Here's a small article I've written about nuclear power. As you might have guessed, I don't like it at all. This article contains some of my views, but there are also many facts. If you're interested, I've got hundreds of letters from different debates on my local First Class BBS. Just send me an e-mail, and specify what you want to know. I'll try to dig it out for you.

Note: This article is written for the Swedish nuclear power plants, but the power plants are built in the same way in most of the world, except for some countries (for example some in the east of Europe) where the safety is even worse.

1. Introduction
2. How a nuclear power plant works
3. The way from the mines in Russia to electricity in our wires
4. Accidents
5. What to replace nuclear power with

1. Introduction

Today most of us never question things we’ve always taken for granted. Like, for example, electricity. How many of us would manage without it? We use it when we’re cooking, washing, surfing on the Net... And just such a thing as lightbulbs. The science would never have discovered all the things that we’re used to today, if someone hadn’t invented the electricity.

Since the electricity is so important, maybe we should know a little about where it comes from. A relatively big part of the electricity comes from nuclear power plants.


2. How a nuclear power plant works

The raw material in a nuclear power plant is uranium-235. It is put into the reactor, together with water. A process of splitting neutrons is beginning.
1. A neutron hits an atom of uranium-235, and the atom is split into smaller pieces.
2. The neutrons from the split atom is spread around.
3. They hit other atoms, which are split, and so on.



When this happens energy is released, and it heats the surrounding water. The water starts to boil, and steam is coming. The steam goes through a pipe to the turbine. It hits the turbine at high speed, and the turbine rotates very fast. The turbine runs a generator that generate the electricity. The electricity goes through wires to our homes, the industry etc.

When the steam has slowed down after hitting the turbine, it’s lead to the condenser. The condenser is made up by several small pipes filled with seawater. When the steam hits the outside of the cold pipes, it is condensed, it becomes water. The seawater that has been warmed up is pumped back into the sea, and new, cold seawater is pumped in. Actually, around the nuclear power plant the temperature use to be about 10 ºC warmer than in the rest of the sea. The former steam which has now turned to water, is pumped back to the reactor, just to make a new tour through the nuclear power plant.


3. The way from the mines in Russia to electricity in our wires

The raw material is uranium, radioactive stuff that mineworkers in Russia is providing us with. The problem is that they don’t have any protection from the radioactivity. They go to work in their ordinary clothes. This is the reason why many of them get cancer, and that their family often get it too. In other words, people are dying for our electricity.

The uranium is enriched at a special station. In normal uranium-ore there is 0,7 percent uranium-235, and after the enrichement it has increased to 3 percent. Also, the volume has been reduced to 20% the original volume. Uranium isn’t especially cheap either...

The uranium is transported from Russia to Sweden (where I live). A trip that means large risks for both environment and safety. What if the tanks with uranium would break down? The radioactivity will spread out, and big parts will be uninhabitable for hundreds and thousands of years. Mostly, the trip goes well, except for the pollution it’s causing. That’s affecting not only the environment, but also peoples health. The pollution today causes many lung diseases, and the transportation is only increasing it.

In Sweden, the enriched uranium is convertded to pulverised uraniumdioxide, which is being compressed into small cylinders (about 1 cm high), called ”kutsar” in Swedish. They are stapled on each other to fill a 4 m long pipe. Then it is put into the reactor, and the splitting of atoms starts. How it turns into electricity can you read about in chapter 2.

Once a year, usually in the summer when the request for electricity is low, one fifth of the uranium is switched out. There isn’t so much uranium-235 in the waste (if there were, they could have used it agin), but there are plutonium, that is used in nuclear weapons. There is always a small risk that some country ”in all friendliness” wishes to buy radioactive waste, to make nuclear weapons. And since they’re having problems with were to put the waste, they’d probably be glad to get rid of it.

First the waste is stored in the nuclear power plant for a year. Then it’s transported to a temporary storage station for radioactive waste. It is stored in waterbasins for 40 years. It is still hot, and it takes this long to cool it down a little.

After the 40 years at the temporary storage station, the waste is supposed to be stored 500 m down in the Swedish bedrock. The place for this isn’t yet decided. They have voted about this in several places, but none want to have high-radioactive waste under their houses.

I still can’t keep out of thinking if the one’s who voted yes to nuclear power in 1980, also will vote yes when it’s their turn to vote about accepting the radioactive waste. If so, we know where to store it. Under their houses... It seems as they’re bad at taking the consequences of their actions. Just my thought.

Anyway, the waste is highly radioactive, and it has to be isolated for 100 000 years, which is quite a while. What they’re really doing is pushing away the responsibility to coming generations. It’s our great-grandchildren that has to take care of that. Even though some might say that this generation is making up the storage location, it’s still the innocent children of tomorrow that has to keep it isolated for 100 000 years.

