Should have known Lars was going to call me on this one. Yes, we will use the clean depleted U tailings first. But after a couple hundred years, the spent fuel will be pretty easily handled. 95% U is an awfully high grade ore, and the U can be pulled out fairly easily with fluoride volatility. If nuclear power is truly successful, we are going to need this stuff.
Some math. We have had around 500GW for 40 years for 20,000 GWe-yrs so far. We burn around 1000 kg U235 per GWe-yr and extracted around 0.4% (0.7% U235 but with 0.3% tails) so we have around 250 tonnes DU per GWeYr for a total of 5,000,000 tonnes. A breeder will produce around 1GWe-yr per tonne. At 5,000 GWe this will last us 1000 years. We have around 20 tonnes spent fuel per GWe-yr so using the spent fuel will only stretch supplies by 10% over using the DU. When we start running low on DU then we will turn to mined uranium - fussing over the spent fuel uranium is a distraction. Do whatever is reasonably priced and politically acceptable with the spent fuel. If a promise to burn 95% of it 100 years into the future helps with the politics fine - but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that this is anything but politics.
Now you guys get to see what happens behind the scene at ThorCon.
Lars,
Agree with your math except in a fully decarbonized, nuclear powered world we will need at least 20,000 GW. So the DU lasts 200 years. At that point you will have a choice of mining and milling a few percent or less U ore, or extracting U from a 95%U ore. My guess is the latter is cheaper and has less environmental impact.
True, the spent fuel will not last us very long but that's no reason not to use it.
OK, you get a 20 year supply iff you don't bury the spent fuel so that it is unretrievable. I still maintain do what you need to now - if that means burying it fine, if it means keeping it in a cave fine, if it means keeping it above ground fine - whatever will be acceptable politically and get us moving with the real problem.
One more number. Cost for UF6 natural uranium today is around $200/kg which translates to 0.0023 cents/kwhr. Fuel costs simply aren't a factor for a breeder.
I haven't seen this film yet, but with your excellent review, I definitely will. As for the cause of the problem, I'm still not convinced we should focus all our attention on the NRC. Overregulation is the proximate cause, but not the root. NRC bureaucrats do what the politicians tell them to do. The politicians do what the public wants, or thinks they want, given almost total ignorance. I believe the root cause is this ignorance.
What should we do to solve the problem? What is the first step? Abolishing the NRC just seems like an impossible goal.
I have no influence over Congress or any way to get them to set up an Advisory Group. What I am doing is editing some articles at Citizendium targeting journalists and others who might be anti-nuclear by default, but still open-minded, and willing to go against the groupthink current in the media. They need something better than Wikipedia. I am disappointed you think that is "hand-wringing".
Regardless of whether the source of our problem is Big Oil and other economic interests or the regulators themselves, I believe the solution is in changing public opinion, and the most open to persuasion are the ignorant but well-meaning journalists we see wailing about climate change and ignoring nuclear. So I will continue my work at Citizendium.
I guess Stone thinks the first problem is public acceptance versus regulatory and related cost challenges, so he targets a general audience, who probably won’t be watching the film, and that can explain some of the failings. Could make a more useful film about practical fission deployments, targeting the politicians, commissioners, scientists, and academics that actually influence the regulations - going around to the world leading nuclear manufacturers, shipbuilders, EPA, NRC, etc and seeing what they have to say about costs, phasing out LNT, transforming the NRC, and transitioning to underwriter certification. A distillation of the Gordian Knot and the solution - with clear questions and visuals from the the thinkers and doers.
I thought the film quality was extremely disappointing - looked like a bottom of barrel YouTube video hardly befitting the promethean subject matter. Could have done a better job over a weekend.
In interviews about the film, Stone makes it quite clear he does not care about cost. In his view, we are in an existential war with global warming. When your existence is at stake, you do not worry about cost. It's a limousine liberal's view of the planet.
Stone does a good job of documenting how a kind of mass psychosis misled the Left about nuclear power. It apparently never occurs to him that the same thing may be happening with respect to the time we have to deal with global warming.
I look forward to watching your "over a weekend" film.
Don't forget that Stone is a filmmaker and story teller who has nothing to do with the nuclear industry. He isn't planning to build any new nuclear plants.
