By: Jim
Taylor
At first glance, it looks like the worst of both
worlds -- a nuclear power plant in the Alberta Oil Sands.
But National Resources
Minister Gary Lunn thinks "nuclear can play a
very significant role in the oil sands."
"I'm very, very
keen." he said. And he added, "It's absolutely emission free."
His statement is
patently nonsense.
True, nuclear plants do
not emit carbon-dioxide, a prime culprit among the "greenhouse gases"
contributing to climate change. But nuclear plants -- especially those using
cooling towers -- emit huge volumes of water vapour,
an equally potent greenhouse gas.
The construction of a
nuclear plant consumes enormous amounts of materials and energy, all of which
pump carbon emissions into the atmosphere. As economist Amory Lovins calculated, in the 1970s, construction and
decommissioning of a nuclear power plant consumes as much energy as the plant
will produce.
To say
nothing of the long-term problem of safeguarding radioactive wastes.
Let's say, for the sake
of argument, that nuclear waste won't be safe for 1,000 years. The
CONFESSION OF BIAS
Let me declare my bias
-- I have opposed nuclear power plants ever since I wrote a national article
about them 30 years ago.
But I'm changing my
mind. I'm becoming a reluctant convert. Not because nuclear energy is the best
choice, but because it's the least bad.
The best choice would be
to curb our relentless lust for energy. To call a halt to
burgeoning populations with ever-increasing expectations. To give this
poor battered earth a rest.
As I grow older, I grow
less optimistic we will ever do that. The best I can hope is that we will apply
some sanity to the ways we use energy.
When I wrote that
article, 30 years ago, I left one crucial factor out of the equation. I
considered nuclear wastes. I did not consider fossil fuel wastes.
Nuclear wastes are easy
to recognize. They're the spent fuel rods that glow eerie blue in the bottom of
rigorously quarantined swimming pools.
Fossil fuel wastes are
mostly invisible. They go up industrial chimneys and out exhaust pipes. But as
a series of recent scientific reports has demonstrated, fossil fuel wastes do
not disappear. They skew our atmospheric balance.
In 250 years, human
activity has raised levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere higher than they
have been for 400,000 years.
To put that visually,
we've been moving carbon -- coal, oil, and gas -- from underground and
redistributing it in the air.
WASTEFUL USE OF SCARCE ENERGY
That's where the Oil
Sands -- more accurately described as Tar Sands -- come in. Their operations, surface and underground, are already the biggest
source of greenhouse gases in
Currently, mining
processes burn natural gas to heat the tar enough to extract gooey oil. Each
barrel of oil will generate about 5.8 million British thermal units (Btu) of
heat. But extracting that barrel of oil consumes about one million Btus -- 1,000 cubic feet -- of natural gas.
Add the hydrogen needed
to upgrade that barrel to higher quality synthetic crude oil (SCO) and, write
Swedish engineers Söderbergh, Robelius
and Alekletta, "a barrel of .
high quality SCO may require more than 1700 standard
cubic feet of natural gas."
A Reuters
economist likened the process to using gold to produce lead.
The Tar Sands contain
the world's second-largest petroleum reserves.
So we're burning
relatively cheap but limited energy to produce more expensive energy -- for
export.
Heat is currently a
waste product of nuclear power. Instead of heating the atmosphere, it could
substitute for natural gas in heating the buried tar.
QUESTIONS ABOUT TRUSTWORTHINESS
Opponents will
immediately scream that we can't trust the nuclear industry.
All industries protect
their information. But I have found nuclear advocates more open, more
transparent, than their fossil fuels counterparts. Big oil has been just as
intransigent about admitting its complicity in global warming as big tobacco
was about lung cancer. Imperial Oil has yet to admit that climate change is
happening, let alone its own role in causing it.
The coal industry
promotes "clean coal" power, but carefully ignores the environmental
ravages of strip mining and the deaths of about 8,000 coal miners a year. The
World Bank estimates that air pollution from coal burning causes about 300,000
premature deaths every year.
In contrast, the nuclear
industry publishes scientific papers analyzing its failures.
When I wrote my article,
Ontario Hydro operated all but two of
"I can't agree with
your conclusion," Horton told me. "But I don't want your research
dismissed because of some silly slip."
MISSING FACTORS
Granted, waste is still
a problem. But not just for the nuclear industry. At least nuclear wastes are
solid, concentrated, in a single location. Fossil fuel wastes get dispersed in
every piece of plastic packaging, every puff of exhaust from a car's tailpipe,
every industrial burner and boiler.
If we can't control
fossil fuel wastes, there may be no human civilization left to guard
radioactive wastes.
It makes no sense to me
to burn cheap energy to produce expensive energy. Or to use
relatively clean energy to produce dirtier energy.
If nuclear power can
balance the equation a little better, I have to support it. But
reluctantly.
Because
back in the 1970s, I left a crucial element out of my energy equations.
I can't help wondering what we might be leaving out of today's equations.
*****************************************
Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study
groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
*****************************************
If you have comments or questions about Jim's column, write to him directly at jimt@quixotic.ca