Last night I poked my head into a debate about “Impediments to a renaissance of nuclear power in the US: discussion of materials science solutions”. I expected a gentle natter between some nuclear power big wigs. This is not what i got.
Panellists included Chaim Braun, from the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, US; Claude Guet, standing in for Bernart Bigot from the French Atomic Energy Commission; Tom Cochran from the US’s National Resources Defense Council; Rodney Ewing, a geologist from the University of Michigan; and Michael Mayfield from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The debate started fairly sedately, with panellists asked how materials research would make nuclear power safer. Cochran’s view was that people, not materials, make a nuclear plant safe, while Ewing suggested a need to be able to predict better what happens to materials over long time frames. Guet said that when so-called 4th generation reactors are built, materials will need to withstand more heat and more radiation than every before, and that a good deal of research would be needed to get the very best materials for the job.
These 4th generation reactors could be fast reactors, which might require substantial amounts of uranium, or reprocessed uranium. And here the debate got lively. Cochran was very vocal about his feelings on reprocessing spent fuel – he thinks that there is no need to do it, and that it produces more waste ultimately.
Cochran then said just what he thought about the current French model – a country where 80% of its electricity comes from nuclear power. The system creates more low level waste from its reprocessing system, and is expensive, he said. “There’s nothing positive to say about [the French] approach,” he said, talking directly to Guet.
Obviously not one to mince his words, Cochran then added that transporting waste, and fast reactors are both schemes doomed to failure.
The debate turned to the status of current plants in the US, which was where we began, with Mayfield saying that current plants would keep going.
The closing moments of the debate saw an accusation by Cochran that the French energy group EDF’s recent joint venture with US firm Constellation Energy to build new nuclear plant in the US was the French government making money from US tax payers. This ouburst left the panel somewhat tongue-tied, but Ewing finished things up by saying that the discussion is a good way of illustrating why nuclear power discussions in the US are failing. Bringing things back to science, his closing comments were that engineers urgently need to be educated in the long terms effects of mining uranium, and disposing of nuclear waste – the two things that sit at either side of actual nuclear power generation.
The debate was far more political, heated, and full of personal fire than I had imagined. Nuclear power, I had presumed, was a topic that scientists were agreed on, and was something that the politicians fought about. It seems I was wrong. What hope there is for the industry based on some of the potential stalemates displayed in this debate – who knows?
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