Resources: Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Waste Debates

The first opinion essay for The Unstable Nucleus should concern an active debate over nuclear energy or nuclear waste. Not sure where to start?  Pick a news source that you respect and search their opinion pages for items on nuclear power or nuclear waste.  Look at local news stories related to nuclear power plants near Chicago or near your home town - odds are, there will be ongoing discussions about licensing issues, safety concerns, plans for upgrades, or new power plants. 

A handful of potentially useful resources are below.

Nuclear Waste Issues in the US

* What's the government doing about nuclear waste?  Well, Yucca Mountain was canceled and now there's a committee talking about the alternatives.  The presidential Blue Ribbon Commission on nuclear waste issues has a website.  Also, check out responses from some House Republicans to the decision to give up on Yucca Mountain here.

* A guy named Matthew Wald has written extensively on nuclear waste for the New York Times, and many of the articles are interesting.  Check them out, along with some other news stories on nuclear waste, here.

* How do the people of Nevada feel about Yucca Mountain?  Here's an archive of articles from the Las Vagas Sun. 

* While you'll need to log in through the library proxy server to get access to these, Scientific American has several great articles on nuclear waste - Try these links:
An overview of the nuclear waste conundrum 
Opinion piece against waste reprocessing


Nuclear Power Issues in the US


If you pick a topic on nuclear energy, I hope you'll aim for something specific (like whether the Indian Point reactor near New York City should be shut down, or whether Indonesia should go forward with the plans to start nuclear power).  But if you need some extra resources for general "pro" and "con" arguments, a few are below.

* Pro-nuclear:  check out an interesting (though old) essay by Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore on why he changed his mind and became pro-nuclear, here.  The industry group The World Nuclear Association has loads of fact sheets and materials to support nuclear energy - start with this essay by Director General John Ritch.   The US-based Nuclear Energy Institute is another place where you can get the perspective of the industry, for example at their "myths and facts about nuclear energy" page.

* Anti-nuclear:  Greenpeace is one of the major anti-nuclear activist organizations - their nuclear energy page is here.  The Union of Concerned Scientists is an activist organization that calls for tighter security and safety regulations for nuclear power.  They maintain an enormous amount of information about accidents, mishaps, and safety issues at U.S. reactors.  An overview of their concerns is here.

Checking in on North Korea

So, the fact that North Korea has nuclear weapons makes a lot of other nations nervous, to say the least.  For years, South Korea, China, the U.S., Japan, and Russia have tried to negotiate with North Korea to slow their nuclear activities.  A year ago, the surprise discovery that North Korea had a brand-new uranium enrichment plant caused a lot of speculation and unease around the world - what are they up to exactly?

Just in the last week, talks have been restarted between North Korea and the other nations mentioned above.  So far, they seem to be going well - but this is definitely something to keep a sharp eye on!

Here's a Reuters update.


(p.s. - looking for readings/assignment this week?  Check the portal page to find a written homework assignment due this week in class.  No quiz!)

US's most powerful nuclear bomb being dismantled

I thought this was an interesting article about how the largest nuclear bomb is set to be dismantled in Texas. Especially when I thought about how Obama wants to get down to zero nuclear weapons but at the same time increased nuclear weapons research. Also I just thought it was interesting when the article mentioned that the bomb is 600 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and that it weighs 10,000 lbs.

-Alexis

http://my.news.yahoo.com/uss-most-powerful-nuclear-bomb-being-dismantled-071325260.html

India's Continuous Nuclear Conundrum

India's path for nuclear plans has been full of many complicated decisions and speed bumps.

In 2008, Bush signed a nuclear deal with India which allowed civilian nuclear trade with India, and

in 2010, France signed a nuclear deal with India to build two reactors in India at a cost of $9.3 billion.

This occurred a few months before India and Japan signed trade deals to boost trade and investment. (this playing a role to counter China's anti-Japanese movement) However, Japan wanted India to commit to ending nuclear tests and India refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

One month post-Fukushima, violent protests (one man killed, many injured) rose in areas of India where power plant proposals were being made. (Jaithapur, West India) Many farms and neighborhoods are being taken over and hurting the agricultural and farming economy.

Australia being India's main supplier of Uranium (as well as China), now sees its opportunity to refuse to sell it to them as a means of getting India to sign the NPT. Although India does not disagree with the treaty, they see that it would be unwise to do so because the other countries that haven't signed will have an upper hand. "The issue is, above all, one of strategic common sense: China, which went to war with India in 1962, has nuclear weapons pointed at it, making it irresponsible to sign a treaty that would disarm India unilaterally."


