A long list of antinuclear activists like Helen Caldicott (33, 34) and Amory Lovins (15, 35, 36), as well as organizations such as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Union of Concerned Scientists have been trumpeting the message for decades that nuclear power is bad for the envi­ronment and for humans and that catastrophe is just around the corner. And yet, their dire predictions have not come true. Other environmental activists—includ — ing Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, Patrick Moore, the former head of Greenpeace, and James Lovelock, the founder of the Gaia the­ory—have changed their minds and have concluded that nuclear power is safe and essential if we are to reduce the production of carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels and thus minimize global warming (37-39). So who is right?

The arguments most often made against nuclear power are that it is too expen­sive, it is too dangerous, it produces deadly waste that will be with us for hundreds of thousands of years and produce environmental damage, mining for uranium is too hazardous and generates so much carbon dioxide that it does not really help solve global warming, and it is a target for terrorists. But most of these concerns are based on myths about the hazards of radiation, both from accidents that have occurred and from the storage of nuclear waste. I have already discussed the cost of nuclear power in this chapter. The rest of the book is devoted to exploring these other issues.

A number of questions come to mind: What exactly is radiation? What are the biological effects of radiation? How does radiation cause cancer, and how danger­ous is it really? How much radiation are we naturally exposed to? What happened at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, and what are the consequences? What is nuclear waste, and can we safely deal with it? Is there enough uranium available to expand nuclear power dramatically, and can it be safely mined?

Our story begins with radiation—what is it and where does it come from? It’s a fascinating story, full of amazing scientific discoveries that boggle the mind, so stick with me.

NOTES

1. The power production of nuclear reactors is commonly stated as GWe for the amount of electrical power they generate. That is because, as with coal and natural gas plants, much of the total energy dissipates as heat. The electrical component is about one-third of the total power, so a 1 GWe power plant actually produces about 3 GW total power, which is sometimes given as GWt (thermal).

2. See Chapter 10 for more details about reactors.

3. Millirem (mrem) and mSv are measures of a dose of radiation. See Chapter 7 for details about dose.

4. Fusion is even more concentrated energy, but it is not on the horizon for an avail­able energy source.

WHAT IS NUCLEAR WASTE?

I gazed over the railing into the crystal clear cooling pool glowing with blue Cherenkov light caused by particulate radiation traveling faster than the speed of light in water.1 I can see a matrix of square objects through the water, filling more than half of the pool. It looks like you could take a quick dip into the water, like an indoor swimming pool, but that would not be a good idea! It is amazing to think that this pool, about the size of a ranch house, is holding all of the spent fuel from powering the Wolf Creek nuclear reactor in Burlington, Kansas, for 27 years. The reactor was just refueled about a month before my visit, so 80 of the used fuel rod assemblies were removed from the reactor and replaced with new ones. The used fuel rods were moved underwater into the cooling pool, joining the approximately 1,500 already there. There is sufficient space for the next 15 years of reactor opera­tion. There is no danger from standing at the edge of this pool looking in, though the levels of radon tend to be somewhat elevated and may electrostatically attach to my hard hat, as indeed some did. What I am gazing at is what has stirred much of the controversy over nuclear power and is what must ultimately be dealt with if nuclear power is to grow in the future—the spent nuclear fuel waste associated with nuclear power.

What is the hidden danger that I am staring at? Am I looking at the unleashed power of Hephaestus, the mythical Greek god of fire and metallurgy? Or is this a more benign product of energy production that can be managed safely? What exactly is in this waste? And is it really waste, or is it a resource?

To answer that question, we have to understand the fuel that reactors burn. The fuel rods that provide the heat from nuclear fission in a nuclear reactor contain fuel pellets of uranium, an element that has an atomic number of 92 (the number of protons and also the number of electrons). However, there are different iso­topes of uranium that have different numbers of neutrons. The fuel pellets con­sist of about 96% 238U and 3-4% 235U, depending on the reactor. As discussed in Chapter 6, fission is a process in which an unstable nucleus splits into two unequal parts (Figure 9.1), giving nuclei that have atomic masses centered around 95 and

140. Only the 235U in the fuel pellets can undergo fission because 238U is more stable, with an even number of protons and neutrons (only isotopes with odd numbers of total neutrons and protons readily undergo fission). When a nucleus of 235U splits into two pieces, the pieces themselves—the fission products—are very unstable because they have too many neutrons, so they undergo nuclear decay processes, primarily negative p decay and у decay, as discussed earlier (see Chapter 6). There are several hundred possible combinations of fission products produced when a large amount of 235U undergoes fission, and these all become part of the used fuel rods.

