Which is a bigger problem: CO2 or radioactive waste?

[Ted C]

I found this interesting little jewel on a weblog...

I'm an archaeologist and I see things in the long perspective. Let me offer you a suggestion.

The CO2, greenhouse effect, climate issue is no cause for concern compared to the issue of radioactive waste.

--Aardvarchaeology

His argument is that 40,000 years from now, global warming will be a forgotten thing of the past, while today's nuclear waste will still be a problem.

I personally think he's out of his tree. I agree with Mike that properly design and managed nuclear power plants are far less polluting than existing fossil fuel power plants. CO2 and global warming may cease to be a problem at some point, but the sulphur, mercury, and other pollutants released by burning coal won't get taken up by plants. Of course, if global temperatures change drastically enough, quickly enough, the plant populations that we might hope could correct the problem could be catastrophically damaged by it.

[Admiral Valdemar]

In a century, we're fucked if CO2 and other GHGs keep rising. Methinks forty-millennia from now is less of a worry.

[Shinova]

Of course begs the question what's an archaeologist doing trying to give professional advice on global warming?

[Gustav32Vasa]

That depends of how much of both. If the greengase effect run away so far that we get a second Venus that is bad.

[Ariphaos]

Global warming is ultimately a temporary issue, and even a worst-case scenario isn't going to destroy human civilization. Though I wouldn't want to live on the coast.

But the only reason it's a temporary issue is because technology will eventually let us deal with it - there are a lot of potentially feasible solutions. It's ultimately a long term problem because each year, on average, the sun outputs more energy.

Radioactive waste, on the other hand, is a drop in the bucket, though I find the idea of putting it all in one spot to be a less than brilliant idea.

[General Zod]

Global warming is ultimately a temporary issue, and even a worst-case scenario isn't going to destroy human civilization. Though I wouldn't want to live on the coast.

But the only reason it's a temporary issue is because technology will eventually let us deal with it - there are a lot of potentially feasible solutions. It's ultimately a long term problem because each year, on average, the sun outputs more energy.

Radioactive waste, on the other hand, is a drop in the bucket, though I find the idea of putting it all in one spot to be a less than brilliant idea.

I'm not entirely sure scattering it all over the place is worse than putting it all in one spot. If it's all in one spot then at least it can have an eye kept on it.

[TithonusSyndrome]

If it takes something on the order of several millenia for nuclear waste to become a problem, then surely we can store it somewhere until we advance to the point where we can casually lob it into the depths of space. I don't see this as a palpable deterrent, but nonetheless I expect this argument will pop up somewhere, in hyperinflated form of course, in an anti-environmentalist debate.

[General Zod]

If it takes something on the order of several millenia for nuclear waste to become a problem, then surely we can store it somewhere until we advance to the point where we can casually lob it into the depths of space. I don't see this as a palpable deterrent, but nonetheless I expect this argument will pop up somewhere, in hyperinflated form of course, in an anti-environmentalist debate.

Or we can store it somewhere safe until we develop a viable alternate fuel source that has limited waste. Though launching it in a rocket on a direct course to the sun is appealing.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Global warming is ultimately a temporary issue, and even a worst-case scenario isn't going to destroy human civilization. Though I wouldn't want to live on the coast.

No. The worst case scenario makes humanity extinct. Or do you think you a medium sized mammal species can survive with barely 5% of the biosphere operational?

But the only reason it's a temporary issue is because technology will eventually let us deal with it - there are a lot of potentially feasible solutions. It's ultimately a long term problem because each year, on average, the sun outputs more energy.

Radioactive waste, on the other hand, is a drop in the bucket, though I find the idea of putting it all in one spot to be a less than brilliant idea.

Technology is not going to magick away climate change, no matter what governments or eco-technology salesmen say. We're sorely lacking in motivation which, given we have technology today to deal with the AGW threat, makes the magical technology of the future scenario somewhat redundant.

Additionally, it'd be a good idea to store radioactive waste in one big, isolated area, such as in the centre of Australia in places like Woomera where there's fuck all bar the odd sidewinder (they have those there, right?) and bird. That way, you keep tabs on this stuff that most certainly won't leak into the water table nor be local enough to people to accidentally construct near it or allow for waste to be stolen for nefarious uses.

[drachefly]

The wildlife around Chernobyl is doing pretty well these days, I've heard. As a consequence, I've heard that the best thing to do to protect animals from habitat destruction would be to make a series of nuclear waste dumps, on the surface, dispersed through their habitat.

