Ace Hoffman's Nuclear Failures Reports: December 2024

Saturday, December 28, 2024

Book Review: Nuclear Is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change

Reviewed by Sharon and Ace Hoffman

Physicist M.V. Ramana has studied nuclear power policies worldwide. Currently Ramana is a professor of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. Previous positions include researcher at the Princeton Program on Science and Global Security and at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, Bangalore, India. Accolades include a Guggenheim Fellowship and the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Award.

Ramana's most recent book, Nuclear Is Not the Solution, shows why nuclear power cannot combat climate change and has no place in the planet’s energy portfolio: It costs too much, takes too long to build, encourages weapons proliferation, and contaminates the environment.

People who promote nuclear power often start with the lie that it is clean energy. Ramana refutes this by describing the environmental destruction nuclear power actually causes, starting with mining uranium ore and continuing through each phase, including the unsolvable problem it leaves: “… we can neither unmake radioactive wastes once they are created nor bury them in a manner that we can be absolutely sure they will never come back out.” (page 61).

He describes the powerful economic and political forces that promote nuclear power, and exposes the false promises of “small-modular reactors” (“SMRs”) and other supposedly “advanced” designs such as liquid sodium reactors. These designs do not address the underlying problems with nuclear power – and they've all already been tried – unsuccessfully – in the past.

It takes nearly a decade to build a typical nuclear power plant, whereas utility-scale wind or solar can be built in under two years. When planning, permitting and financing are included, the disparity is even larger. Climate solutions cannot wait.

Nuclear Is Not the Solution makes obvious what nuclear proponents try to ignore: “… today the most cost-effective and quickest way of reducing air pollution is to replace coal and natural gas with renewable sources of power.” (page 45).

Nuclear energy in the United States costs $168/kWh (2021 data), while wind-generated energy costs $38/kWh and utility-scale solar energy costs $34/kWh. Renewable energy prices are declining while the cost of nuclear power continues to increase.

Why do governments continue to pour money into nuclear power? One reason is the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, including guaranteed jobs for nuclear plant operators when they leave the military.

Politicians and government agencies are also influenced by corporations and by wealthy individuals who have a stake in nuclear projects. The potential profit equation is simple: government subsidies, guaranteed customers, and indemnity from risk. All governments severely limit potential payouts from nuclear accidents (in the U.S. this is done through the Price-Anderson Act).

In addition to economics, Nuclear Is Not the Solution covers the inevitability of future nuclear accidents: “Accidents, almost by definition, are chaotic, occurring due to reasons that engineers fail to consider …”. (page 39) As a Fukushima protester’s sign says: “They say that the probability of a reactor meltdown is one in a million years / In my lifetime, three meltdowns.” (page 26)

As in his previous books and articles, Ramana's writing is clear and concise. He also provides numerous references to back up his conclusions about nuclear power.

If you only read one book on nuclear energy – or even if you've read hundreds of books on the subject, THIS is one of the best, both to read, and to recommend to anyone you know who wants to learn the truth about nuclear power.

Also by M. V. Ramana (and also excellent!):
The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy In India (2012)

Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Book review: Worst Case Scenario by T. J. Newman (reviewed by Sharon and Ace Hoffman)

Reviewed by Sharon and Ace Hoffman, December 24, 2024

NOTE: This review was posted prior to learning that Russia had downed yet another civilian airliner -- Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer ERJ-190AR (4K-AZ65). Known previous civilian planes shot down by Russia are Korean Air 007 & Malasian Airlines MH17.

Worst Case Scenario is a gripping fictional story about a commercial airline crash. Airline crashes happen with infrequent regularity, but in Worst Case Scenario, much of the debris from the crash impacts a nuclear power station with three operating reactors, three overcrowded spent-fuel pools, and on-site nuclear-waste dry-storage casks.

Unfortunately, such an event is very credible: There are over 45,000 commercial flights per day in the United States and over 90 operating reactors. In November 1972, hijackers considered crashing the plane they had taken over into nuclear facilities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The author is a former flight-attendant, and asked some of the pilots she flew with a question: “What’s your biggest fear as a pilot?” One replied: “My biggest fear is a commercial jet slamming into a nuclear power plant.” When Newman responded that such a scenario seemed impossible after 9-11, the pilot answered: “And that’s exactly what they want you to believe.” Indeed: The nuclear establishment has always treated low-probability incidents such as large earthquakes and airplane strikes as if they are impossible, rather than merely unlikely.

