Philosophical Vegan Forum

As apart of the nuclear unit on chemistry, I decided to do a project on Indian Point. I'm also volunteering for a democratic candidate who believes that Indian point is a danger due to terrorists being able to attack it and because it is located on two fault lines.
So I have a few general questions:

1) Radiation causes cancer, right? And gamma radiation is the most dangerous, because it can easily penetrate through your skin, while beta and especially alpha particles have more difficulty with that (beta particles can pass through, but alpha particles can't at all- though apparently they are very dangerous when ingested). I did some research, and there have been some leakages at Indian Point with radioactive isotopes that undergo gamma and beta decay (mostly beta, but a few gamma as well). This seems like an issue. Isn't it?

2) According to the candidate, terrorists could theoretically attack the plant. So they could just fly a plane into it and cause radiation to leak everywhere? Is that how that works?
Isn't that extremely dangerous? O_O

3) The fault line thing- so basically there could be an earthquake? Isn't the combo of the earthquake and tsunami what caused the Fukushima disaster?
I mean, Fukushima now isn't very radioactive compared with other parts of the world, but so many people had to evacuate at the time. Wasn't the radiation dangerous? Or else why were they evacuated?
Fukushima is still deserted now.

4) Indian Point doesn't seem to have a cooling tower, which means in contributes to thermal pollution- and indeed, according to the Guardian, it kills over a billion aquatic animals every year.

Because the plant is cooled in large part by water from the Hudson – up to 2.5bn gallons a day – it kills about 1 billion fish and other aquatic organisms a year.

Here are some other things that seem like problems with Indian Point from that article:

In May 2015, an electrical transformer in the reactor called Unit 3 exploded, causing water to flood a room near the explosion where electrical distribution panels are housed and pouring 3,000 gallons of oil into the Hudson. The Union of Concerned Scientists classified the incident as a “near miss” in its annual review. Last year near misses occurred at eight nuclear facilities in
the US.

“Had the flooding not been discovered and stopped in time, the panels could have been submerged, plunging Unit 3 into a dangerous station blackout, in which all alternating current (AC) electricity is lost,” the report’s authors wrote. “A station blackout led to the meltdown of three nuclear reactor cores at Fukushima Dai-ichi in 2011.”

In February, radiation levels at three monitoring wells around the plant spiked, in one spot by 65,000%. Patricia Kakridas, a spokeswoman for Entergy, said the source was likely “water which exited a temporary filtration system that was set up and dismantled in late January 2016” in preparation for refueling; the company said radioactive material won’t leach into drinking water.

And in March, when the plant was being refueled, a breaker tripped and cut power in one of the reactors; when the diesel generators kicked in, they died while trying to restart the first electrical system. Fortunately a second backup worked.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/28/indian-point-nuclear-plant-new-york-troubled-history

I don't understand why these wouldn't be problems.
To those of you who support nuclear energy, which from my understanding is pretty much all of you, what do you guys think about this stuff?

Just to clarify, I lean towards supporting nuclear energy because it's a great way to prevent climate change. It costs less to produce than other forms of renewable energy, and even less to produce compared with fossil fuels. It emits basically no greenhouse gases, and Indian Point in particular provides 25% of the electricity in its surrounding area.
But how do you deal with what seems like serious problems like these?

And then I came across this CBS article that talks about how there have been radioactive leaks found at the overwhelming majority of nuclear plants in the United States.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radioactive-leaks-found-at-75-of-us-nuke-sites/
It says about Indian Point:

For example, cesium-137 turned up with tritium at the Fort Calhoun nuclear unit near Omaha, Neb., in 2007. Strontium-90 was discovered with tritium two years earlier at the Indian Point nuclear power complex, where two reactors operate 25 miles north of New York City.

EquALLity wrote:1) Radiation causes cancer, right?

Yes, but radiation leaks only increase background radiation by a very small amount and background radiation increases only increase cancer risk by a very small amount. For example, the normal background radiation levels of Denver are higher than those of Fukushima ever got, and you don't see Denver being evacuated. With Chernobyl, more people died from the stress that the evacuation caused than ever would have from radiation.

According to the candidate, terrorists could theoretically attack the plant. So they could just fly a plane into it and cause radiation to leak everywhere? Is that how that works?
Isn't that extremely dangerous? O_O

IF they manage to get their hands on a plane, which is not very easy to do anymore, there are far more dangerous options. They could, for example, try to unload oil on a city center and ignite it. Or, you know, fly into a skyscraper.

I can't really answer your other questions, I'll leave that to brimstone.

You should absolutely take a tour of indian point if you can.
Contact them, or drive up there. In the least, you should be able to interview somebody who runs it by phone.

EquALLity wrote:a democratic candidate who believes that Indian point is a danger due to terrorists being able to attack it

Can you find a source discussing this argument? It's hard to believe they're saying something so ridiculous.

