Customer Reviews

The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear

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Dr. Beckman's energy book is still the most concise comparison of health hazards across multiple electrical generating technologies of which I am aware.

He makes clear that no technique for generating electricity is absolutely safe. Each has its risks. However some are much more dangerous to human safety and health than others. His energy book carefully makes comparisons and shows that our failure to use nuclear as the primary heat source for electrical power generation has sentenced many people to premature death. Nuclear power generation using U.S. technology is not only safer in some aspects, but in all significant aspects.

In his first chapter he discusses the fear mongering campaign that eventually halted construction of nuclear power reactors in the United States. He examines some of the lies, half-truths, and true statements of the type "I see you have not raped any under-age girls in the last two weeks." As usual fear sells, and journalists who did not wish to investigate the facts contributed heavily to the destruction of the U.S. lead in the use of the safest form of power yet discovered.

Dr. Beckman disposes of the canard about the possibility of nuclear power stations exploding as part of his description of how nuclear power is used to generate electricity.

We know more about the safety aspects of nuclear energy than any other form of power generation. Dr. Beckman pulls together enough of the fuzzy data available on the other forms to show that they are significantly more dangerous.

Since Dr. Beckman's book was published it has been shown that coal plants release enough uranium and thorium in their stack gases and scrubber sludge to power a nuclear power plant larger than the coal powered plant.

One of the few significant hazards of nuclear power is the release of radioactivity. Most coal plants release too much radioactivity to operate if they were regulated by the NRC.

U.S. background radiation is about 250 millirems per year (some locations in other countries have levels 20 times higher). To this, nuclear power plants add about 0.003 millirems. Living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant adds about 1/100 as much radiation as 1 old color TV. Grand Central station in NY could not be licensed as a nuclear reactor even without any fuel because its granite blocks emit too much radiation.

Dr. Bechman discusses loss of coolant accidents and events leading to a meltdown and shows that even in this type of extreme event, loss of life is unlikely. He shows that loss of life events for nuclear power generation are the result of worst case computer simulations while deaths associated with fossil fuel generation are frequent occurrences.

He discusses the many parts of the power generation cycle. For example coal mining kills about 100 times as many miners per unit of power as do fatal accidents in uranium mining. Black Lung disease causes about 50 excess lung cancer deaths for every excess case of lung cancer among uranium miners.

About 100 people a year are killed in the process of transporting coal to power plants. At the time of his publication none had been reported killed transporting fuel for nuclear power plants.

Storage disasters for nuclear fuel are a small calculated theoretical disaster, but storage disasters for other fuels kill actual people - a 1976 storage fire in Brooklyn killed only a few people because the wind was blowing in a favorable direction, but a 1944 LNG tank explosion in Cleveland killed 133, and in 1973 an empty LNG tank exploded killing 33. Minor accidents with gas kill about 100 people a year.

In 1973 calculations show that a small change in radiation levels at nuclear plants would cost 800 million per saved life. The NRC mandated the change. A similar calculation showed that moving LNG tanks out of crowded areas would cost 0.001 million per life saved, but that has not been done.

Non-fossil fuel generation also has risks. In 1928 a dam collapse in Santa Paula, California killed 450, and in 1959 a French dam collapse killed 412. A landslide into a reservoir (1963 in Italy) killed 2,000 people and left 50,000 homeless.

Even solar, because of its very dilute nature, is more hazardous than nuclear. Non-nuclear waste is again far more dangerous. Dr. Beckmann has very competent explanations.

He estimates that replacing a 1,000 MW coal plant with a nuclear plant will save very roughly between 20 and 100 lives a year.

Dr. Beckman even discusses environmental impacts, terrorism, sabotage. reliability, and economy. Quite a bit for 177 pages of text including a 5 page preface on Three Mile Island.

This book is still incredibly informative and pertinent to our resumption of nuclear plant construction. Hopefully this time the lies will not be accepted so uncritically.

The book is an in-depth technical treatment of the subject, but it is very readable for the layman. Beckmann deals with the arguments against nuclear power in a clear and decisive fashion. There is an interesting analysis of the reasons for the controversy as well. The only major problem I have with this book is the fact that it is rather outdated at 20+ years old.

A thoughtful examination of the energy issue, as well as environmental safety concerns associated with it. Accurate, reliable well researched, I strongly recommend this book for anyone concerned with the future of society or the environment.

I am a student attending the University of Phoenix Online University. In one of my classes this question was posed:

In what ways can a company be legally but not socially responsible? What are examples of this?

I used the opportunity to quote from The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear by Dr. Petr Beckmann.