His story is a journey of discovery. He started it by reading Bright New World and learning that most of what he had been taught about nuclear energy was wrong. His initial starting point included a deep concern about climate change and a recognition that the vast investments made in RE were not actually reducing global CO2 emissions.
His journey led him to find the roots of the myths that he had been taught.
It is a film that targets a general audience because he believes that many have been taught the same myths that he was taught. Dispelling those ideas among the public is a step towards convincing politicians and decision makers that they have also been wrong about nuclear. Political pressure CAN change the way that the NRC acts. Changing actions, attitudes and "science policies" will have a major effect, even without changing actual regulations.
Stone's film will reach a broader general audience than you imagine it will. He has major chops and is making appearances on mainstream news outlets as well as important new media outlets like the Joe Rogan Experience. (That show has about 11 M listeners. Stone spoke with Rogan for an hour and 45 minutes last week. Rogan expressed his newfound respect and acceptance of nuclear power.)
BTW - Oliver Stone, an experienced, well resourced filmmaker invested more than 2 years into making the film and then another 18 months into finding distributors and building a solid plan for releasing the film to achieve maximum possible long-tail impact. Again, good luck on doing a better job over the weekend.
Thanks for the review- it is on my list now that it is streaming. My view is that it is mostly the boomer left or those that were influenced by them that needs to be brought along here, so it is understandable that Stone would focus on things from that angle. Hating on government regulators or focusing on cost would just end up coding as “right wing” even if it was tried in good faith, and that would lose the target audience. Stone also has to find a conspiracy angle in everything, but that is just who he is...
I guess my hope is that this will cause people to get more interested in it, and there is now a ton of more positive info out there if one takes even a quick look on YT, Twitter, Substack, etc.
As Stone’s interviewed source regarding LNT creation story, I feel personally attacked. You keep claiming that the RF intent was to use radiation fear in anti weapons campaign. How do you know what they INTENDED? Do you simple accept their words without paying attention a to their actions?
Oil companies have never accepted their own scarcity propaganda. They know there plenty of resource to enable destructive over-production. They top planners of the Seven Sisters coordinated production to ensure prices didn’t collapse. They helped train OPEC leaders to perform the same service.
Nuclear power represented an uncontrollable source of new supply. Your often repeated assertion that Big Oil made a big investment in nuclear is misleading because it was a tiny investment relative to the scale of the companies involved.
If, as you claim, the nuclear industry is responsible for losing cost control, why didn’t the much smarter oil guys use their superior skills to create a success in the technology?
As I’ve said repeatedly, fossil fuel INTERESTS, not just Big Oil, had the means, motive and opportunity to assist in raising the barriers to entry for the nascent nuclear power business. It was intruding on a market they believed they OWNED.
Only somebody who is unsure of their position feels "attacked" when somebody disagrees with them.
The RF was quite out front about their motivation in their private letters and Annual Reports and their actions were perfectly consistent with that motivation. See
The "tiny "investment cost the charismatic CEO of Exxon to lose his job and Gulf Oil, one of the Seven Sisters, to lose its existence when it went bad.
Your one new point is cost control. All industries lose control of their costs in a boom. Oil is not immune from this phenomenon. It's happened to the Oil Patch at least thrice in my life time. The difference is in each case oil costs plummeted in the ensuing slump. Nuclear costs could not because the regulatory ratchet only works one way.
If its amorphous "fossil fuel interests" that took down nuclear, (which is not true), Stone did not get the memo. All we are shown is the Standard Oil octopus, and the Seven Sister's logos. I'm reviewing the film, not Rod Adams.
Your implication that Gulf's investment in nuclear was responsible for its loss of independence ignores a litany of challenges and missteps made by the company's leadership during the 1970s and 1980s.
Here is a quote from an NY Times article dated July 5, 1981.
"Over the last half decade, Gulf has been hammered by a political payoff scandal, a battery of lawsuits, the loss of most of its prized foreign oil, declines in domestic output, a ludicrously disadvantageous natural gas sales contract and a devastating change in energy policy by the Government in Canada, where Gulf has vast holdings. Perhaps most painful, however, has been the combination of sharply reduced consumer demand and an overabundance of refining capacity, an industrywide affliction that is stinging Gulf particularly.