I don't think that was a very serious suggestion, but it does give an idea of the scale of the problem.

[Darth Wong]

Greenpeace et al are fond of exaggerating the magnitude of the nuclear waste problem by cleverly treating high-level waste and low-level waste as synonymous, lumping them both together to get a gigantic figure for the amount of waste produced by nuclear power plants each year. In truth, the high-level waste (the stuff that stays radioactive for thousands of years) is produced in such small quantity that a plant typically keeps its entire output right on-site, generally submerged in a water tank. We're talking about 20 years of waste stored in a large water tank here. Conventional coal-fired power plants pump more trace uranium than that into the fucking air.

Terror over nuclear high-level waste is unfounded; the stuff is nasty but it's not produced in huge volume and the only reason it's so scary is that we've managed to collect 100% of it in concentrated form rather than spewing it into the atmosphere where we can just shrug about its effects. So it's sitting in a tank glowing blue and freaking people out, rather than floating through the air until people just figure it can't be that harmful.

[Master of Ossus]

Conventional coal-fired power plants pump more trace uranium than that into the fucking air.

Mike, do you know of any articles that make that comparison explicit? I'd love to beat one of my colleagues over the head with that one.

[Fire Fly]

Conventional coal-fired power plants pump more trace uranium than that into the fucking air.

Mike, do you know of any articles that make that comparison explicit? I'd love to beat one of my colleagues over the head with that one.

I do not have a scholarly article on hand, merely a book written by a retired professor of mechanical enginnering with a strong interest in nuclear energy at my university, whom I interviewed a few years ago for my persuasive speech. He gave me a copy of his book entitled "Nuclear Power: Villain or Victim." An online copy in PDF format can be found at this link. If you go down to PDF page 31, there is a chapter entitled "Radiation and Health Effects." If you go down to PDF page 36, there is a small mention about the radiation output from conventional power production. I quote:

Comparison with Alternate Electricity Sources
Radiation is not involved in making electricity from fossil fuels. However, people living near coal plants typically receive 100 times as much radiation as those living near a nuclear plant. This is because coal has uranium, thorium, and other radioactive materials mixed in with it. When the coal is burned, the radioactive materials go out the smokestack; a relatively harmless amount of radiation is spread downwind from the stack.

There is a list of suggested readings at the end with various sources attached for each chapter. If you look hard enough, I'm sure you can find a source. Or, if you would prefer, you could probably email the author and ask him directly. The suggested readings for "Radiation and Health Effects:"

Chapter 5
• The Good News About Radiation by John Lenihan, Medical Physics Publishing, 4513 Vernon Blvd., Madison, WI 53705, 1993.

• Understanding Radiation by Bjorn Wahlstrom, Medical Physics Publishing, 4513 Vernon Blvd., Madison, WI 53705, 1995.

• Health Effects of Low-Level Radiation by Sohei Kondo, Medical Physics Publishing, 4513 Vernon Blvd., Madison, WI 53705, 1993.

• Power Production: What Are the Risks? by J. H. Fremlin, Adam Hilger, New York, 1989.

• "Natural Background Radiation Exposures World-Wide," B. G. Bennett, International Conference on High Levels of Natural Radiation, Ramsar, Iran, 3-7 November 1990, INIS-mf-13747.

• "Studies of the Mortality of Atomic Bomb Survivors." Report 12, Part 1. Cancer: 1950-1990 by Pierce, Shimizu, Preston, Vaeth, and Mabuchi, Radiation Research, Vol. 146, July 1996, pages 1-27.

• "The Children of Parents Exposed to Atomic Bombs: Estimates of the Genetic Doubling Dose of Radiation for Humans," Neel, Schull, Awa, Satoh, Kato, Otake, and Yoshimoto, Am. J. Hum. Genet., Vol. 46, 1990, pages 1053-1072.

• "Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation," United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, New York, 1993.

• "Health Effects of Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation - BEIR V," Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, National Academy Press, 1990.

• "Beneficial Radiation," Zbigniew Jaworowski, Nukleonika, Vol. 40, No. 1, 1995, pages 3-12.

• "Chernobyl — Ten Years On: Radiological and Health Impact," Nuclear Energy Agency, Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, Paris, November 1995.

• "One Decade After Chernobyl: Summing Up the Consequences," Kaul, Landfermann, and Thieme, Health Physics, Vol. 71, No. 5, Nov. 1996, pages 634-640.

