Harnessing Nuclear
Technology for the Prosperity and Security of Our Nation
Panel Chairman:
Robert G. Card, Under Secretary for Energy,
Science and Environment
CARD: Many
of you may not be fully aware that there’s two
fleets of 100 nuclear power plants in the United States
and you’ve heard about the civilian electricity
half of them. The other half of them is owned by the
U.S. Navy and the steward of that half is Admiral Skip
Bowman, the Director of Naval Reactors. I want to say
that Skip has done just an outstanding job. He’s
our star guest speaker at our annual safety summit that
we have for all of the leaders and the contractors in
the Department of Energy. And I think everybody here
knows about Naval Reactors, they’ve built an envious
record of outstanding technology combined with really
world-class safety. So I’m sure Skip is going
to share a few things about that. Skip, thank you.
BOWMAN: Well, with no microphone and no slides, I’d like
to petition for two minutes more before you give me
the hook [laughter]. And finally I would like to thank
everyone who hasn’t already been thanked here
today [laughter]. I’m very happy, though, to participate
in this conference because I truly believe that the
past, the present and, indeed, the future of President
Eisenhower’s vision are closely tied to the story
of Admiral Hyman Rickover and Naval reactors.
To give you my bottom
line propositions. First, the Rickover story is living
proof that a technically based organization with unchanging
core values can harness this unforgiving technology
for the prosperity and security of the nation. Second,
that there is today a national security mandate for
commercial nuclear power to greatly increase its role
in meeting America’s energy needs.
Let me piggyback just
a little bit on Don Hintz’ presentation. In 1946
Admiral Rickover, then Captain Rickover, set himself
up at Oak Ridge National Laboratory under the slimmest
of authorizations, some would say none, and with an
even slimmer staff of one to study the fledging nuclear
technology. By August 1948, Admiral Rickover had earned
the support of key national leaders in and out of the
Navy, mostly out of the Navy, and they gave him a formal
mandate to deliver a true submarine that could travel
at high speeds, continuously submerged, without having
to recharge batteries.
Well, Rickover attacked
this challenge (as he did everything else), at full
tilt ? developing the technologies, the materials, the
standards, and, most importantly, the people. In March,
1953, just five years from receiving this mandate, and
just 15 months after Argon Laboratory’s experimental
reactor illuminated that string of light bulbs, the
prototype reactor plant for the submarine Nautilus began
operation in the Idaho dessert, nuclear-powered operation,
the first harnessing of nuclear power to do real work
on a large and practical scale.
Everyone following the
nuclear developments of the day recognized that if nuclear
power could be used to propel a submarine, it surely
could be used to generate electricity for homes and
industry. So in the summer of 1953, Admiral Rickover
received yet another national mandate: to build and
operate a commercial reactor, thereby beginning this
country’s civil nuclear power industry. Several
months later, and undoubtedly acknowledging the work
of Admiral Rickover and the success of that experimental
reactor outside of Arco, Idaho, President Eisenhower
made the famous proclamation in his speech.
“The United States
knows that peaceful power from atomic energy is no dream
of the future. The capability, already proved, is here
today.”
On December 23, 1957,
again, fewer than five years after Admiral Rickover
accepted that second challenge, our country’s
first commercial reactor, the Shipping Port Atomic Power
Plant began providing electricity to the people of Pittsburgh,
taking a giant step forward to fulfilling what President
Eisenhower called a “special purpose... to provide
abundant electrical energy.”
When Admiral Rickover
began the Naval Reactors program, he also began embedding
into it these core values that endure today. First,
technical excellence and technical competence are absolutely
required in our work because things do happen and especially
at sea: we rely on a multi-layer defense against off-normal
events. Our reactor designs and operating procedures
are uncomplicated and conservative and we build in redundancy.
Next, we always will select the best people that we
can find, with the highest integrity and professional
competence, and the willingness to accept complete responsibility
over ever aspect of nuclear power operations. And then
we rigorously train them and continuously challenge
them.
Third, we require formality
and discipline and we insist on forceful back-up from
the youngest sailor on board all the way to the commanding
officer. And fourth, we insist that the only way to
operate our nuclear power plants ? the only way to insure
safe operations generation after generation ? is to
embrace a system that mainstreams in each operator a
total commitment to safety: a pervasive, enduring devotion
to a culture of safety and environmental stewardship.
