Real Costs of Energy Comparisons Make Nuclear Shine

Solar Panel Costs Do Not Cost the Energy Transformation Correctly

People do not understand energy or the benefits and risks that relate to energy.

Brian Wang
NextBigFuture

John Gorman was the chief executive of the Canadian Solar Industries Association but now he is a nuclear energy advocate. John indicates that nuclear energy is vital to solving the energy issues related to climate change.

An overly optimistic view of renewables has affected major decisions about other energy sources, particularly nuclear. The global focus on renewables has caused existing nuclear plants to be retired early and has stalled investment in new projects. It’s given people a false sense of security that we don’t need nuclear any more when nothing could be further from the truth.

What’s worse, because wind and solar are variable (they produce electricity only when the wind blows or the sun shines), they must be paired with other energy sources to support demand, and these are almost always fossil fuels. In the absence of enough nuclear energy, renewables are effectively prolonging the life of coal and gas plants that can produce power around the clock.

Nuclear is the only proven technology that has decarbonized the economies of entire countries, including France and Sweden.

Another French Revolution In the Offing?

President Macron Is Heading for His Green Waterloo

James Delingpole
Breitbart News

As the Gilets Jaunes protests in France catch fire, French President Emmanuel Macron is heading for his green Waterloo. And really, humiliation, defeat and — with luck — exile somewhere really remote just couldn’t happen to a more deserving candidate.

One reason this dime store Napoleon has it coming is outlined in a characteristically incisive piece by Dominic Lawson in the Mail. It’s headlined: “Why It’s Hard Not to Gloat at the Travails of the Strutting French President Who Called Brexiteers Liars.”

Lawson points out that of all the European leaders, no one has gone further out of his way to try to shaft Britain’s Brexit prospects than the pint-sized Mummy’s Boy Macron.

He has, more than any other European leader, expressed his own political vision as a direct rebuke to the idea of national self-assertion (making him a hero to British anti Brexit campaigners).  At the Salzburg EU summit in September, Macron denounced the British politicians behind Brexit as ‘liars’ — a most unusual intervention in a gathering where leaders are not meant to take sides in the debates of neighbouring countries.

But the main reason he deserves to lose this one — and lose horribly — is that the protests in France are an entirely self-inflicted disaster, the product of Macron’s suicidal decision to embrace the globalist cause of green lunacy just as it has begun to fall out of fashion.

The Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) protests are a perfect example of how the tide of public opinion is turning on green policy.    Yes, there are other reasons too: resentment at the tax cuts Macron has offered the super-rich in order to lure them to France; the fact that permanent revolt is the natural state for all Frenchmen…

But the main one is the 23 per cent hike in the price of diesel which Macron has inflicted on motorists. And to which he has then added insult to injury by telling them in a classic “Let them eat cake” moment, that it’s all OK — they can just use public transport instead.

Yeah, that’s just the way to appease all those drivers in rural France — where anti-Macron, anti-EU, anti-green sentiment is strongest: tell them that, for the good of the environment, they should accept not being able to use their own cars and vans and lorries.

And guess where all the money raised by these taxes is going…

Rupert Darwall has the dirt:

But when it comes to the higher fuel taxes that sparked the gilets jaunes protests, all the proceeds – €5bn this year, €7-8bn next – are being used to subsidise wind and solar energy, which in turn means higher energy prices. Higher taxes, higher electricity costs, worsened business competitiveness is Macron’s triple whammy for nil social benefit.

This was an entirely unforced error on Macron’s part. Of all the countries in Europe, France can lay claim to the title of the “greenest” or most “global-warming-friendly” because of the happy historical accident that it has so much nuclear power. Though greens generally hate nuclear power it is by far the most carbon-neutral. France has lots of it because of a policy introduced in the Georges Pompidou era and embraced by Valery Giscard d’Estaing whereby France would demonstrate its technological prowess while simultaneously freeing itself from vulnerability to OPEC-induced oil shocks.

And now, in order to kowtow to the kind of rabid green ideologues who’d probably hate him anyway regardless of what he does, Macron has chosen to indulge the eco-loons’ anti-growth, junk-science-fuelled renewable energy nonsense at the expense both of his economy and of popular support from the electorate.  Under Macron, France now looks in serious danger of squandering all its energy advantages in order to imitate the kind of renewable energy policies which have proved such a disaster in Germany.

Darwall again:

At present, France is the efficient part of the European electricity market and Germany the inefficient part. At a cost of hundreds of billions of euros, Germany’s Energiewende has seen Germany turn into Europe’s largest energy exporter, dumping its low grade, surplus electricity on its neighbours, sometimes even paying them to take it when too much wind and sun turn wholesale prices negative. In ten years, German electricity exports more than doubled from 20 Terrawatt hours in 2006 to over 50 TWh in 2016 compared to some 37TWh of French electricity exports.  

A study by two green think tanks in Germany and France argued that France can’t accommodate the growth of wind and solar unless it shrunk its nuclear fleet, a vivid demonstration of the Pretzel Effect. Macron alluded to this in his speech. In talking of developing interconnections so that France and its neighbours can benefit from the lowest cost electricity, Macron committed the fundamental economic fallacy of confusing cost and value. The value of electricity depends on when it’s demanded. If lots of electricity is produced when it’s not wanted, its value plunges along with the price it fetches.

Tuesday’s speech sounds the death knell of France’s nuclear programme. Macron’s announced the closure of 14 nuclear reactors between now and 2035. New nuclear power stations after the troubled Flamanville project would have to be price competitive. The problem, as shown by the premature closure of nuclear plants in the US, is having large amounts wind and solar destroy the economics of nuclear – transferring the inefficiency of wind and solar makes nuclear less efficient, raising the price at which it can break even. Nuclear doesn’t make for a good pretzel.

Macron is a very, very silly boy. He will pay a terrible price for his foolishness.

The Islamist Side of Obama's Face

It's My Way or War

President Obama's dirty slip is showing.  Faced with the increasing likelihood that his "peace at any price" deal with Iran will be rejected by Congress, he has taken once again to browbeating his opponents.  But this time, the opposition is not just from political parties.  It is broader than that.

