Bharat kee Parmanu Saheli | Dr. Neelam Goyal | President APEAF

Since my sincere and deepen devotion from 1996 , ”l’ve written five books and numerous technical papers and popular articles about nuclear civil use and the related myths v/s reality.  In my research, I’m repeatedly by the inconsistencies, contradictions and questionable logic that characterize its literature, including statements that are presented as scientific fact but are demonstrably false. Anything nuclear is repeatedly charactised as “scary,” “dangerous,” and “hazardous,” yet the actual health statistics show nuclear workers among the healthiest. These contradictions and mis-statements have become part of the legend and culture of the nuclear enterprise, on which we all-insiders and out-base our opinions and decisions. How did this happen, and what should we do about it. Let’s start at the beginning. Most people learned about nuclear fission from the fiery destruction of two entire cities. Although most other large Japanese cities had destroyed by firebombs, this was different. The degree of destruction was comparable. The mechanics of destruction-heat and physical blast-were comparable. The uniquely nuclear feature-radiation- was trivial, by design. But, for military and political reasons, it was important that nuclear weaponry be seen as the ultimate doomsday super weapon so uniquely fearsome that no merely human army could stand up to it. That fear-generating ability was carefully nurtured through the duck-and-cover drills of the cold war that followed, in the tactic called “MAD’’ (Mutually Assured Destruction). Each party kept reminding the other a breach of the treaty would surely bring about the end of civilization.

The New World

Out of this uneasy uniqueness, the

Nuclear community undertook the creation of a new and esoteric Nuclear World-a kind of a Fantasy Land, where 200 years of mundane engineering experience and judgment seemed wholly inadequate. In the 1970s, New Age gurus from Baba Ram Dass to Margaret Mead told young people that their elders had not experienced the coming age, did not understand it, and therefore could not advise them on how to live in it. Experience in the dying age was declared inapplicable to the New World. At the same time, nuclear gurus were applying the same philosophy to the Nuclear Age. Alvin Weinberg, long-time senior spokesman from Oak Ridge, characterized nuclear energy as a “Faustian Bargain”-a providential gift to humanity, but with the Devil to pay if we slip up. To keep nuclear technology from slipping inexorably into mediocrity, we need to keep the Faustian threat alive.” Rickover had created the American nuclear navy, and he certainly agreed with the need for unprecedented excellence-indeed, he practically created it. But he believed that excellence was justified on its own merit, and didn’t need a satanic myth to support it. Then, in 1953, U.S. President Eisenhower launched his atoms for Peace program; the Friendly Atom was to take over from the fearsome A-bomb. Eisenhower wanted to have his Atoms for Peace program completely civilian, but the only group ready to take on such a major chore was Rickover’s Naval Reactors group. So Eisenhower assigned Rickover the job of building the world’s first wholly commercial central station nuclear power plant. All the supporting technology was to be rounded up, declassified, and submitted to civilian engineering code committees. Fear and mystery would no longer be an integral part of nuclear technology. Rickover was to build an engineering world to help the Atom join the civilian labor force. The declassification order was carried out swiftly and completely. When the plant was built and operating, Rickover showed Frol Kozlov, the USSR second-in-command, through it. When Kozlov asked Rickover, on public TV, where to leave his camera, Rickover said he was welcome to photograph anything in the plant; there was no classified information in the entire facility. But of course, it was not quite so simple to bring about such a complete reversal of mindset in the public, or even within the nuclear community. Most people had been quick to accept that the Atom was fearsome, and now they were reluctant to abandon that belief. When it became apparent that they might have to take the Atom into their homes, they started expressing concerns and raising questions. For many, these concerns have still not been satisfactorily answered. Yet, it is not hard to show that most of these fears are based on premises that are   simply untrue, and others are based on theoretical computer models that describe situations that simply cannot occur in the real world. Let’s look at some specifics, one at a time.