''Gulf is a company going through a shrinking phase,'' Sal Ilacqua, an analyst with L.F. Rothschild, Unterberg & Towbin, says. ''Gulf has no real turn-ons,'' Robert LeVine of E.F. Hutton, adds. ''Everytime they straighten out their business, something happens and they get hurt,'' Constantine Fliakos of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, says"
IOW, many contributing factors. Not just its modest - relatively speaking - investment in General Atomics.
Arguably, Gulf's investment in uranium mining and its participation in the Uranium Club helped to distract Westinghouse so much that it lost focus on expanding its reactor sales business.
People who want to learn more about the involvement of wealthy fossil fuel interests in the temporarily successful effort to suppress fission should skim through Environmentalism: Ideology and Power by Donald Gibson.
Among many other facts, it describes how Robert Anderson "provided seed money for the formation of Friends of the Earth" (p. 64) AND also "helped finance creation of the John Muir Institute" (p.65).
That source, BTW, attributes the motives of the fossil fuel interests to Malthusianism. It's more logical and in keeping with the way wealthy people act to believe that their underlying motive was to protect their existing power base and to expand their wealth.
Tom Turner who was there makes it quite clear that the Anderson donation was to teh John Muir Institute, whose creation Anderson had already funded. The money was to go to setting up a conference called Forum for the Future in Aspen. JMI hired Brower to run the conference. So JMI supported Brower while he was setting up Friends of the Earth. He may have funneled some of the money directly to FOE. Brower had a history of playing fast and lose with money.
In any event to claim this one donation shows that Big OIl ran a concerted campaign against nuclear power, when Big Oil was making a big investment in nuclear, is a ridiculous stretch.
I would not call people like Robert O Anderson and George Mitchell Malthusians. They were optimistic, inventive, forward looking people unlike creeps like Erhlich . But they were worried about population and the scarcity of resources. That was what Forum of the Future was about. Not bashing nuclear power.
Jack - I interviewed Tom Turner for Atomic Show #256
From the blog post accompanying the interview:
“As Turner acknowledged, FOE’s early success was greatly assisted by a major contribution from Robert O. Anderson, the CEO of the Atlantic Richfield Company, one of the largest oil and gas producers in the United States at the time. Turner wasn’t able to explain why Anderson provided the money; he did say that it wasn’t because of any personal relationship between him and Brower.”
But you’ve somehow missed the point that the Anderson contribution is just an EXAMPLE. The book I linked to earlier provides information about specifically antinuclear donations from Rockefeller Brothers Fund, McGeorge Bundy, Ford Foundation and numerous other members of the Hydrocarbon Economy elites.
You keep talking about big investments in nuclear. How did they compare to CAPEX spent on oil & gas development and production?
The movie offers exactly two examples of how Big Oil supposedly scuppered nuclear power. I assume Stone picked the two most compelling. We've covered the RF machinations and the Anderson donation. This post is a review of the movie. It is not about you.
The connection between the Oil Patch and these other elitist organizations is even more tenuous. You don't seem to understand for these immensely wealthy foundations the problem is spending money, not making it.
This whole discussion is a counterproductive diversion from nuclear power's real problem. I do not intend to continue it.
Sorry you feel? "This whole discussion is a counterproductive diversion from nuclear power's real problem. I do not intend to continue it." but all good things come to an end. On the contrary reading the opinions of Two Titians of Nuclear who disagree is fascinating and better than the Nuclear Now Movie review which was good. To me USN Commander, Movie Star Rod Adams has an edge but as a USN Sailor I am prejudiced. Please both of you keep talking Nuclear.
I think the functionally harmless point about nuclear waste is starting to get out there. The Decouple studios and Chris Keefer nuclear twitter cluster have been making that case. Keefer testified to a Canadian government committee that after 600 years you have to pulverize and ingest it to be harmed
Further to that, the radioactivity is itself functionally irrelevant to the risk of spent fuel, which will kill you with simple chemical toxicity before you can get much radiation from eating it
Ted Rockwell, formed Naval Reactors technical director during construction of the USS Nautilus, Shippington and the early submarine build out, was one of my most respected mentors in nuclear advocacy
He used to say that the only long term communications needed on nuclear waste containers would be various forms of the warning "Do not eat."
Great quote. Wish I had seen it before the 600-year-old-spent-nuclear-fuel is just another poison post. Can you give us a specific occasion or reference?
We need somebody with graphics ability to do a graphic based on this quote. Volunteers?
