Clean nuclear power? Same ol' song and dance.
Russell Sadler
The media coyly called it the “Trojan Implosion.” It was a controlled demolition of the 500-foot cooling tower that loomed as a landmark over the lower Columbia River for nearly 30 years at the site of now-defunct Trojan Nuclear Power Plant.
The demolition of the cooling tower was an inconvenient reminder that Trojan was sold as a “clean, inexhaustible” supply of electric power in the 1970s. It went on line in 1976 after a protracted political battle over nuclear energy’s safety and economics. It was expected to produce power for 30 years or more.
Trojan’s owner, Portland General Electric, shut it down just 17 years later in 1993, not because of environmental or safety concerns, but because of economics. The utility learned that the corrosion inside the reactor’s cooling system was so severe that the plumbing would have to be replaced. It would be so costly that Trojan could no longer generate affordable electricity. So PGE shut it down. Trojan’s ratepayers are still paying off the 30-year bonds sold to build the plant even though it has not produced electricity for 13 years.
Trojan cost about $400 million to build in 1976. It is costing ratepayers $410 million to decommission the plant.
The reactor and its associated radioactive machinery went first. Encased in concrete and lead, it was dropped on barges and hauled up river to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington. The stately parade had a funereal air. The barge, pushed by a tugboat, was followed by a Navy grey warship, operated by a private contractor, constantly sniffing the air for any escaping radiation.
Last week, the huge cooling tower came down. But decommissioning is not done. Every year over its 17-year life span, Trojan was shut down for a month or so while technicians replaced one-third of the fuel rods in its reactor core.
These radioactive fuel rods were supposed to be moved to a federal nuclear waste repository for reprocessing and safe storage. But the promised federal repository never materialized. The official repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada hasn’t opened because of public opposition. So spent radioactive fuel rods have accumulated at every nuclear power plant in the country, stored in basins of water, from the time each plant began producing electricity. At Trojan, there are 17 years of spent fuel rods, accumulated in a glorified swimming pool, on the flood plain of the lower Columbia River, sitting on an earthquake fault with no serious plans to move them in the foreseeable future.
The legacy of the Atomic Age has not been kind to the Pacific Northwest. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation is a product of the Manhattan Project, the super-secret effort to build the atomic bomb during World War II. Plutonium from Hanford was in one of the two bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, persuading the Japanese to surrender and ending World War II.
During the war, officials at Hanford deliberately released radioactive gas from Hanford to see where the wind currents would carry it. Decades later thousand of people who had lived downwind were treated for or were dying of cancer -- usually thyroid cancer -- attributed to the radioactive releases.
After the war, Hanford became a facility for producing more material for atomic and hydrogen bombs. It also became a repository for high-level radioactive waste from all over the country.
Radioactive material is highly corrosive. It has eaten through the tanks designed to hold it and it is leaching into the water table below Hanford. A plume of radioactive water is advancing on the Columbia. The federal government is years behind and billions of dollars short doing what it promised to stop the leaks and clean up the ground water. No one is sure what the consequences will be if radioactive tritium reaches the Columbia and heads for the sea.
There is also the saga of the Washington Public Power Supply System, aptly nicknamed Whoops! WPPSS began construction of five nuclear powerplants in the 1970s. Only one ever generated electricity. The other four were doomed by huge cost overruns when construction was stopped in 1982, resulting in the largest public bond default in history -- $2.25 billion.
The Northwest has not built a new thermal power plant in decades and is not running out of electricity. Why? It’s the accelerated construction of wind farms in Eastern Oregon and Washington, conservation of electricity we already generate and more efficient use of the hydropower generated in the region.