The US Jewish community--largely formerly an Obama fan base--is turning against him.  Rabbi Richard Block explains his dissent and rejects Obama's nasty denunciation of his opponents.  He also exposes, once again, Obama's disingenuous deceptive and misleading "framing" of the issues.

Letter From Australia (About Going Nuclear)

Nuclear Power Now a Hot Option 

South Australian inquiry ordered

ANDREW BOLT
Herald Sun
February 12, 2015

ALARMISTS like Jay Weatherill now finally admit nuclear power isn’t actually a terrifying mass-killing menace. 
 
Now they say we need nuclear to stop their latest terrifying mass-killing menace — global warming.
Can you believe these guys? Nuclear power has switched from our greatest threat to greatest saviour. Yet none of these hypesters has said sorry for having peddled such baseless scares.

Take Weatherill, South Australia’s Labor Premier. As a budding politician he was “­opposed to nuclear power, all elements of it”, but this week said he’d changed his mind.  Now he is calling for a royal commission to “consider what role our state can potentially play in the fuel cycle for the peaceful use of nuclear energy”.

See, Weatherill reckons a nuclear industry might help save his struggling state.  The most obvious money-spinner would be a nuclear waste facility, like one Pangea tried to sell in 1999 that would have earned us $2 billion a year.

. . . anti-nuclear protesters are shameless. When the Fukushima reactor was smashed by a tsunami in 2011 they were at it again, with Crikey’s Guy Rundle predicting “the Japanese crews (at the reactor) will ... bleed out internally under the full glare of the world’s media”. In fact, not one person died from the radiation and the WHO doubts any will.

It makes sense. We have the stable geology and stable government to store the world’s nuclear waste, safe from earthquakes and terrorists.  But such facts never used to count with the likes of the unapologetic Weatherill. Such alarmists instead mounted the usual scare against Pangea and ran it out of town. Pangea couldn’t even get interviews with the young Howard government.

Green Energy and Dirty Money

A Good-News Story

As we read the account below, we could barely repress a chuckle.  They say that necessity is the mother of invention and it appears to be true in the UK.  A recession, coupled with a desperate need to restrain wasteful, profligate, debt-driven public spending have forced the government to turn to the private sector to fund much needed infrastructure spending.  At the edge of the dark cloud is a burnished silver lining.

This from the Telegraph:

Letter from the US (About Denver's Radiation)

The Panic Over Fukushima 

Japan's nuclear accident was a great human tragedy, but its long-term health effects have been exaggerated—and the virtues of nuclear power remain. 

By Richard Muller
Wall Street Journal
August 18, 2012

 

Bloomberg News

Radiation screening in Koriyama, Japan, on March 31, 2011.

Denver has particularly high natural radioactivity. It comes primarily from radioactive radon gas, emitted from tiny concentrations of uranium found in local granite. If you live there, you get, on average, an extra dose of .3 rem of radiation per year (on top of the .62 rem that the average American absorbs annually from various sources). A rem is the unit of measure used to gauge radiation damage to human tissue.

The International Commission on Radiological Protection recommends evacuation of a locality whenever the excess radiation dose exceeds .1 rem per year. But that's one-third of what I call the "Denver dose." Applied strictly, the ICRP standard would seem to require the immediate evacuation of Denver.

Physicist Richard Muller discusses the panic over the Fukushima accident and the need to put nuclear risks in perspective with WSJ Weekend Review editor Gary Rosen.

It is worth noting that, despite its high radiation levels, Denver generally has a lower cancer rate than the rest of the United States. Some scientists interpret this as evidence that low levels of radiation induce cancer resistance; I think it is more likely that lifestyle differences account for the disparity.
Now consider the most famous victim of the March 2011 tsunami in Japan: the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Two workers at the reactor were killed by the tsunami, which is believed to have been 50 feet high at the site.

But over the following weeks and months, the fear grew that the ultimate victims of this damaged nuke would number in the thousands or tens of thousands. The "hot spots" in Japan that frightened many people showed radiation at the level of .1 rem, a number quite small compared with the average excess dose that people happily live with in Denver.

What explains the disparity? Why this enormous difference in what is considered an acceptable level of exposure to radiation?

The Deathy Hallows

 Maintaining Perspective

. . . a single organic farm in Germany has recently killed more people than have all the nuclear power plants Germany is rushing to shut down.

An Environmental Reformation

Standing up to Pope Carl

By Steven F. Hayward

Letter From America

Common Sense Meltdown

Daniel J. Flynn

Printed in FrontPageMag.com


An old joke in conservative circles takes the gloomy occasion of the world’s end to make an amusing point about media coverage. On the eve of Armageddon, the Wall Street Journal’s headline announces: “Planet’s Demise Imminent; Dow Plummets.” Us Weekly’s cover reads: “Earth Extinction: Who Will Lady Gaga Be Wearing?” The headline in the New York Times? “World to End; Women and Minorities Suffer Most.”

The Gray Lady’s coverage of the apocalyptic scenes in Japan illustrates why the joke worked. Leave it to the Times to insert its unrelated political tics into its chronicling of a major event. Instead of focusing on the actual tragedy of lives lost and homes gone, the Times fixates upon an imaginary one: the terror unleashed at damaged nuclear reactors. But the nuclear power plant in question has thus far witnessed the death of a single human being who died in a crane accident. Times reporters forever lose the story in front of their noses for politicized abstractions that massage their worldview.

Such headlines as “Risk of Meltdown Spreads at Japanese Plant,” “Partial Meltdowns Presumed at Crippled Reactors,” and “U.S. Nuclear Industry Faces New Uncertainty” suggest to Times readers that a politically-charged manmade catastrophe is what ails Japan. In reality, Japan has endured a one-in-a-lifetime natural disaster.