In the immediate aftermath of the fictional airplane crash, the station manager tells a shocked U.S. President that if a spent-fuel pool loses its water, the resulting fire would make one think: “Chernobyl was a campfire.” He explains that losing water in one spent-fuel pool would inevitably lead to cascading fires and explosions at all three spent-fuel pools, and all three reactors would soon also melt down, producing “an uncontrollable spread of invisible, toxic, cancer-causing radioactive particulates...”.

Newman’s story takes place on the banks of the Mississippi River. There are currently five operating commercial nuclear reactors located along the Mississippi River. A Worst Case Scenario at any of them would contaminate every city downstream and downwind of the event.

Newman emphasizes the complacent attitudes people have about nuclear power. A fictional scientist from the Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) had tried to convince regulators and the nuclear industry to pay attention to “low-probability, high-consequence” events but was ignored. (NEST is a real agency (https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/nuclear-emergency-support-team-nest).) When the NEST scientist questions the station manager about the tight packing of nuclear fuel rods in the spent fuel pools, the manager explains that there’s no more space at the site for more dry casks. As real-life regulators keep extending licenses for nuclear power plants to 80 and even 100 years or more, this is a realistic situation.

Newman explores additional consequences of the accident. A first-grade teacher looks at her students and thinks about how much more vulnerable their growing bodies are to radiation than her own.

The risks from cascading failures is an important theme of the book. The emergency generators at the nuclear station crank up as soon as offsite power is lost, but nobody knows if the connection to the power grid can be repaired, or additional fuel brought to the site in time to avoid catastrophic problems when fuel runs out.

At Fukushima in 2011, flooding destroyed the emergency generators, which led to all three meltdowns. At Three Mile Island (TMI) a valve which should have closed automatically remained stuck in the open position, but the control panel indicated that the valve was closed. Another indicator light was hidden by a maintenance tag, causing the operators to miss important data. Given the confusing information, reactor operators mistakenly followed Naval reactor training which did not apply to the situation at TMI.

A potential nuclear disaster is one of two major story lines in Newman's book, which also focuses on the personal relationships between the characters. A collection of heroic actions and unlikely coincidences help avert an even worse catastrophe. But anyone reading the book can realize that it won't always work out that way.

After 9-11 the NRC and the nuclear industry were desperate to avoid explaining what would have happened if the planes had attacked the reactors at Indian Point, or if the plane that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania had instead crashed into TMI (possibly the hijacker's actual intention). Worst Case Scenario does a great job of showing that official information about nuclear safety is intentionally misleading. In an early scene the station manager admits to himself that: “… everyone who worked in nuclear power knew: The ‘tests’ the government had run in the wake of September 11 … were at best incomplete and at worst suspect. ... used small planes traveling only up to three hundred miles per hour.”

If an airplane (or a missile, tsunami, hurricane, tornado, or asteroid, or…) were to strike a nuclear power facility, it would, indeed, be a "Worst Case Scenario." Fortunately, so far, the book is still fiction.

Notes:

For a unique perspective explaining why the TMI operators failed to recognize what was happening see: https://www.ans.org/news/article-1556/tmi-operators-did-what-they-were-trained-to-do/.

The possibility of an airplane crashing into a commercial nuclear power plant is nothing new and was well-known long before 9-11 -- although of course the nuclear industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have always downplayed the possibility of such an incident – whether accidental or intentional.

One thing that’s seldom discussed, but is emphasized in “Worst Case Scenario” is that if an airplane hit the spent fuel it could actually be WORSE, than if an airplane hit a reactor. There are several reasons this is true including the domes protecting the reactor. In addition, there's much more radioactivity in the waste than in the reactor. (That's why, first and foremost, we have to stop making more nuclear waste.)

The closest the world has come to a plane crashing into a nuclear power plant occurred on November 11, 1972 when a hijacker threatened to crash a plane into the nuclear facilities at Oak Ridge, specifically the High Flux Isotope Reactor. (The non-fiction book about this incident is “Odyssey of Terror” by Ed Blair with William R. Haas.)

Sooner or late an airplane will crash into a wind turbine, and the wind turbine will be blamed for causing the crash…but when an airplane crashes into a nuclear waste dump, the pilot will be blamed, or air traffic control, or the aircraft manufacturer...anyone except the reactor company which is responsible for putting a hazard in harms way and not protecting it properly from the inevitable.

