Critical Reflections on Nuclear and Renewable Energy E-Book

Way Kuo

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 303

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Provides a personal yet scientific comparative study of nuclear energy and a spectrum of other energies from a reliability point of view, as well as outlining guidelines for developing energy policies The Fukushima nuclear accident made people ponder and question nuclear safety again, resulting in national decisions to phase out nuclear power completely. Is this the right decision? Are there better ways to deal with this important issue of the 21st century? Critical Reflections on Nuclear and Renewable Energy examines both the real and unreal potential dangers of nuclear power as well as a range of other energy sources, including coal, oil, gas, and renewable energies like solar, hydro, wind, and wave energy sources. The book analyzes the pros and cons of a spectrum of energies in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011. It maintains that we should look at nuclear energy from a rational point of view instead of being influenced by emotions or politicians' arguments. The book also examines policies that concern science and technology, energy resources, environmental protection, and occupational safety, emphasizing the need to deepen the general populace's understanding of the concept of reliability. Critical Reflections on Nuclear and Renewable Energy provides both perspective and detail on the relative merits and state of the various energies and the real-life cost of new energies. The analysis considers mining, emissions, sustainability, cost implications, and energy security and safety. Through the discussion of the real cost and impact on environment of individual sources, this book provides a valuable insight into prospects for future energy development.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Half Title page

Title page

Copyright page

Foreword 1

Foreword 2*

Preface

Introduction

Part One: The World after March 11, 2011 — Ripple Effect of the Fukushima Accident

Chapter 1: Reliability and Nuclear Power

Nuclear Accidents in History

Nuclear Power Plants are not Atomic Bombs

Is Nuclear Power Reliable?

“Second-hand Contamination” — An Unfounded Notion

Nuclear Power Plants: Economical and Safe

Monitoring Imported Japanese Food

Human Factors

Paying Heed to Maintenance

Nuclear Waste and Waste Management

Impact of Nuclear Science and Technologies on Modern Society

Social and National Security

Chapter 2: Some Flowers Fall, and Again They Bloom

Visit to Sendai During the Cherry Blossom Season

Tohoku University

Chapter 3: Different Responses Across the Waters

Different Reactions to the Nuclear Accident

Chapter 4: Aging and Reliability

Law of Aging

When Will Signs of Spring Replace the Old?

Chapter 5: Transparent Management Guarantees Nuclear Safety

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine

TEPCO’s Crisis Management

Recent Events at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant

Rules-based Management versus People-based Management

Chapter 6: The Need for Quality Control

An Ancient Doctor’s Comment on Quality Control

Performance of Power Plants

In-breeding Encroaches upon Quality Control in Nuclear Plants

Chapter 7: Don’t Let Gossip Affect the Safe Operation of Nuclear Power

Self-defeating Hearsay

Three Elements in the Safety of Nuclear Power

Nuclear Power and Nuclear Energy Industry in Japan

South Korea: An Emerging Power of the 21st Century

China: Nuclear Power House in the 21st Century

Taiwan: Confounded by the Nuclear Power Issue

Speaking from Evidence

The Unsettling Element in Discussions about Nuclear Power

Part Two: Environmental Protection, Occupational Safety and Innovation — A Spectrum of Energies

Chapter 8: A Spectrum of Energy Sources

A Brief History of Energies

Energy Crisis

Of the Spectrum of Energies, Which is Most Splendid?

Sense and Sensibility

Chapter 9: Facts about Background Radiation

Where is the Nuclear-free Homestead?

Chapter 10: Human Negligence of Occupational Safety Leads to Numerous Accidents

Occupational Safety in Serious Jeopardy Right by Your Side

The Unheeded Serious Problems of Occupational Safety

Train Collisions Throughout the World

Natural Calamities are Less Destructive than Man-made Accidents

Chapter 11: When Will Environmental Pollution End?

The Misleading and Mislabeling Food Products

The Ubiquity of Biological and Chemical Sources of Pollution

Non-nuclear Pollution Permeates the World

Coal-fired Pollution Shocks and Global Warming

Coal Mining

The Melancholic Beauty of Idaho

Which Way Forward: “Nuclear” or “Non-nuclear”?