The paper requirements were fairly informal and we are encouraged to chose subjects that stimulate discussion so I wrote the following: (hopefully I didn't corrupt the intent of Dr. Beckmann's work)

Typically legally imposed responsibilities represent the minimum, socially acceptable standard. (In my opinion, laws are the social/cultural norms that have been legislated into law.) Always taking the minimum route, while possibly more profitable, does not translate into socially responsible.

One example that comes to mind is the activities of the press/media. Often, the media's quest for ratings and to "inform the people" ahead of one of their competitors, results in releasing information about a crime in such a way that the defendant cannot be assured a fair trial. This can lead to a couple of possibilities. The first being that the guilty party gets away. The other extreme, of course, is an innocent party gets convicted because of public pressure rather than evidence. Is it legal? Yes. Is it even close to being socially responsible? Absolutely not.

Now, what if a company/industry, in light of unquestionable scientific evidence, chose a technology for production of its product that was less subject to government regulations and had popular appeal with media? And this course of action ultimately reduced the stockholder's return on investment and took a much higher toll in human lives and damage to the environment? The actions of this industry brings with it an incredible social cost in terms of higher government expenditures. Would you say this company was socially irresponsible? Naturally, there is no question. Right?

Well this is exactly what ! happens every time a power generating company chooses not to use nuclear power. (Assuming they could start up a plant in this ridiculously over regulated industry.) I won't labor the issue but here are some undisputable facts listed in the 1985 book, The Health Hazards of NOT going Nuclear, by Dr. Petr Beckmann. It is important to note that Dr. Beckmann's thesis is not that nuclear power generation is safe. On the contrary, he simply points out that all methods of converting energy are inherently dangerous. Nuclear is simply the least dangerous, most efficient method of doing so. This is just one example of socially irresponsible management responding to criticisms of the biased and uninformed media.

First of all Dr. Beckmann dispels the myth of a nuclear explosion. The technology used to convert energy via nuclear fission is entirely different from that used to create nuclear bombs and an explosion is impossible.

However, an oil fired power plant with a of capacity 1000 MW capacity usually stores 6 weeks worth of fuel or roughly 2 Million barrels of oil. What happens if the fuel catches on fire? In December 1952 3,900 human lives were lost due to such an accident and the ensuing black cloud that engulfed London. 24 years later another similar accident happened in Brooklyn NY when a 90,000 barrel oil storage complex caught fire. The fire could not be brought under control and burned for 4 days. Had the weather not been favorable, thousands of lives would have been lost (Beckmann, pp.88-89.) Now, think about the fact that there is a place (undisclosed) on the east cost that stores 151 million gallons of oil literally on top of a town of 37,000 people (Beckmann p.92).

The potential energy of a 200,000 ton oil tanker is roughly equivalent to that of a two megaton hydrogen bomb. Naturally if one caught fire and exploded it would not release all the energy at once so you can sleep well knowing the resultant blast would probably not exceed that of a couple of nuclear bombs like the ones d! ropped on Hiroshima (Beckmann p. 93).

Another example. Liquid natural gas (LNG) is far more dangerous than oil. In Cleveland, in October 1944 a LNG tank exploded taking 133 lives. The quantity of LNG stored in highly populated areas is 20 times that of the tank that exploded in Cleveland. An empty tank exploded in February 73, but since it was empty, it only took 33 lives. Minor accidents with natural gas claim about 100 lives/year. Not hypothetical lives of a computer simulation but actual lives counted by coroners. (Beckmann, p. 93).

[ "Professor Richard Wilson of Harvard University has made an interesting comparison on the money spent to save human life from LNG tank explosions versus the money spent to save a human life from the radioactive emissions of nuclear power plants. [13] When in 1973, the maximum possible radiation dose at the property line of a nuclear power plant was reduced from 170 mrems/ year to 10 mrems/year, the effect was to reduce the incidence of cancer from 4 to 1 per year (out of a total of 300,000 cancers in the US). The cost of this step was $800,000,000 per saved life.

On the other hand, there are 75 LNG tanks located in US cities. The cost of moving these tanks out of the cities (calculated in the same way as the example above) would amount to only $1,000 per saved life; but this cost has not been paid and the LNG tanks remain in the cities.

Now who is it (and here we are no longer quoting Prof. Wilson) that decides to pay $800,000,000 for saving a human life from one danger, but refuses to pay $1,000 to save it from another?" [13]R. Wilson, paper given at Energy Conference, Center for Technology and Political Thought, Denver, Colo., June 1974. . . ] (Beckmann pp. 93-94,183)

I submit this is a powerful example of an industry or company staying well within the letter of the law and ! being completely, socially irresponsible.

