2. Nuclear Power Today
• Provides almost 20% of world’s
electricity (8% in U.S.)
• 69% of U.S. non-carbon electricity
generation
• More than 100 plants in U.S.
– None built since the 1970s
• 200+ plants in the Europe
– Leader is France
• About 80% of its power from nuclear
4. Origins
• After World War II,
development of
civilian nuclear
program
• Atlantic Energy Act
of 1946
• 1954: first
commercial nuclear
power program
5. The Vision
• “It is not too much to expect that our
children will enjoy in their homes
[nuclear generated] electrical energy
too cheap to meter.”
– Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the U.S.
Atomic Energy Commission (1954)
6. Manhattan Project
• Secret government project to create
atomic weapons during World War II
• After the war, the government encouraged
“the development of nuclear energy for
peaceful civilian purposes.”
• This led to the technology used in nuclear
plants today
7. Early Beginnings
• Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) established by
Congress in 1946 as part of the Atomic Energy Act
• AEC authorized the construction of
Experimental Breeder Reactor I ( EBR-1) at a site in
Idaho in 1949
• in August of 1951, criticality (a controlled, self-sustained,
chain reaction) was reached using
uranium
• A football sized core was created and kept at
low power for four months until December 20,
1951
8. • power was gradually increased until the first
usable amount of electricity was generated,
lighting four light bulbs and introducing nuclear
generated power for the first time
• In 1953, the EBR-1 was creating one new atom of
nuclear fuel for every atom burned, thus the
reactor could sustain its own operation
• With this creation of new cores, enough energy was
created to fuel additional reactors
• A few years later, the town of Arco, Idaho became
the world's first community to get its entire power
supply from a nuclear reactor
• This was achieved by temporarily attaching the
town’s power grid to the reactor’s turbines
9. Atoms for Peace
• Began in 1953 and was designed by Eisenhower
specifically to promote peaceful, commercial
applications of atomic energy after the Manhattan
Project and atomic bombings on Japan
• Public support for nuclear energy grew, federal
nuclear energy programs shifted their focus to
advancing reactor technologies
• With this came the support of utility companies,
which saw nuclear energy as a cheap and
environmentally safe alternative energy choice
10. Shippingport Atomic
Power Station
• Department of Energy and the Duquesne Light Company
broke ground in Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1954 for the
first commercial electric-generating station in the U.S. to
use nuclear energy
• Opened on May 26, 1958, as part of Eisenhower’s “Atoms for
Peace” program
• Three years later, it began supplying electricity for the
Pittsburgh area
• It was by far the world’s largest commercial nuclear
power plant, surpassing those already in place in the
Soviet Union and Great Britain
11. Uranium Mining
There are three main methods:
• Underground mining
• Open pit mining
• In Situ Leaching (ISL)
13. • Olympic Dam mine is
located in South Australia
• Most of the mine’s profit
actually comes from the
copper that they mine as
well
• Tunnels are dug into the
earth, where ore is
extracted
• The ore is crushed into a
powder, then soaked in a
lake. The impurities
precipitate and the rest is
dried by heat.
14. Ya Got Trouble….
• Lake uses an intense
amount of water
• Rabbit popluation has
crashed as a result of
drinking from the lake
The Western Mining
Corporation (WMC) is
owned by BP
15. In Situ Leaching
• Wells are drilled into aquifers, the water is
removed, and a solvent, such as hydrogen
peroxide, is pumped in
• The peroxide dissolves the uranium, and the
solution is pumped back up
• An ion exchange system causes the uranium
to precipitate in the form of UO42H2O (uranium
peroxide)
17. ISL has its woes
• Ground water supply has radioactive
residues
• There are ISL mines in Texas,
Wyoming, and Nebraska that share the
same aquifers as residents
18. From Where Does It Come?
• Australia has 30% of the world’s uranium
below its topsoil, and it is all for export
• Canada (mostly
Saskatchewan) is
the next largest
source
• The True North,
strong and free, has
20% of the world’s
supply
19. Nuclear Governance in the
U.S.
• Energy Reorganization Act of 1974
– Created NRC and DoE
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission
– Regulates reactors; use of nuclear
materials; movement, storage, and
disposal of nuclear materials and waste
• Department of Energy
– Oversight of nuclear weapons; public
relations side of nuclear energy
20. Int’l Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA)
• Part of U.N.
– Oversees global energy security, scientific
concerns
• Origin
– Eisenhower’s “Atoms for
Peace”
– Formed in 1957
– Promote peaceful
nuclear use
21. IAEA Today
– Forum for scientific cooperation
– Institutes safety measures
– Promotes non-proliferation
– Featured prominently in recent news
• Iraq inspections
– Mohammed El Baradei
• Head of IAEA
• 2005 Nobel Peace
Prize Winner
22. Major Problems of
Nuclear Energy:
• Cost
• Safety
• Proliferation
• Waste Disposal
23. Cost
• More expensive than coal and
natural gas, but could be made
cheaper with carbon credits
• New nuclear plants could generate
power at $31-$46/MWh
• It would take 3-4 new plants to
absorb the the early costs of these
new plants
24. Safety
• Public remains wary of nuclear
power due to Chernobyl and
three mile island accidents
• Nuclear plants vulnerable to
terrorist attacks
• Safer, more efficient, and more
secure plants planned for the
future
26. March 28, 1979, 4:00 am
• Secondary cooling loop stops pumping.
• Rising temperatures caused emergency
valve to open to release pressure, but
indicator light malfunctioned
• Due to loss of steam, water level drops,
water overheats and burns out pump
• Reactor core overheats and begins to
melt (a “meltdown”)
27. March 28, 1979, 6:30 am
• Overheated water contains 350 times
normal level of melted down radioactive
matter
• A worker sees the open valve and
closes it
• To prevent an explosion, he reopens it,
releasing radioactive steam into the
atmosphere
28.
