Why We Need Nuclear Power - The Environmental Case

"Makes a case for nuclear energy as a clean-energy solution."--

List of contents

• Table of Contents


• Introduction


• Part 1 Global Warming and Energy Production


• 1 Global climate change: Real or myth?


• What is the debate about?


• The IPCC and International Conventions


• The greenhouse effect


• Skeptical politicians and pundits


• Skeptical scientists


• Historical temperature and greenhouse gas record


• Last 10,000 years of climate - the Holocene


• Recent changes in temperature and CO2


• Melting glaciers and rising seas


• Models


• Response to Singer and Avery


• Predictions of future global warming and consequences


• Sea level and acidification


• Global weirding


• 2 Where our Energy Comes From


• A brief history of energy


• Coal


• Oil and natural gas


• Uranium


• How much energy do we use and where does it come from?


• World energy usage


• What can be done to reduce our carbon-intensive energy economy?


• 3 The Good, Bad and Ugly of Coal and Gas


• Coal


• Anatomy of a coal-fired plant


• Carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants


• Mining and health hazards


• How much is there? 50


• Carbon Capture and Storage


• Natural Gas


• How much is there?


• Greenhouse gas emissions


• Fracking


• 4 The Siren song of renewable energy


• Solar


• Photovoltaic (PV) solar power


• Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)


• Solar heating


• Limitations of solar power


• Wind


• Limitations of Wind Power


• Summary


• 5 Back to the Future: Nuclear Power


• Anatomy of a reactor


• Advantages of nuclear power


• Baseload power 82


• Greenhouse gas emission


• Location and footprint


• Cost


• Subsidies for nuclear and renewables


• Advanced Reactor Technology


• Can nuclear replace coal?


• Arguments against nuclear power


• Part 2 Radiation and its Biological Effects


• 6 The world of the atom


• What is radiation?


• Black body radiation - the quantum


• The nuclear atom


• The quantum atom


• The nucleus


• Radioactivity: decay processes


• Fission


• Summary


• 7 How dangerous is radiation?


• Interactions of Radiation with Matter


• Electromagnetic radiation (photon) interactions


• Charged particle interactions


• Neutron interactions


• What is a dose of radiation?


• Effects of radiation on DNA and cells


• How does radiation cause cancer?


• What are the risks?


• Death from radiation


• Cancer from radiation


• Hereditary effects of radiation


• How bad is plutonium?


• Summing up


• 8 What comes naturally and not so naturally


• Natural Background Radiation


• Cosmic radiation


• Primordial terrestrial radiation


• Medical exposure


• Part 3 Risks of Nuclear Power


• 9 Nuclear Waste


• What is nuclear waste?


• The long and the short of waste storage


• Yucca Mountain


• Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)


• Recycling spent nuclear fuel


• Making new fuel from recycled "waste"


• Summing up


• 10 About those accidents


• The Scare, March 16, 1979


• Three Mile Island, March 28, 1979


• How the accident happened


• Consequences of TMI


• Chernobyl, April 26, 1986


• How the accident happened


• The hazardous radioisotopes


• Health consequences


• Environmental consequences


• A trip to Chernobyl


• Consequences for nuclear power


• Fukushima, March 11, 2011


• How the accident happened


• Health and environmental consequences


• Consequences for nuclear power


• Public perception of risks from nuclear power


• 11 The Quest for Uranium


• Mining for uranium


• Shinkolobwe


• Shiprock


• Milling


• In Situ Recovery


• Enrichment


• Fuel fabrication


• World resources of uranium


• Megatons to Megawatts


• Is there enough uranium for a nuclear renaissance?


• Breeder reactors


• Thorium


• Summary


• 12 Now What?


• Myth 1: Radiation is extremely dangerous and we don't understand it


• Myth 2: There is no solution to the nuclear waste produced by nuclear power


• Myth 3: Nuclear power is unsafe and nuclear accidents have killed hundreds of thousands of people


• Myth 4: Uranium will run out too soon and mining it generates so much carbon dioxide that it loses its carbon-free advantage


• Myth 5: Nuclear power is so expensive it can't survive in the marketplace


• Afterword


• Appendix A: Global warming


• Earth's energy balance:


• Radiative forcing


• The emission scenarios of the IPCC special report on emissions scenarios (SRES)


• Appendix B Glossary of terms, definitions and units


• Appendix C Glossary of acronyms and abbreviations


• Appendix D Selected Nobel prizes


• Index

About the author

Michael H. Fox is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences at Colorado State University. He has been a radiation biologist for 35 years.

Summary

An argument for nuclear power as an environmentally sound option, based on real science and written by a radiation biologist. A complete scientific analysis of nuclear power.

Additional text

[T]his is a very well conceived and well written book. Overall, the book is a good read for a health physics audience and achieves its goal of making the environmental case for nuclear power.

Product details

• Authors: Michael H Fox, Michael H. Fox, Michael H. (Department of Environmental and R Fox, Michael H. (Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences Fox
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 15.05.2014
• EAN: 9780199344574
• ISBN: 978-0-19-934457-4
• No. of pages: 320
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Physics, astronomy > Atomic physics, nuclear physics; Non-fiction book > Nature, technology > Natural science