Thought I’d reblog Albert Wenger’s post today and add my comments at the end.

continuations:

The Deepwater Horizon accident is a terrible lesson in not testing backup plans.  Yes, it is probably impossible to test the various way of trying to stop a well under exact conditions (i.e. with a gushing well), but the constant refrain of “this has not been tried at this depth” is deeply disheartening.  That’s like hearing from your operations team that they have only ever practiced restoring a single development machine and never anything in the production environment.  At this point I am with former Labor secretary Reich — the government should put the US operations of BP into temporary receivership and take complete control of the cleanup effort.  I have lost all confidence in communications emanating from BP and would rather see the US Navy in charge.

I certainly hope that we draw the right lessons from this disaster, but I am fairly skeptical about that.  A similar event that comes to mind isThree Mile Island.  Since then the US has not built any new nuclear power plants but is still relying on nuclear power to supply a meaningful chunk of electricity.  That has left us with the worst of both worlds.  We are now operating the existing nuclear plants which have relatively unsafe designs (compared to what researchers have come up with since) way past their original due dates.  Much like driving cars to very high mileage that means stuff breaks (I should know, having two cars with way over 100,000 miles each).  Only here it is radiation not radiators we are talking about.

The only really consistent lesson to draw from the Gulf accident is that we need to invest heavily and rapidly into alternatives to oil.  Personally, I am open to those alternatives including nuclear for base load in the grid, although it would be great if eventually we could do without that too.

I agree that the U.S. navy should take charge of the situation. They should have done this immediately because the navy has the best resources to take care of the issue as discussed in this blog post: http://bit.ly/bOHLi3

Three Mile Island (TMI) is a sore spot for me because of all the misinformation that is out in the world. I appreciate that Albert is not equating the TMI accident with Deep Horizon and remains open to the technology but I can not help but point out just a few things.

1st off, nobody died at TMI as opposed to the 11 that died in the initial explosion of deep horizon. Not to mention the other 40 people who died thus far this year in relation to fossil fuel activities http://bit.ly/99wkVE. Where as no civilian in the US has ever been harmed by the US commercial nuclear industry.

2nd, nuclear power plants (NPP) were only designed for a 40 year life because that was what the initial life cycle analysis for hydroelectric dams were (due to similarities in use of concrete). Every NPP that has applied for a 20 year extension has received one - after extensive safety analysis - and I have personally worked on projects that have shown that these plants will operate up to an 80 year life with just a bit of maintenance.

3rd. Many, many lessons have been learned from TMI. The simple fact is that the accident was a financial loss. The nuclear industry has found that it is much more cost effective to uphold a strong safety culture and to regulate themselves extensively so that they do not have an accident which leads to large losses. I am shocked that the engineers of Deep Horizon would allow such an accident because of the large financial risk, not to mention the environmental.

Nuclear power supplies 20% of U.S. electricity and about 75% of U.S. emission-free electricity. It was a grave mistake to halt construction of new NPPs for the past thirty years and I am relieved that times have changed. However, there has been a recent movement to equate TMI with the Deep Horizon disaster which I abhor. http://bit.ly/a7pyvI. 

Nuclear energy is the only future because it has the highest energy density. Fission is the only instance where mankind has actually made energy. All other forms are just scavenging the sun in one way or another. The faster we embrace fission, the faster we can innovate it for our needs and utilize it for our own advancement.