Jack: - Here are a few of documented occurrences when Ted made similar statements.
"“Where is any instance where nuclear waste has hurt the environment?” he asked rhetorically. Maybe OSHA should just issue warnings that say “Do Not Eat the Ceramic [Casks],” Rockwell says, “because if you don’t eat it, it won’t hurt you.”"
Regarding cleanups like those at the Hanford site:
"In these more hazardous cases of non-radioactive spills, we devote a modest effort to cleaning up the area, leaving earth or concrete permanently stained and contaminated to the degree that, if you tried to eat it, you might suffer some deleterious effects. And we rightly conclude, that's a reasonable level of response. (Maybe we should post OSHA warning signs: DO NOT EAT THE DIRT.) There is no realistic justification for requiring that all the ground be decontaminated to hospital or "clean room" standards."
(Note: Site incorrectly says "By ACSH Staff", but the author blurb at the bottom indicates that Ted Rockwell wrote the piece.)
Thanks. I think we need to be careful to point out that, if the "waste" is spent fuel, you should wait about 500 years before hugging the fuel elements.
But, contrary to what many nuclear power supporters apparently believe, properly aged spent fuel is just another poison.
Generally agree but this statement sticks out as total nonsense.
"No talk about the need to keep the U-238 around for breeders."
U238 is readily available all over the place. spent fuel u238 is the most expensive source of u238. Depleted uranium stores are likely the cheapest.
Should have known Lars was going to call me on this one. Yes, we will use the clean depleted U tailings first. But after a couple hundred years, the spent fuel will be pretty easily handled. 95% U is an awfully high grade ore, and the U can be pulled out fairly easily with fluoride volatility. If nuclear power is truly successful, we are going to need this stuff.
Some math. We have had around 500GW for 40 years for 20,000 GWe-yrs so far. We burn around 1000 kg U235 per GWe-yr and extracted around 0.4% (0.7% U235 but with 0.3% tails) so we have around 250 tonnes DU per GWeYr for a total of 5,000,000 tonnes. A breeder will produce around 1GWe-yr per tonne. At 5,000 GWe this will last us 1000 years. We have around 20 tonnes spent fuel per GWe-yr so using the spent fuel will only stretch supplies by 10% over using the DU. When we start running low on DU then we will turn to mined uranium - fussing over the spent fuel uranium is a distraction. Do whatever is reasonably priced and politically acceptable with the spent fuel. If a promise to burn 95% of it 100 years into the future helps with the politics fine - but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that this is anything but politics.
Now you guys get to see what happens behind the scene at ThorCon.
Lars,
Agree with your math except in a fully decarbonized, nuclear powered world we will need at least 20,000 GW. So the DU lasts 200 years. At that point you will have a choice of mining and milling a few percent or less U ore, or extracting U from a 95%U ore. My guess is the latter is cheaper and has less environmental impact.
True, the spent fuel will not last us very long but that's no reason not to use it.
OK, you get a 20 year supply iff you don't bury the spent fuel so that it is unretrievable. I still maintain do what you need to now - if that means burying it fine, if it means keeping it in a cave fine, if it means keeping it above ground fine - whatever will be acceptable politically and get us moving with the real problem.
One more number. Cost for UF6 natural uranium today is around $200/kg which translates to 0.0023 cents/kwhr. Fuel costs simply aren't a factor for a breeder.
I haven't seen this film yet, but with your excellent review, I definitely will. As for the cause of the problem, I'm still not convinced we should focus all our attention on the NRC. Overregulation is the proximate cause, but not the root. NRC bureaucrats do what the politicians tell them to do. The politicians do what the public wants, or thinks they want, given almost total ignorance. I believe the root cause is this ignorance.
What should we do to solve the problem? What is the first step? Abolishing the NRC just seems like an impossible goal.
David,
I'v e already told you what the first step is. See tail end of
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/implementing-underwriter-certification
If all you are going to do is hand wringing, please do it somewhere else.
I have no influence over Congress or any way to get them to set up an Advisory Group. What I am doing is editing some articles at Citizendium targeting journalists and others who might be anti-nuclear by default, but still open-minded, and willing to go against the groupthink current in the media. They need something better than Wikipedia. I am disappointed you think that is "hand-wringing".
