The Green Nuclear Option

William Donald Needham

Description

The Green Nuclear Option offers a logical argument for considering nuclear power as one of the best options to deal with the climate crisis of the 21st century. Nuclear technology is decades old and has stood the test of time, becoming even more reliable and safe, incorporating the lessons learned from accident assessments. Carbon-free nuclear power is the only mature technology available to power the world away from greenhouse gas emissions.

This book is about the conflation of nuclear engineering and climate change, beginning with a history lesson that separates the origins of the atom bomb from the subsequent engineering of nuclear reactors. The destructive power of atomic bombs has ever cast a shadow over the potential bounty of taming the energy stored in the atomic nucleus for human good, but The Green Nuclear Option lays out the facts about its magnitude, global disposition, and why fuel recycling would greatly reduce the burden.  

The human race is running an uncontrolled physics experiment with the only home we have. There is little time to waste, and renewables can’t do it all. Nuclear power plants need to play a key, bridging role to a survivable future. 

Sujets

• Energie & environnement
• Power Resources
• Sciences et techniques
• Technology
• Nuclear
• Engineering
• Physique
• Physical attractiveness

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 16 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977263384
• Langue: English

Extrait

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The Green Nuclear Option All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2023 William Donald Needham v2.0
The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com
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Outskirts Press and the "OP" logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE: ATOMS FOR WAR
CHAPTER TWO: FISSION PHYSICS
CHAPTER THREE: THE CURIE METER REM RULE
CHAPTER FOUR: SAFETY CONTROL REACTOR AX MAN
CHAPTER FIVE: ATOMS FOR PEACE
CHAPTER SIX: CHINA SYNDROME
CHAPTER SEVEN: SOVIET SYNDROME
CHAPTER EIGHT: WASTE NOT WANT NOT
CHAPTER NINE: WORLD POWER
CHAPTER TEN: ECONOMICS AND ELECTRICITY
CHAPTER ELEVEN: CHANGED CLIMATE
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE NUCLEAR OPTION
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
After graduating from college in 1972 at the height of the Cold War in the Naval ROTC program as a mechanical engineer, I found myself across the desk from Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy, which was then in a period of rapid growth. After being thrown out of his office and spending two hours in a hall closet, I was led back for a final tongue lashing before being sent on my way, evidently rejected outright. As I picked up my orders to go back to my unit, the clerk asked me, "Mare Island or Bainbridge?" On learning that these were the two locations for the navy’s Nuclear Power Schools, I found out that I was to become a nuclear engineer.
After a year at Mare Island, California, and then Idaho to learn and respect nuclear reactors, I was sent to my first submarine, eventually rising to become chief engineer of a second submarine. There followed tour assignments as nuclear repair officer at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, MIT for a degree in submarine design, submarine repair officer at the forward deployed base at Holy Loch, Scotland, and submarine force maintenance officer in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I came to know that nuclear reactors are reliable, powerful, and safe if they are operated and maintained by well-trained personnel using well-established procedures. My life depended on them for months on end deeply submerged in the unforgiving ocean.
Twenty years later, I reported for duty in Washington, DC as the engineering director of the Seawolf Submarine Program, a new vessel meant to set a standard that adversaries could not easily best. This was the capstone of my aspirational career. Three months later, the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the program was cancelled. My days as a rising star naval nuclear engineer were over. My thoughts turned to other interests on hold while underwater and repairing submarines on navy bases.
The environment as human habitat has always been a core tenet deeply embedded in my way of thinking. This in all probability a result of starting out life on Midway Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean surrounded by gooney birds at eye-to-eye level. After running the recycling program in college for the Ecological Society of America, the move to California prompted a continuation there and my first introduction to the Sierra Club on John Muir’s home turf. It was to the Sierra Club that I turned for an initiation to the mountains of western Virginia. A decade of discovering new trails through forests and fields and learning the fauna, fauna, and fungi that lived there followed the interconnected harmony of nature through the cycle of seasons punctuated by the occasional storm. Green in summer, red and gold in fall, brown and gray in winter, pink and blue in spring. I became a Sierra Club Life Member.