Besides the pieces of the nucleus that are formed in the fission process, sev­eral neutrons are produced. On average, two and a half neutrons are formed in the fission of 235U, and these neutrons can sustain the chain reaction and create the nuclear fire that is the heart of a nuclear power reactor. On average, one neutron has to be absorbed by another nucleus of 235U to cause it to fission and continue the reaction. The neutrons play another role, however. Due to the vast amount of 238U that is present, it is very likely that some neutrons will be cap­tured by the nucleus of this isotope of uranium. The result of that neutron cap­ture process is the formation of a new isotope of uranium, 239U, which quickly emits a p particle to become neptunium-239 (239Np), which has 93 protons. The neptunium, in turn, emits a p particle to become plutonium-239 (239Pu) with 94 protons, which is relatively stable with a half-life of 24,100 years. The 239Pu can also undergo fission, and it contributes to the nuclear fuel in the fuel rods as it builds up. Other wizardry occurs so that 239Pu can capture a neutron and become 240Pu, and this neutron capture process can continue to produce 241Pu and 242Pu. Plutonium-241 (241Pu) p-decays into americium 241 (241Am), which is a useful isotope that is used in smoke detectors. This is truly the dream of the ancients—transmutation from one element into another—though of course they were hoping to get gold! These isotopes that have higher atomic numbers than uranium are known as transuranics or actinides.2 Jeremy Bernstein tells the amazing story of the discovery of these transuranic elements in his fascinat­ing book Plutonium (1).

The transuranic elements and the fission products, along with a lot of 238U and a small amount of 235U, are what are left in the spent fuel rods after they are used up and have to be removed and stored. One-third of the fuel assemblies are replaced every 12 to 18 months, depending on the reactor, so a given fuel assembly will be in the reactor for three refueling cycles or 3 to 4.5 years. For every 100 kilograms (kg) of nuclear fuel containing 3.5% 235U that are put into a reactor, three years later there will be 1 kg 235U, 95 kg 238U, 1 kg plutonium of various isotopes, and 3 kg fission products (2).

Some of the most important of the radioactive isotopes produced in the spent fuel are listed in Table 9.1.3 This table has some important information about the characteristics of spent nuclear fuel from a nuclear reactor. It is easy to see that the fission products have atomic masses around either 95 or 140, in accordance with Figure 9.1. The radioactive decay of all the fission products is negative p decay, which emits an electron, while the radioactive decay of neutron capture prod­ucts like plutonium is mostly a decay, which emits an a particle (helium nucleus), although 241Pu undergoes p decay. Gamma radiation is also produced from many of the isotopes and is listed if it is a major type of radiation (see Chapter 6 for more information on these types of decays). The most dramatic information in Table 9.1 is the range of half-lives, the time it takes for half of the radioac­tive isotope to decay, which varies from less than a day to over 15 million years. Highlighted isotopes are ones that pose particular biological hazards in case of an accident (131I, 137Cs, and 90Sr) or pose special problems in waste storage (241Pu). These will be discussed later.

Besides the various radionuclides that are present in used fuel rods, the other very important property is that they are thermally very hot because of the con­tinuing radioactive decay of the fission products. Of course, producing heat to make steam is the reason the fuel rods are in the reactor in the first place, but after they are removed from the reactor, the heat has to be dealt with. The purpose of the cooling pool that I was gazing into is now clear. In fact, it has two purposes: it absorbs the heat from the used fuel rods and it allows the large majority of the hundreds of fission products with short half-lives to decay harmlessly, with the water absorbing the radiation. The heat being produced by the fuel rods decreases exponentially, so that after one year, the heat energy has dropped by 10,000-fold. The high speed p particles (electrons) produced by the fission products in the fuel rods cause the blue glow in the water (Cherenkov radiation);4 the a particles from plutonium decay cannot escape from the rods, so they do not contribute to the radiation in the pool.

Now what? That is the big question about spent nuclear fuel. There are two time domains of importance. In the short term, the spent fuel rods can be stored in the cooling pools for several years to allow them to cool and for much of the initial radioactivity to decay. In the case of the Wolf Creek Nuclear Power plant, the rods have been in the cooling pool for the 27 years of operation and will continue to be there for the 40 years originally planned for the reactor lifetime. During that time, all of the radioisotopes with lifetimes of less than four years will become negligible. As a practical rule, 10 half-lives are long enough for radioisotopes to decay to a level that is relatively safe. How do I know that? Let’s do the math. After one half-life, only one-half of the radiation is present; after two half-lives, only one-quarter; after three half-lives, only one-eighth, and so on. In general, the mathematical expression is (1/2)N, so after 10 half-lives, the amount of radiation is (1/2)10, which is one-thousandth of the original amount. Of course, whether it is actually harmful or not depends on the amount of radiation that you start with. Helen Caldicott and other anti-nuclear activists are fond of saying that you need at least 20 half-lives for radiation to decay away (3). What this means is that there is only one-millionth of the original radiation, which would be far less than what is naturally present in the uranium ore.