Now 2000 years has passed. Take everything that’s happened in the last 2000 years, multiple it by 50, and you have what the community looks like when the waste isn’t radioactive anymore. Now I don’t want to seem pessimistic, but isn’t there a small risk something would happen under these 100 000 years? Like, the continents are moving all the time. They may crush the barriers, and the radioactive waste will leak out. Also, there is a risk for earthquakes, birth of new volcanoes, and many other things. Maybe they haven’t thought of the natural things happening all the time. What about the water, for example. The barrier may rust down. How can we be so sure that nothing really will happen in 100 000 years? OK, the thing about continents and volcanoes may be a little strained, but do we really know what will happen in 100 000 years?


4. Accidents

I thought I’d sneak in a few words about accidents in nuclear power plants.

A meltdown is caused when the hearth is getting too hot, and melts through the reactor, out in the open. This makes large areas uninhabitable for hundreds and thousands of years. Lots of people will die.

As an example we have the Three-Mile Island accident in the USA, and the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine. People around Chernobyl is still dying of cancer, malformed children are still born.

Accidents like this has been about to happen in Sweden too, even though we have some of the safest nuclear power plants in the world. What happened was the emergency coolar system didn’t work. Luckily, it was summer, and the reactor almost went on idle. If it had been run at full speed, nothing could have stopped the meltdown. This time, there was no accident. But if there had been, 3 million people in the south of Sweden and Denmark would have been dead by now, including Denmark’s capital Copenhagen. No wonder the Danish people are mad at Sweden for having nuclear power plants... I think the least we could do is to respect Denmark, and close Barsebäck (as the nuclear power plant over there is called).

There really isn’t so much to say about accidents than it’s extremely dangerous to have nuclear power plants. History has showed us that. Why can’t we learn from it?


5. What to replace nuclear power with

The big question today is what to replace the nuclear power with.

Coal and oil is very bad for the environment, since they pollute the air with large amounts of carbondioxide. Coal and oil is dead organisms that under millions of years and under hard pressure has become coal and oil. This process won’t hurry up because we like to waste the oil fast, and therefore need more oil. Experts think that we’ll run out of oil in about 40 years. That means coal and oil is no good as nuclear power replacer.

Hydropower has been used as much as possible in Sweden, and we’ve decided to leave the last four rivers untouched. The reason for that is that it’s a interference in nature, it changes the scene of a lovely river into an electrical provider. Many people go to the rivers in the north of Sweden to escape from the busy life of today’s cities.

Now we’ve taken away the three most common providers of electricity, among with nuclear power. So what’s left? We can start with nature.

We’ve seen that if something’s warm, it can be turned into electricity, or if not, at least warm up houses. What’s making the Earth warm? I think you all know the answer to that question. Yes, that’s right, the sun. Free electricity is falling down from the sky. What a waste it is not using it! Today there is many different ways to use the sun energy. The most common thing is the solar cells, that even the ordinary person can use to warm up water in the pipes, that is used instead of electric radiators. Then there is the solar power plants, that is much larger and mostly used by the industry. It even works when it’s cloudy.

If we continue our trip in the air, we find it’s blowing a lot in several places. The electricity blows away in front of our eyes, and all we have to do is to put out some wind power stations. This is also a thing that an ordinary person can do. And there’s no raw material that has to be bought, neither in the wind power or the solar power. Just the wind power stations and the solar cells. Cheap and clean. There’s no waste, and we won’t run out of sunshine, either. If we do, I don’t think we’ll have any use for electricity anymore, if you know what I mean...

We’ve already taken 3 elements - fire, air and water. Now we have the earth left. And in fact, we can get very much electricity from the earth. First of all, it’s warm in the earth. We can use this to warm up houses, just like we did with the solar power. If we combine all the elements - earth, water, sun(fire), and air, we get plants. Plants are growing outside, and when they grow they take in the carbondioxide, and turns it into oxygen, that we need. This is the ecological balance on Earth - we need the plants, and they need us.

There is another source of electricity that also keeps this sensitive balance. It’s called biomass. Special fast-growing plants are planted, cut off, and burned. With this there is no risk for pollution, since the carbondioxide that is released, has once been absorbed by the plant. This is therefore not disturbing the ecological balance.

Another great thing is the biogas. What people do is they’re taking the waste from purifying plants, shit from cows, pigs etc., and putting it in a big tank where it’s beginning to rot. The biogas is then coming out from the mess, and it’s used just like any other gas, like for example natural gas.

Most people know that boats often go under in storms. They’re being crushed by the waves. And someone really smart found out that we actually could use the energy in this large waves to something better than crushing boats. It’s hard to explain how the wavepower looks like, but if you imagine a really large stick, and on this stick there are things that looks like a duck’s feet. When a wave hits them they’re moving up and down. In the end of the stick are a generator that changes the movement into electricity.

Now I’m just waiting until someone finds out what to do with the Niagara falls...


This article was written by Anna Hallin.
Copyright © Anna Hallin, 1996

Links to other nuclear sites:

Chernobyl 10 years after
Greenpeace International
Greenpeace Sweden

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