Well, these core values,
among a few others, are the foundation that have allowed
our Navy nuclear-powered warships to safely steam more
than 128 million miles, equivalent to over five thousand
times around the earth, without a reactor accident,
indeed, with no measurable negative impact on the environment
or human health. As Admiral Rickover’s successor,
the fourth Director of Naval Reactors, I do oversee
the operation of 103 reactors, equaling the number of
commercial reactors in this country. These reactors,
powering United States Navy ships, are welcomed in more
than 150 ports, in over 50 countries around the world.
I offer this thumbnail
sketch of the past and the present as objective proof
to the naysayers that it really can be done. Reliable
and robust nuclear reactors can be operated on very
large scale with the trust and confidence of the operators
and the population that live and work nearby. And what
nuclear power provides a warship ? a combination of
speed, endurance, flexibility and reliability ? is counted
on now more than ever to defend our Nation and further
our national interests.
Immediately following
the terrorist attacks on 9/11, nuclear-powered warships
responded decisively and have contributed and continued
to lead the way at sea in operations Enduring Freedom
and Iraqi Freedom. Especially today, as we evolve to
a more responsive Navy to fight the Global War on Terrorism,
our nuclear- powered warships are needed to provide
sustainable, reliable and independent operations to
answer the call for prompt, overwhelming action.
But proud as I am of what
our Department of Energy and Navy have done and their
success at developing and safely using nuclear energy,
I must say that as a Nation we must, can and should
do more to accomplish President Eisenhower’s “special
purpose” vision.
And this brings me, of
course, to the second point. I’m absolutely convinced
that this country must take immediate steps to significantly
increase our energy production from nuclear power. And
I believe that we should feel the same national mandate
to act that Admiral Rickover felt back in 1953 at the
beginning of the Atoms for Peace era.
The late Edward Teller
gave a sense of urgency to this suggested contemporary
mandate years ago when he observed, “If we want
safe and clean energy, we should accept fission reactors.
Unfortunately the fear of that technology is widespread
and it will be hard to eradicate. Therefore reactors
must not only be safe; we must make them obviously safe.
And if we don’t find ways to make the obvious
clear to people, to persuade them to accept the best
technologies then,” listen to this, “I believe
America will turn itself into an underdeveloped country.”
Pretty dire warning, but
I believe it’s corroborated by two synergistic
facts of life.
First, there is a credible expectation the U.S. energy
demand will increase significantly ? far beyond our
current domestic supply ? over the next two decades.
And, second, unless we do something about it foreign
countries that aren’t necessarily friendly and,
perhaps, are even hostile to U.S. interests, will provide
at their price ? or withhold at their whim ? the oil
that could satisfy much of this expanding need.
As widely reported, OPEC
will exercise its arbitrary authority at the end of
this month to cut the supply of oil by over 900 thousand
barrels a day. This action will show us again that our
dependence on foreign oil puts us at the mercy of foreign
entities such as OPEC. As they vary production quotas
and price for a third of the world’s oil supplies,
we feel that economic impact, and they demonstrate the
significant power they have over our economy.
Well, will America continue
to grow and prosper or will we tumble rapidly and chaotically
into Dr. Teller’s “underdeveloped”
status? Unless we control our own energy supplies, the
choice may not be ours to make. Given that nuclear power
is a necessary part of the answer to our growing energy
needs, what must we do? Advancements in science and
technology as Bill Magwood discussed, like Generation
Four are very important for the future. But what we
urgently need today is an earnest, robust, and large-scale
program of media and public education.
It’s encouraging
to see that recent NEI survey on public attitudes towards
nuclear power, especially the bottom line that 64% favor
nuclear power. But I note that while that is a positive
sign, that same survey indicates that the public is
split down the middle on the need to build new nuclear
plants. And that recent MIT study, “The Future
of Nuclear Power,” also indicates that more needs
to be done. The study’s summary concludes that,
“the public does not yet see nuclear power as
a way to address global warming, suggesting that further
public education may be necessary.”
Therefore the fact that
we must deal with is that American people have been
led and conditioned to mistrust anything nuclear. For
far too long we have allowed this feeling to simmer,
despite the consequences. In addition to our nuclear
Navy’s 50-year success, the commercial nuclear
industry has a very powerful case to make and we’ve
heard some of this case today from my fellow panelists.
As we do what Teller suggested
? make the obvious clear to people ? let’s talk
to the American people about comparative risk. David
Ropeik of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis makes
some interesting points: 7,800 deaths attributed to
sun a year from melanoma; medical mistakes kill as many
as 98,000 Americans a year; food poisoning kills 5,000
Americans a year; air pollution kills over 60,000 Americans
a year. Mr. Ropeik recently compiled a list of “risks
that aren’t really risky.” Do you know what
was number one on his list? Radiation from a nuclear
reactor.