A Quick Look at Nuclear Power “Problems”

Myth: It’s better to use a biofuel, because it’s renewable and sustainable. In fact, biofuels raise more uncertainties and known problems than nuclear fuels. That’s because biofuels need huge quantities of materials in demand elsewhere. We’ve already seen what happens to the price of food, when even a small amount of corn is diverted to ethanol production. If cornhusks, switch-grass or other fibers can be used instead, their diversion from soil nurture is apt to have serious consequences. Nuclear fuel requires less than a millionth as much material, and it’s not a material vitally need in the consumer market. Only one in 140 uranium atoms is fissionable that is, fuel. The other atoms are “fertile,” that is, capable of converting to fuel by absorbing a neutron if the fuel is recycled. We are in future recycling fuel and India is going to lead the whole world in this field. As we go into recycling and then breeder reactors, we can eventually tap the seawater, in addition to hundreds of years of mineable uranium, the oceans contain an estimated 4 or 5 billions tons of uranium, which is continually replenished as uranium is leached from ocean life -forma and from the land, by the rivers emptying into the sea. In addition, there is nuclear energy available from thorium, which is several times more abundant than uranium. (Some or all of India’s new reactors will probably be based on a thorium cycle.) Like the non-fissile uranium, thorium can capture a neutron and produce nuclear fuel. That can create a reliable energy source for millions of years. (India has its own, homegrown way of introducing real-world technology into the nuclear world. Drawing on lessons from the Swedish Movement, which it has used so effectively in dealings with other nations, India is buying nuclear technology from more than one nation, with the intent of developing full capability to build nuclear power plants of local design, with no outside assistance. True swaraj!

But How Do We Solve the Nuclear Waste problem?   

We created this problem. I’m not referring to fission products. Fission products are not a problem. They’ve never been released in dangerous quantities into the environment. They’re still bound within the refractory ceramic fuel pellets where they were formed. These pellets are inside stainless zirconium tubes that are sealed into high-integrity used-fuel casks, which are nearly indestructible. These casks sit in water pools for several years, until more than 99% of their radioactivity dies out. Then the casks are removed from the water until they are recycled to recover most of the fissionable material still in them. Right now, it’s cheaper to keep using new uranium, but eventually they will all be recycled. They’ ve  been sitting there up to half a century, hurting no one, having no impact on the environment. They could stay there another century. Some plant owners invite the public-school children, church groups, scout troops- to visit and see these casks, touch them, measure their radiation level, to understand firsthand that these casks are neither mysterious nor dangerous. We’re the ones that keep telling people there’s a problem. Anti-nuclear activist, Sheldon Novick, wrote that nuclear waste is no more hazardous than many other industrial wastes. During the first decades of nuclear power, there was no demand from the public to move the waste, until Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) took out full-page ads in major papers telling people that used nuclear fuel casks were terrorist targets. This created the “Mobile Chernobyl” problem. We also kept telling people that our most important problem was getting the nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain (YM) approved. It’s true that the federal government by law is supposed to take responsibility for the waste, but this is not because of its special danger. The only way to solve this problem is to tell the truth: is no such problem. The quantity of material is trivial. Its toxicity is comparable to other, non-nuclear wastes that we deal with routinely except that it gets less and less toxic each.(How is that a problem\) No one has been injured, or even in danger of being injured, nor is there any objective evidence of environmental harm. So long as we keep telling people “we have to figure out how to solve the waste problem,” we make it so. This “problem” provides income, reputation and jobs for many people. But so does building and operating nuclear power plants. We need to stop working on problems that aren’t real, build plants we know how to build, and keep looking for ways to make plants better and better. We need to do all three.

 Why Treat Nuclear Assets as Fearsome Problems?  

In trying to think rationally about the many contradictory statements and actions associated with nuclear power, one useful tool is the concept of reduction ad absurdum. This rule of logic says to follow a particular line of reasoning until either the problem is solved, or an absurdity is encountered. But

This approach fails when one cannot recognise absurdity For example, suppose one postulates that nuclear waste is so dangerous that extraordinary actions must be taken to keep it from being eaten (the only way it can be hazardous). Following that premise, we could put the waste into sealed canisters, with great care taken in design and material selection, and announce that the problem is solved. With this in mind, let us look at some of the myths that have been developed to claim that nuclear technology is uniquely hazardous. To understand the situation, we must recognize how these myths arose and how they are sustained. First: antinuclear activists did not. Jane Fonda did not invent The China Syndrome, Nor did the media. We did. So we should not complain that we cannot get our message out. We’ve gotten it out very well. We’ve said for fifty years that is no safe level of radiation, that nuclear waste is a major (perhaps insoluble) problem. Further instruction in public relations will not solve this problem. We must first get a clear picture of what is so and what is not. Let’s start with an easy one:

 Myth: Nuclear are potential nuclear bombs. Even shipments of spent fuel are “mobile ChernobyIs.”