[Molyneux]

Who's to say we won't find some use for nuclear waste in the next forty thousand or so years?

Global warming is, by an incredible margin, a much more imminent danger.

[Cincinnatus]

Conventional coal-fired power plants pump more trace uranium than that into the fucking air.

Mike, do you know of any articles that make that comparison explicit? I'd love to beat one of my colleagues over the head with that one.

There's an article about it here.

[Ariphaos]

No. The worst case scenario makes humanity extinct. Or do you think you a medium sized mammal species can survive with barely 5% of the biosphere operational?

Whose estimate was this? Smells awfully like alarmist BS. There are people that claim that humanity is the worst ecological disaster the Earth has ever seen, but even that takes into account more than just global warming.

In this case though, the melting of the Greenland icecap is theorized to shut down the Great Conveyor, since it will lower the salinity of the region around Greenland and sinking the normal flow to lower depths, which apparently has stopped it and is what caused the previous ice ages of times past. Earth warms up, the northern icecap melts, thermohaline transport shuts down, northern icecap grows again, and so on.

...but 95% of the biosphere? I'd doubt my biology and geology professors if they had told me that. If they told me 90% or 80%, even. The problem that was related to me was that plants basically move by how far their seeds can travel. None of them went even remotely doomsday about it, just that it would be a serious problem.

Technology is not going to magick away climate change, no matter what governments or eco-technology salesmen say. We're sorely lacking in motivation which, given we have technology today to deal with the AGW threat, makes the magical technology of the future scenario somewhat redundant.

It's a million-year long issue, the sun is now putting out 33% more radiation than it did when it ended its protostar stage. Taking a linear estimate of the Sun vaporizing a trillion tons of water each day (not proper, but hey...), each year the Sun vaporizes a tiny bit more than it did during the last. Eventually some technical solution is going to be required.

Additionally, it'd be a good idea to store radioactive waste in one big, isolated area, such as in the centre of Australia in places like Woomera where there's fuck all bar the odd sidewinder (they have those there, right?) and bird. That way, you keep tabs on this stuff that most certainly won't leak into the water table nor be local enough to people to accidentally construct near it or allow for waste to be stolen for nefarious uses.

Most radioactive waste I'm aware of either has a short as hell half-life (irradiated water), or is solid in form, which a number of people are advocating putting back into uranium mines to maintain the radiation balance. I see nothing wrong with that, myself, especially as there is so little of it.

But people are too knee-jerky about radioactive waste to really consider that a solution. Like Wong mentions, they lump the stuff together, as if it's a single thing. Stupid.

[Ender]

well, in theory if it was C-13 in all the CO2 then the guy could be right.

[SyntaxVorlon]

Greenpeace et al are fond of exaggerating the magnitude of the nuclear waste problem by cleverly treating high-level waste and low-level waste as synonymous, lumping them both together to get a gigantic figure for the amount of waste produced by nuclear power plants each year. In truth, the high-level waste (the stuff that stays radioactive for thousands of years) is produced in such small quantity that a plant typically keeps its entire output right on-site, generally submerged in a water tank. We're talking about 20 years of waste stored in a large water tank here. Conventional coal-fired power plants pump more trace uranium than that into the fucking air.

Terror over nuclear high-level waste is unfounded; the stuff is nasty but it's not produced in huge volume and the only reason it's so scary is that we've managed to collect 100% of it in concentrated form rather than spewing it into the atmosphere where we can just shrug about its effects. So it's sitting in a tank glowing blue and freaking people out, rather than floating through the air until people just figure it can't be that harmful.

These days greenpeace is eating its words and promoting nuclear energy. Their MO back in the cold war was anti-proliferation and anti-nuclear weapon and they put out a butt load of propaganda promoting the fear of nuclear waste and fallout.

That fear has motivated the 30 year trend away from nuclear power and into the loving embrace of coal/oil. Right now what we really need is something that would have made GP activists in the 70's shit their ponchos, breeder reactors. And now GP vets are starting to push those plants as an option.

[Winston Blake]

No. The worst case scenario makes humanity extinct. Or do you think you a medium sized mammal species can survive with barely 5% of the biosphere operational?

Whose estimate was this? Smells awfully like alarmist BS. There are people that claim that humanity is the worst ecological disaster the Earth has ever seen, but even that takes into account more than just global warming.