John M. Broder reported Sunday in the Times that “the world watches the unfolding crisis in Japan’s nuclear reactors and the widespread terror it has spawned.” But the crisis the world watches involves an earthquake and a tsunami. That real crisis has killed upwards of 10,000 people, left hundreds of thousands homeless, and caused billions in property damage. The crisis of the Times’ narrative? It doesn’t warrant constant, above-the-fold attention, particularly when competing with the worst disaster in an industrialized nation in recent memory.

“Operators fear that if they cannot establish control, despite increasingly desperate measures to do so, the reactors could experience full meltdowns, which could release catastrophic amounts of radiation,” Hiroko Tabuchi and Matthew Wald wrote in the Times Monday (emphasis added). “The two reactors where the explosions occurred are both presumed to have already suffered partial meltdowns—a dangerous situation that, if unchecked, could lead to full meltdown.” Who has time for facts when there is conjecture to be made?

The opening line of a Times editorial Tuesday might be read as a tacit indictment of its news coverage: “Any comment on the disaster in Japan must begin with the stunning scale of human loss.” This is precisely what the Times has not done. Sensationalistic accounts of the problems at Fukushima Daiichi have been allowed to dwarf the catastrophe that dwarfs it. The editorial, after noting the human tragedy, obsesses over potential calamities involving nuclear power: “this four-day crisis in Japan already amounts to the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.” Unmentioned is the inconvenient fact that nobody has been killed in a nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

There is something profane about bumping a human tragedy on such an enormous scale to the sub narrative. This indecency is compounded by leading with Godzilla scenarios and frenzy-inspiring what-ifs. The disproportionate coverage is obtuse in a profound way.

Hyperpolitical reporters feel lost without a black-hat to crusade against. Geological disturbances lend themselves neither to politicization nor anthropomorphization. So, reporters invent boogeymen to propel story arcs.

The Indian Ocean Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, some conspiracy theorists in the Muslim world suggested, unleashed so much destruction because U.S. officials withheld information that could have warned those in its path. After Hurricane Katrina, Al Gore and others suggested global warming as the culprit. In Japan, where an earthquake and ensuing tsunami damaged, among much else, nuclear power plants, nuclear power overshadows the earthquake and the tsunami as the villain among Western journalists. Part ideological slant, part yellow journalism, the overblown Fukushima Daiichi coverage represents the worst of journalism.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant has experienced radiation levels rise above normal (and then has experienced a drop down to the level of a common X-ray). One worker has been treated for radiation exposure. There have been fires and explosions. But nobody has died, save for in the crane accident, as the result of undeniable problems at the 40-year-old plant. This is a news story. This isn’t the news story.

The Times coverage tells us less about the tragedy in Japan than it does about the Times. We glean from the reporting that journalists working for the newspaper of record are skeptical about the proposed expansion of nuclear power in the U.S. Less apparent to readers is what is happening a half-a-world away. In Rahm Emanuel fashion, the paper has not let a good crisis go to waste.

Daniel J. Flynn is the author of A Conservative History of the American Left (Crown Forum, 2008), Intellectual Morons (Crown Forum, 2004), and Why the Left Hates America (Prima Forum, 2002). He has appeared on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, Sky News, PBS, CSPAN, and other networks. He writes a Monday column for Human Events and blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.

No Chernobyl

Fukushima 'meltdown' is worrying, but this is no Chernobyl

Tom Chivers
Tom Chivers is the Telegraph's Strategic Events Editor. He writes on science, culture and anything that crosses his mind. Follow him on Twitter @tomchivers.

I’ve been trying to write this blog post for two days, because I wanted to get it right. The events at Fukushima No1 Nuclear Power Plant are frightening and, understandably, they have attracted the attention of the world’s media. The words “meltdown” and “Chernobyl” have been bandied around, and every time I wrote something, the situation moved on, making each of my pronouncements out of date. So forgive me if that has happened again.

Are we looking at a meltdown? Possibly, in that the fuel rods that run the reactor have lost coolant and may be melting. Will that lead to a Chernobyl-style disaster? Almost certainly not, for two reasons: one, at Chernobyl there was a “criticality accident”, when an uncontrolled nuclear reaction took place, which is essentially impossible at any well-designed reactor; and two, because there was no dedicated containment vessel at Chernobyl, unlike the 20cm-thick concrete-and-steel structures at Fukushima, solely designed to contain a full meltdown.

That’s not to say it’s not alarming – apparently the containment vessels have been breached, so radioactive steam (although not fuel) is leaking out, which is part of the reason for the high radiation levels. Also, a spent fuel pool has been damaged, which is less well protected than the reactors themselves, and could also end up leaking. But it seems (from the confused information that is coming out) that coolant systems should be put back in place today. Further, while radiation levels spiked at more than 11 milliSieverts per hour outside the main gate of Fukushima, that is still only about the equivalent of having a CT scan every hour. Obviously you wouldn’t want to do that, but working in those conditions for short periods probably won’t do any lasting damage, and the usual levels have been significantly lower.

It could all get worse, and I don’t want to belittle it. But here is the thing: the fourth largest earthquake in recorded history struck Japan on Friday. 10,000 people may be dead, and more than 3,000 certainly are. This is in a country more used to earthquakes than any in the world. Of those 10,000 possible dead, so far it appears that not one was due to the problems at Fukushima. Even in a worst-case scenario, if the team of fantastically brave nuclear workers who are there trying to fix it are killed, then it is still something of a triumph for Japanese engineering, which – 40 years ago, remember – created a nuclear reactor so solid that, faced with a cataclysm 8,000 times as powerful as the one which devastated Christchurch last month, it is still largely intact.

So by all means build future nuclear power stations in Japan to withstand greater earthquakes. But don’t think this means that nuclear power is unsafe. And, most importantly, don’t let the very human fear of the words “radiation”, “nuclear”, “meltdown” and “Chernobyl” distract us from the real tragedy, which is an unfolding humanitarian disaster of entirely natural and familiar causes. The real problem over the next few days is not going to be radiation sickness. It’s going to be hypothermia. Fukushima is a high-profile diversion. Snow is the silent killer.