29. March 28, 1979, 8:00 am
• Nuclear Regulatory commission is
notified
• White House is notified
• TMI is evacuated
• All small children and pregnant women
within a five mile radius are evacuated
• A fifteen-year clean up project awaits
30. Waste Disposal
• Yucca mountain
• Use breeder reactors
instead
• Alternative storage site
32. Current Waste Disposal
• At this time, radioactive wastes are being
stored at the Department of Energy’s
facilities around the country
• High level wastes are stored in
underground carbon or stainless steel
tanks
• Spent nuclear fuel is put in above-ground
dry storage facilities and in
water-filled pools
33. Yucca Mountain
• Storage sites becoming full, waste may be
transported to Yucca Mountain
• Located on government land, about 100 miles
northwest of Las Vegas in the Nevada desert
• It is a 6 mile long, 1,200-foot high flat-topped
volcanic ridge
• Will be able to house 70,000 tons of radioactive
material
34. Problems with Yucca
Mountain
• The nuclear waste currently sitting
around is enough to fill the repository
• At the earliest, the repository will be
open in 2010, which seems unlikely
• NRC has found 293 technical issues with
the repository that must be fixed
• Danger to the public with the
transportation of the waste to yucca
mountain
35. Still More Problems
• Possible health risks to those living near
Yucca Mountain
• Eventual corrosion of the metal barrels
which the waste is stored in
• Located in an earthquake region and
contains many interconnected faults and
fractures
• These could move groundwater and any
escaping radioactive material through the
repository to the aquifer below and then
to the outside environment
36. Oops!
• At right is a map
of the Yucca
Mountain site
• The area within
the dotted line is
the burial site
• Two faults run
directly through
the site
37. Current Situation
• The Government maintains that Yucca
Mountain will open on time, in 2010
• Those in the nuclear energy industry put
that date closer to 2015 or not at all
• It has been suggested that the
construction of concrete and steel cask
fields will add additional waste storage
space to nuclear plants
• This would allow several additional
decades for the government to put
together a permanent nuclear waste
storage facility
38. Proliferation
• Fuel cycles that involve the chemical
reprocessing of spent fuel to separate
weapons-usable plutonium and uranium
enrichment technologies are of obvious
concern
• Once-through cycle sends discharged
fuel directly to disposal, thus allowing
the used fuels to be broken down,
leaving no options for proliferation
40. Threat of Proliferation
• North Korea (DPRK)
part of “Axis of Evil”
• 2003 admission of
nuclear weapons
• Kim Jong-Il* justifies
nukes as defense
against the U.S.
• Other potential
threats?
Kimmy Neutron
*Not to be confused with Jeong Kim,
namesake of the beautiful new
Engineering building at UMD
41. Decline of Nuclear Power
• The public began growing fearful of
possible meltdowns, especially after the
disaster at Three Mile Island
• Nearly 2/3 of all orders for new plants
were cancelled in the late 1970’s
• No new plants having been built in the
past twenty-five years
42. The Anti-Nuclear Movement
• Rachel Carson
started it all in Silent
Spring
• She was the first to
bring to light the
harmful externalities
of nuclear energy,
including the risks of
genetic mutations
43. November 1974: Silkwood
• Karen Silkwood was a worker at the Kerr-
McGee plant in Cimarron, Oklahoma, where
the workers were not being protected from
the radioactive materials
• When she raised a stink about this problem,
she was mysteriously struck by a car
• As a result, NOW (National Organization of
Women) and OCAW (Oil, Coal, and Atom
Workers) joined the struggle against the
corruption in the nuclear industry
44. July 16, 1979: Church Rock
• One hundred million gallons of nuclear waste
were accidentally spilled on the Navajo Indian
reservation in Church Rock, New Mexico
• The waste ran into the Rio Puerco
• The towns of Gallup, Lupton, and Saunders
had to truck in drinking water, and all of the
grazing livestock were slaughtered
• Very little media coverage due to Three Mile
Island
46. Seabrook: Sunday, April 30, 1977
• 18,000 people protested the building of a
nuclear reactor in Seabrook, New
Hampshire
• National Guard and State Troopers called
in by Gov. Meldrim Thomson
• 1,414 of them were arrested and denied
due process
• They refused to pay bail, and were
incarcerated for a week
• This was a struggle between the people
and the corporate/government structure
48. Case Study:
Different Attitudes on Nuclear
Power
United States:
• Stigma of “unsafe” after Three Mile Island
• NIMBY attitude toward siting
France:
• Impact of “oil shock” during 1970s
• Advantage of strong centralized gov’t
• Huge lobbying campaign
• Trust in technology
• Today, France is energy exporter!
50. Nuclear Power 2010
Program
• A joint government-industry cost-shared
effort that will be used to
identify new nuclear power plant sites,
develop advanced nuclear plant
technologies, and to evaluate the
business case for building new nuclear
plants
• In early 2005, it was announced that two
sites and Mississippi and Alabama have been
selected as locations for these
advanced power plants
51. Energy Policy Act of 2005
• Signed by the president in August 2005
• Government would cover cost
overruns due to delays, up to $500
million each for the first two new
nuclear reactors, and up to $250 million
for the next four reactors
• Delays in construction due to vastly
increased regulations were a primary
cause of the high cost of some earlier
plants.
52. • A production tax credit of 1.8 cents per
kilowatt-hour for the first 6,000
megawatt-hours from new nuclear power
plants for the first eight years of their
operation
• Would put nuclear energy on par with
other sources of emission-free power,
including wind and closed-loop biomass