The thing is basically a bunker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwAO5yRpUs8

Unless terrorists may steal nuclear waste to create a dirty bomb (which is pretty much inconceivable without a huge conspiracy involving the complicity of hundreds of well screened employees), this is pretty irrelevant. It is by no means easy to steal the spent fuel or other waste (it's underwater, and if you got close to it to swipe it you'd get cooked). Aside from being guarded, it's basically impossible to steal without help from the facility to get it out for you and gift wrap it in lead and use a forklift to take it to your truck.

Attacking a nuclear power station would be about the lamest and most difficult act of terrorism possible.

The power grid is much more vulnerable at substations -- that is a risk, but it's present regardless of where the power is coming from. It's not that hard for terrorists to take out the grid with a couple RPGs or even improvised explosives.

Attacking a nuclear power plant with a tuck or plane loaded with explosives wouldn't cause a nuclear blast if that's what people are worried about, it would be a "waste" of an attack if they had those resources. Worst case you'd get a meltdown, but it would take a massive coordinated effort and would result in probably zero loss of life (aside from the staff killed by their explosives).

If they did attack Indian point, we should all be thankful for their idiocy in wasting their ammunition on one of the strongest bunkers in the region with sparse staff. Aside from attacking an empty field or the ocean, that's probably the least dangerous target there could be.

EquALLity wrote:and because it is located on two fault lines.

That's not really an issue, as discussed in that interview.
It's built to engineering specs to withstand any plausible Earthquake that could be expected in that region.
If there's a stronger Earthquake than that, the Earthquake will kill plenty of people, but even if it causes a meltdown I'm skeptical of any additional loss of life.
Nuclear meltdowns just aren't that dangerous.

EquALLity wrote:1) Radiation causes cancer, right?

Right.

EquALLity wrote:And gamma radiation is the most dangerous, because it can easily penetrate through your skin, while beta and especially alpha particles have more difficulty with that (beta particles can pass through, but alpha particles can't at all- though apparently they are very dangerous when ingested). I did some research, and there have been some leakages at Indian Point with radioactive isotopes that undergo gamma and beta decay (mostly beta, but a few gamma as well). This seems like an issue. Isn't it?

Gamma radiation is not as dangerous, because it passes through your skin. It goes in one side, and out the other. It interacts only weakly with matter.
Yes, it is ionizing, but it's unlikely to actually hit one of your molecules. It mostly just passes through all of the empty space in between the nucleus and the electrons in atoms.

Alpha and beta radiation interact more readily, which is why they are easily blocked.

The problem with a nuclear meltdown is that some radioactive iodine is created and gets into the air. Because your thyroid readily absorbs iodine, this can cause cancer. That's why it's important to take iodine pills if there's a large meltdown or a nuclear bomb nearby; this will compete with the radioactive iodine, and basically prevent your body from absorbing it, thus protecting you from the radiation.

Anyway, it's the dose that makes the poison.
The radiation dosages involved are very small, with the exception of iodine which can accumulate and which is very radioactive.
Radioactive iodine, however, has a short half life of only eight days. While that makes it more radioactive, it also means it disappears pretty fast.

In eight days, half is gone. In 16 days it's down to a quarter. In a month it's down to under 10%, then it another month it's under 1%.
In a year it's down to less than a trillionth or so the amount. Homeopathic amounts. Harmless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131

If there is some kind of ridiculous melt down AND some kind of huge explosion which sends the radioactive material into the city somehow, all authorities need to do is distribute iodine pills and tell people to stay inside for a few days. If there's anybody very close to the explosion (which there isn't for Indian Point), they can be evacuated.
Nobody should drink water or eat food from the area until it has been tested (food and water need to be imported for a little while).

EquALLity wrote: 2) According to the candidate, terrorists could theoretically attack the plant. So they could just fly a plane into it and cause radiation to leak everywhere? Is that how that works?
Isn't that extremely dangerous? O_O

That's ridiculous. We can only hope that if terrorists hijack a plane they will choose to fly it into the plant instead of into a building down-town.

EquALLity wrote:3) The fault line thing- so basically there could be an earthquake? Isn't the combo of the earthquake and tsunami what caused the Fukushima disaster?

Tsunamis are not a problem on the East coast.
A hurricane is possible, but there's no reason to believe that would coincide with an Earthquake (unlike a tsunami). They have backup generators to cool the reactors in the case of loss of power.

The Fukushima disaster at the plant killed very few people. Deaths were from the Earthquake, the flooding, and the evacuation.

WHO put out a report on the issue, explained here:
http://science.time.com/2013/03/01/meltdown-despite-the-fear-the-health-risks-from-the-fukushima-accident-are-minimal/

Some people should be expected to die from cancer in the next fifty years, but not that many. Fewer than had the power been produced by coal, and fewer than will be killed by global warming.

Even accounting for the worst disasters, nuclear has a very low comparative death toll. Solar is worse (more factory workers dying from the materials used to make them, and people falling off roofs).

EquALLity wrote:I mean, Fukushima now isn't very radioactive compared with other parts of the world, but so many people had to evacuate at the time. Wasn't the radiation dangerous? Or else why were they evacuated?
Fukushima is still deserted now.