Since some of the radionuclides have very long half-lives, the long-term han­dling of the waste is critically important. To get a better idea of the time frame involved in the short term, it is instructive to look at the decay of various radio­nuclides and actinides that are produced from fission (Figure 9.2). What is not readily shown here is that initially there is a very rapid loss of radioactivity from

the very short half-life radionuclides, some with half-lives of seconds or minutes. 137Cs and 90Sr, both of which have half-lives around 30 years, become by far the most important fission products after a few years. By 300 years (10 half-lives), 99% of the fission products are 137Cs and 90Sr. By about 500 years or less, the radio­activity of the fission products is at the level of the original uranium ore equivalent to one ton of fuel.

The other important process is the continuing production of transuranics from neutron capture, since there is still some ongoing spontaneous fission of 235U (it was not all used up in the fuel rods). This leads to a gradual increase in various isotopes of plutonium and a few other nuclides. This is the long-term radioactive waste problem. It takes about 250,000 years for the total radioactivity from both fission products and actinides to equal that of the original uranium ore equivalent (4). Since this level of radioactivity was originally present in the uranium that was mined to make the nuclear fuel, returning that amount of radioactivity to the earth should not be a particular problem. However, that is not the whole story. Bernard Cohen has calculated that the toxicity of the spent nuclear fuel is simi­lar to that of the original uranium ore after only about 15,000 years (5). Also, if the spent nuclear fuel is recycled as discussed below, the radioactivity of the spent nuclear fuel is equal to the uranium ore after about 10,000 years (4). It is also worth noting that there are various metals that are extremely toxic and have infinite half-lives—such as mercury, lead, arsenic—yet we use them routinely in various industrial processes.

I consider myself to be an environmentalist and have been for most of my adult life, especially since reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson in the 1960s. I believe that we humans have a responsibility to be good stewards of the earth and to assure that it can support not only human life but also the wide diversity of life that has evolved on earth. We are making big impacts on the earth, and we need to take measures to mitigate those effects. For many environmentalists, nuclear power is considered too dangerous to be used, yet there is no evidence for this. It is hard for me to see how environmentalists can protest against nuclear power while also recognizing that global warming is a huge, looming problem.

I and other pro-nuclear environmentalists find ourselves in an interesting conun­drum. Many of my fellow liberal environmental activists are opposed to nuclear power, while many conservatives who are staunch deniers of global warming are supportive of nuclear power. Truly this is an area where both liberals and conserva­tives could come together. Suppose we liberal environmentalists are wrong about global warming being caused by human influences. Would it really be such a bad thing for you conservatives if we actually reduced emissions of carbon dioxide by having nuclear power and renewable sources of energy? More jobs will likely be created in these industries than those that will be lost in the coal industry. If we are right, then we have taken action to prevent serious harm to the earth’s ecosystems and to human populations. And to environmentalists, look at the environmental cost of depending for so long on coal and measure that against the actual hazards from the very few nuclear accidents that have occurred. Even in the worst acci­dent—Chernobyl—the effects were very localized, but the atmospheric effects of burning coal are worldwide. Wind and solar energy are not going to substantially reduce the use of coal—that is the unfortunate truth. Is nuclear power really as bad as coal? Choices must be made, and every choice entails some risk. If you continue to oppose nuclear power, coal will still be providing most of the world’s electricity 50 years from now and the earth will be on a path to catastrophic warming.

The choice is up to us. I believe the best choice is to go back to the future and halt global warming by replacing most fossil fuel electrical generation with nuclear power, supplemented with wind power. I hope we have the wisdom to take that path.

What is “bad” or “ugly” about natural gas? The worst problem with natural gas is that it still produces CO2 when it burns, even though only about half as much as burning coal. However, the EPA recently evaluated the greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas and concluded that, because of leaks from pipes and venting from gas wells, natural gas may actually be only about 25% cleaner than coal, not 50%

(32) . Another “bad” is that methane is a greenhouse gas in its own right. In fact, it is 26 times more effective than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, but it rapidly breaks down in the atmosphere into CO2 and water, with a lifetime of 12 years. Greenhouse gases are compared by their global warming potential (GWP)—a relative number that compares their effectiveness to CO2 over a specified number of years. The GWP of methane is 72 over 20 years and 25 over 100 years (see Appendix A). Methane emis­sions accounted for 11.6% of the greenhouse gas GWP in the United States in 2010

(33) . About 41% of methane emissions come from energy production, 30% from agriculture (mostly cattle), and 28% from landfills and waste management (34).