The first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was a global-warming yellow alert. It was based on the unassailable principles of thermodynamics. The science of heat and energy is a core curriculum course in mechanical engineering and the basis for all power plants, including nuclear. Carbon dioxide traps heat, and the earth must warm up to balance the sun’s light energy input; global warming is thermodynamics. In the two decades that have passed since then, the prescience of early climate scientists has become manifest. Soaring temperatures, massive floods, and superstorms have been heralded by subsequent IPCC reports. The predicted slow but inexorable effect on nature is now a matter of observable fact with changing migration patterns of both animals and plants. There are already some migrations of Homo sapiens to greener pastures. The need for action to reverse this trend is now a flashing red alert.
The conflation of nuclear engineering and climate change is what this book is about. It is at first a history story that separates the origins of the atom bomb from the subsequent engineering of nuclear reactors. Atoms for war versus atoms for peace. The destructive power of atomic bombs has ever cast a shadow over the potential bounty of taming the energy stored in the atomic nucleus for human good. Fear of the unknown is at the heart of the nuclear energy debate. There follows a nuclear engineering educational primer that provides the basics of reactions and radiation based on the basic curriculum of the navy program that turned ignorant raw recruits into competent nuclear engineers. The three nuclear accidents that stand out from an otherwise excellent nuclear safety record have been branded as the inevitable rather than the rare exception. A technical summary of what actually happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima Daiichi provides some context from which important lessons were learned.
The second half of the book is a world’s eye view of the present and future of nuclear energy. From this global perspective, many countries such as France and Finland have embraced nuclear power and others such as Germany have opted out, choosing to rely on Russia’s gas instead. Nuclear waste is one of the key obstacles in the mind of many environmentalists. The facts about its magnitude, global disposition, and why fuel recycling would greatly reduce the burden are discussed in sufficient detail to understand the issue. It is not what it has been made out to be. That reactors are expensive and complicated, and therefore take too long to build is one of the key issues raised by critics. A business case analysis for the construction of new nuclear power plants affordably and on schedule is a template for success.
The point is that green is not the same color anymore. The human race is running an uncontrolled physics experiment with the only home we have. There is little time to waste, and renewables can’t do it all. Nuclear power plants need to play a key, bridging role to a survivable future. The United States Navy has been building nuclear reactors and putting them into ships and submarines for over seventy years. There has never been a nuclear accident on any navy reactor even though they are routinely cycled through their full range of power in all manner of ship operations. The model is proven: Build the same reactor design over and over with the same seasoned workforce and operate it with a knowledgeable, well-trained crew. This is the green nuclear option.
CHAPTER ONE
"Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true."
~ Ulysses S. Grant
ATOMS FOR WAR
The nuclear age began with a bang at 5:29:45 a.m. on 16 July 1945 at a godforsaken site in the western desert of North America code-named Trinity. Los Alamos Director Robert Oppenheimer chose the name from John Donne’s sonnet "Batter my heart, three-person’d God," eliciting the contradiction of the power of the atom for all time. Human habitation of the empyreal Garden of Eden abruptly came to an end because the knowledge of good and evil had been gained by eating the forbidden fruit. When the cynosure Aioi Bridge in central Hiroshima was sighted, the bomb bay doors of the Enola Gay were opened, and "bomb away" announced its dispatch. Adam and Eve were banished to a life of painful toil to eke out a meager subsistence amid thorns and thistles. In the blasted Eden of Hiroshima, one resident recalled "a blinding … flash cut sharply across the sky… [followed by] dead silence … probably a few seconds … and then a … huge boom … like the rumbling of distant thunder." 1 The white light at Trinity announced the mushroom of debris and energy that grew ever upward and outward to become the signature of its frightful destructive power. It was the culmination of the three-year sprint of the Manhattan Project that started with scientific theory and ended with engineered demonstration. The knowledge gained changed the equation of life on Earth forever, the Garden of Eden now twice removed.
The first use of the power of the atom was both good and evil in the grayness of moral suasion. The quest began in 1939 with a letter to President Roosevelt written by Albert Einstein encouraged by the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard warning of advances already apace in Nazi Germany to unleash the power of the atom. A British committee named Military Application of Uranium Detonation (MAUD) had concluded that a bomb was feasible in 1941, about six months before the entry of the United States into World War II coincident with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the 7 December date that would oratorically live in infamy. With the laconic brevity necessitated by war, the United States special committee S