Pictured: Still image from a 2005 animation, "One Bad Day at San Onofre" by Ace Hoffman. An airplane is about to strike the north dome, a terrorist is about to come into view, attacking from the south to lob mortars at the plant, an asteroid has destroyed the south dome and that reactor is on fire and melting down. An earthquake, tsunami and tornado are also arriving...and the operators probably got nervous and are pushing the wrong buttons.

Sunday, December 15, 2024

Book Review: Dirty Secrets of Nuclear Power in an Era of Climate Change by Brugge and Datesman

Reviewed by Sharon and Ace Hoffman

Dirty Secrets of Nuclear Power in an Era of Climate Change summarizes a wide range of evidence regarding the dangers of nuclear power. The authors (Doug Brugge and Aaron Datesman) explain why nuclear power is not a solution to climate change, why it has never been cost-effective (and will never be), why more -- and possibly worse -- nuclear accidents are inevitable, and why the continued accumulation of nuclear waste is foolhardy and irresponsible.

"Dirty Secrets" also examines the social impacts of nuclear power and nuclear weapons proliferation, including exploitation of indigenous communities throughout the nuclear fuel cycle – from uranium mining to nuclear waste storage.

Both authors are scientists, and their rigorous evaluation of evidence highlights the flaws in various pro-nuclear arguments. Each chapter concludes with summary points of the more detailed analysis in the chapter, and includes references for readers interested in learning more.

A recurring theme in Dirty Secrets is that "science" and "regulations" are not the same thing. For example, Linear No Threshold (LNT) is a well-established scientific assumption that there is no safe level of radiation. However, regulations that purport to be based on LNT invariably allow some level of radiation to be added to the environment. Making matters worse, the standard definition of “background radiation” has expanded to include fallout from nuclear testing, emissions from nuclear power plants, and medical radiation exposures.

Dirty Secrets makes a distinction between the environmental and medical concerns regarding background radiation in order to clarify an important point: The environmental portion of background radiation is unavoidable, but that doesn’t mean it's harmless. For example, none of us can avoid naturally-occurring radioactive Potassium-40 (about 0.012 percent of total Potassium), because our bodies require Potassium. But as the authors explain, the unavoidable Potassium-40 doesn’t mean regulations should allow comparable releases of other radioactive isotopes such as Strontium-90.

Readers will find clear information in every chapter of Dirty Secrets. For example, chapter 6 (Three Mile Island:An Unresolved Paradox) reexamines data collected in the wake of the Three Mile Island (TMI) meltdown.

Dirty Secrets points out that if official estimates of radiation releases are accurate, two additional cancer deaths would be expected from TMI. Residents near TMI tell a different story – people getting cancer at an early age, miscarriages and birth defects for humans and animals, and deformed plants. The book explicitly considers the official position that any excess health effects to humans were caused by panic and asks the obvious question: how could panic impact plants?

In the wake of TMI, two groups of respected epidemiologists looked at the same data and drew completely different conclusions. One group was headed by Dr. Mervyn Susser from Columbia University, and found excess cancer deaths, but did not attribute those deaths to radiation from TMI.

The other group was headed by the late Dr. Steven Wing from the University of North Carolina (to whom Dirty Secrets is dedicated). Dr. Wing’s team analyzed Dr. Susser’s data and came to a completely different conclusion: that TMI might have been responsible for observed increases in lung cancer.

Dirty Secrets suggests several reasons for the different conclusions, including the willingness of Dr. Wing’s team to consider anecdotal evidence of individual radiation exposure. For example, some residents reported symptoms such as sunburn-like skin damage, a metallic taste in their mouth, and/or nausea in the immediate aftermath of the accident (these are well-known effects of exposure to high radiation doses).

In attempting to resolve the paradox of the different epidemiology conclusions, the authors of Dirty Secrets became interested in cytogenic studies (examination of chromosomes for failed DNA repairs). Cytogenic studies of people potentially exposed to radiation from TMI were proposed by the Pennsylvania Department of Health in 1979, but the authors found no evidence the studies were ever done.

Some cytogenic analysis was done in the mid-1990s by a group headed by a Russian scientist, Dr. Vladimir Shevchenko. Because chromosome aberrations are stable over time, the authors of Dirty Secrets are currently (2024) participating in an investigation that looks at cytogenic results for people who lived near TMI in 1979.

Delving even deeper into potential causes for observed medical effects from radiation exposure, Chapter 7 (Protracted Exposures May Be Misunderstood) proposes the “shot-noise” hypothesis. This hypothesis offers a possible mechanism for the observed supra-linear response to low-level radiation (see below).