Let me reinforce his points
with a few of my own.
Three Mile Island was,
obviously, this country’s worst nuclear accident,
yet few people realize that even though 90% of the fuel
rods ruptured, TMI was an absolutely non-event from
a radiation and health hazard standpoint.
My submarine sailors,
who live and work within yards of operating reactors,
receive less whole body radiation while underway than
they do while at home exposed to natural background
radiation. So if you really want to minimize your exposure
to radiation, go to sea on a submarine. [laughter]
We need to tell this story.
We need to educate our fellow citizens. For sure, this
is an unforgiving technology and we can’t forget
that. It demands our keenest attention to keep it safe,
but it can be safe. Our country... today operating 206
reactors... with the world’s largest operating
nuclear Navy... the world’s largest output of
nuclear-generated commercial electricity... the Atoms
for Peace country... must continue to apply today’s
stringent requirements and defense in depth to this
technology to ensure the nuclear power meets President
Eisenhower’s mandate, his “special purpose,”
to provide abundant nuclear energy. Thank you.
[applause]
Questions and
Answers: CARD: Thank you. Unless my watch is
horribly off, we have a generous amount of time for
questions, challenges, comments, whatever from the audience.
COZARELLI(?):
I’m Nick Cozarelli from UC Berkeley and my question
is that we’ve heard several people talk about
the hydrogen fuel cell but, obviously, the amount of
energy you are going to get out of the hydrogen fuel
cell is going to be less than the amount of energy you
put in to making that hydrogen and, given the fact of
what we’ve been hearing about this morning, about
how far off any kind of really substantial nuclear power
is, the hydrogen fuel cell is more polluting than any
other form, than just gasoline for running a car.
So I was wondering if
anyone would like to respond to this negative aspect
of the hydrogen fuel cell idea.
CARD: Does
anyone on the panel want to take a shot at that?
MAGWOOD: Sure,
I’ll-- I think first I’ll say that I don’t
entirely agree with your postulate. First, I think that
hydrogen fuel cells, especially the advanced fuel cells
that DOE is doing research on now, has a great potential
for very high efficiencies and I think that if we’re
successful in having very efficient means of producing
hydrogen, that the overall efficiency will be very good.
I think we will be very competitive. What we’re
trying to accomplish is not necessarily to achieve an
alternative to petroleum that is going to be cheaper
than petroleum.
I mean the reason that
we use petroleum is because is cheap. What we like to
do is have a viable alternative to petroleum that is
not vastly more expensive but yet has huge environmental
and economic security benefits for the country. And
discussing this in the context of a lot of the overseas
meetings, I’ve been to; there are many countries
that agree with that point of view. So I actually am
an optimist on both the fuel cell development and also
and possibly for having nuclear technology appear in
the foreseeable future, in the next decade or two that
will fuel those fuel cells especially.
CARD: Thank you Bill. I just might attempt to weigh in just
a bit on that. Right now, today I think well-to-wheels
efficiency probably would favor a diesel or a diesel
hybrid. But we really see an addition to the strategic
diversity issues that Bill mentioned, which are vitally
important, we’re really shooting for breakthrough
technologies and when you couple that with the possibility
of fuel price increases and other inputs, we think the
hydrogen system is an extremely important alternative.
Okay. I just wanted to
make sure I had the right person.
NEFF: I don’t know if I’m the right person. I
think I am. I’m Tom Neff from MIT. I just had
a question and a comment about renewables. Everybody
there on the panel I think said something very kind
about renewable resources and energy and nuclear but
there is a link and not much has made of it. It is actually
an old point. I wrote a book about it about 25 years
ago. Most new energy technologies have payback times.
They take two, three, five years even to generate as
much energy as it took to make them.
So if you and to get from
a low installed base for renewables to a large installed
base, you need to expand a lot of traditional forms
of energy in order to get that base installed. It takes
aluminum. It takes-- Whether it’s wind, wave,
solar panels or whatever or hydrogen fuel cells. For
example, if you want a gigawatt of solar next year,
you’ve got to use about three gigawatts this year.
I’m not sure why the point has not been made that,
in order to have, say, expansion of renewable resources
over the next 50 years or 100 years, we actually need
to build a lot more conventional capacity.
We have two choices, basically.
