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A Nuclear Submariner Challenges a Pro-Nuclear Film

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
August 16, 2013, 11:02 am

John Dudley Miller [ http://www.drjohnmiller.com/cv.html ], a former nuclear engineering officer in the Navy with a doctorate in social psychology and a long career in journalism, sent this “Your Dot” critique of “Pandora’s Promise [ http://pandoraspromise.com/ ],” the new documentary defending nuclear power [ http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/?s=%22pandora%27s+promise%22+nuclear+stone ], and the more recent videotaped discussion of nuclear energy [ http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/jim-hansen-presses-the-climate-case-for-nuclear-energy/ ] by the climate scientist and campaigner James E. Hansen [Updated, 12:27 p.m. | Hansen has responded below.]:

When I saw “Pandora’s Promise [ http://pandoraspromise.com/ ],” I didn’t believe a word of it. I served as a submarine nuclear engineering officer for my four-year stint in the Navy years ago. I qualified as an Engineering Officer of the Watch (a guy who’s in charge of the plant and its other technicians during four-hour shifts) on two different sub reactors. I know the truth about reactors, and the movie replaces it with the demonstrably false Nuclear Dream, a just-so mythical story claiming that nukes are safe, clean and cheap.

Then when I viewed the video interview [ http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/jim-hansen-presses-the-climate-case-for-nuclear-energy/ ] of climate scientist Dr. James Hansen conducted by the movie’s producers, I got mad. Here is an esteemed academic telling us that the next generation of nuclear plants is passively safe, so we should build some. But how does he know? He’s not an expert on nuclear power; outside of climate science, he’s just another person with an opinion.

Let’s start with the movie. It spews out a stream of untruths [ http://www.thenation.com/article/174740/pandoras-myths-vs-facts ], for instance, telling us only that Chernobyl [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster ] killed 56 people [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/10/chernobyl-nuclear-deaths-cancers-dispute ]. It leaves out that a United Nations World Health Organization [ http://www.who.int/about/en/ ] agency [ http://www.iarc.fr/search.php?cx=009987501641899931167%3Ajwf5bx4tx78&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&sa=&q=Chernobyl+cancers#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=Chernobyl%2Bcancers&gsc.page=1 ] predicts 16,000 [ http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2006/pr168.html ] more will die from Chernobyl cancers and that the European Environment Agency [ http://www.eea.europa.eu/ ] estimates 34,000 [ http://www.nuclearconsult.com/docs/NM_756.pdf ] more. It omits that non-fatal thyroid cancer [ http://www.webmd.com/cancer/tc/thyroid-cancer-topic-overview ] struck another 6,000 [ http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html ], mostly children.

Even the movie’s two reactor designers distort truth. Physicist Charles Till [ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html ] claims that fast-breeder reactors [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor ] are inherently safe. Actually, they’re riskier than ordinary reactors [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_water_reactor ]. Hans Bethe [ http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1967/bethe-bio.html ], Manhattan Project [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project ] scientist and Nobel laureate [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Bethe ], calculated [ http://fissilematerials.org/library/bet56.pdf ] in 1956 that if a breeder’s liquid sodium coolant leaked out, it could melt in 40 seconds, become a small unintended atom bomb [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prompt_critical ] and spontaneously explode. (Modern designers believe breeders are more likely to melt down [ http://www.amazon.com/Fast-Spectrum-Reactors-ebook/dp/B007C5AXDA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374932631&sr=1-1&keywords=Fast+Spectrum+Reactors ] like Three Mile Island than to explode like Chernobyl.)

The breeder reactors EBR-1 [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I ] in Idaho and Fermi-1 [ http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/decommissioning/power-reactor/enrico-fermi-atomic-power-plant-unit-1.html ] near Detroit partially melted. Several breeders have suffered sodium coolant fires [ ], because sodium automatically burns [ http://cameochemicals.noaa.gov/chemical/7794 ] in air and explodes [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJ4FH7q0EQ (next below)]

in water.

Engineer Len Koch [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoQ00331Hi0 ] tells us that breeders create plutonium [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium-239 ] that can all be recycled to power other reactors that will produce more plutonium [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor ] in an endless chain. But the Idaho National Laboratory [ https://inlportal.inl.gov/portal/server.pt/community/home ] has been trying for 13 years to separate the plutonium bred inside the EBR-2 [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_II ], and 24 to 35 percent [ http://www.inl.gov/technicalpublications/documents/5411188.pdf ] of each batch cannot be removed.

The leftover plutonium must be isolated for 240,000 [ http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/plutonium.html ] years [ http://www.ndt-ed.org/EducationResources/CommunityCollege/RadiationSafety/theory/decay.htm ] before it is safe, because breathing air contaminated with it sooner can cause fatal lung cancers. Creating it is the most immoral action humans have ever taken. We get electricity for a few decades; future generations inherit an impossible burden essentially forever.

The world’s 990,000 pounds [ http://fissilematerials.org/library/gfmr11.pdf ] of already-separated plutonium can make more than 35,000 A-bombs. Procure 29 pounds [ http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/design.htm ] of it and you can make your very own.

The movie also illustrates that none of its five layman “converts” to pro-nuke views knows enough about nuclear plants or other energy solutions to evaluate them fairly. They only know the Nuclear Dream.

For instance, author Stewart Brand [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand ] tells us that thinking even 10,000 years in the future is “science fiction,” so we should just forget about sequestering long-lived waste for 240,000 years. That’s fatally irresponsible.