The shot-noise hypothesis focuses on the timing of radioactive decays from internal (inhaled or ingested) beta-emitters and how that timing may impact the resulting biological response. Aaron Datesman, who is the primary author of Chapter 7, provided additional context in his excellent talk for Nuclear Energy Information Service’s (NEIS: https://neis.org/) “Night With the Experts” on November 21, 2024. (We’ve summarized our own understanding of the shot-noise hypothesis below.)

Brugge and Datesman make it clear that the shot-noise hypothesis for low-level radiation is currently unproven. In his NEIS talk (which will be made available at the NEIS website), Datesman suggested an experiment that could disprove the shot-noise hypothesis. In doing so, Datesman is adhering to the standard scientific method of attempting to disprove a hypothesis as a tool for determining whether it deserves additional study.

The authors applied similar scientific reasoning to their analysis of other aspects of nuclear power. Throughout the book they made rigorous attempts to evaluate all of the evidence even if it did not support their conclusions.

Dirty Secrets contains a lot of information that can be used to counter people who promote nuclear power as a solution to the climate crisis. In addition, it presents new theories that might explain some of the biological impacts of radiation, and provides important information about lesser-known studies concerning radiation damage in the wake of the TMI accident.

We highly recommend reading Dirty Secrets and using the book’s information to counter arguments from people who believe nuclear power has a role in slowing climate change.

The digital version of Dirty Secrets of Nuclear Power in an Era of Climate Change is available at no charge through Springer:

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-59595-0

Shot-noise Hypothesis (as interpreted by Sharon and Ace Hoffman)

The shot-noise hypothesis proposes that the supra-linear response to low doses of radiation from internal beta-emitters occurs because of several related factors:

Each beta decay is a high-energy event that lasts for approximately 1 nanosecond. The length and energy of beta emissions can help explain the mechanism for the shot-noise hypothesis.

OH radicals (aka HO or hydroxyl radicals) are one of the primary mechanisms for damage from internal beta emissions.

The shot-noise hypothesis theorizes that timing ("temporal effects") might account for the supra-linear response at very low levels of radiation exposure. According to Dirty Secrets, it takes the human body about two hours to repair a double-strand DNA break. If multiple beta decays occur in a small area during this period (which can occur when radionuclides are inhaled or ingested) the damage might not be repaired before another beta decay causes more damage.

The phrase “shot-noise,” used to describe this hypothesis, is based on the concept of shot-noise in electronics, where it describes random fluctuations in electrical flow that are observed in Direct Current (DC) circuits. These fluctuations result because electrons are actually discrete charges, and therefore, DC does not produce a continuous flow of electricity. Shot noise was discovered by Walter Schottky in 1918. Beta particles are high-energy electrons or positrons.

The shot-noise hypothesis relies on data from studies done immediately after the TMI accident, as well as the biological response to OH radicals, and specifics concerning how Xenon concentrates in the body.

Background on the Supra-Linear Response to Low-Level Radiation

A single radioactive decay can destroy or damage cells, which indicates there is no lower threshold for radiation damage. The supra-linear response to radiation at very low dose levels does not negate LNT at higher levels. Early researchers disagreed about whether there was a supra-linear response at low levels of radiation. Most notably, in 1969 former Manhattan Project scientist Dr. John W. Gofman disagreed with Dr. Ernest Sternglass about the extent of low-level radiation damage. (One of the authors of this review (Ace) spoke extensively with Gofman and also with Sternglass (and many other radiation experts) beginning in the 1970s.)

In 1969, Sternglass wrote an article asserting that fallout from bomb tests was responsible for 400,000 excess infant deaths in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960s. When asked to review Sternglass’s results, Gofman and his colleague Dr. Arthur Tamplin calculated 4,000 excess infant deaths from fallout. The Atomic Energy Commission tried to convince Gofman and Tamplin to refute Sternglass’s results without publishing their own estimate, which Gofman and Tamplin refused to do.

Over the next few decades, as more and more evidence about low-level radiation exposures became available, Gofman changed his mind about the supra-linear response. In an interview, he said: “I’ll say today—ten years later—the new evidence coming out suggests to me that Sternglass may have been right.” (https://ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/nwJWG.html)

In his 1990 book, “Radiation-Induced Cancer From Low-Dose Exposure” Gofman wrote: “The new A-bomb evidence shows, when all ages are considered together, that the cancer-hazard per dose-unit is more severe at LOW doses than at intermediate and high doses; the dose-response curve is supra-linear.” (https://www.ratical.org/radiation/CNR/RIC/chp3F.html)