Gas is saturated. We have nuclear and we have coal.
And I think it’s a great argument for nuclear.
Nuclear power plants can generate the electricity that
is largely used to make the facilities necessary for
renewable for energy generation. And I think that might
help disarm a certain amount. There is a certain dichotomy
here between those who sort of favor the soft energy
path, the renewable resource path as a simple, totally
separate kind of path to go forward. But there is no
such simple, separate path. They are linked.
CARD: Thank you Tom. Does anybody want to expand on that before
we go on to the next question? [pause] Let’s look
over here. Burt, I think I saw your hand up and then
we’ll go there and over here and back.
RICHTER: I
think all the technical people certainly agree that
nuclear power is the way to go.
CARD: Burt, you want to tell us who you are?
RICHTER: I’m Burt Richter, physicist, Stanford. All the
techies agree, nuclear power is wonderful and we should
go that way. I have a question I want to direct toward
Mr. Hintz and I want to start with three comments, first.
The present nuclear power plants are gold mines because
of the life extension programs, their capital costs
are paid off and the utilities that own them are making
a fortune. That’s wonderful. (Laughter)
Second, fossil fuels get
a huge subsidy in our system because they’re not
required to pay for the disposal of waste product, carbon
dioxide. Because of that subsidy, fossil fuels and new
power plants in fossil fuels are cheaper; generate cheaper
electricity than nuclear, at least according to all
the studies I’ve seen. Now, Mr. Hintz talked about
building new nukes in the United States. The question
is, is industry really going to do that without some
incentives? What does the government have to do to strike
the appropriate economic balance to make up for the
subsidy that fossil fuel is getting?
HINTZ: Well, I don’t know if I agree with you that we’re
making tons of money on the existing plants (laughter)
but they are very profitable and that’s primarily
because the production cost is very low compared to
other ways of generating power. But getting back to
what it would take for say, Entergy to build a new nuclear
plant, I guess it’s been about two years ago,
I made a presentation. And the title of the presentation
was, “The Stars are Aligning” and the theme
was that it does seem like everything is starting to
come together that would allow us to go ahead and build
new nuclear plants.
And the star I was talking
about was, I think the public opinion is continuing
to get better. We’re seeing plant operational
performance not only being better but I think we have
a lot of confidence that we can operate them consistently
at high performance levels. And I’d say ten years
ago we weren’t sure of that because it always
seemed like you could operate them well but then you
would end up with a long-term shut down for some reason
or another. The safety record has been extremely good.
We still see that operating
costs are decreasing or at least stable and we’re
seeing most other fuels, the fuel costs are continuing
to escalate. And so I mean it looks like everything
is coming together that, why aren’t utilities
jumping at the chance to build a new nuclear plant?
Probably the biggest reason I think is that the capital
costs are still quite high. And I know the vendors have
done a lot of work in trying to reduce the costs and
trying to make the plants a little simpler and having
more passive systems and things like that.
But the issue is, with
the special things associated with nuclear, a lot of
capital dollars, it takes a long time to build them
and things like that, that the capital costs are still
such that the other forms of generating electricity
are more attractive. But it is getting close and I get
a lot of questions now, when people see what happens
to the price of gas. Well, surely, now, that’s
going to be the final thing that’s going to tip
it. And I think everybody’s got a different view
on natural gas and I’ll give you Entergy’s,
which I’m sure is wrong. We’ve never been
right on it in the past, but (laughter) we see natural
gas is going to be very volatile. I mean you are going
to see $10 dollar gas and, we used to say, $2 dollar
gas. I don’t think you are going to see that again,
probably.
But you are going to see,
we believe, fairly low-priced gas. You’re going
to have the volatility. So, when you are building a
plant, like a nuclear plant, you’ve got to figure
out, on average, what’s the price of natural gas
going to be? And we’re not convinced on the average
that it’s going to be greater then $5 dollars.
And if you’re somewhere between $4 and $5 dollars,
these capital costs are still too much. But I think
if we got any credit or much credit for the environmental
advantages of nuclear, I think that would be enough
to tip the table and I’d be surprised if you wouldn’t
see someone going ahead it.
Let me just say. I know
I am taking much too much time. But let me just say
one of the problems that you have with building a nuclear
plant, besides large capital costs, we can’t get
debt on them. And maybe we can’t today, but we
built a gas-fired plant with 90% debt and we’re
building this nuclear plant with 100% equity. And it
could be the greatest technology in the world and vendors
can do a great job of getting costs down, but when you’re
building something with 100% equity, that does change
the financial situation of that plant. I think we’re
close but we’re not quite there yet.