According to EPA estimates, 570 billion cubic feet of methane leaked from pipes or were vented from natural gas wells and the natural gas distribution net­work in 2009. That represents 2.4% of the total US natural gas production for 2009 (35). The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado recently measured daily methane emissions over three years from the Denver-Julesburg Basin due to fracking and concluded that about 4% (range of 2.3-7.7%) of the natural gas is lost to the air (36). This is an even larger loss than that estimated by the EPA and does not include additional losses in pipelines and the distribution network. Robert Howarth and colleagues from Cornell University analyzed the losses of methane from natural gas well develop­ment (“fugitive emissions”) and estimated that 3.6-7.9% of the lifetime produc­tion of the well is lost through fugitive emissions (37). Since methane is such an efficient greenhouse gas, this loss nullifies much of the advantage of natural gas over coal (38). The authors conclude that “[c]ompared to coal, the footprint of shale gas is at least 20% greater and perhaps more than twice as great on the 20-year horizon and is comparable when compared over 100 years.” How true that statement is depends greatly on the actual percentage of natural gas that is leaked and on the total amount of natural gas produced.

Ramon Alvarez and colleagues analyzed how long it would take to get a net climate benefit from using natural gas instead of coal in a power plant, and the answer depends greatly on the percent of natural gas leakage. At a leakage rate of 3.2%, they calculate that there would be an immediate global warming benefit in converting from coal to natural gas power plants. However, if the leakage rate were 5%, it would take over 40 years for a benefit (35). Clearly, it is important to get more precise information on the actual leakage from the natural gas produc­tion system but even more important to take steps to reduce the fugitive emissions wherever possible.

The second way that photons can interact is through the Compton interaction (Figure 7.2). This interaction occurs over a broad range of photon energies and is the most important interaction between 200 keV and 2 Mev. It is not dependent on the atomic number of the target atom, so it does not cause preferential absorp­tion in bone. The photon with energy hf interacts with a very loosely bound outer

shell electron (essentially a free electron) and gives up part of its energy in the col­lision. After the collision, the photon keeps on going with less energy hf’ (hence a longer wavelength), and the electron moves away with the rest of the energy, much like what would happen in a collision of pool balls. The less energetic photon can then interact again by either a Compton or photoelectric interaction until finally it loses all of its energy or passes through the target. The electron does damage on its own in a way to be discussed shortly. The Compton interaction is the primary interaction that occurs when cancers are treated with high energy у or X-rays and is also the principal interaction with у rays from natural or artificial radioactivity. Both the photoelectric and Compton interactions provide excellent confirmation that light can indeed act like a particle (a photon) since these interactions can be described mathematically as collisions of particles.

The initially high doses in the pine forests surrounding Chernobyl led to the “Red Forest" Pine trees are particularly sensitive to radiation and many trees died, giving a rusty appearance in the needles as they die, hence the name. This is the same color that is widespread over the northern Rocky Mountains as the pine trees are killed by mountain pine beetle, in part as a consequence of global warming. However, the severe consequences in the forests around Chernobyl were not long-lived. Trees grew back as the high radiation levels dropped quickly in the first few months after the accident. Pripyat was abandoned by the people and it is turning into a forest. Fields quickly reverted to grasslands and trees as a more natural ecosystem developed in the exclusion zone. 137Cs activity has remained high in berries, mushrooms, and wild game in the forests of the exclu­sion zone, which precludes their use as food, though some illegal gathering and poaching occur.

In spite of the elevated radioactivity, the exclusion zone has become a wildlife preserve half the size of Yellowstone National Park where birds and mammals thrive (20, 30). Between 250 and 280 bird species—40 of them rare or endan­gered, including white-tailed eagles and black storks—have been sighted in the area. Large mammals that thrive include boars, red deer (elk), roe deer, European bison, moose, wolves, foxes, beavers, and Przewalski’s horses. The only subspe­cies of wild horse that was brought back from the cusp of extinction, Przewalski’s horses were introduced into the exclusion zone in a controversial move. Thirty-one horses were released in 1998 and 1999, though 10 of them soon died—not from radiation but from the stress caused during transport. By December 2003 they had grown to 65 head (16). Unfortunately, the numbers are now down to as little as 30-40 as poachers have begun killing some of the horses (31).