Passengers and Taxi Drivers

Chapter 12: Non-nuclear Calamities Are Also Horrible

Natural Calamities

Man-made Disasters

Horrible Consequences

Seeking Enlightenment Instead of Chasing Shadows of An Illusion

Chapter 13: Where Can We Find Safe Energy Sources?

Where to Look for the Spring of Energy?

Petroleum-producing Countries’ Plans for Nuclear Power

World-wide Trend in Building Nuclear Power Plants

Essential Conditions for Safety Design of a Power Plant

Ah Q’s Story of Generating Electricity by Marsh Gas

The Need for Rationality

Chapter 14: Pick up Our Share of the Energy Cost

Hike in European Electricity Prices Expected

How Much Does Energy Cost?

The Real Cost of Electricity

Stop Food Waste

Insatiable Desire for Energy

Purity Endures Like the Lotus

Chapter 15: In Search of Innovation in Formulating Energy Policy

Address the Energy Problem by Means of Innovation

Scientific Innovation: Cornerstones of Safety and Reliability

The Myth of Building a Nuclear Power Plant by the Sea

Formulation of an Optimal Energy Policy

Energy Conservation: Only a Precondition for the Formulation of an Energy Policy

Smart Grid

Democracy, Populism and Innovation

Chapter 16: Practice Makes Great

PhD Stands for… What?

Putting Knowledge and Practice Together

Ah Q’s Daydream

Appendix I

Reliability Through the Ages

The Essence of Reliability

Reliability Bottleneck and Historical and Societal Track

Black-dress Lane: An Embodiment of Reliability

Public Construction from the Perspective of Reliability

How Reliable Are High-tech Products?

Stress, Strength and Aging

Infant Mortality

Nuclear Energy Industry

Conclusion

Appendix II

Analyze the Crisis and Opportunity in the Aftermath of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

A Dialogue with Chip Tsao

Enjoy a Hot Spring and Eat Seafood

Japanese “Nuclear Warriors” Didn’t Die

iPhone 4 and Radiation from Reclaimed Land

Residents Nearby a Uranium Mine Live a Longer Life

Way Kuo is Realistic and Truthful

Death of Luo Fu’s Son

Postscript

Bill Gates Discussing New Nuclear Reactor with China

Technical Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Catastrophe

Japan’s NAIIC Report

My Reflections

A Story about Ted Kennedy

A Trip to Fukushima on July 2, 2013

The Current Status of the Disaster-stricken Fukushima and its Prospects

Additional Reading Materials

Afterword

Index

Critical Reflections on Nuclear andRenewable Energy

Scrivener Publishing 100 Cummings Center, Suite 541J Beverly, MA 01915-6106

Publishers at Scrivener Martin Scrivener ([email protected]) Phillip Carmical ([email protected])

Copyright © 2014 by Scrivener Publishing LLC. All rights reserved.

Co-published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Hoboken, New Jersey, and Scrivener Publishing LLC, Salem, Massachusetts. Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750–8400, fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748–6011, fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at [phone], outside the United States at [phone] or fax [phone].

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.

For more information about Scrivener products please visit www.scrivenerpublishing.com.

Cover design by Russell Richardson

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

ISBN 978-1-118-77342-0

Bureaucrats are those who feel disinclined to say what should be said or to do what should be done.

Engineers are those who do not dare to say what should be said, but persist stubbornly in doing what should be done.

Scholars are those who say whatever comes to their mind, but shy away from doing what should be done.

Politicians are people who talk rot without thinking and act rashly and randomly without regard to whether such action should be taken.

Foreword 1

by Arden Bement

President Way Kuo applies his world-recognized expertise in system reliability in sharing his reflections of why energy sustainability is critical for society’s well being in the information age. This especially applies to developing countries, which are actively building economic capacity to meet their societal needs. The availability of affordable, reliable, and safe energy will control their rate of progress. However, Way Kuo in a most scholarly way explains that one can’t have energy sustainability without concurrently assuring environmental and economic sustainability. Achieving all three will require not only continued innovation but also an improved understanding of the interrelationships among the technical, social (including behavioral) and economic factors involved in building greater energy capacity and distribution on ‘smart grids’.