Media Hysteria and Japanese Reactors

In the Bowels of Nuclear Reactors

We are being bombarded with visions of Armageddon daily. It's Meltdown, folks. Well, maybe not.

Here is a piece written by a research scientist  from MIT on the Japanese nuclear power situation. It is the best we have come across. We cannot verify or confirm this, as we have no scientific credentials in the matter. The upshot appears to be: layers upon layers of safety procedures coupled with no radiation threat to the population at large, even with the pressure releases.

It is a bit lengthy, but if you are interested then well worth the read. It is also written clearly in non-technical language, which speaks for its credibility.

(Hat Tip: Patterico; post taken from Morgsatlarge.)

This post is by Dr Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT, in Boston.

He is a PhD Scientist, whose father has extensive experience in Germany’s nuclear industry. I asked him to write this information to my family in Australia, who were being made sick with worry by the media reports coming from Japan. I am republishing it with his permission.

It is a few hours old, so if any information is out of date, blame me for the delay in getting it published.

This is his text in full and unedited. It is very long, so get comfy.

I am writing this text (Mar 12) to give you some peace of mind regarding some of the troubles in Japan, that is the safety of Japan’s nuclear reactors. Up front, the situation is serious, but under control. And this text is long! But you will know more about nuclear power plants after reading it than all journalists on this planet put together.

There was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity.

By “significant” I mean a level of radiation of more than what you would receive on – say – a long distance flight, or drinking a glass of beer that comes from certain areas with high levels of natural background radiation.

I have been reading every news release on the incident since the earthquake. There has not been one single (!) report that was accurate and free of errors (and part of that problem is also a weakness in the Japanese crisis communication). By “not free of errors” I do not refer to tendentious anti-nuclear journalism – that is quite normal these days. By “not free of errors” I mean blatant errors regarding physics and natural law, as well as gross misinterpretation of facts, due to an obvious lack of fundamental and basic understanding of the way nuclear reactors are build and operated. I have read a 3 page report on CNN where every single paragraph contained an error.

We will have to cover some fundamentals, before we get into what is going on.

Construction of the Fukushima nuclear power plants

The plants at Fukushima are so called Boiling Water Reactors, or BWR for short. Boiling Water Reactors are similar to a pressure cooker. The nuclear fuel heats water, the water boils and creates steam, the steam then drives turbines that create the electricity, and the steam is then cooled and condensed back to water, and the water send back to be heated by the nuclear fuel. The pressure cooker operates at about 250 °C.

The nuclear fuel is uranium oxide. Uranium oxide is a ceramic with a very high melting point of about 3000 °C. The fuel is manufactured in pellets (think little cylinders the size of Lego bricks). Those pieces are then put into a long tube made of Zircaloy with a melting point of 2200 °C, and sealed tight. The assembly is called a fuel rod. These fuel rods are then put together to form larger packages, and a number of these packages are then put into the reactor. All these packages together are referred to as “the core”.

The Zircaloy casing is the first containment. It separates the radioactive fuel from the rest of the world.

The core is then placed in the “pressure vessels”. That is the pressure cooker we talked about before. The pressure vessels is the second containment. This is one sturdy piece of a pot, designed to safely contain the core for temperatures several hundred °C. That covers the scenarios where cooling can be restored at some point.

The entire “hardware” of the nuclear reactor – the pressure vessel and all pipes, pumps, coolant (water) reserves, are then encased in the third containment. The third containment is a hermetically (air tight) sealed, very thick bubble of the strongest steel and concrete. The third containment is designed, built and tested for one single purpose: To contain, indefinitely, a complete core meltdown. For that purpose, a large and thick concrete basin is cast under the pressure vessel (the second containment), all inside the third containment. This is the so-called “core catcher”. If the core melts and the pressure vessel bursts (and eventually melts), it will catch the molten fuel and everything else. It is typically built in such a way that the nuclear fuel will be spread out, so it can cool down.

This third containment is then surrounded by the reactor building. The reactor building is an outer shell that is supposed to keep the weather out, but nothing in. (this is the part that was damaged in the explosion, but more to that later).

Fundamentals of nuclear reactions

The uranium fuel generates heat by nuclear fission. Big uranium atoms are split into smaller atoms. That generates heat plus neutrons (one of the particles that forms an atom). When the neutron hits another uranium atom, that splits, generating more neutrons and so on. That is called the nuclear chain reaction.

Now, just packing a lot of fuel rods next to each other would quickly lead to overheating and after about 45 minutes to a melting of the fuel rods. It is worth mentioning at this point that the nuclear fuel in a reactor can *never* cause a nuclear explosion the type of a nuclear bomb. Building a nuclear bomb is actually quite difficult (ask Iran). In Chernobyl, the explosion was caused by excessive pressure buildup, hydrogen explosion and rupture of all containments, propelling molten core material into the environment (a “dirty bomb”). Why that did not and will not happen in Japan, further below.

In order to control the nuclear chain reaction, the reactor operators use so-called “control rods”. The control rods absorb the neutrons and kill the chain reaction instantaneously. A nuclear reactor is built in such a way, that when operating normally, you take out all the control rods. The coolant water then takes away the heat (and converts it into steam and electricity) at the same rate as the core produces it. And you have a lot of leeway around the standard operating point of 250°C.

The challenge is that after inserting the rods and stopping the chain reaction, the core still keeps producing heat. The uranium “stopped” the chain reaction. But a number of intermediate radioactive elements are created by the uranium during its fission process, most notably Cesium and Iodine isotopes, i.e. radioactive versions of these elements that will eventually split up into smaller atoms and not be radioactive anymore. Those elements keep decaying and producing heat. Because they are not regenerated any longer from the uranium (the uranium stopped decaying after the control rods were put in), they get less and less, and so the core cools down over a matter of days, until those intermediate radioactive elements are used up.

This residual heat is causing the headaches right now.

So the first “type” of radioactive material is the uranium in the fuel rods, plus the intermediate radioactive elements that the uranium splits into, also inside the fuel rod (Cesium and Iodine).