The Soviet Union had cleared the forest around Chernobyl and built canals to drain the marshy land so that it could be turned into collective farms. After the nuclear accident, beavers returned to their natural habitat as people abandoned the exclusion zone and soon transformed the farmland back to its native marsh­land. Vast flocks of waterfowl migrate through and spend months in the water­ways. Huge catfish up to 18 feet long swim in the former artificial lake that was used to cool the reactors. Their size is not because they are mutants but because they live up to 100 years and there are no top predators to kill them, so they just keep growing. Around 120 wolves in numerous packs thrive as top predators to keep the populations of bison, deer, elk, and moose in balance (32). As it turns out, nature thrives in the absence of people—radiation is less of a problem than people!

Mary Mycio, the author of the excellent book Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl (2005), put it very well.

It seems odd, but it is impossible to smell fresher air in an inhabited urban setting than in Chornobyl,4 where the number of cars can usually be counted on one hand and songbirds frequently provide the only sound. It is one of the disaster’s paradoxes, but the zone’s evacuation put an end to industri­alization, deforestation, cultivation, and other human intrusions, mak­ing it one of Ukraine’s environmentally cleanest regions—except for the radioactivity. (31)

Agriculture was affected by radioactivity, but the levels decayed rapidly. Over time, the transfer of 1 37Cs from soil into plants became the biggest problem with radioactivity in crops, but this was reduced through weathering, physical decay, binding in the soils, and remediation efforts. Levels of 137Cs are now below national and international standards in agricultural food products produced in areas contaminated by radiation from Chernobyl, with the exception of the exclu­sion zone, where agriculture is banned (20). The Belarus government is beginning a program to resettle thousands of people in the formerly contaminated areas and to return the areas to normal use with few restrictions, though some areas with too much radioactivity will be reforested and managed (13).

A relatively small area in northern Wales, Scotland, and Cumbria was unfor­tunately under the radioactive plume when it rained heavily, bringing down high concentrations of 1 37Cs onto the peaty soils where sheep grazed. About 9,700 farms were unable to sell their sheep because internal radioactivity from 137Cs exceeded 1,000 Bq per kilogram—the international standard for restricting meat from consumption. Because the peaty soils kept the cesium in the plants rather than being adsorbed into the soils, the area maintained high levels of cesium for decades. It wasn’t until 2010 that the Scottish farmers were able to raise and sell sheep without quarantine (33, 34).

Altamont Pass may be an anomaly, but it is not the only threat to birds. The sagebrush plains of Wyoming and Montana have areas that are excellent for wind power but are also the habitat for the endangered sage grouse. The major problem for the sage grouse is not flying into the rotors but the very presence of the tall towers. The natural predators for sage grouse are raptors that like to perch on high structures to spy their dinner, so sage grouse instinctively avoid areas where wind turbines are installed. Wyoming has acted to put a voluntary sage grouse protec­tion plan in place by identifying core areas for sage grouse and restricting activi­ties in these areas. The areas were identified largely with the oil and gas industry in mind, however, not the wind industry. As a result, 23% of the class 4 or higher, and half of the class 6 and 7, winds are excluded from wind power development. This puts the oil and gas energy companies at odds with the wind energy com­panies, but oil and gas pay more of the state’s bills and have more clout (66). The outcome of this battle is uncertain but is emblematic of the problems that wind power faces.

Montana faces similar issues. The Nature Conservancy did a study to identify core areas for wind power that are relatively free of conflicts with sage grouse and other bird species (67). They estimate that of the 17 million acres of good to superb wind energy potential, about 7.7 million acres have a high potential for risks to breeding and resident bird species, including sage grouse, numerous grassland endemic species, piping plover and interior least tern, waterfowl, and bats. They concluded that Montana has about 9.2 million acres of land that could sustain wind power development without endangering native species.

So how many birds are killed by wind power? That is a difficult question to answer and the few studies are not very definitive. A National Academy of Sciences study of environmental effects of wind power (68) concluded that the average death rate for raptors is 0.03 per MW of rated power per year. At Altamont Pass, though, the rate for raptor kill is 1.94 per MW (69). But about 80% of birds killed are not raptors but passerines, mostly songbirds that are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Reform Act of 2005. The death rate varies widely between studies but most fall within the range of 2-4 birds killed per MW per year, though one study was as high as 12. With the current 50 GW of installed wind capacity, that would mean 100,000 to 200,000 birds killed per year and over half a million at the highest reported rate. The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) estimated in 2009 that 440,000 birds are killed by wind turbines each year (70). Of course, as wind power is scaled up, the number of birds killed would be expected to increase proportionally unless siting of wind farms is done to protect birds. Scaling up the FWS estimate to the DOE scenario of 20% of electricity in the United States from the wind would mean the possibility of over 3 million birds killed per year.