Facts: is simply untrue. No shading or ambiguity about it. We should have no hesitancy in asserting that the Laws of Nature prevent accidental criticality occurring in such cases.

Myth: nuclear power is an especially unforgiving technology. A momentary slip-up, and it’s catastrophe.

Facts: the opposite is true: nuclear plants are robust and stable. Hundreds of commercial nuclear power plants worldwide, and hundreds of naval reactors operating reliably for decades, confirm this. They can resist earthquakes, hurricanes, power loss, sabotage, and operator errors. Ironically, although nuclear plants are designed to operate reliably under conditions that destroy, or shut down, other facilities, a distorted sense of caution requires that they be shut down just when they needed most! This may be another case where purported safety rules actually actually lead to a less desirable situation. The proven stability of nuclear plants spawns the next myth:

Myth: Nuclear plants are so touchy; they use them only for providing the steady base load. You wouldn’t want to try load-following with a nuclear plant.

Facts: This is a wonderful example of portraying a nuclear asset as a problem. Nuclear fuel is cheap; building a nuclear power plants is expensive. So, once a plant is built, it makes economic sense to use the cheapest fuel as much as possible, and bring in the cheap gas- fired plants that burn expensive fuel only when you have to. But it’s the steam plant, not the nuclear plant that limits how fast you can maneuver. The flexibility and responsiveness of a nuclear power plant is dramatically demonstrated in a working nuclear- attack submarine. Admiral Rickover used to challenge the crews to see how fast they could change power level. They would select the biggest, strongest sailor aboard, and pass the order, “Crash back!, ”which is a maneuver that takes the ship from “All Ahead Flank!” to “All Back Emergency!” The sailor spins the ahead throttle closed bringing the reactor from 100% power to zero. He then immediately opens the astern throttle as fast as possible, restoring the reactor to 100% power. The ship shakes violently, shrieks of various equipment protesting mix with the clatter of coffee cups, operating manuals and other miscellany sliding off normally horizontal surfaces, as the ship shudders to an emergency stop. The reactor plant operator watches placidly as the reactor temperature drops a few degrees, which automatically raises the power smoothly to the required level. He could pull the reactor control rods a notch to restore the temperature, but he doesn’t have to. The electrical plant operator and the steam plant operator are equally relaxed, as the ship’s propeller reverses, and the plant accommodates itself to the new conditions. Lt’s hard to imagine the need for any greater flexibility than that. Unlike a combustion-fired power plant that has to warm up and cool down very carefully, to avoid thermally shocking the system, the temperature swings in a water-cooled plant are quite moderate, and impose no restraints on the operators.

Myth: We should stop creating all this radiation and radioactivity. It’s unnatural, little-understood, an unprecedented, ever- growing threat to the natural earth. We’re fouling our nest and degrading the human gene pool by continually adding to the earth’s radioactivity.

Facts: Radiation has been with us since the dawn of time. Evolved in a sea of radiation several times more intense then than it is now Our soil, water and our bodies are naturally radioactive. Radioactive processes light the sun and stars and keep the earth’s core molten and our environment livably warm. Radiation is better understood that. Most environmental challenges. Tests report NCRP-136, by the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement, states right up-front (page 6) that most people exposed to low-dose radiation are benefited, not harmed by it. Fission changes long-lived uranium into shorter-lived fission products, ultimately decreasing earth’s radioactivity. All the radioactivity we generate is not enough to offset the earth’s natural radiation decay. The earth becomes less radioactive each year.

Myth: But radiation is spooky. You can’t see it or smell it. You can’t tell it’s there until it’s too late!

