Seite - 90 - in Water, Energy, and Environment - A Primer

due to fracking. It is my belief that a safe (i.e., non-meltdown) nuclear reactor can be built today – for example, a high- temperature gas reactor (HTGR) – unlike the early pressurized water reactors (PWRs) and boilingwater reactors (BWRs) built at 3-Mile Island and Fukishima. Care and maintenance are critical, andhumanerror and trying to cut costs have a tendency to get in theway.Nevertheless, the likelihoodof a nuclear plant accident is arguably small, and if one rules out a meltdown, coal-burning plants may put more radioactivity into the environment thanoccasional radioactive gaseous releases. Thewaste issue is a tough one, but one that has to be solved aswe started off the nuclear erawith tens ofmillions of gallons of high-level waste fromweapons programs inWWII. Civilian wastes are adding to this total in an increasing number of countries around the world, and the long-term waste issue is being actively explored. I believe a solution will be found, probably in deep geologic storage, but at this point we don’t knowenough tobe confident. Theweapons proliferation issue is the one that scaresme the most, not just because of the growing knowledge of how to build a ‘nuclear device’ (i.e., a bomb), but also the potential availability of radioactivewastes that can be incorporated into a ‘dirty bomb’. This latter possibility does not require great technical and manufacturing capabilities (it requires chemical explosive dispersal of radioactive materials) but can do immeasurable harmby creating uninhabitable radioactive zones. When I raised this issuewith a representative of theUSNuclear Energy Institute his response was the US can handle such wastes safely, whichmay be true. But when I asked him about themany other countries that were adding nuclear power plants hewent silent, illustrating the problem.Many countrieswill not have themeans, technical and financial, to control thesewastes as well as the US and a few other counties can, and the only answer I can come up with is internationalization of the waste Water,Energy, andEnvironment–APrimer90