Bats are another issue for wind power. For reasons that are not entirely clear, bats seem to be killed at higher rates than birds. One hypothesis is that the tall white towers act as visual beacons to attract insects and bats. Another possibil­ity is that the audible and ultrasonic sounds of wind turbines may either attract bats or confuse their echolocation process (68). Bats are killed at high rates along forested ridge-top wind farms in the East, ranging from 15 to 41 bats killed per MW per year. Generally, the rates have been lower in the West and Midwest, ranging from 0.8 to 8.6 bats per MW per year, but a study in southwestern Alberta, Canada, showed high kill rates, similar to those of ridge-tops in the East (68). Bats are of particular concern because they are already threatened from the white nose syndrome that is killing millions of bats (71). Additional killing from wind turbines could be the straw that broke the bat’s back. A wind farm in Pennsylvania was shut down for a month and a half during the bat migration sea­son because a state — and federal-protected Indiana bat was killed. Another wind farm in West Virginia reached a court settlement that it could operate 24 hours a day from mid-November until April 1 when bats are hibernating. During the other months, the farm cannot operate at night (72). Bats are extremely impor­tant for both the vast quantity of insects they eat as well as the pollination they provide for many plants. It is very important to minimize bat killing from wind turbines.

But we need to keep this in perspective. According to the National Academy of Sciences report:

Collisions with buildings kill 97 to 976 million birds annually; collisions with high-tension lines kill at least 130 million birds, perhaps more than 1 billion; collisions with communications towers kill between 4 and 5 million based on “conservative estimates," but could be as high as 50 million; cars may kill 80 million birds per year; and collisions with wind turbines killed an estimated 20,000 to 37,000 birds per year in 2003, with all but 9,200 of those deaths occurring in California. Toxic chemicals, including pesticides, kill more than 72 million birds each year, while domestic cats are estimated to kill hundreds of millions of songbirds and other species each year. (68)

These numbers have a huge amount of uncertainty, but even so, it is clear that wind power is not going to be the major killer of birds. However, that does not mean that wind farm development should not take bird killing into account. Major flyways of migratory birds in Nebraska, Kansas, and the Texas panhandle are prime areas for wind power development. To avoid unnecessary killing of these birds, ecologically important areas need to be excluded from wind power development, following the approach used in Wyoming and Montana. The US Department of the Interior, in collaboration with environmental groups, recently issued guidelines on siting wind towers to assess and minimize their impacts on wildlife and their habitat, a good step in the right direction (73).

There are other environmental issues associated with wind power. The network of wide roads necessary to install the wind turbines and the trenches to bury the wires collecting the generated power disrupt natural areas, particularly in the northeastern mountains. Trees on ridgelines have to be cut down in an area of several acres around each tower so they don’t block the wind. These roads and cleared areas cause habitat fragmentation and increase the spread of invasive spe­cies. The net effect of these environmental insults is not clear, but they are clearly disruptive to some degree (68).

Humans react differently to the tall towers that are popping up like mushrooms throughout the country. Some people like them, or at least are not opposed to them, and some farmers and ranchers especially like the financial benefits that they get from leasing land for wind turbines. Wyoming ranchers can get $4,000 per MW per year for wind turbines on their property and more generally rates range from $4,000 to $6,000 per MW installed capacity (66, 74). But other peo­ple, including myself, have concerns about these huge industrial wind farms and associated transmission lines popping up in beautiful places. Mountain ridges are prime areas for wind turbines because of the high wind rating. To put wind tur­bines on mountain ridges or passes or undeveloped natural areas destroys the essence of what is most compelling about undisturbed nature—the sense of peace and tranquility and unity with nature that is a balm to the human soul.

I, for one, do not welcome wind turbines that destroy the viewshed in these places, and I am not alone. Colorado State University wanted to build a wind farm to generate up to 200 MW on a ranch it owns near the Colorado-Wyoming border. The project was met with vociferous opposition by the people living in the area who had unbroken views of the mountains but would now see wind tur­bines. Extensive wind farms are being proposed in Vermont, and there are many people opposed to them because of the environmental and visual effects (63). A proposed wind farm in the Flint Hills of Kansas was met with a lawsuit by the Flint Hills Tallgrass Prairie Heritage Foundation and the Audubon Society of Kansas because of danger to migratory birds and aesthetic views (75). In 2011 the governor of Kansas designated nearly 11,000 square miles of protected land in the Flint Hills that cannot have wind farms (76). For years there was opposition to the development of wind power off Cape Cod. A quick Google search on opposition to wind farms or solar power gets over 6 million hits for each. And so it goes.