Regardless of whether the source of our problem is Big Oil and other economic interests or the regulators themselves, I believe the solution is in changing public opinion, and the most open to persuasion are the ignorant but well-meaning journalists we see wailing about climate change and ignoring nuclear. So I will continue my work at Citizendium.
I guess Stone thinks the first problem is public acceptance versus regulatory and related cost challenges, so he targets a general audience, who probably won’t be watching the film, and that can explain some of the failings. Could make a more useful film about practical fission deployments, targeting the politicians, commissioners, scientists, and academics that actually influence the regulations - going around to the world leading nuclear manufacturers, shipbuilders, EPA, NRC, etc and seeing what they have to say about costs, phasing out LNT, transforming the NRC, and transitioning to underwriter certification. A distillation of the Gordian Knot and the solution - with clear questions and visuals from the the thinkers and doers.
I thought the film quality was extremely disappointing - looked like a bottom of barrel YouTube video hardly befitting the promethean subject matter. Could have done a better job over a weekend.
Lorenzo,
In interviews about the film, Stone makes it quite clear he does not care about cost. In his view, we are in an existential war with global warming. When your existence is at stake, you do not worry about cost. It's a limousine liberal's view of the planet.
Stone does a good job of documenting how a kind of mass psychosis misled the Left about nuclear power. It apparently never occurs to him that the same thing may be happening with respect to the time we have to deal with global warming.
Lorenzo:
I look forward to watching your "over a weekend" film.
Don't forget that Stone is a filmmaker and story teller who has nothing to do with the nuclear industry. He isn't planning to build any new nuclear plants.
His story is a journey of discovery. He started it by reading Bright New World and learning that most of what he had been taught about nuclear energy was wrong. His initial starting point included a deep concern about climate change and a recognition that the vast investments made in RE were not actually reducing global CO2 emissions.
His journey led him to find the roots of the myths that he had been taught.
It is a film that targets a general audience because he believes that many have been taught the same myths that he was taught. Dispelling those ideas among the public is a step towards convincing politicians and decision makers that they have also been wrong about nuclear. Political pressure CAN change the way that the NRC acts. Changing actions, attitudes and "science policies" will have a major effect, even without changing actual regulations.
Stone's film will reach a broader general audience than you imagine it will. He has major chops and is making appearances on mainstream news outlets as well as important new media outlets like the Joe Rogan Experience. (That show has about 11 M listeners. Stone spoke with Rogan for an hour and 45 minutes last week. Rogan expressed his newfound respect and acceptance of nuclear power.)
BTW - Oliver Stone, an experienced, well resourced filmmaker invested more than 2 years into making the film and then another 18 months into finding distributors and building a solid plan for releasing the film to achieve maximum possible long-tail impact. Again, good luck on doing a better job over the weekend.
Thanks for the review- it is on my list now that it is streaming. My view is that it is mostly the boomer left or those that were influenced by them that needs to be brought along here, so it is understandable that Stone would focus on things from that angle. Hating on government regulators or focusing on cost would just end up coding as “right wing” even if it was tried in good faith, and that would lose the target audience. Stone also has to find a conspiracy angle in everything, but that is just who he is...
I guess my hope is that this will cause people to get more interested in it, and there is now a ton of more positive info out there if one takes even a quick look on YT, Twitter, Substack, etc.
Jack
As Stone’s interviewed source regarding LNT creation story, I feel personally attacked. You keep claiming that the RF intent was to use radiation fear in anti weapons campaign. How do you know what they INTENDED? Do you simple accept their words without paying attention a to their actions?
Oil companies have never accepted their own scarcity propaganda. They know there plenty of resource to enable destructive over-production. They top planners of the Seven Sisters coordinated production to ensure prices didn’t collapse. They helped train OPEC leaders to perform the same service.
Nuclear power represented an uncontrollable source of new supply. Your often repeated assertion that Big Oil made a big investment in nuclear is misleading because it was a tiny investment relative to the scale of the companies involved.
If, as you claim, the nuclear industry is responsible for losing cost control, why didn’t the much smarter oil guys use their superior skills to create a success in the technology?
As I’ve said repeatedly, fossil fuel INTERESTS, not just Big Oil, had the means, motive and opportunity to assist in raising the barriers to entry for the nascent nuclear power business. It was intruding on a market they believed they OWNED.