Works Cited Beckmann, Petr. The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear. Rev. ed. Boulder, CO: The Golem P, 1985.

Petr Beckmann stands up and answers the anti-nuclear attacks. He is very scientific in his answers. This book was written in a way that those without nuclear scientific know-how could understand. Most enjoyable was the voice and attitude Petr Beckmann used. He was tired of the stupid reasons used against nuclear power, and he explains why these reason were stupid.

In an objective, technically researched book, Dr. Beckman presents a great deal of thought=provoking material that should give us pause to reconsider many of media=promulgated myths of nuclear power generation. In addition, he provides many facts pertaining to so=called "conventional" methods of generating power that will surprise and disturb you. A "must" read for anyone who is the least bit concerned and curious about the subject. This is not a book you read from cover=to=cover==a few pages at a time, anywhere in the book, will always prove worthwhile!

I am an engineer working with electronics for radiation detectors. I gave a talk at my kids' school for Earth Day a couple of years ago, explaining that despite 40 years of fearmongering by people calling themselves environmentalists, a *rational* environmentalist would have to favor nuclear power as a big part of reducing CO2 emissions. I wish I'd had this book before I prepared that talk.

This is a book written by one very p*ssed-off guy. You may or may not agree with the political slant, but the scientific facts are not in doubt. Beckmann shows unequivocally that, considering the entire fuel cycle, nuclear power is safer than all competing forms of large-scale power generation, including hydro, wind, and solar. Not just a little safer, but one or two orders of magnitude. Thousands of people are dead today from industrial accidents or respiratory disease because irrational activism blocked nuclear power 30 years ago. And that's *before* taking CO2 into account at all! If you want to be a thinking man's environmentalist, get this book and read it. Then start talking to your friends. The country and the planet need nuclear power *now*.

The media loves to bash Nuclear energy. They would have us believe is that nuclear energy is a giant bomb waiting to happen. What Dr. Bekman so clearly points out is that ALL large scale conversion of energy is inherently dangerous. The truth is that Nuclear Energy production is the least dangerous per unit of production. Read it, then decide for yourself.

This book is the most sensible and most valuable written on the energy crisis and a way to really make a difference. Many countries are already doing this, but the U.S.A. has been stuck in neutral for several decades and not adding any new nuclear capability. If you want to read great arguments as to why Nuclear Power is the SAFEST and the best way out of the energy crisis, you can't miss this one!

Missing from this debate are several relatively intangible issues that seem easy to ignore, the fact that nuclear power isn't currently possible without massive public subsidies, most of which hidden "costs" are ignored when calculating economic benefits and costs.

No insurance is available for them at any cost, for example, so the government of every country which uses nuclear reactors in any form "insures" them by fiat.

The claim is that government insurance is "fair," because everyone is equally protected, but it's also true that such "insurance" is inherently unfair, because real insurance is a contract; if one suffers a provable loss, a set benefit is payable. Government "insurance," on the other hand, is subject to the whims of polticians, central government, and taxpayers.

Imagine how comfortable you'd feel if, before an insurance company paid a claim for your home being lost in a fire, the Board of Directors and Shareholders were allowed to vote on whether they wanted to pay your claim or not? Some populations are more popular with lawmakers and governments than others, so one's economic and social status would undoubtedly figure into whether one was compensated or not, and what sort of payout was provided. If Martha's Vinyard were "nuked," one imagines that they'd do rather better than the inhabitants of Eureka, California.

Then too, the effective tax rates on the poor are higher than those of the rich, so the people with the most to lose pay less, on average, than those with the least.

The discussion also tends to focus on narrow windows and best-case scenarios.

Narrow, because the full costs, including carbon costs, of construction, possible regional effects, health hazards, mining, processing, and then storing nuclear waste for tens of thousands of years are rarely taken seriously. After all, *we're* not going to have to pay for most, perhaps any problems, and we haven't set aside any money to pay for any future problems, so what the heck?

The author points out, fairly I think, that we treat ordinary power plants with frightening insouciance, and even nuclear contamination from the burning of coal is routinely ignored, but this isn't a particulary good argument in favour of expanded nuclear power, but rather of heightened scrutiny of the health costs of "standard" power production.

There are many places where nuclear power makes quite a bit of sense, in space exploration, medicine, and other situations where the small size of the reactors involved and the enormous social benefits justify the potential risk, but almost every nuclear power plant under construction in the world right now is suffering enormous cost overruns, delays, shoddy construction requiring expensive rework, and heightened risks that some such substandard construction goes undetected until years, or decades later, and only then reveals the true costs of any particular power plant through catastrophe or final price tags many times larger than originaly forecast, perhaps exponentially larger.