In the final stages of World War II, the United States dropped a 16 kiloton yield uranium atomic bomb named Little Boy on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Three days later, a 21 kiloton yield plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki (30). These bombs, thankfully, remain the only human experience with actually using nuclear weapons because of the horror of what was unleashed. Far more power­ful hydrogen fusion bombs were later developed by both the United States and the Soviet Union, unleashing the Cold War and a reign of terror that lasted until the 1990s. The number of people killed in the two cities is uncertain, but it is estimated that about 140,000 died in Hiroshima and 70,000 died in Nagasaki by the end of 1945 (31). Most of the people died of the intense heat and the bomb blast, not so different from people who died from the fire-bombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, as well as Dresden and other cities in Germany. But a sinister new form of death occurred within days, weeks, and months from the radiation, known as acute radiation syndromes.

There are three different ways that very high doses of radiation kill peo­ple: hematopoietic syndrome, gastrointestinal (GI) syndrome, and cerebrovascu­lar syndrome. In addition, high doses of radiation cause a generalized temporary sickness known as the prodromal syndrome that causes nausea, diarrhea, fever, and low blood pressure. The prodromal syndrome begins with doses as low as 1 Gy but becomes more severe and prolonged after higher doses of several Gy. The hematopoietic syndrome is due to the death of stem cells in bone marrow that produce the white blood cells necessary for our immune systems. These are the most sensitive cells in our bodies. There is about a 50% chance that a human will die from a whole body dose of 4 Gy within several weeks, though treatment with antibiotics and isolation in a sterile environment can sometimes help people sur­vive doses up to 7 Gy. At higher doses of 8 Gy or more, 100% of people die within a week or so from the gastrointestinal syndrome. The rapidly growing stem cells of the intestine (crypt cells) become depleted and the intestines become leaky and unable to absorb food. Rampant infection, shock, and electrolyte imbalance usu­ally cause death from the GI syndrome. Finally, for extremely high doses of 50 Gy or more to the head, people die of the cerebrovascular syndrome within hours (7).

Uranium is widely distributed around the world in the earth’s crust and even in seawater. How much is available to power nuclear reactors, though, depends on economics as well as geology. As is true with virtually all kinds of geological resources, the amount that is available depends on the price people are willing to pay for it. There are more oil resources available at $100 per barrel than at $30 per barrel because lower quality resources become economically viable when the price goes up. Of course, the flip side is that the energy needed to get the resource goes up as the quality goes down. This is as true of uranium as it is of oil or gold. When the price goes up, exploration also goes up, so additional resources are found. With fossil fuel energy resources such as oil or coal, the cost of the fuel is the major part of the expense of producing power. With nuclear power, that is not true. Because so little fuel is used in a reactor, the cost of the fuel is only of sec­ondary importance to the cost of power produced by a reactor. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the cost for variable operations and management (O&M), which includes the cost of fuel, is only 10% of the total lev — elized cost of energy from advanced nuclear reactors. In contrast, variable O&M cost is 57% for conventional natural gas power plants and 69% for conventional combined cycle natural gas plants (42). The major cost for nuclear power is the capital cost of building the reactor. Thus, the cost of nuclear power is fairly insen­sitive to the cost of uranium.

As an example, if the cost of uranium doubled from $50 per pound to $100 per pound ($110/kg to $220/kg), the fuel cost for a reactor would go up from 0.62 cents per kWh to 0.86 cents per kWh, raising the cost of electricity from an efficient nuclear reactor from 1.42 cents per kWh to 1.66 cents per kWh (43). Over the last five years, uranium spot prices have been volatile, ranging from about $100 per pound in late 2007 before the worldwide recession to about $40 per pound in mid-2010. As of early 2013, the spot price was about $42 per pound, but most uranium production is actually sold on long-term contracts to utilities with nuclear reactors. The long-term contract price in 2013 was $57 per pound, sufficient to produce uranium profitably in the United States via ISR methods for high-grade deposits (44).

Exploration for uranium has gone in phases. The major push in the 1940s and 1950s came from the military effort to build bombs in the Cold War. A second push for exploration came in 1974-1983 due to the need to power civilian nuclear reactors and a perception that uranium was a scarce resource, which turned out not to be true. Little exploration occurred over the next couple of decades as the price of uranium tumbled, but picked up from 2003 until the present because of the increasing interest in a “nuclear renaissance” and an increase in the price of uranium. Because of this additional exploration, from 2005 to 2006 the world’s known uranium resources increased by 17% (45, 46). So where is it found?

