[New post] Gordon Edwards busts the pro-nuclear spin of a Canadian documentary on the ”Nuclear Revival” and small nuclear reactors.
Christina Macpherson posted: " Gordon Edwards, 1 December 21, On November 24, 2021, APTN broadcast a half-hour TV documentary about High Level Nuclear Waste in Canada, with some extra attention paid to the new, unorthodox irradiated fuels that would result from the proposed ne"
Gordon Edwards, 1 December 21, On November 24, 2021, APTN broadcast a half-hour TV documentary about High Level Nuclear Waste in Canada, with some extra attention paid to the new, unorthodox irradiated fuels that would result from the proposed new reactors called SMRs. Here is a link to the program, entitled Nuclear Revival: https://youtu.be/uLhPwAWejzc
A couple of observations that crossed my mind while watching the report by Journalist Christopher Read - (1) The fuel bundles should be thought of as CONTAINERS of the actual radioactive wastes, which are locked up inside those solid bundles. There are many different radioactive elements (all of them human-made, most of them not found in unspoiled nature) that can escape from the fuel bundles as gases, liquids or solids. They all have different chemical and biological properties but they are all cancer-causing elements and can damage genetic materials like DNA molecules.
Even though the fuel bundles may not move an inch from where they have been emplaced, these other materials can leak out or leach out and find their way to the environment of living things. Time is on their side!! Damaged fuel bundles are analogous to a broken bottle - the container is still there, but the contents (some at least) have escaped.
(2) Concerning SMRs, even if these new nuclear reactors all worked very well, which is doubtful, they will be terribly expensive and very slow to reach a level of commercial deployment (and profitability) - at least 10 to 20 years - so they are too costly and too slow to respond to the climate crisis TODAY.
Solar and wind are much cheaper than nuclear, they are proven and can be quickly deployed, while energy efficiency measures are even cheaper and even faster to implement. We do not yet know how much progress can be made using these alternatives but clearly they should have the first priority - with nuclear as a wait-and-see backup possibility which very likely will not be needed at all (as in the case of Germany, which has phased out nuclear - nearly finished - and now is focussed on phasing out coal, using renewables and efficiency.)
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