The worst ecological disaster the Earth has ever seen was the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, killing 96% of all marine life and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrate life. Most mass extinctions happen extremely slowly and this one lasted for at least 300 000 years; for scale, Homo sapiens has only existed for 250 000 years. One theory is that the methane hydrates under the sea (which we only recently realised existed in such vast quantities) melted once the temperature got too high.

Geologist Gerry Dickens suggested that the increased carbon-12 could have been rapidly released by upwellings of frozen methane hydrate from the seabeds. Experiments to assess how large a rise in deep sea temperature would be required to sublimate solid methane hydrate suggested that a rise of 5°C (10 F) would be sufficient. Released from the pressures of the ocean depths, methane hydrate expands to create huge volumes of methane gas, one of the most powerful of the greenhouse gases. The resulting additional 5°C rise in average temperatures would have been sufficient to kill off most of the life on earth.[19]

That's the worst case scenario for climate change, since we already know it happened once. I still need to read more about this stuff, but currently I don't think that's going to happen. We're in for increasingly hard times for a few centuries or millennia, but a Permian-style event is rock bottom.

To clarify my background, I've noticed hints around the Interwebs that the P-Tr extinction was mentioned in 'An Inconvenient Truth' but I haven't seen it. I think most of the emotional 70s era environmentalism is either harmful (anti-nuclear) or like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. In the shower I figured there are a few things that need advancement to avoid this stuff: lots of nuclear power, closed ecological life support systems, space settlement/power, archiving of knowledge/DNA/etc, and some emo teenagers to pilot the giant robots.

[glass]

In a century, we're fucked if CO2 and other GHGs keep rising. Methinks forty-millennia from now is less of a worry.

Yeah, by then we'll have all those daemons from the warp to worry about, not to mention the hive fleets.


glass.

[Hokalus]

These days greenpeace is eating its words and promoting nuclear energy. Their MO back in the cold war was anti-proliferation and anti-nuclear weapon and they put out a butt load of propaganda promoting the fear of nuclear waste and fallout..

Greenpeace isn't exactly eating it's words, they have just suceeded in sending UK plans to a new generation of nuclear plants back to the consultation stage. Some of the older generation of Greenpeace has certainly changed their minds about nuclear power, but they seen to have been largely replaced by a new generation of neo-ludites in greenpeace itself. While they have attacked the consultation process, the reason behind the attack is pretty clear.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6364281.stm

Nuclear review 'was misleading'
Sizewell B nuclear power station (Image: PA)
Ministers say nuclear power will cut carbon emissions
Greenpeace has won its High Court bid to make the government rethink its programme to build a new generation of nuclear power stations.

A judge ruled that the consultation process before making the decision last year had been "misleading", "seriously flawed" and "procedurally unfair".

Greenpeace said the ministers should "go back to the drawing board".

The government said the judgement was on the "process of consultation, not the principle of nuclear power".

'Updating'

Greenpeace's Emma Gibson told the BBC: "The government's so-called consultation was a sham and we are very pleased the judge has agreed with us on that.

"If Tony Blair wants to continue with his misguided plan for a whole new generation of nuclear power stations, the government will have to go back to the drawing board."


The government has been shown up as fundamentally deceitful
Alan Duncan, Conservatives

In 2003, the Energy White Paper described nuclear power as an "unattractive option".

It added: "Before any decision to proceed with the building of new nuclear power stations, there will need to be the fullest possibly public consultation and the publication of a further white paper setting out our proposals."

The government launched a fresh energy review in January 2006, and after public consultation in July published a report, The Energy Challenge, which said "new nuclear power stations would make a significant contribution to meeting our energy policy goals".

In court, Greenpeace said the consultation had not fulfilled the promise to carry out "the fullest public consultation".

It complained that there had been a failure to present clear proposals and information on key issues, such as disposal of radioactive waste and building costs.

'Radically wrong'

Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling, contesting the judicial review, argued that the energy review was only part of an ongoing process which would ensure full consultation.

But Mr Justice Sullivan said "something has gone clearly and radically wrong".

The consultation document had given every appearance of being simply an "issues paper".

It had contained no actual proposals and the information given to consultees had been "wholly insufficient for them to make an intelligent response".

The judge said information given on waste had been "not merely inadequate but also misleading".

Fairness required that consultees should be given a proper opportunity to respond to that substantial amount of new material before any decision was taken.

"There could be no proper consultation, let alone the fullest consultation, if the substance of these two issues was not consulted on before a decision was made," said the judge.