CARD: Thank you Don. I think it was important to have that
dialogue so that the audience understood that it is
not a national policy issue is why we are not seeing
more nuclear plants. It’s the financial structure
and the thing the Don didn’t delve into but I
think is a big deal is that since we have liberalized
the market and we’re in favor of that and Europe
is doing the same thing, when you apply corporate rate
of return to that capital, it makes it very hard to
recognize the long-term investment potential of a nuclear
power plant.
Finland, TVO, the buyer
of the Fin Five plant was using a 5% rate of return
in their calculation, which is a third to a fifth of
what Don would have to use for his company.
We have a question down
here and then I’ll take the next one from over
here.
WAGNER: Henry Wagner, Johns Hopkins. I would like to ask the
panel what role nuclear energy has in desalination.
Fresh water availability is a major, major problem for
the future. And sometimes I dream of seeing a nuclear
submarine temporarily parked outside the island of Kauai(?)
in Hawaii, making enough fresh water for next year and
then moving on to another place and producing more fresh
water. Could somebody comment on the role of nuclear
energy in desalination?
CARD: Since
you mentioned submarines, Alain or Skip, do you want
to comment on that?
BOWMAN: I see a golden opportunity to use nuclear power in desalinization.
I see less opportunity for using a nuclear submarine
to do that. First of all, just very quickly, we need
all the nuclear submarines that we can get and then
some to do the Nation’s business with what’s
going on in the world today. It’s not that outlandish
a proposition, by the way. I’ve been approached
several times in the seven years I’ve been in
this job to back a submarine into the piers in New Hampshire
and perhaps feed the energy grid there.
The truth of the matter
is, if you look at the size of our reactors and you
look at the devotion of the majority of that energy
to propulsion power and not to electrical generating
power, you will see that it is a non-starter from the
standpoint of contributing measurably to any of our
deficits. But nuclear energy as a means of desalinization,
you’re right, we do that onboard our nuclear-powered
aircraft carriers and submarines today and it certainly,
with the advent of new systems, such as reverse osmosis
systems for desalinization, I think it is another thing
we should be thinking about.
We talk mostly about cracking
water for hydrogen today as out-of-the-box ways to use
nuclear power. But I think desalinization is certainly
another one.
CARD: Alain.
BUGAT: Yes,
I can add some more on the subject. We are studying
300- megawatt electric co-generation nuclear plant for
electricity and desalination and it works. The Indian
people are studying too. But roughly speaking, with
the 300- megawatts you can use 250 for electricity and
use 50 megawatts for desalination and with that 50 megawatts
you can produce 200 thousand cubic meters by day. So
that means that that kind of is able to furnish electricity
and water for one million people, an area of one million
people.
So it cannot be-- We are
not plenty of that kind of population who need the water.
That is tropical countries with networks and are able
to transfer the electricity. And more of that, what
is important, the cost of the kilowatt that is produced
is two times the cost of one thousand megawatt plant,
which means, how do you build the investment? How do
you build the capital for the investment? It was a question
on which every company is locked(?) now.
CARD: There is another example that comes to mind that is
being mused about. I don't know if anything will happen,
but Canada, and its oil sands in Alberta is looking
to consume two billion cubic feet a day of natural gas
to turn oil sands into oil and produce one to 200 million
metric tons a year of CO2. So people wonder, would that
be a good application. We will see what happens there.
Is there a question? Yes.
DOWNEY: Good
morning. Lieutenant Colonel Jim Downey. I’m currently
a fellow at Harvard University. And I want to ask just
a little off question. We’ve spoken about nuclear
power and land and also the sea. I’m interested
in the medium of space. NASA has a new program to develop
a nuclear reactor based propulsion system for deep space.
And what surprises me is so far, it has not received
a lot of attention in perhaps the environmental concern
arena, although it may in a couple of years.
But I wonder is how any
of you might feel about that program and does it inform,
help or hinder development of nuclear energy in general.
CARD: Well, Naval Reactors has actually been assigned that
mission. So, Skip, do you want to take a first shot
at it?
BOWMAN: Yes,
Secretary Carter, the truth is we haven’t been
officially assigned it, but we anticipate that to happen.
CARD: So,
no breaking news.
BOWMAN: No breaking news. I’m still developing some understandings.
I believe space nuclear
propulsion will forward the cause of nuclear energy.