There is a second type of radioactive material created, outside the fuel rods. The big main difference up front: Those radioactive materials have a very short half-life, that means that they decay very fast and split into non-radioactive materials. By fast I mean seconds. So if these radioactive materials are released into the environment, yes, radioactivity was released, but no, it is not dangerous, at all. Why? By the time you spelled “R-A-D-I-O-N-U-C-L-I-D-E”, they will be harmless, because they will have split up into non radioactive elements. Those radioactive elements are N-16, the radioactive isotope (or version) of nitrogen (air). The others are noble gases such as Argon. But where do they come from? When the uranium splits, it generates a neutron (see above). Most of these neutrons will hit other uranium atoms and keep the nuclear chain reaction going. But some will leave the fuel rod and hit the water molecules, or the air that is in the water. Then, a non-radioactive element can “capture” the neutron. It becomes radioactive. As described above, it will quickly (seconds) get rid again of the neutron to return to its former beautiful self.

This second “type” of radiation is very important when we talk about the radioactivity being released into the environment later on.

What happened at Fukushima

I will try to summarize the main facts. The earthquake that hit Japan was 5 times more powerful than the worst earthquake the nuclear power plant was built for (the Richter scale works logarithmically; the difference between the 8.2 that the plants were built for and the 8.9 that happened is 5 times, not 0.7). So the first hooray for Japanese engineering, everything held up.

When the earthquake hit with 8.9, the nuclear reactors all went into automatic shutdown. Within seconds after the earthquake started, the control rods had been inserted into the core and nuclear chain reaction of the uranium stopped. Now, the cooling system has to carry away the residual heat. The residual heat load is about 3% of the heat load under normal operating conditions.

The earthquake destroyed the external power supply of the nuclear reactor. That is one of the most serious accidents for a nuclear power plant, and accordingly, a “plant black out” receives a lot of attention when designing backup systems. The power is needed to keep the coolant pumps working. Since the power plant had been shut down, it cannot produce any electricity by itself any more.

Things were going well for an hour. One set of multiple sets of emergency Diesel power generators kicked in and provided the electricity that was needed. Then the Tsunami came, much bigger than people had expected when building the power plant (see above, factor 7). The tsunami took out all multiple sets of backup Diesel generators.

When designing a nuclear power plant, engineers follow a philosophy called “Defense of Depth”. That means that you first build everything to withstand the worst catastrophe you can imagine, and then design the plant in such a way that it can still handle one system failure (that you thought could never happen) after the other. A tsunami taking out all backup power in one swift strike is such a scenario. The last line of defense is putting everything into the third containment (see above), that will keep everything, whatever the mess, control rods in our out, core molten or not, inside the reactor.

When the diesel generators were gone, the reactor operators switched to emergency battery power. The batteries were designed as one of the backups to the backups, to provide power for cooling the core for 8 hours. And they did.

Within the 8 hours, another power source had to be found and connected to the power plant. The power grid was down due to the earthquake. The diesel generators were destroyed by the tsunami. So mobile diesel generators were trucked in.

This is where things started to go seriously wrong. The external power generators could not be connected to the power plant (the plugs did not fit). So after the batteries ran out, the residual heat could not be carried away any more.

At this point the plant operators begin to follow emergency procedures that are in place for a “loss of cooling event”. It is again a step along the “Depth of Defense” lines. The power to the cooling systems should never have failed completely, but it did, so they “retreat” to the next line of defense. All of this, however shocking it seems to us, is part of the day-to-day training you go through as an operator, right through to managing a core meltdown.

It was at this stage that people started to talk about core meltdown. Because at the end of the day, if cooling cannot be restored, the core will eventually melt (after hours or days), and the last line of defense, the core catcher and third containment, would come into play.

But the goal at this stage was to manage the core while it was heating up, and ensure that the first containment (the Zircaloy tubes that contains the nuclear fuel), as well as the second containment (our pressure cooker) remain intact and operational for as long as possible, to give the engineers time to fix the cooling systems.

Because cooling the core is such a big deal, the reactor has a number of cooling systems, each in multiple versions (the reactor water cleanup system, the decay heat removal, the reactor core isolating cooling, the standby liquid cooling system, and the emergency core cooling system). Which one failed when or did not fail is not clear at this point in time.

So imagine our pressure cooker on the stove, heat on low, but on. The operators use whatever cooling system capacity they have to get rid of as much heat as possible, but the pressure starts building up. The priority now is to maintain integrity of the first containment (keep temperature of the fuel rods below 2200°C), as well as the second containment, the pressure cooker. In order to maintain integrity of the pressure cooker (the second containment), the pressure has to be released from time to time. Because the ability to do that in an emergency is so important, the reactor has 11 pressure release valves. The operators now started venting steam from time to time to control the pressure. The temperature at this stage was about 550°C.

This is when the reports about “radiation leakage” starting coming in. I believe I explained above why venting the steam is theoretically the same as releasing radiation into the environment, but why it was and is not dangerous. The radioactive nitrogen as well as the noble gases do not pose a threat to human health.

At some stage during this venting, the explosion occurred. The explosion took place outside of the third containment (our “last line of defense”), and the reactor building. Remember that the reactor building has no function in keeping the radioactivity contained. It is not entirely clear yet what has happened, but this is the likely scenario: The operators decided to vent the steam from the pressure vessel not directly into the environment, but into the space between the third containment and the reactor building (to give the radioactivity in the steam more time to subside). The problem is that at the high temperatures that the core had reached at this stage, water molecules can “disassociate” into oxygen and hydrogen – an explosive mixture. And it did explode, outside the third containment, damaging the reactor building around. It was that sort of explosion, but inside the pressure vessel (because it was badly designed and not managed properly by the operators) that lead to the explosion of Chernobyl. This was never a risk at Fukushima. The problem of hydrogen-oxygen formation is one of the biggies when you design a power plant (if you are not Soviet, that is), so the reactor is build and operated in a way it cannot happen inside the containment. It happened outside, which was not intended but a possible scenario and OK, because it did not pose a risk for the containment.