(All information taken from english.aljazeera.net)

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/10/20111011113454624274.html


-karin..again.

Nuclear New York

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/19/141489883/fight-over-nuclear-plant-draws-n-y-political-heavies



Polls show that 40 percent of New Yorkers want the plant closed while 49 percent do not want the plant to close.

To close the plant or not to close the plant?

-karin

Chernobyl Film Premieres at Chicago Film Festival

Tomorrow is the last screening of the film "Innocent Saturday," (3:40 at AMC River East 21) a story which follows a man on the day of the disaster of Chernobyl, April 26, 1986. He is the only one who realizes the vast impact that the disaster will have but nobody in his town seems to believe him.

Here's the trailer: http://vimeo.com/29438487

Sorry for the late post, I just found out about it.

-Karin

Readings for October 21

Here we go - head first into the debate over nuclear energy!  The main reading for this week is an article from a few years ago that gives an overview of both sides of the debate.  This is a pre-Fukushima survey, but the core issues have not really changed:

1)  Pros and Cons of Nuclear Energy from a Wall Street Journal article by Michael Totty.  Notice as you are reading this that many of the "pro" arguments for nuclear energy are not actually phrased as inherent advantages of nuclear energy, but as answers to criticisms.  For the quiz this week, I will be asking you to write a few one-sentence summaries of arguments on each side of the issue, so be familiar with the range of points made in this article.

2) The other reading for this week is a recent New York Times article on the future of nuclear power around the world, after Fukushima.  Key (quiz-able) things to note:  how has Japan's plan for the future development of nuclear power changed?  Is the United States still planning to build new nuclear reactors?  Which country has the most nuclear reactors, and which country gets the largest fraction of their energy from nuclear power?

Global Zero Nuclear Summit Aims To Eliminate Nuclear Weapons Worldwide

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/11/global-zero-nuclear-power_n_1004801.html

A thought-provoking article discussing the possibility of eliminating nuclear weapons.

"Some 100 international leaders from across the globe and across the political spectrum -- including former top Reagan advisers -- will call on the heads of the eight nuclear powers (plus nearly-there North Korea) to initiate the first-ever multilateral negotiations for the elimination of nuclear weapons."

Posted by Jasmine Chong

Polonium-210, smoking, and spies

What do cigarettes and the strangest (publicly known) assassination in the recent history have to do with each other?  Polonium-210!  It's a radioactive isotope that is one of the many "daughters" of the decay of natural uranium.  It's present in small quantities in soil and rock around us.  Interestingly, tobacco plants take up Polonium from soil and fertilizer.  A significant contribution of the cancer-causing power of smoking comes from radiation from Polonium-210 alpha decays in the lungs.

I recently ran across an article that is an "expose" of the fact that tobacco companies have long known about the radioactive material in their cigarettes and kept it quiet.  Check it out: ABC News article on radiation in tobacco smoke.

A concentrated (but still invisibly small) dose of pure Polonium-210 was slipped into a cup of tea consumed by former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, and led to his rapid death from radiation poisoning.  This story of this assassination is fascinating and disturbing.  Read about it in this CBS News Article or by following the book review link below.


Image credit:  The Alexander Litvinenko Family, via Getty Images, taken from a New York Times book review on "The Terminal Spy," a book about Litvinenko's death.

Readings (and quiz info) for October 7

Right now in class we're talking about radiation health risks, "risk" in general, and beginning to develop a better understanding of nuclear reactors.  Readings for this week pick up on a couple of those threads. 

1)  The American Nuclear Society Dose Chart.  Go through this and find out your own average yearly ionizing radiation dose.  I won't expect you to know any of the actual numbers for the purposes of the quiz in class, but I'd like you to have some sense of which contributions are large and which are small.  It is also worth looking at this critically:  this is put together by a pro-nuclear organization.  Can you tell?

2) A primer on the health effects of ionizing radiation, used for training workers at Princeton University who handle radioactive materials.  This is an online version of the type of training manual used anywhere that scientists or technicians have to work with or around ionizing radiation.  Things to pay attention to:  types of prompt vs. delayed effects, why children and fetuses are more susceptible to radiation damage, and which body organs are most and least sensitive.  (Note - your brain is a part of your nervous system.  Is it extra sensitive to radiation, or not so much?)

3) An opinion piece by (pro-nuclear) risk expert David Ropeik in Scientific American last Spring.  This article was in response to the reaction to the Fukushima catastrophe.  As you're reading it, pay particular attention to his explanation of why nuclear risks are particularly scary to people.  Also pay attention to the idea of "confirmation bias," and his comparison of estimated deaths from nuclear accidents compared to deaths from fossil fuel burning.