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SOME ENERGY FACTS AND FALLACIES* BERNARD M. OLIVERt The prolonged controversy over nuclear power has delayed the construction of additional nuclear plants in California and other parts of the nation to the point where serious power shortages are imminent. In view of the dwindling domestic oil and gas reserves, there is now talk of building additional coal-fired plants. It is to try to avert that ecological disaster that I am writing this. There is something dreadfully ironic about an environmentalist fighting nuclear power and endorsing coal plants instead. Never mind that nuclear plants have been quietly producing power for the last decade, that they now produce 13 percent ofall of our electric power (and 30 percent of Britain's, in spite of their North Sea oil), and that all this has had negligible environmental impact. Never mind that nuclear power saved the Ohio valley during the freeze of 1977 when coal piles and railroads were buried under snow and ice and nothing could move. Never mind that coal mining and coal burning are dangerous and heavily degrade the environment. (How can we forget so soon the mine disasters and the terrible coal smogs of London and our own eastern cities that marred the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?) Rather than point out these clear benefits of nuclear power, the media apparently find it more profitable to keep the public fear ridden by playing up such events as the Three Mile Island fiasco—the only "disaster" known in which no one was even hurt. What is behind it all? Do many people actually believe that a nuclear reactor can accidentally turn into a nuclear bomb?1 Did the nuclear This article is based on a paper presented at a conference entitled 'The Future of Nuclear Power," held in Honolulu, October 31-November 3, 1979, under the sponsorship of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, together with the Industrial Research Institute of Japan, Tokyo; the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, St. Augustin, Federal Republic of Germany; and the Pacific Forum, Honolulu. The paper will be published in a volume containing the proceedings ofthe conference. It is printed here with the permission of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, Inc., Cambridge, Mass. tVice President, Research and Development, Hewlett-Packard Co., 1501 Page Nili Road, Palo Alto, California 94304. 'Weapons-grade uranium contains over 20 times as much U235 as nuclear fuel. A critical mass of fuel will melt if not cooled; it cannot explode.© 1980 by The University of Chicago. 0031-5982/80/2303-0180$01.00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine ¦ Spring 1980 | 335 physicists, who felt they had sinned in developing the A-bomb, throw such a fear of radiation into the U.S. psyche in order to stop further nuclear weapons testing that we have lost all power to think rationally in this area? Or are we following some hidden agenda—a plan to subvert the United States by crippling its ability to provide its own energy? How do you explain so many environmentalists arguing against their own best interest? Is it not time we forgot all the hysteria and took a look at the facts? Eight years ago I was a member of the energy panel of the Assembly Science and Technology Advisory Council. The very first recommendation ofthat council to the California State Assembly was [I]: I. Use of nuclear power The State of California should encourage the use of nuclear and other relatively non-polluting energy sources in preference to fossil fuels to meet its future electric power needs. This recommendation is based on the following facts: 1.The world resources of nuclear energy are far greater, particularly2 if processed in fast breeder reactors, than the reserves of fossil fuels. The latter should be conserved for mobile, portable, and emergency uses, and for use in important chemical processes. 2.Both nuclear and fossil fuel plants use heat engines and produce comparable amounts of waste heat; about twice as much energy is wasted as is produced in electricity. The problem of waste heat disposal is therefore essentially comparable for conventional fossil fuels plants and nuclear plants; however, the former produce atmospheric pollution while the latter do not. 3...

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