Facts: Radiation is detectable at the single atom level by a simple, hand-held detector. No other hazard is so easily detected. As the respected physicist/ physician, Zbigniew Jaworowski, wrote, humans and other animals have no organs for sensing ionizing radiation, because they have no need for them. Natural radiation up to hundreds of times the levels now being regulated have proved to be harmless, or even beneficial, as noted above. Myth: we don’t know how to solve the waste problem. The quantity of nuclear waste is so great and we don’t know what to with it!

Facts: Not true! In every real sense, we handle the problem before it begins. Nuclear plants produce less than one-millionth the volume of waste from an equivalent coal-fired plant, so it can be put into sealed, stainless steel containers and controlled, rather then dumped into the environment. The 50.000 tons of radwaste destined for a federal repository was produced by all U.S. nuclear plants over the past 40 years. This is less than 2 pounds per person served. You could put each person’s lifetime of nuclear waste into a soda pop can. So it’s no problem to keep it in casks and never dump it into the biosphere. The corresponding waste from a coal-fired plant is 140000 pounds. U.S. Naval reactors can now operate for the life of the ship-a million miles, without refueling. All the waste from that operation stays locked up within the fuel elements, without causing any undue swelling or distortion. That illustrates the small quantity of waste we’re dealing with. Compare that to wastes produced by other industries. Even the volume of waste from construction & operation of solar, wind and other renewable is greater on a per-kilowatt-hour basis than nuclear, and some of the solar power poisons and highly toxic forever.

Myth: What about those huge waste tanks that have been leaking radioactivity into the ground for years?

Fact: Those tanks, at the Hanford site in the state of Washington, were built during World War II, to handle liquids used in the Army’s Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. They have nothing to do with the commercial nuclear power plants. If no nuclear power plants had ever been built, the situation of Hanford would still exist. We’ve learned a lot since then, there are no such tanks associated with the commercial nuclear plants. Incidentally, Hanford is now being cleaned up, and there is no evidence of danger to people or to any of the surrounding environment. The phrases “exposed to radioactivity” make exciting headlines, but it is not evidence of bodily harm. We are all exposed to radioactivity, every day and night, and it does us no harm.

Myth: Nuclear waste stays toxic for thousands of years. Humanity has never faced such long-term hazard.  Anthropologists have talked about setting up a “nuclear priesthood” to pass on word of where radioactivity is buried. So as civilizations rise and die out, people a million years from now will be warned to stay away.

Facts: All radioactive materials continually decrease in toxicity, whereas non-radioactive pollutants like mercury, lead, arsenic, selenium, cadmium, chromium,etc. maintain their toxicity undiminished forever. After a few hundred years, nuclear waste is no more toxic than the original ore, yet we plan to bury it 1,000 feet underground. We make 10,000 times more lethal doses of chlorine each year and put it in our drinking water to kill germs.

Myth:  Shipping spent fuel casks past school and homes is a terrible risk.

Facts: These shipments pose no realistic risk whatsoever. The shipping containers are nearly indestructible. They have been tested by high-speed collisions, and fire. The fuel and waste are solid and there is on liquid to leak. It can’t “go critical” like a reactor. In tests. A special armor-piercing missile was mounted on a cask, to ensure that it would hit exactly on the centerline and not be deflected harmlessly aside. It blew a small hole in one side of the container, but the small amount of radiation released would not be harmful. The diesel fuel in the truck’s “gas tank” would be a greater risk than the waste cask, although it is on more dangerous than any other truck.

Myth: The Chernobyl accident in 1986 killed thousands of people and disabled millions.

