Girls, if not longer. That scandal was more than 100 years ago. Over 100 years to realize how difficult this problem will be to solve. Over 100 years to fully grasp what an incredibly small quantity of radioactive nuclear "quap" (as H. G. Wells called it) is required to kill, disfigure, and otherwise harm a person or other living thing.

Recall that Vladimir Putin had nuclear whistleblower Alexander Litvinenko murdered with approximately less than 1/20th of a teaspoon of Polonium-210 -- and everyone near him was put in danger as his body decomposed right before our eyes. That's what radiation does. But in microscopic doses it merely does it on a microscopic -- but not harmless -- scale. Even the least powerful radioactive decay (for example, a Tritium decay) can destroy thousands of chemical bonds in the human body. One radioactive decay.

So there's just no excuse for making ever-more piles of radioactive nuclear waste that is so highly toxic and so impossible to isolate from humanity. And so worthless.

But instead, the NRC representatives ignored every issue the attendees brought up: The issue of the shifting sand dunes on which the reactor was built, as well as the risks from climate-caused large waves that are possible from the nearby Great Lake. They ignored threats from terrorism and war as well, despite ample current evidence that it is no longer reasonable to assume terrorism against nuclear power plants is somehow magically "off the table" (as if it ever actually was) and several wars are going on as we speak, requiring and/or getting huge U.S. materiel involvement.

And as always, the NRC completely ignored the cleaner better cheaper safer alternative energy sources, the likely embrittlement issues throughout the plant, the loss of trained personnel... The entire NRC staff was all-in on restart. When someone asked about their response to a recent General Accounting Office report which indicates the NRC needs to take competing advantages of alternative energy resources into account when balancing the options, the NRC spokesperson simply assured attendees that they hadn't had time to review the GAO report!

There's lots of offshore wind on Lake Michigan.

The NRC is hardly an unbiased regulator. Yet that's why they were cleaved from what became the Department of Energy in the first place -- to be unbiased (the DOE is an unabashed promoter of nuclear energy, much to its lasting shame). The NRC NEVER fulfilled their charter. If they had, we wouldn't have nuclear power at all, anywhere, and we'd all be better off for it.

The NRC "spokesliars" rambled on for over an hour, telling us how good they are at regulating and how to contact them later if you want your written comments to also be ignored. Then they left just one hour for the public they supposedly came to listen to -- and a lot of "our" time they took back for their lame responses. With dozens left to speak, they extended it by about 20 whole minutes so they could act like they cared.

The NRC didn't even bother to hire a professional facilitator like they should have -- and used to. This meeting was done on the cheap -- but the government has over eight billion dollars to give to Holtec for restart? What a sham!

But at least they showed up: After San Onofre closed down permanently in 2012 (at least the locals ASSUME it's permanent!), the NRC stopped showing up entirely: No more hearings despite a mountain of hot nuclear waste that will need constant attention for longer than human civilization has existed. And while we're at it, does anyone recall WHY San Onofre shut down long before its license expired?

NRC maleficence. And utility maleficence too, but I guess that's expected.

The utility (Southern California Edison) tried to slip in a new design for their steam generators as "like-for-like." They supposedly did this so that the NRC wouldn't scrutinize the changes they made to generate more income (changes which caused the reactors to fail miserably -- almost catastrophically -- a few months after installation). The NRC blithely let the utility scam them. But it's not like they didn't know how different the S.G.s really were -- they must have known -- its that neither the NRC nor the utility WANTED the necessary public disclosures, hearings and scrutiny, since the math just wasn't there to spend well over a billion dollars to upgrade the reactors rather than let them retire a few years prematurely and be done with it. And put the money into renewables.

Instead, with future governor Gavin Newsom's approval, the utility separated out about half a billion dollars worth of additional upgrades that would also be needed if operation were to continue (including reactor pressure vessel head replacement for both reactors) to make the total apparent cost for just the S.G. replacement portion somewhat under a billion dollars. But the new S.G.s were faulty. And any competent technical review would probably have caught the problems with the new design.

This year, at Diablo Canyon (California's only remaining pair of still-operating reactors) the NRC is helping California's pro-nuke Governor push for extending the reactor licenses to 60 years. Doing so would void an agreement the utility previously made with the public, the regulators and the state to shut those old decrepit reactors at the end of their planned 40-year life-span.

At first the extension was just going to be for five years "during a transition to renewables" but the NRC doesn't offer five-year license extensions, only 20 years at a time. So suddenly a closing, decrepit pair of reactors in one of California's most earthquake-prone areas might keep generating nuclear waste for 20 more years -- not five, and not closing when their license actually should expire.

It's an insane decision in today's renewables-rich environment. Nobody -- least of all California -- needs nuclear power over wind/wave/solar, and California has been proving that every day, generating more energy from those sources than it uses for part or all of nearly every day this year, in a trend that will only grow exponentially over the next few years -- with or without Diablo Canyon -- but much more so without it. And much safer without it, too. And much cheaper.

California can do MUCH better without Diablo Canyon, and Michigan can do MUCH better without Palisades.

So why does Gov. Newsom want to keep DCNPP open anyway? The claim, of course, is they want to keep it open for the environment: The nuclear industry has decided to claim to be "carbon free" even though it's a blatant lie when looking at the whole industrial cycle of uranium extraction, processing the uranium ore into nuclear fuel, reactor construction, operation, maintenance and the never-ending decommissioning phase. And the accident risk.

But the real reason Gov. Newsom is desperate to keep DCNPP open is because if Diablo Canyon closes, California will be nuke-free at last, and no place for Small Modular Reactors. California's current state statutes forbid "new" reactors, but there is a plan to either rescind that old ruling or, failing that, to call any site that has -- or had? -- an operating reactor license an "old" site that can replace its "old" reactor with "new" SMRs. Even if the reactor hasn't been there for decades!

Seriously demented thinking, but that's true with ALL nuclear reactor "wisdom." Most if it based on distorting the truth, when ignoring the truth isn't an option.

One last tidbit:

Considering what is happening at Palisades and at Diablo Canyon, the next time a community gets a reactor closed for ANY reason, it should be sure to require the control room be immediately destroyed so that restart becomes impossible. If they say they need to keep the control room to monitor to spent fuel pool or something, that's a bogus excuse. Don't buy it.

Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California

The author has been studying nuclear energy and nuclear weapons independently since before Palisades opened...