So the pressure was under control, as steam was vented. Now, if you keep boiling your pot, the problem is that the water level will keep falling and falling. The core is covered by several meters of water in order to allow for some time to pass (hours, days) before it gets exposed. Once the rods start to be exposed at the top, the exposed parts will reach the critical temperature of 2200 °C after about 45 minutes. This is when the first containment, the Zircaloy tube, would fail.

And this started to happen. The cooling could not be restored before there was some (very limited, but still) damage to the casing of some of the fuel. The nuclear material itself was still intact, but the surrounding Zircaloy shell had started melting. What happened now is that some of the byproducts of the uranium decay – radioactive Cesium and Iodine – started to mix with the steam. The big problem, uranium, was still under control, because the uranium oxide rods were good until 3000 °C. It is confirmed that a very small amount of Cesium and Iodine was measured in the steam that was released into the atmosphere.

It seems this was the “go signal” for a major plan B. The small amounts of Cesium that were measured told the operators that the first containment on one of the rods somewhere was about to give. The Plan A had been to restore one of the regular cooling systems to the core. Why that failed is unclear. One plausible explanation is that the tsunami also took away / polluted all the clean water needed for the regular cooling systems.

The water used in the cooling system is very clean, demineralized (like distilled) water. The reason to use pure water is the above mentioned activation by the neutrons from the Uranium: Pure water does not get activated much, so stays practically radioactive-free. Dirt or salt in the water will absorb the neutrons quicker, becoming more radioactive. This has no effect whatsoever on the core – it does not care what it is cooled by. But it makes life more difficult for the operators and mechanics when they have to deal with activated (i.e. slightly radioactive) water.

But Plan A had failed – cooling systems down or additional clean water unavailable – so Plan B came into effect. This is what it looks like happened:

In order to prevent a core meltdown, the operators started to use sea water to cool the core. I am not quite sure if they flooded our pressure cooker with it (the second containment), or if they flooded the third containment, immersing the pressure cooker. But that is not relevant for us.

The point is that the nuclear fuel has now been cooled down. Because the chain reaction has been stopped a long time ago, there is only very little residual heat being produced now. The large amount of cooling water that has been used is sufficient to take up that heat. Because it is a lot of water, the core does not produce sufficient heat any more to produce any significant pressure. Also, boric acid has been added to the seawater. Boric acid is “liquid control rod”. Whatever decay is still going on, the Boron will capture the neutrons and further speed up the cooling down of the core.

The plant came close to a core meltdown. Here is the worst-case scenario that was avoided: If the seawater could not have been used for treatment, the operators would have continued to vent the water steam to avoid pressure buildup. The third containment would then have been completely sealed to allow the core meltdown to happen without releasing radioactive material. After the meltdown, there would have been a waiting period for the intermediate radioactive materials to decay inside the reactor, and all radioactive particles to settle on a surface inside the containment. The cooling system would have been restored eventually, and the molten core cooled to a manageable temperature. The containment would have been cleaned up on the inside. Then a messy job of removing the molten core from the containment would have begun, packing the (now solid again) fuel bit by bit into transportation containers to be shipped to processing plants. Depending on the damage, the block of the plant would then either be repaired or dismantled.

Now, where does that leave us? My assessment:

The plant is safe now and will stay safe.

Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else.

Some radiation was released when the pressure vessel was vented. All radioactive isotopes from the activated steam have gone (decayed). A very small amount of Cesium was released, as well as Iodine. If you were sitting on top of the plants’ chimney when they were venting, you should probably give up smoking to return to your former life expectancy. The Cesium and Iodine isotopes were carried out to the sea and will never be seen again.

There was some limited damage to the first containment. That means that some amounts of radioactive Cesium and Iodine will also be released into the cooling water, but no Uranium or other nasty stuff (the Uranium oxide does not “dissolve” in the water). There are facilities for treating the cooling water inside the third containment. The radioactive Cesium and Iodine will be removed there and eventually stored as radioactive waste in terminal storage.

The seawater used as cooling water will be activated to some degree. Because the control rods are fully inserted, the Uranium chain reaction is not happening. That means the “main” nuclear reaction is not happening, thus not contributing to the activation. The intermediate radioactive materials (Cesium and Iodine) are also almost gone at this stage, because the Uranium decay was stopped a long time ago. This further reduces the activation. The bottom line is that there will be some low level of activation of the seawater, which will also be removed by the treatment facilities.

The seawater will then be replaced over time with the “normal” cooling water

The reactor core will then be dismantled and transported to a processing facility, just like during a regular fuel change.

Fuel rods and the entire plant will be checked for potential damage. This will take about 4-5 years.

The safety systems on all Japanese plants will be upgraded to withstand a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami (or worse)

(Updated) I believe the most significant problem will be a prolonged power shortage. 11 of Japan’s 55 nuclear reactors in different plants were shut down and will have to be inspected, directly reducing the nation’s nuclear power generating capacity by 20%, with nuclear power accounting for about 30% of the national total power generation capacity. I have not looked into possible consequences for other nuclear plants not directly affected. This will probably be covered by running gas power plants that are usually only used for peak loads to cover some of the base load as well. I am not familiar with Japan’s energy supply chain for oil, gas and coal, and what damage the harbors, refinery, storage and transportation networks have suffered, as well as damage to the national distribution grid. All of that will increase your electricity bill, as well as lead to power shortages during peak demand and reconstruction efforts, in Japan.
This all is only part of a much bigger picture. Emergency response has to deal with shelter, drinking water, food and medical care, transportation and communication infrastructure, as well as electricity supply. In a world of lean supply chains, we are looking at some major challenges in all of these areas.

Misdirection and Confusions

Nuclear Weapons and the Hands That Bear Them

Nuclear issues have to the fore in recent days, what with President Obama's grand summit which has drawn more nations to the US to confab since the international meetings which set up the United Nations.

Gwynne Dyer, writing in the NZ Herald, opines that the summit it just a symbol, but at least it is a conversation starter. Who could be opposed to talk, right? Confabulation is a medium in which Obama seems to set a great deal of store.

