Paper

Remediation of uranium mill tailings is costing the taxpayer billions of dollars a year to move dirt from one place to another in an attempt to reduce dose rates which are already below background on large parts of the planet. The largest such effort is at Moab, Utah.

Assuming fusion can solve a whole slew of daunting engineering problems, it will then face a monumental economic problem: you must recycle a large proportion to the electricity generated back to the reactor to keep the process going.

Navy/NRC style regulation and quality assurance has no problem making did-cost ten or more times should-cost. The LPD is an example. And the quality stinks.

Nuclear power will get Joe Sixpack’s support if and only if it is as cheap as fossil fuel power.

Edmund Teller played an important role in promulgating the Intolerable Harm Lie.

LNTer often fall back on the prudence argument. But LNT’s form of prudence has killed thousands of people, and will kill a lot more.

LNT is the radiation harm model that is the foundation for our radiation protection regulation. LNT denies our ability to repair radiation damage. Therefore it is qualitatively incorrect, especially when a large dose is received more or less evenly over a protracted period. This paper is a elementary introduction to LNT.

A key factor in nuclear quality control is the ASME N stamp. It’s what make nuclear quality, nuclear quality. Shaw Industries, the vendor of the Vogtle submodules, was the holder of three of the prized N stamps. The quality of the product was execrable. This was not discovered until the submodules reached the site, in part because of the faith Westinghouse had in N stamp paperwork. Under Underwriter Certification, there would have been three independent inspection teams crawling all over the modules at the factory. They never would have shipped.

The NRC’s mission is in its own words to minimize radiation exposure without regard to economic and social costs. It is given omnipotent power to do the job. It makes up its own rules and can change them as it sees fit. The result is a tragically unbalanced regulatory system, and some very strange decisions. Here’s an example.

The NRC not only shuts down nuclear plants for even the tiniest of defects, they can and will shut down any similar plant on the chance that it has the same defect. The cost to the consumer in more expensive power and the loss in grid reliability is by design a non-factor in the NRC’s calculus. Here’s one example.