Every two years, the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency publish the “Red Book“—a compilation of uranium resources, production and demand, with the latest edition published in 2010 (47). Identified resources include reasonably assured and inferred deposits of uranium; undiscovered resources include both prognosticated and speculative resources. Reasonably assured resources are known mineral deposits that are well character­ized by quantity and quality of ore, while inferred deposits have been geologically established but are not as well characterized. Prognosticated resources are based on expected deposits within a geological area that has some known deposits. Speculative resources are based on indirect evidence and extrapolation from types of geological formations that usually contain uranium. The identified resources are broken down in categories by the cost of uranium, since more resources are avail­able at a higher cost. The top ten countries in thousands of metric tons (tonnes, or 1.1 US tons) of uranium are given in Table 11.1. The availability of uranium is strongly dependent on the cost. At < $80 per kilogram there are 3.7 million tonnes available, but at < $260 per kilogram there are over 6.3 million tonnes.

The quality of the ores varies substantially in different countries. The highest grade ores ever found were at Shinkolobwe, with assays of over 60% uranium, but that is all gone. Canada has the world’s richest ores in Saskatchewan, with assays exceeding 20% uranium. Australia has by far the world’s largest resources and the largest mine in the world (Olympic Dam). Even though Olympic Dam has low grade uranium ore (0.05%), the mine also produces copper, silver, and gold, which increases the economic efficiency of the mine. Other mines in Australia have ores with concentrations greater than 0.1%. Nearly all of Australia’s uranium is available at $80 per kilogram (Table 11.1). Kazakhstan has mostly low grade ores in sandstone that are amenable to ISR mining, which can very efficiently extract low grade ores. Uranium in the United States is also mostly low grade sandstone deposits that are amenable to ISR mining (47, 48).

note: Reasonably assured and inferred deposits of uranium in metric tons ura­nium at different prices per kg of uranium. Source: Red Book 2009.

Actual production of uranium does not follow the same country order as the resources, though. While Australia has by far the largest uranium resources, it is the third largest producer, producing only 8,000 tonnes of uranium in 2009. The largest producer was Kazakhstan (29%), followed by Canada (20%), Australia (16%), Namibia (9%), Russia (7%), Niger (6%), and Uzbekistan (5%). About a third of uranium production is now done by ISR, with the rest by underground and pit mining. The United States is a net importer of uranium, producing less than 3% of the world’s uranium in 2008 but using about 28% of the total (47). The total world production for 2009 was about 50,000 tonnes, but the world’s reactors used about 69,000 tonnes (46). So where did the rest of it come from? Part of it came from stockpiles of uranium held by utilities and governments, some came from depleted uranium tailings that still have useful amounts of uranium, and some came from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel (see Chapter 9). But the largest amount came from a unique program to disarm nuclear warheads.

The United States has traditionally been the world’s largest user of energy and the largest producer of CO2, accounting for 18% of energy-related CO2 emissions in 2009 (5.4 gigatons [Gt] in the US compared to 30.3 Gt worldwide) (16). Even worse is the fact that the US share of cumulative CO2 (what has been produced historically and is still mostly in the atmosphere) is 28% (17). However, this is changing rapidly, as China and India are on a pathway to the use of much more energy. China passed the United States in energy-related CO2 production in 2006 and total energy consumption in 2009. On a per capita basis, though, the United States produces three times as much CO2 as China (17.7 metric tons vs 5.8 met­ric tons) (16). Projections for the 32 countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)7 suggest that energy use will grow by only 0.6% per year, while in the non-OECD countries, dominated by China and India, energy use will grow by 2.3% per year over the next quarter century. According to the World Energy Outlook 2011 New Policies Scenario (18), the total energy demand in the world by 2035 will be one-third higher than in 2010, with non-OECD countries accounting for 90% of the increase. China alone is expected to account for 30% of world energy demand. Fossil fuels account for the large majority of that increase in world energy demand.

Electricity demand is expected to grow by 84% from 2008 to 2035, and coal and natural gas are likely to provide the majority of the increase, though renew­able sources of energy will also increase sharply (Figure 2.4) (19). More than half of the renewable energy component is expected to come from hydropower in non-OECD countries, while about one-quarter might come from wind power. unfortunately, the total CO2 emissions increase from 30.2 Gt in 2008 to 43.2 Gt in 2035 (19). If this actually occurs, global temperatures could rise by 6°C (20), which would be disastrous. Admittedly, projections of this sort do not have a good track record for accuracy (21), but the two main driving forces for this growth in energy use are almost certainly going to happen. One is that the world popula­tion is projected to increase from 7 billion in 2012 to 9 billion by 2050 (22). The other is that non-OECD countries, especially China and India but also Russia and Brazil (the so-called BRIC countries), are rapidly developing, and their energy use per capita will increase to be more in line with the OECD countries.