Rod,
Only somebody who is unsure of their position feels "attacked" when somebody disagrees with them.
The RF was quite out front about their motivation in their private letters and Annual Reports and their actions were perfectly consistent with that motivation. See
https://gordianknotbook.com/download/nuclear-power-and-fossil-fuel/
The "tiny "investment cost the charismatic CEO of Exxon to lose his job and Gulf Oil, one of the Seven Sisters, to lose its existence when it went bad.
Your one new point is cost control. All industries lose control of their costs in a boom. Oil is not immune from this phenomenon. It's happened to the Oil Patch at least thrice in my life time. The difference is in each case oil costs plummeted in the ensuing slump. Nuclear costs could not because the regulatory ratchet only works one way.
If its amorphous "fossil fuel interests" that took down nuclear, (which is not true), Stone did not get the memo. All we are shown is the Standard Oil octopus, and the Seven Sister's logos. I'm reviewing the film, not Rod Adams.
Jack:
Your implication that Gulf's investment in nuclear was responsible for its loss of independence ignores a litany of challenges and missteps made by the company's leadership during the 1970s and 1980s.
Here is a quote from an NY Times article dated July 5, 1981.
"Over the last half decade, Gulf has been hammered by a political payoff scandal, a battery of lawsuits, the loss of most of its prized foreign oil, declines in domestic output, a ludicrously disadvantageous natural gas sales contract and a devastating change in energy policy by the Government in Canada, where Gulf has vast holdings. Perhaps most painful, however, has been the combination of sharply reduced consumer demand and an overabundance of refining capacity, an industrywide affliction that is stinging Gulf particularly.
''Gulf is a company going through a shrinking phase,'' Sal Ilacqua, an analyst with L.F. Rothschild, Unterberg & Towbin, says. ''Gulf has no real turn-ons,'' Robert LeVine of E.F. Hutton, adds. ''Everytime they straighten out their business, something happens and they get hurt,'' Constantine Fliakos of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, says"
IOW, many contributing factors. Not just its modest - relatively speaking - investment in General Atomics.
Arguably, Gulf's investment in uranium mining and its participation in the Uranium Club helped to distract Westinghouse so much that it lost focus on expanding its reactor sales business.
People who want to learn more about the involvement of wealthy fossil fuel interests in the temporarily successful effort to suppress fission should skim through Environmentalism: Ideology and Power by Donald Gibson.
It's available from Google Books (https://books.google.com/books?id=D3ZE7zYVynUC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=david+brower+robert+anderson&source=bl&ots=UOlL91XRZs&sig=bmQ4s6kkH5YHsoDsCIxrIGBf1RY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qNf8UZDHM5Lm8wS3uYHYCA&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=200%2C000&f=false)
Among many other facts, it describes how Robert Anderson "provided seed money for the formation of Friends of the Earth" (p. 64) AND also "helped finance creation of the John Muir Institute" (p.65).
That source, BTW, attributes the motives of the fossil fuel interests to Malthusianism. It's more logical and in keeping with the way wealthy people act to believe that their underlying motive was to protect their existing power base and to expand their wealth.
Tom Turner who was there makes it quite clear that the Anderson donation was to teh John Muir Institute, whose creation Anderson had already funded. The money was to go to setting up a conference called Forum for the Future in Aspen. JMI hired Brower to run the conference. So JMI supported Brower while he was setting up Friends of the Earth. He may have funneled some of the money directly to FOE. Brower had a history of playing fast and lose with money.
In any event to claim this one donation shows that Big OIl ran a concerted campaign against nuclear power, when Big Oil was making a big investment in nuclear, is a ridiculous stretch.
I would not call people like Robert O Anderson and George Mitchell Malthusians. They were optimistic, inventive, forward looking people unlike creeps like Erhlich . But they were worried about population and the scarcity of resources. That was what Forum of the Future was about. Not bashing nuclear power.
Jack - I interviewed Tom Turner for Atomic Show #256
From the blog post accompanying the interview:
“As Turner acknowledged, FOE’s early success was greatly assisted by a major contribution from Robert O. Anderson, the CEO of the Atlantic Richfield Company, one of the largest oil and gas producers in the United States at the time. Turner wasn’t able to explain why Anderson provided the money; he did say that it wasn’t because of any personal relationship between him and Brower.”
https://atomicinsights.com/atomic-show-256-tom-turner-talks-david-brower/
But you’ve somehow missed the point that the Anderson contribution is just an EXAMPLE. The book I linked to earlier provides information about specifically antinuclear donations from Rockefeller Brothers Fund, McGeorge Bundy, Ford Foundation and numerous other members of the Hydrocarbon Economy elites.