"There was therefore procedural unfairness and a breach of Greenpeace's legitimate expectation that there would be the fullest consultation before a decision was taken."

'Tough choices'

The judge granted what he called a "quashing order".

The Department of Trade and Industry issued a statement saying: "This judgement is about the process of consultation, not the principle of nuclear power. We will of course consult further.

"Tackling climate change takes leadership, taking on tough long-term choices.

"This is why we continue to believe nuclear power has a role to play in cutting emissions and helping to give this country the energy security it needs."

Shadow trade and industry secretary Alan Duncan said: "This is an astonishing ruling.

"What it really says is that the government has been shown up as fundamentally deceitful."

'Slap in the face'

Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Chris Huhne said: "The judgement really shows you can't perform a 180-degree U-turn on a matter as important as nuclear power without a proper public debate.

"It's a real slap in the face for prime minister's sofa style of government."

The government says its proposals, including building more nuclear plants, will cut carbon emissions by 19 to 25 million tonnes by 2020, compared with projections based on current trends.

In January, Mr Blair said it was important to ensure that the UK had a diverse energy supply, including nuclear power.

"If we don't get these decisions right, and get them right quickly, we will pay a very heavy price in the future."

A White Paper is still expected to be published next month.

[Admiral Valdemar]

This development is something of a blow for the gov't and any real progression away from foreign hydrocarbon deposit reliance. I don't too like the sound of being held by the short and curlies, least of all by Gazprom and OPEC, so it's about time we put more money into an immediate nuclear programme and looked at making more decentralised investments.

Still, nuclear would help our economy even more, given the UK is something of a leader in nuclear reprocessing and given ties with the former colony of Australia which has, IIRC, the largest uranium mine deposits around.

Then there is the VULCAN laser transmutation process that will further mitigate any dangerous radioisotope waste that has to be disposed of.

It's interesting all this is in the news again just as I finish watching the DVD of the 1985 drama Edge of Darkness about a private nuclear reprocessing plant conspiracy and eco-terrorism.

[Darth Wong]

Anyone who thinks that Greenpeace has changed its tune is delusional. Check out their website; if anything, they are pushing the appeals to emotion and fearmongering to new heights, with a cute little movie showing a loving family taking a nice stroll on the beach and then staring, horrified, at the sky to see a jetliner crashing into a nuclear power plant. DO YOU WANT THIS TO HAPPEN TO YOU???!?!?!????? SEE THE LITTLE GIRL SMELLING FLOWERS AND THEN ... DEATH FROM ABOVE!!!!!

RAR!! TERROR!!!!!!!

[Admiral Valdemar]

Beware: Do not visit Sizewell A when TERRORISM is in the vicinity. Ignoring the fact that these plants are made to withstand such attacks, the father is an idiot for lacking imagination on locations for holidaying.

What's that? Greenpeace using emotive language and super-scary scenarios to play to the nuke fearing crowds amongst us? Never.

I do so love that video and how there's a load of comments showing up this as grandstanding scaremongering of epic scale. It's no wonder the founding father of the movement tries to distance himself as far away from this group as possible now.

[Ariphaos]

The worst ecological disaster the Earth has ever seen was the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, killing 96% of all marine life and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrate life. Most mass extinctions happen extremely slowly and this one lasted for at least 300 000 years; for scale, Homo sapiens has only existed for 250 000 years. One theory is that the methane hydrates under the sea (which we only recently realised existed in such vast quantities) melted once the temperature got too high.

That count is by species, and even then it wasn't 95% of the entire biosphere... anyway...

That's the worst case scenario for climate change, since we already know it happened once. I still need to read more about this stuff, but currently I don't think that's going to happen. We're in for increasingly hard times for a few centuries or millennia, but a Permian-style event is rock bottom.

Comparing it to the end of the Permian is... insane. The Siberian Traps were the largest release of carbon dioxide known, and the Deccan Traps - much smaller - some 33 trillion tons.

I doubt humanity will ever put so much CO2 into the air. It takes a generate estimate of remaining fossil fuels for that to even be possible.

And the Wikipedia entry talks about this still not being enough, so adds in the releasing of deep-sea methane deposits due to heating, but most deposits are located near the poles these days.

Another important point to consider is that global temperatures are also rather cold - the ice caps are an anomaly of our current continental configuration. The P-T extinction was taking place on an Earth already sans icecaps.