Soaring, Cryptography, and Nuclear Weapons

Martin Hellman sends in a pointer to his essay that uses analogies from cryptography and the sport of soaring in an attempt to draw people in to thinking about the risks of nuclear weapons. Quoting: "... I did a preliminary risk analysis which indicates that relying on nuclear weapons for our security is thousands of times more dangerous than having a nuclear power plant built next to your home." Hellman is best known as co-inventor (with Diffie and Merkle) of public key cryptography, and has worked for over twenty-five years to reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons. He is also a glider pilot with over 2,600 logged hours. Hellman adds, "Readers needing a break can go to some photos of the Sierra Nevada mountains taken from my glider."

Comments

Off the cuff statistics make me sick.

[shellster_dude]

"...I did a preliminary risk analysis which indicates that relying on nuclear weapons for our security is thousands of times more dangerous than having a nuclear power plant built next to your home."

Yeah...I would love to see how he produced that "risk analysis" statement. I guess, since nuclear reactors are virtually not dangerous at all with todays technology, it can be said that something that is only a little dangerous (relying on nuclear weapons for security, which has worked for almost 60 years) can be a thousand times as dangerous, because 1000 * 0 = 0.

Re:Am I the only one...

[Firethorn]

Uh, it really is dangerous. That's why nuclear power plants are considered terrorist targets.

That's funny, nuclear plants don't even make my list. On my list are things like planes, train stations, embassies and other government buildings, cafes, malls, and busses.

While you are correct that Chernobyl was a bad design and an ill-conceived experiment started the disaster, do you recall what caused Three Mile Island or what the consequences might have been had the hydrogen bubble ignited?

Do you recall that TMI happened BEFORE Chernobyl, and sparked a quite thorough redesign of reactors to make them safer, and GenIV reactors, if we ever get around to building them, would be safer yet?

And the bigger problem is the cost and various issues with properly sequestering the waste. Using nuclear power is basically like borrowing to run the country - we get the immediate benefit and our children have to pay the price.

First, the stuff is safer than coal - a lot of the pollution from coal actually ends up in the environment. Besides that, I(and many other nuclear proponents) figure we'll be going after that high level waste in less than a hundred years to use it as fuel again. Other options include breeder reactors and reprocessing using modern methods to reduce the amount of waste, and the lifespan of the waste, substantially.

Any idea how much it will cost to pay just for the guards to monitor a waste site for 100,000 years or so? I don't think that is factored into the cost of electricity from a nuclear plant, is it?

How long until the Mercury released by Coal plants exits out of the environment? How long until the CO2 is sequestered again?

And yes - it is factored in. The federal government told the nuclear power plant operators: You WILL pay us $X per megawatt/hour produced. We WILL dispose of the waste. There's lawsuits going on about that one.

Re:Am I the only one...

[HungryHobo]

God, tell me about it. After reading a comment on the good old somethingawful forums on the subject I did the math for how much uranium/thorium and other nasties can be found in coal. a few parts per million doesn't sound like much but when you burn billions of tons of coal it adds up FAST.
Powering everything with nuclear and having a chernoble every year would put less radioactive material into the air/water/ground.

I wish someone could get around to actually finishing an IFR so we could just say "burn it for fuel in the ifr" whenever someone spews crap about how there's no way of getting rid of nuclear waste for a hundred thousand years. Technical problem, technical solution.

Slightly disagree

[mbessey]

Waste becomes much less of a problem if you reprocess the fuel. We don't do that in the US because our nuclear policy is completely idiotic. But there's no rational reason not to do it.

I think that's overstating it a bit. The rational reasons for not reprocessing fuel revolve around the following issues:
  1. Transporting used fuel to the reprocessing center and back.
  2. Production and separation of enormous quantities of Plutonium, which needs to be carefully guarded due to proliferation and terrorism risks.
  3. Some hazards in the reprocessing itself. There have been several serious accidents in reprocessing plants, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorp_nuclear_fuel_reprocessing_plant#2005_leak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident
(and other incidents)
  4. Reprocessing only really starts to make good economic sense if you bring fast breeder reactors online, and those have safety issues of their own.

Something like the IFR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor) might substantially reduce these risks, but until an advanced breeder reactor is actually built and operated for a significant period, it's hard to say how safe they really are, and whether they'll make economic sense.