I suggest that your opening salvo may come true sooner
than we want, that the environmentalists will notice
and we will begin having to answer some questions about
it. The first idea that NASA is working on is an unmanned
orbiter for the icy moons of Jupiter and the JIMO project.
It’s funded. It has received funding for the past
two years in NASA and, indeed, the possibility that
Naval Reactors will be delivered another national mandate
similar to the two that I discussed earlier, that Admiral
Rickover received is very real and we’re looking
at that even as we speak.
But I think it would be
a positive advancement if, obviously, the kinds of reactors
that you know we use on our aircraft carriers and submarines
are not exactly amenable to space travel, so we would
have to branch out and think about other ways to do
that and that would involve organizations across the
country that have been working in other types of technologies
over these years.
CARD: --Space
nuclear. Bill, did you want to add anything to that?
MAGWOOD: Sure, I’ll just add that I think that whenever
you are able to use nuclear technology to take on an
activity such as exploring space that the public gets
excited about, I think it’s something that has
potential benefit all over for nuclear power. I often,
in talking to school children about nuclear technology,
point out the wonderful pictures we’ve gotten
from the planets, from Jupiter, from Uranus and others--
And to be able to point to that and say, “We wouldn’t
be able to do that without nuclear technology,”
I think is a real advantage.
And the fact is that as
we’ve worked with NASA over the years about what
their future visions are for space exploration, it became
extremely clear to them-- We had to sort of drag them
into it but it became very clear to them that they couldn’t
accomplish their mission without nuclear technology.
And someone mentioned earlier there needs to be an education
process and that is part of the education process because
there are things you can do with nuclear you can’t
do with other things, not just in space exploration
power but also in medical treatment and other things
and I getting that story out has to be very important.
CARD: We’ll
begin drifting back this way. Anything else from here?
Yes, sir,
BRODSKY: Alan
Brodsky again, ...(inaudible)RC and Georgetown University.
But I’m speaking for myself. Not even my wife
approves very much of what I say. (Laughter) I congratulate
the nuclear energy industry and the great safety record
and I wonder why they don’t-- My question is,
why don’t they spend more advertising funds to
educate the public properly. I’ve made my own
miniscule efforts through professional society and have
had very little success.
The President, as opposed
to the conditions under which President Eisenhower was
able to promote nuclear energy, has to face the possibility
that he won’t be re-elected because so much of
the misinformation that some of the people I know have
spread through the media to the public. I have some
ideas about the proper kinds of information to be given
by the public but have not been able to reach anybody
in a leadership position who can present this information.
My question is to Mr.
Hintz, why doesn’t your Entergy spend more money
on advertising the things that have been presented at
this meeting?
CARD(?): Yeah, all that money you’re making. (Laughter)
HINTZ: Angie(?) Howard is here from NEI and she continually
begs for more money to do more advertising. I can’t
agree with you more that we have a tremendous education
undertaking ahead of us and at times we have the discussion
whether or not advertising is the best way to do it.
It’s very expensive but maybe we should do more
of it and maybe it is an effective way to get out story
out.
You know, I personally
think at times we spend too much time educating the
people that believe in our product and we’re speaking
to the choir. So I think we have to look at that more,
other ways to educate the public including using more
advertising. But, it is costly and when it’s been
recommended by NEI that the industry spend more money
on it, we got sort of mixed support on how much we want
to spend on the advertising.
CARD: Okay.
I have one back here and then you and-- (simultaneous
conversations) Let’s take this question and we
will come back--
__: Great.
So, I’m a physics professor at Michigan and like
Bart Richter, I work at high energy accelerators. We’re
not producers of electricity; we’re customers.
But I’m going to talk about nuclear engineering.
President Eisenhower’s 1953 “Atoms for Peace”
speech, certainly helped to make nuclear engineering
a very exciting field. Therefore it attracted some of
the best and brightest young students. As I say, I sure
am not a nuclear engineer but for a complex reason,
I came to know and admire some of the ex-students about
20 years later in 1973, when there was some problem.
Some of them were ex-nuclear
Navy guys, some of the really good ones. However, most
of these guys are no longer bright young guys. If some
new international crisis comes up, we may have a real
shortage of capable people to build all the nuclear
reactors that are going to be rapidly needed. And my
general feeling was that the guys from the nuclear Navy
were the very best.