You keep talking about big investments in nuclear. How did they compare to CAPEX spent on oil & gas development and production?
Rod,
The movie offers exactly two examples of how Big Oil supposedly scuppered nuclear power. I assume Stone picked the two most compelling. We've covered the RF machinations and the Anderson donation. This post is a review of the movie. It is not about you.
The connection between the Oil Patch and these other elitist organizations is even more tenuous. You don't seem to understand for these immensely wealthy foundations the problem is spending money, not making it.
This whole discussion is a counterproductive diversion from nuclear power's real problem. I do not intend to continue it.
Sorry you feel? "This whole discussion is a counterproductive diversion from nuclear power's real problem. I do not intend to continue it." but all good things come to an end. On the contrary reading the opinions of Two Titians of Nuclear who disagree is fascinating and better than the Nuclear Now Movie review which was good. To me USN Commander, Movie Star Rod Adams has an edge but as a USN Sailor I am prejudiced. Please both of you keep talking Nuclear.
XLNT
XLNT
XLNT
I think the functionally harmless point about nuclear waste is starting to get out there. The Decouple studios and Chris Keefer nuclear twitter cluster have been making that case. Keefer testified to a Canadian government committee that after 600 years you have to pulverize and ingest it to be harmed
Further to that, the radioactivity is itself functionally irrelevant to the risk of spent fuel, which will kill you with simple chemical toxicity before you can get much radiation from eating it
Ted Rockwell, formed Naval Reactors technical director during construction of the USS Nautilus, Shippington and the early submarine build out, was one of my most respected mentors in nuclear advocacy
He used to say that the only long term communications needed on nuclear waste containers would be various forms of the warning "Do not eat."
Rod,
Great quote. Wish I had seen it before the 600-year-old-spent-nuclear-fuel is just another poison post. Can you give us a specific occasion or reference?
We need somebody with graphics ability to do a graphic based on this quote. Volunteers?
Jack: - Here are a few of documented occurrences when Ted made similar statements.
"“Where is any instance where nuclear waste has hurt the environment?” he asked rhetorically. Maybe OSHA should just issue warnings that say “Do Not Eat the Ceramic [Casks],” Rockwell says, “because if you don’t eat it, it won’t hurt you.”"
https://m.cityweekly.net/utah/nuclear-utah/Content?oid=2140966&showFullText=true
Regarding cleanups like those at the Hanford site:
"In these more hazardous cases of non-radioactive spills, we devote a modest effort to cleaning up the area, leaving earth or concrete permanently stained and contaminated to the degree that, if you tried to eat it, you might suffer some deleterious effects. And we rightly conclude, that's a reasonable level of response. (Maybe we should post OSHA warning signs: DO NOT EAT THE DIRT.) There is no realistic justification for requiring that all the ground be decontaminated to hospital or "clean room" standards."
(Note: Site incorrectly says "By ACSH Staff", but the author blurb at the bottom indicates that Ted Rockwell wrote the piece.)
https://www.acsh.org/news/2010/02/16/its-the-dose-that-makes-the-poison-the-importance-of-numbers
On a May 4, 2018 Atomic Insights post, Jerry Cuttler wrote:
"So we have been spending lots of money (labour) trying to find a “willing host community” a site for deep disposal.
Ted Rockwell said it best. Just put the containers anywhere with a sign saying, “Please do not eat.”"
https://atomicinsights.com/waste-issue-continues-to-be-part-of-antinuclear-movement-strategy-of-constipation/#comment-150861
Thanks. I think we need to be careful to point out that, if the "waste" is spent fuel, you should wait about 500 years before hugging the fuel elements.
But, contrary to what many nuclear power supporters apparently believe, properly aged spent fuel is just another poison.
Excellent summary, though I do believe that the 1971 NEPA fiasco did as much damage to proposed nuclear builds as anything else pre-TMI incident.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvert_Cliffs%27_Coordinating_Committee,_Inc._v._Atomic_Energy_Commission