The long, tragic history of incompetence in the nuclear industry and government has made the Pacific Northwest skeptical. You will forgive us, please, if their PR offensive hailing a “revival” of “clean” nuclear power sounds like the same old song and dance.
 |
More Recent Posts | |
Albert Kaufman |
|
Guest Column |
|
Kari Chisholm |
|
Kari Chisholm |
Final pre-census estimate: Oregon's getting a sixth congressional seat |
Albert Kaufman |
Polluted by Money - How corporate cash corrupted one of the greenest states in America |
Guest Column |
|
Albert Kaufman |
Our Democrat Representatives in Action - What's on your wish list? |
Kari Chisholm |
|
Guest Column |
|
Kari Chisholm |
|
connect with blueoregon
9:10 a.m.
May 28, '06
Trojan's gone. Hurray for NW activists who were able to pull it off. I think the real insight to be gained from this implosion is to compare it to the collapse of WTC 7, another building that was brought down by controlled demolition.
http://www.911research.com/wtc/attack/wtc7.html
http://www.911research.com/wtc/evidence/videos/docs/wtc7_collapse2.mpg
No plane struck WTC 7.
Minor fires were in evidence, then it just came down. There is no explanation in the 911 Omission report.
May 28, '06
I understand that it is possible to condense radioactive waste to a solid form, and that the consolidation of all condensed waste in the USA, from all nuclear power plants that have operated in the U.S., would be small enough to fit in a container the size of a high school gymnasium. The problem is that technology of this sort has only been dangled before voters as a means of enticing them to support nuclear energy. The actual cost of appropriate nuclear waste storage has never seriously been incorporated into the financial analysis of building a nuclear power plant.
Citizens have no reason to trust the nuclear power industry and no reason to trust the US Government to appropriately regulate it. Therefore, the true potential of nuclear power has never fully been realized. I would support nuclear power IF and ONLY IF, it was legislated under criminal penalties, that nuclear power plants must pay a federal tax that is exclusively dedicated to proper consolidation and storage of nuclear waste, subject to citizen audits, on demand. THEN and ONLY THEN will the public get a clear accounting of the costs of safe nuclear production, to weigh in its consideration of bond measures for nuclear power production.
May 28, '06
Trojan’s owner, Portland General Electric, shut it down just 17 years later in 1993, not because of environmental or safety concerns, but because of economics. The utility learned that the corrosion inside the reactor’s cooling system was so severe that the plumbing would have to be replaced. It would be so costly that Trojan could no longer generate affordable electricity. So PGE shut it down.
I think this is only in part true. They were also faced with a ballot measure that was well-financed by Marilyn and Jerry Wilson of Soloflex. That measure, if passed, would have transferred the costs of closing the plant and storing the waste from it to PGE's stockholders. It was only after the measure got on the ballot that PGE announced Trojan's closure and they used the promise of closure to defeat the ballot measure.
Because of the way electrical facilities are financed, PGE was able to make a profit (return on investment) from Trojan even after the plant was closed. I believe they also got approval for investments in natural gas powered generation facilities to replace it - paid for by ratepayers with an additional return on investment for PGE.
In short, Trojan was highly profitable for PGE. It was just expensive for their customers.
12:10 p.m.
May 28, '06
Russell,
Another great post. But there's one point in your post that I think misses the point.
You write:
The official repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada hasn’t opened because of public opposition.
While public opposition in Nevada has been fierce, Yucca Mountain hasn't opened because it's not safe and engineers have yet to be shown it can be safe for its intended purpose.
For one of many articles in this subject, check out:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/apr2005/yucc-a06.shtml
Nuclear power has and never would make financial sense without massive federal subsidies in the form of legislation limiting liability for any nuclear disaster and without taxpayers picking up the tab for waste storage.
Conservation, wind, and solar power are far cheaper non-fossil fuel resources that won't saddle our great, great grandkids with the ongoing costs of storing dangerous waste and don't contribute to global warming.
May 28, '06
Ross Williams wrote on May 28, 2006 9:52:13 AM: {snip}
Wrong.
PGE won that Ballot Measure campaign, THEN, two months later, PGE announced closure.