But let's step back and think about the broad parameters of the debate over nuclear weapons. Obama has publicly declared his long term goal is to rid the world of all of them. This tells us that he believes them to be intrinsically evil. He apparently puts nuclear weapons in the same category as, say, rape or incest. But, he must also believe that they are a necessary evil, which would explain why he is prepared to maintain his own nation's nuclear capability--at least for the present.

Are nuclear weapons intrinsically evil? If one would answer in the affirmative, presumably one would also include all weapons of war--say, semi-automatic rifles, tanks, bombs, and fighter aircraft in the same category. Whatever argument one may advance to remove all nuclear weapons from the world it would apply with equal force and veracity to all weapons and technologies of war.

If someone may object and argue that it is the immense destructive force of nuclear weapons which makes them inherently evil. The risk that they could destroy the entire world puts such weapons in a different category which amounts to intrinsic evil. But this is emotive clouding. If a primitive village can be wiped out by machine guns, it is not the smaller quantum of deaths which makes machine guns acceptable. A murder is a murder is a murder. The death of one man, Abel led to his blood crying out from the ground to God.

If nuclear weapons are intrinsically evil, so too is the machine gun--for both alike exist for one purpose, and one purpose only--to kill human beings. Both alike can kill in large numbers.

We would argue that nuclear weapons are not intrinsically evil at all--no more so than any other instrument or weapon of war. It is the use to which they may be put by men that makes them either evil or good. Evil resides in the human heart and is expressed in human actions. Evil does not reside in things.

Obama's rhetoric in calling for a nuclear-weapon-free world reflects the idealistic world-view of the West in general which looks for evil not in the human hearts, but in externalities. Change the circumstances and the environment and righteousness will dawn upon mankind--at least that's what makes sense of the actions and pontifications of most in the West. When boiled down Obama's stance on nuclear weapons, whilst typical, is akin to calling for a ban on gun ownership or knife bearing. If the inanimate object is removed, men will become righteous and act righteously. The Christian knows this to be a naive and misdirected argument.

Ironically, the Obama summit actually recognizes this--at least to some degree. The specific focus has been on taking action to prevent nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda--who will use them, we are told--and we do not doubt it. This, apparently is in contrast to nations such as Pakistan, Great Britain, the United States etc, who will not--at least as a first strike.

Here we come to the nub of the issue. Having nuclear weapons is not the issue. What will be done with them is the all important matter. Ought we to be deeply concerned that Israel has (allegedly) over 200 nuclear warheads? We have never lost the least amount of sleep over it. Ought we to be worried that North Korea has nuclear weapons? Indeed we should, since that nation considers itself at war with South Korea and calls for the subjugation of the South.

Should surrounding nations be concerned about Iran getting nuclear weapons. Absolutely. Their president--a president in good standing let us add--has routinely and regularly called for the extermination of another state--Israel. This, it seems to us, is a de facto declaration of war of Iran upon Israel. That state of war should be reckoned to exist until Ahmadinejad and his doctrines are officially and formally removed in Iran.

If that be accepted as a fundamental principle, then all "pre-emptive" strikes by Israel against Iran to destroy their nuclear weaponry and resource are not only justified, but a necessary act by the Israel government. It would be derelict in its duty to God and its people not to so act.

But, were Iran to eschew Ahmadinedjadism and armed jihad against Israel, whether they had nuclear weapons or not would be neither here nor there. If Iran committed itself to a policy of recognition of Israel as a legitimate state, and of a complete and permanent cessation of any military aggression--either by direct or indirect means--against any other state, they would be welcome to nuclear weaponry.

If we are not prepared to take this position, then a whole can of worms inevitably opens. One such worm is the implication that all nuclear weapons are intrinsically evil, which implicitly condemns all those nations which holds any military capability whatsoever--which is clearly contrary to Scripture. Another worm would be an insinuation that an Islamic state should be regarded as "bad" states--as the Great Satan--which sort of sounds a bit familiar.

In a fallen world, war is an inevitable reality, even as crime is. But an absolutely vital issue is whether any nation's war is offensive or defensive in its goals, purposes, and intents. Defensive acts of war are a necessary duty of the civil magistrate. Aggressive or offensive war is always evil. And aggressive war has surely started when one nation calls for the annihilation of another.

Masterful Iran

Perfect Bait and Switch

You have to hand it to Iran. The Al Jazeera headline says it all: "Iran Not to Cede Nuclear Rights". These guys are very focused and very clever. They know exactly what they want, where they are going, and how they are going to get there. They have the West and Russia flummoxed, out-thought, out-manoeuvred. Not that it is particularly difficult to do--they saw Obama coming a mile off, and Putin is very easily played.

European nations have had it with Iran. They have tried the diplomatic game long enough to know that the party sitting over the other side of the table is duplicitous and for whom "good faith" is merely a weakness of the other side to be exploited at will. So, when it was finally public that Iran had a carefully concealed uranium enrichment plant at Qom, and that it had lied to the UN and the West for years, France, Germany, and the UK threw their toys out of the cot and got mad.

But "no drama Obama" just saw it as one more courtroom manoeuvre in the drive to negotiate and settle out of the court. Enter the Iranians with the best "bait and switch" manoeuvre seen in a long time. They allowed themselves to be "forced back" to the negotiating table, under threat of yet more UN sanctions. They assured everyone they really did want to talk and prove to the world that they were only interested in peaceful nuclear technology. They responded positively to a Russian and American suggestion that they give their stocks of uranium to the specific nations (Russia, France, US) for processing into non-military fuel rods, which they could then use in their medical and energy sectors. This would ensure that their uranium was used for peaceful means only.

Everyone was pleased. It was clearly the way forward. It was a face-saving compromise. Iran would now be able to buy non-military enriched processed uranium so that it could put it to all those developmental and peaceful uses it said it really wanted to do all along. By handing over its uranium stockpile, at one fell swoop its nuclear weapons programme would be cut off at the knees. You could almost see the relieved grin on the faces of the White House. But the American tyro knew nothing of Iran's masterful game playing. The European powers glowered. They knew that Iran had merely laid the bait out.