Is there any plan for
DOE or the nuclear power industry to start rapidly providing
some scholarships in nuclear engineering for freshman
engineers, some fellowships for graduate students in
nuclear engineering and some post-doctoral fellowships
to keep these young guys occupied so that you can start
attracting people? I started talking to some of the
kids in my physics class into going into nuclear engineering
and I work at it and I got a few. But it’s hard
when there is not clearly any jobs downstream.
CARD: Burt,
is your Nobel Prize inheritable?
BURT: Do
you want to borrow it?
CARD: If we could pass that down, Bill, go ahead.
MAGWOOD: We’re currently funding about 150 scholarships
and fellowships for nuclear engineering students every
year. That’s not enough. I mean I would like to
do twice as many but it’s a start and it’s
a basis to build on. The point you make is absolutely
correct. There is a real threat in the United States
particularly, that the infrastructure that was built
after Atoms for Peace-- It is not just the people. It
is the research reactors. It’s the program. They’re
all aging to the point where many schools are abandoning
their programs.
We’re making a bigger
investment. When I first took over the Office of Nuclear
Energy, we were spending about $3 million dollars a
year on nuclear engineering. We’re now spending
about $20. So we’ve increased it. I would like
to do more. I will do more. But the fact of the matter
is there is a limit to how much the government can do
unless Don here gets his industry, galvanizes it to
build more plants because when we talk to students about
the future prospects for nuclear, it’s very clear
that the people we’re seeing are the people really
excited by the science and technology.
But when they’re
thinking about their future careers, they like to know
that there really are going to be new nuclear power
plants being built in the United States. So I think
there is always going to be a limit to what will be
successful in accomplishing until there is really a
revival of nuclear power in the United States.
CARD: And
a follow-up question up here. Can we get the mic up
here? I notice in Nobel land we have Mr. Letterman(?)
here today also.
IRVINE: I’m Reed Irvine the founder of Accuracy in the
Media and I want to say that like Alan Brodsky, I was
rather amazed to come and have a panel like this where
it has indicated that economic reasons were the reasons
that we have not built nuclear plants in this country.
And, of course, the ...(inaudible) experience, shows
that it is fear that has stopped the building of nuclear
plants, the misapprehensions that the public has.
And I give you an illustration
of ...(inaudible) well they could advertise. But it
isn’t necessarily a matter of advertising. It’s
a matter of getting you message out and there are many
ways that that can be done. I’ll give you an illustration.
A couple of years ago The New York Times ran an article
in which they said that thousands of people had died
as a result of the Chernobyl accident. How many of people
here, I wonder believe that thousands of people died
at Chernobyl?
__: Not
at Chernobyl but as a result.
IRVINE: As a result? Well, so it happened that ten years after
the accident, there was a conference in Vienna where
all the people that had studied the impact of Chernobyl
on health met and it may surprise you to know that they
agreed at that conference in Vienna that the number
of people who died as a result of that accident was
less than 50. You may find that incredible but I invite
you to go look at the record, the report of that conference,
which you can find on the Internet.
__: ...(inaudible)
IRVINE: Yes, except they pointed out that there were a lot of
lives lost as a result of the abortions because the
mothers feared that the babies would be malformed or
something like that. So, what you should do, Mr. Blitz
is when you see something like that in The New York
Times, you might have done what Accuracy in Media did
and that is write them a letter and tell them they were
wrong and lean on them to persuade them that they are
on the wrong track in terrifying people. I’m sure
that the people who were resisting putting that $7 billion
dollar plant at Shoreham(?) into operation, were not
concerned about economics. They were not even concerned
about their taxes or electrical bills. They were concerned
about the danger that they perceived even though the
industry has an outstanding record for safety.
CARD: We’re
just fortunate we don’t have anything like Chernobyl
here. So, rather than get into that issue, I want to
go all the way over and then we will come back and sweep
around this way. All the way in the back over there--
CONNOR: Hi,
my name if Mike Connor and I’m the President of
Nuclear Resources International. But along with Don
Hintz, I think I’m one of the few utility people
that’s here at the conference. I manage the nuclear
fuel for the Robert Emmett Gina power plant outside
Rochester, New York. And I just thought after listening
to these papers that you might enjoy a small success
story. Ginna is 500-megawatt Westinghouse PWR.
It started up in 1969.
So we just voted region 33. We did it in 33 days and
replaced the reactor head. The plant runs on an 18-month
cycle and in the 12 months when it is running continuously,
it has 101% capacity factor. So it is possible, even
with old plants, small plants, goodies to keep your
heads up high in the nuclear industry and to look forward
to more days.