Facts: Not true. Fifty workers and firefighters at the plant were killed. A 20-year investigation by the U.N. and World Health Organization concluded that no members of the public were harmed. There were about 2,000 cases of childhood thyroid nodules, with 10 or 12 deaths resulting from this condition. But the occurrence of these doesn’t correlate with radiation level, and are within the natural occurrence frequency for such nodules nodules. The World Health Organization (WHO) said that fear of radiation caused much more harm than radiation itself. It led to unnecessary, long-term evacuation of large population groups, 100,000 unwarranted “voluntary” abortions, unemployment, depression, alcoholism and suicides. Deformed “Chernobyl victims,” displayed to raise money for relief efforts suffered from conditions that were later shown to be unrelated to the accident. Some were from far away; others were deformed before the accident. Chernobyl not a factor in their condition. In any event, no one is suggesting that more Chernobyl reactors be built. It was a flawed design, built and operated without adequate safety considerations. The water-cooked reactors of the king now operating could not under undergo the type of casualty that occurred at Chernobyl. Let us look at the fundamental question about the safety of nuclear power plant: How bad could a worst-case nuclear casualty be? Many theoretical studies have claimed that a hypothetical mishap could cost thousands___ even hundreds of thousands ____ of lives. Nuclear advocates reply that the particular casualty described is “a highly improbable scenario” and therefore an acceptable risk. Such a response___ that this sort of thing will not happen very often__ does not answer the question. Highly improbable events do happen. How bad could it be? And what about scenarios not yet envisioned? We deserve substantive answers to those questions. Putting extraordinary emphasis on safety without defining the hazard is misleading and irresponsible. It is easy to calculate what would happen if all of the radioactivities in a nuclear reactor were released into the air at once, and it stayed suspended in the air over large areas and populations, and that any radiation exposure is detrimental. Such calculations say that thousands could die. But such a situation cannot be created in the real world. “Worst case” calculations are not meaningful if they are based on conditions that defy the laws of nature and the known properties of materials and processes. What is relevant are credible engineering evaluations of the consequences of the worst conditions that could realistically be created, based on known science, both at the laboratory level and from large-scale tests and analyses. This has been done for pressurized water or boiling water reactors, of the type now operating in nearly all the world’s commercial nuclear power plants. Similar analyses of the Canadian CANDU reactors show that they have an even larger margin of safety. The worst consequence of any postulated scenario would begin with a loss of the water that cools the fuel, leading to some molten fuel. So we can presume (for the worst case) that a large part of the fuel melts. Then we need not argue what scenario could get us there. We’ve accepted the worst case: fission products from the fuel escaping into the coolant. We assume further that the coolant system boundaries are compromised by the casualty, and fission products are escaping into the containment atmosphere. We know the rate and the composition of fission products released by molten fuel. Starting in the 1950s, extensive theoretical and laboratory work was done worldwide to explore these questioned, and we know that in all of the real reactor accidents, measured releases were very much lower than the unrealistic assumptions used for safety studies. And we know what happens to fission products as they enter the air, steam and water surrounding the reactor coolant system. We have substantial field data showing that highly charged and reactive fission product particles rapidly clump together and accumulate in the water flows and settle in the sumps, are absorbed in steam and water, condense and plate out on cooler surfaces, and interact with other materials they contact. The water lost from the reactor cooling systems does not disappear; it does not all evaporate inside the building. It reduces the airborne radioactivity within the building many thousand-fold below the extreme assumptions used for some safety analyses. So we assume that the worst realistic casualty also compromises the containment’s pressure-retaining ability and leak-tightness, so it is no more effective a containment structure than other industrial buildings, which, it turns out, is good enough.

Other means of generating electricity have occasionally caused death and bodily harm. Nuclear Power has not. In this situation, it does not make sense to require nuclear plants to protect against hypothetical dangers, while not applying the same amount of concern to more dangerous, and more vulnerable, facilities (oil refineries, chemical plants, coal mines, and chlorine tanks.)

Unwarranted fear of nuclear technology is based on two false premises: The belief that a nuclear casualty could have catastrophic public health consequences, and The belief that no amount of radiation can be small enough to harmless. These and other false beliefs are accepted uncritically because nuclear power is demonised, and e a r t h l y Solutions considered inadequate by definition. To make progress, we have to apply real-world knowledge and experience, not unrealistic models. To build a solid technology, quickly deploy many proven plants with few regulatory questions; and start preparing improved designs for regulatory review and approval and carry out an appropriate level of long-range research to ensure continuous progress.

Bharat kee Parmanu Saheli (Dr. Neelam Goyal)