Two days ago the celebrated diplomatic talks to sort all this out began in Geneva, with much fanfare. Everybody was feverishly working on the details of how this solution could be made to work operationally. Then the masterful Iranian switch. Yes, they were very keen to buy processed uranium off Russia (not France, it was a bad boy--"untrustworthy", was a term used) and in the open market in general. (The refusal to deal with France, itself, was a classic "divide and conquer" manoeuvre. These guys are good.) But as for sending all its uranium stockpile offshore, you had to be kidding. Iran would never relinquish its sovereignty in this way. But, it was very reasonable of you chaps to offer to let us buy processed uranium from you--all above board, sanctioned, and legal. And, we thank you for your acknowledgement that we have a right to nuclear technology--which your willingness to approve our buying enriched uranium clearly acknowledges. Thanks, guys.

The American contingent has been left with its mouth open. It has been masterfully outplayed by the Iranians. Your move, "No drama Obama." Guess it's back to the Saul Alinsky playbook.

Postscript: The latest is that the West and Russia is playing out the game. They have allegedly agreed with Iran how the uranium-go-round will work. Iran will now consider it.

The UN's atomic watchdog says Iran has agreed to consider a deal on its nuclear programme, which could see it ship out most of its enriched uranium to Russia.

A decision is expected by Friday. It's hard to anticipate those masterful Iranians, but our guess is that Teheran will gravely consider the proposal, and will "co-operate" and agree that a small proportion of their uranium stockpile will be sent overseas for processing. Al Jazeera's correspondent in Teheran is likely signposting something like this when he writes:

Nazanine Moshiri, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tehran, the Iranian capital, said the final decision over the deal "will be made here in Tehran. And Tehran has said it will not give up its right to develop uranium."

The Iranians will probably release just enough uranium to have the West hold up a piece of paper and proclaim, "Peace in our time." If so, as with Chamberlain, we believe they will have been played for fools.

Letter From America

Obama’s French Lesson

Sarkozy could not conceal his astonishment at Obama’s naïveté.

By Charles Krauthammer

“President Obama, I support the Americans’ outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing.” — French president Nicolas Sarkozy, September 24

When France chides you for appeasement, you know you’re scraping bottom. Just how low we’ve sunk was demonstrated by the Obama administration’s satisfaction when Russia’s president said of Iran, after meeting President Obama at the U.N., that “sanctions are seldom productive, but they are sometimes inevitable.”

You see? The Obama magic. Engagement works. Russia is on board. Except that, as the Washington Post inconveniently pointed out, Pres. Dmitry Medvedev said the same thing a week earlier, and the real power in Russia, Vladimir Putin, had changed not at all in his opposition to additional sanctions. And just to make things clear, when Iran then brazenly test-fired offensive missiles, Russia reacted by declaring that this newest provocation did not warrant the imposition of tougher sanctions.

Do the tally. In return for selling out Poland and the Czech Republic by unilaterally abrogating a missile-defense security arrangement that Russia had demanded be abrogated, we get from Russia . . . what? An oblique hint, of possible support, for unspecified sanctions, grudgingly offered and of dubious authority — and, in any case, leading nowhere because the Chinese have remained resolute against any Security Council sanctions.

Confusing ends and means, the Obama administration strives mightily for shows of allied unity, good feeling, and pious concern about Iran’s nuclear program — whereas the real objective is stopping that program. This feel-good posturing is worse than useless, because all the time spent achieving gestures is precious time granted Iran to finish its race to acquire the bomb.

Don’t take it from me. Take it from Sarkozy, who could not conceal his astonishment at Obama’s naïveté. On September 24, Obama ostentatiously presided over the Security Council. With 14 heads of state (or government) at the table, with an American president in the chair for the first time ever, with every news camera in the world trained on the meeting, it would garner unprecedented worldwide attention.

Unknown to the world, Obama had in his pocket explosive revelations about an illegal uranium-enrichment facility that the Iranians had been hiding near Qom. The French and the British were urging him to use this most dramatic of settings to stun the world with the revelation and to call for immediate action.

Obama refused. Not only did he say nothing about it, but, reports Le Monde, Sarkozy was forced to scrap the Qom section of his speech. Obama held the news until a day later — in Pittsburgh. I’ve got nothing against Pittsburgh (site of the G-20 summit), but a stacked-with-world-leaders Security Council chamber, it is not.

Why forgo the opportunity? Because Obama wanted the Security Council meeting to be about his own dream of a nuclear-free world. The president, reports the New York Times, citing “White House officials,” did not want to “dilute” his disarmament resolution “by diverting to Iran.”

Diversion? It’s the most serious security issue in the world. A diversion from what? From a worthless U.N. disarmament resolution?

Yes. And from Obama’s star turn as planetary visionary: “The administration told the French,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “that it didn’t want to ‘spoil the image of success’ for Mr. Obama’s debut at the U.N.”

Image? Success? Sarkozy could hardly contain himself. At the council table, with Obama at the chair, he reminded Obama that “we live in a real world, not a virtual world.”

He explained: “President Obama has even said, ‘I dream of a world without (nuclear weapons).’ Yet before our very eyes, two countries are currently doing the exact opposite.”

Sarkozy’s unspoken words? “And yet, sacre bleu, he’s sitting on Qom!”

At the time, we had no idea what Sarkozy was fuming about. Now we do. Although he could hardly have been surprised by Obama’s fecklessness. After all, just a day earlier in addressing the General Assembly, Obama actually said, “No one nation can . . . dominate another nation.” That adolescent mindlessness was followed with the declaration that “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War” in fact “make no sense in an interconnected world.” NATO, our alliances with Japan and South Korea, our umbrella over Taiwan, are senseless? What do our allies think when they hear such nonsense?

Bismarck is said to have said: “There is a providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.” Bismarck never saw Obama at the U.N. Sarkozy did.

Published in National Review Online.