I wanted to call your
attention on page four of the program, the first bullet
says, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl cast a very dark
cloud over the nuclear industry. Now that we have greater
historical perspective, how should we view these incidents?
What have we learned from these events? It was just
published two days ago that the other Three Mile Island
Plant just hit a record of 680 days continuous operation
before it shut down for its refueling outage. So, that’s
some perspective on Three Mile Island.
CARD: Any
panelist want to comment on any of that? Skip?
BOWMAN: One
other-- In the same vein as to the Accuracy in the Media
report that we heard. Three Mile Island, of course,
I said in my discussion, was a non-event from a radiation
standpoint and I truly believe that. The number of the
public that received the most radiation from that event
was back calculated to have received 37 millirem, which
we, in this audience know is not very much, about a
little over a tenth of what she would have received
in her home anyway, for that year.
Thirty-seven millirem
is a little over a third of the allowable non-occupational
exposure. The Three Mile Island worker who received
the most radiation exposure did not exceed the occupational
limits. So I couldn’t agree more with the perspective
that more needs to be done in educating the public.
I would suggest that along with advertising, we need
to, as a group, go ahead and go for the throat and speak
to the concerned scientists who are legitimately concerned,
but need some information ? need some education about
some of the things that we know that they don’t
know. Indeed we do preach too much to the choir.
We need to go, maybe to
the concerned scientists and sit and walk through some
of these facts and figures and we’ve been in operation
long enough now that it might be time that we stop trying
to prove the negative and put the onus of responsibility
on the other side, bring forward the proof of the bad
effects of this rather than challenging me to show that
there is no bad effect, that we’ve been through
two and a half generations of Navy nuclear power and
there’s nothing there; there are no bad effects
to show.
So I think that there
is a great deal that can be done in the way of public
education outside of full page ads in The New York Times
or things that would be, I think, hooted at by the people
who hoot today. I think we should go to them and talk
softly.
HINTZ: I think there is one other threat that we haven’t
mentioned, a threat to the commercial nuclear industry.
We talk about threats on public opinion and maybe not
having the public educated and we talk about the economics
of the new nuclear plant. But I think there is another
big threat that industry is dealing with as we speak
and that is the consequences of 9/11 and the impact
on security on these nuclear plants. I mean we were
the most secure major infrastructure in the United States
prior to 9/11.
But as a result of 9/11,
we are an industry that has been put in the spotlight
and we spent a lot of money on security already and
it’s not over yet. I mean we just have to keep
dealing with the bigger bomb and we get that done and
we start on something else. And, you know, the industry,
we’re advocating that at some point in time, we
would like to get thrown in with all the other critical
infrastructure in this country. And if we were and you
compared the threat associated with a nuclear plant
compared to chemical plants or any other critical infrastructure,
we look, actually, pretty good.
And yet we’re spending
lots of money and it’s not over yet. And, you
know, I think we’ve got to start putting our nuclear
plants and the threat from terrorism in perspective
with all the other critical infrastructure in this country.
And if we can’t, we will see that we are going
to start seeing some of the small nuclear plants get
shut down because of the cost associated with it.
CARD: We’re technically needing to go to lunch, but
a sensed a real desire to respond to the Chernobyl comment
so we’re going to do that and they we’re
going to wrap it up.
GARWIN: I’m Dick Garwin again. In January of this year
I published with George Charpak a book, Megawatts and
Megatons: The Future of Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons
and we did look at all of the accidents including the
1986 accident and the ten years afterward. And our judgment
is that (a) a couple of people probably, unidentifiable,
died from Three Mile Island. It’s a very safe
plant. We advocate the wide expansion of nuclear power.
But 24 thousand people,
we anticipate, have died, will die from Chernobyl. It
is just a tiny fraction of the population. It does not
influence the positive views on the expansion of the
nuclear industry but we provide the quotes from Abo(?)
Gonzales, from the IAEA who never did the multiplication
but says the 600 thousand seabirds, 60 million person
rem, would correspond to that number of deaths and that’s
the cost of doing business. You kill many more people
from air pollution from coal-fired plants.
But I agree with the Admiral
that the way to go forward is to educate people not
to propagandize and make the value judgment that with
this technology, we can have great benefits for mankind.
The key is, though, to get the capital cost down. We
cannot build old plants and have them competitive. We
need to bring in the new plants at those numbers.
CARD: Thank
you. With regrets to the at least dozen people who are
still waiting for a dialogue on this-- I’m thrilled
with the interaction.