Career public relations man Michael Shellenberger [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger ] dismisses energy efficiency as inconsequential. But the international consulting firm McKinsey & Company [ file:///C:/Users/John/Documents/3NukePwr/Documents/Revkinblog4.docx ] calculated [ http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/electric_power_and_natural_gas/latest_thinking/unlocking_energy_efficiency_in_the_us_economy ] in 2009 that by 2020 the United States could cut non-transportation energy use 23 percent.

In the film, activist Mark Lynas [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Lynas ] claims that because wind and solar power are intermittent, we must build 100 percent redundant natural gas backup plants for them. But the National Renewable Energy Laboratory [ http://www.nrel.gov/ ] says that if we build a more flexible electricity grid [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid ], renewables can provide 80 percent [ http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/52409-ES.pdf ] of the non-transportation electricity we will use in 2050, without backups.

Lynas also asserts that natural radiation is much more harmful than man-made radiation. That’s backwards. While we absorb background radiation [ http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/bio-effects-radiation.html ] every day, standing next to a newly removed reactor spent fuel rod [ http://www.npr.org/2011/03/15/134569191/spent-fuel-rods-now-a-concern-at-nuclear-plant ] for a few seconds will kill you, David Lochbaum [ http://www.ucsusa.org/about/staff/staff/dave-lochbaum.html ], the Union of Concerned Scientists’ (UCS) nuclear safety engineer, calculates.

Last, the documentary includes an interview in which the novelist Gwyneth Cravens [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwyneth_Cravens ] claims that drinking one day’s tritium [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium ] leakage [ http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2010/02/24/nrc_confirms_2005_tritium_leak_at_vermont_yankee_plant/ ] from the Vermont Yankee [ http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/reactor/vy.html ] plant in 2010 would have deposited no more radiation inside someone than eating one banana [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose ]. Actually, it would have delivered about 150,000 times [ http://allthingsnuclear.org/movie-review-put-pandoras-promise-back-in-the-box/ ] that much, calculates Ed Lyman [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Lyman ], a UCS physicist. (Here’s more [ http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/nrc-is-failing-to-protect-0456.html ] from UCS on that plant’s problems.)

Now to the Hansen video. Untrained and inexperienced in nuclear engineering, he nevertheless claims that so-called Generation III reactors will be passively safe. If electrical power is lost, they will simply cool down on their own. Maybe. Maybe not.

Four Westinghouse AP1000 [ http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/ ] (Gen III) nuke plants are now being built (two [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/business/energy-environment/nuclear-powers-future-may-hinge-on-georgia-project.html?pagewanted=all ] in Georgia, two [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil_C._Summer_Nuclear_Generating_Station ] in South Carolina). But had the Fukushima plants all been AP1000s, they would have melted too, because they can only go without power for three days [ http://ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/station_blackout_home/images/AP1000_Integrated_Safe_Shutdown_Solution.pdf ], and it took 11 days [ http://www.oecd-nea.org/press/2011/NEWS-04.html ] to get power turned back on in all four reactors.

Worse yet, no one ever built a demonstration AP1000 nuke plant to prove they really are passively safe. Small demo plants often reveal design errors that can then be corrected before full-size plants are built. Without one, we’re investing $24 billion without knowing whether these four plants will ever work as promised. How rational is that?

Last, the ultimate inherently safe reactors the nuclear industry wants to build are the same liquid sodium fast breeder reactors that can explode or melt down. Good luck with that.

So I urge you, don’t believe “Pandora’s Promise,” James Hansen, or the nuclear industry. Their views are false, one-sided, and so contrary to reality that it is fair for me (now a Ph.D. social psychologist and journalist) to call them delusions — shared, motivated distortions of reality.

Update, 12:24 p.m. | James E. Hansen [ http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/ ] just sent this reaction:

I have a Ph.D. in physics, which included nuclear physics courses, but I have never imagined that this training makes me expert on nuclear power. Therefore I consult regularly with some of the top nuclear power experts in the world. When I write something about nuclear power, it is based on good science, which cannot be said of the piece by Miller that you published.

I discuss the potential contributions of nuclear power in a paper that I am writing now. Miller did get one thing right: I am motivated — by a love of the life on our planet and a desire to pass that on to future generations.

Update, 5:43 p.m. | Miller has responded to Hansen in the comments below [ http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/a-nuclear-submariner-challenges-a-pro-nuclear-film/?comments#permid=8 ].

John Miller
Cleveland OH

In reply to Dr. James Hansen:

When you accept the opinions of nuclear experts at face value, you neglect to read the evidence. Truth comes only from evidence, not expert opinions, because experts disagree. So your view is anti-scientific. Your experts believe in the Nuclear Dream, a motivated delusion that nuclear power is safe and cheap. They ignore the evidence I provided.

It is clear that the Generation III AP1000 reactor has not been proved passively safe, because nobody ever built a prototype, which is contrary to the decades-long precedent in nuke construction. It's easy to see that a plant designed to go without power for three days was not designed to withstand the eleven-day power outage at Fukushima.

Moreover, the "inherently safe"reactors the nuclear industry ultimately wants to build, sodium-cooled fast breeder reactors, are clearly not safe. "Fast Breeder Reactors," by Waltar and Reynolds, 1981, gives convincing evidence that liquid-sodium reactors melt and may explode. You can read safety chapters from its 2012 update, "Fast Spectrum Reactors," on Amazon.

You say my review doesn't follow "good science," yet I cited evidence, including a Neils Bohr calculation. You cited none. I was trained as a nuclear engineering officer. You weren't.

Unless you can prove with evidence that what I said is untrue, then you have no standing in this discussion. Outside of climate science, you're just another guy with an unsubstantiated opinion.

Dr. John Miller
@NuclearReporter
Aug. 16, 2013 at 3:29 p.m.

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