The author approaches his reflections on nuclear and renewable energy as a true scholar, giving the reader extensive evidence for evaluating the viable alternative forms of energy supply for themselves while maintaining a light touch, embracing oriental culture, history and poetry to illustrate his points, when arguing their relative advantages and disadvantages.

Way Kuo in posing his arguments lets facts speak for themselves. However, in terms of net present value of environmental protection, affordability, and safety he concludes that nuclear power offers the best form of energy supply for the future. He devotes an extensive part of his book making this case, informing the reader of the relative impacts and deaths caused by the disastrous use of coal over time for large-scale energy supply. He gives evidence that even so-called ‘clean’ forms of renewable energy have environmental impacts. He explains in comparative detail the consequences of the major three nuclear disasters over the past forty-five years — at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Reactor in 1979, at the Chernobyl Reactor site in the Ukraine in 1986, and at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Site on March 11, 2011.

In the case of the Three Mile Island and Fukushima disasters, which were designed with full concrete containment meeting international standards, the reader may be surprised to learn — contrary to a widely held view — that not a single life was lost to date. While they certainly may rank as economic disasters, they should not be accounted as disasters that entailed enormous losses of life. In the case of Fukushima Daiichi, less- than-transparent owners and government leaders exacerbated public hysteria shortly after the disaster occurred. In the case of the Chernobyl Plant the explosion that penetrated the reactor building resulted in a human disaster of monumental proportion, with thirty-one deaths among operators and emergency workers and over 4,000 civilian deaths caused by excessive exposure to radiation. Adequate engineered safeguards, such as a containment building meeting international standards, were not provided for this plant. As Way Kuo points out, all three disasters can be attributed to human error, where the operators proved to be the least reliable link in the chain of control for returning the reactors to safe control and shutdown after a major upset.

The author devotes much of his book to discussing human fear of radiation as a key factor in the public’s willingness to accept nuclear energy. By pointing out that the thousands of deaths that occur each year in the mining, transportation, and combustion of coal receive little attention he argues that humans are more comfortable with the forms of death that they do understand than those they don’t understand, such as exposure to radiation. However, he points out exposure to radiation is part of living. It is ubiquitous and can’t be avoided if one wants to live in cities, fly airplanes, eat certain foods, or undergo medical radiation diagnosis and therapy. People actually expose each other by small amounts of radioactivity in their bones and organs.

Finally, the author points out from his experience that the lessons learned from disasters such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima also have positive outcomes in compelling corrective actions to achieve greater safety and reliability. The design, construction and operation of future nuclear power plants will benefit from the lessons learned from these events.

As a result of Fukushima, regulators are taking firmer measures to routinely inspect nuclear power plants and assess their safety and reliability as a function of aging. They will also be more stringent in testing the effectiveness of training plant operators to respond to upset conditions no matter how rare. Finally, they will recognize that records are made to be broken. There is nothing sacrosanct about a hundred-year accident. Fukushima proved that designing to a hundred-year event was not sufficient. He also points out that even though absolute safety is an unreasonable expectation, that 100% reliable is a time-dependent challenge that must engage well-trained regulators, management, and operators alike. Safety, reliability, and transparency factor in his formula for building and operating nuclear power plants now and in the future.

Arden Bement David A. Ross Distinguished Professor, Purdue University Director of National Science Foundation, 2004–2010 Director of National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2001–2004 December 1, 2013

Foreword 2*

by Xu Kuangdi

The exploitation of energy resources has been indispensable to human evolution. Though I am not an anthropologist, I believe learning to make use of fire was a defining factor in distinguishing human beings from other animals. Humans, with their ability to use fire, evolved into the most dominant living creatures on earth, and developed a dependence on fossil fuel, especially since the era of the steam and internal combustion engines, for producing food, clothing, shelter and transport.