I read the Minority Report of the committee studying the issue to the City Club, after touring Trojan, and spent too much time learning the duplicity and doublethink employed by PGE management. I also learned TMI was not victimless, as the stories of Marjorie Armodt and other TMI downwinders show.
I also think new nukes of proven design would be tremendously beneficial, and would solve the high level waste problem, making Yucca Mountain a non-issue. See Inconvenient Truth Al Gore Ignores
May 28, '06
PGE won that Ballot Measure campaign, THEN, two months later, PGE announced closure.
Wrong. PGE announced a few weeks after the measure got on the ballot that they were closing Trojan by 1996, but they claimed the power was needed to transition to alternatives. After the election, once they were guaranteed their decommissioning costs and their rate of return on the plant, they announced they were closing it immediately.
Had they closed the plant immediately before the ballot measure campaign, or simply that they were not restarting it since it was down, there is a good chance the measure would have passed, The only issue would have been who was going to pay the bill for decommissioning it. The Wilson's tried to make that the issue anyway, but they failed.
May 28, '06
And just to make it clear, had they not announced it was closing in 1996 the measure would also have likely passed. The claims that Trojan was desperately needed for its power generation had long since been discredited by its repeated breakdowns. And the Wilsons had enough money to get that message out. Once the issue became timing, 1996 or 1993, they chose not to spend it.
May 29, '06
"While public opposition in Nevada has been fierce, Yucca Mountain hasn't opened because it's not safe and engineers have yet to be shown it can be safe for its intended purpose."
Yes, the safety concerns rather than the other costs are the main hurdle for nuclear power plants. Ans as another person mentioned, we don't trust the industry and the government on this issue.
But if the storage issue is addressed to the satisfaction of most people, and plant designs agreed upon to reduce concerns (such as doing what France does -- one design, and no different set of problems for each plant), will you support giving this another try (or actually, its first real try)?
In the meantime, burning mega-tons of coal is far more dangerous to our health, and that is indeed going on (outta sight, outta mind).
Bob Tiernan
May 29, '06
"I think the real insight to be gained from this implosion is to compare it to the collapse of WTC 7, another building that was brought down by controlled demolition....No plain struck WTC 7."
Uh-oh -- conspiracy theory nonsense has entered into this. Why? Does that story also come with dancing Jews on a rooftop?
Gimme a break!
Bob Tiernan
May 29, '06
Bob, Why are you setting up a straw man?
May 29, '06
"Bob, Why are you setting up a straw man?"
Hmmmm, to which post are you responding?
Bob T.
May 29, '06
"Does that story also come with dancing Jews on a rooftop?"
May 29, '06
Actually, WTC 7 WAS a nuclear power plant that underwent a nuclear meltdown. This spawned holographic images of 'airplanes' - really staffed by aliens from another planet who were part of the so-called airline 'passengers' who went missing during the 9/11 incident.
George Bush is a lifeless ragdoll who is mind-controlled by the super-alien, Karl Rove.
The Pentago was damaged when Dick Cheney mistakenly used his proton-blaster gun (instead of his shotgun) to scare away pigeons.
May 29, '06
I guess when people are afraid to look for a rational explaination for something wierd, their respose is to ridicule. I know it's off topic, but does anyone have a plausible explaination for how WTC 7 collapsed? My mind is open. I just think that ridicule is a mean and stupid kid game.
7:45 p.m.
May 29, '06
OK, enough. This is NOT a post about the collapse of WTC 7. Take it elsewhere, or submit a guest column to discuss that topic.
10:46 a.m.
May 30, '06
Jonathan,
What do you think about nuclear power in Europe? I agree with you that other cleaner options would be preferable in the long run, but in the short to medium term, aren't our choices between nuclear and "dirtier" options such as coal or natural gas?
May 30, '06
"aren't our choices between nuclear and 'dirtier' options such as coal or natural gas?"
That seems to be the case. A lot of people don't realize that burning coal has its own radiation problem for us. Here's a good article on this:
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
Bob T