They overreacted based on radiation fear mongering. More people were killed by the evacuation itself than would have been harmed by the radiation.
Particularly, elderly and middle aged should have stayed home. Only young people should have left the area at worst. Older people will die from other things before they'll see an increased risk of cancer.

The cancers caused by this low level of exposure could take decades to form or longer.

EquALLity wrote: 4) Indian Point doesn't seem to have a cooling tower, which means in contributes to thermal pollution- and indeed, according to the Guardian, it kills over a billion aquatic animals every year.

Because the plant is cooled in large part by water from the Hudson – up to 2.5bn gallons a day – it kills about 1 billion fish and other aquatic organisms a year.

Indian point should update their facilities with modern cooling towers.
But switching to a coal plant would also create thermal pollution; it still has to be cooled. And the pollution created by the coal plant would kill far more people.

Closing Indian point either means the power needs to be replaced (and will be replaced by gas, oil, or coal), or there will be instability in the grid and humans will suffer.

EquALLity wrote: Here are some other things that seem like problems with Indian Point from that article:

In May 2015, an electrical transformer in the reactor called Unit 3 exploded, causing water to flood a room near the explosion where electrical distribution panels are housed and pouring 3,000 gallons of oil into the Hudson. The Union of Concerned Scientists classified the incident as a “near miss” in its annual review. Last year near misses occurred at eight nuclear facilities in
the US.

“Had the flooding not been discovered and stopped in time, the panels could have been submerged, plunging Unit 3 into a dangerous station blackout, in which all alternating current (AC) electricity is lost,” the report’s authors wrote. “A station blackout led to the meltdown of three nuclear reactor cores at Fukushima Dai-ichi in 2011.”

This is why there are people there to supervise the reactors and maintain the facility.
If it were left abandoned to run on its own, it might have a meltdown.

EquALLity wrote:

In February, radiation levels at three monitoring wells around the plant spiked, in one spot by 65,000%. Patricia Kakridas, a spokeswoman for Entergy, said the source was likely “water which exited a temporary filtration system that was set up and dismantled in late January 2016” in preparation for refueling; the company said radioactive material won’t leach into drinking water.

This doesn't sound like a problem.

EquALLity wrote:

And in March, when the plant was being refueled, a breaker tripped and cut power in one of the reactors; when the diesel generators kicked in, they died while trying to restart the first electrical system. Fortunately a second backup worked.

This is why they have multiple backups.
I just see a system of redundancy that is working.
"Close calls" are great exaggerations for yellow journalists.

EquALLity wrote: But how do you deal with what seems like serious problems like these?

It's well worth the minimal risk.
Indian Point probably won't melt down. If it does melt down, it's not that big of a deal considering how much power it has produced and how many lives and emissions it has saved from the alternatives.

It's totally sensible to update the plant. Not sensible to close it.

EquALLity wrote: And then I came across this CBS article that talks about how there have been radioactive leaks found at the overwhelming majority of nuclear plants in the United States.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radioactive-leaks-found-at-75-of-us-nuke-sites/
It says about Indian Point:

For example, cesium-137 turned up with tritium at the Fort Calhoun nuclear unit near Omaha, Neb., in 2007. Strontium-90 was discovered with tritium two years earlier at the Indian Point nuclear power complex, where two reactors operate 25 miles north of New York City.

I don't see this as a problem.

Fear mongers like to avoid citing actual numbers, like how much of these were found. The dose makes the poison.

Cesium 137 has a long-half life of 30 years, it's not very radioactive, and it doesn't stay in the body for long if you ingest it (the biological half-life is 70 days). Tritium likewise has a short biological half-life of a week or two, and a longer radioactive half-life of about 12 years.

Strontium-90 is actually dangerous. It's half-life is about the same as Cesium 137, but it can be absorbed into bones if ingested. That means people should avoid eating food from these areas.

For that to mean anything in an epidemiological sense, we'd need to see hard numbers on how much was released and whether any human exposure is expected. It's unlikely anybody is growing crops in this radioactive material and eating it. It's also unlikely that it's making it into human consumed groundwater.

brimstoneSalad wrote:You should absolutely take a tour of indian point if you can.
Contact them, or drive up there. In the least, you should be able to interview somebody who runs it by phone.

Pffffffttttttt.......... Who said I live near Indian Point?

brimstoneSalad wrote:Can you find a source discussing this argument? It's hard to believe they're saying something so ridiculous.

The thing is basically a bunker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwAO5yRpUs8

Unless terrorists may steal nuclear waste to create a dirty bomb (which is pretty much inconceivable without a huge conspiracy involving the complicity of hundreds of well screened employees), this is pretty irrelevant. It is by no means easy to steal the spent fuel or other waste (it's underwater, and if you got close to it to swipe it you'd get cooked). Aside from being guarded, it's basically impossible to steal without help from the facility to get it out for you and gift wrap it in lead and use a forklift to take it to your truck.

Attacking a nuclear power station would be about the lamest and most difficult act of terrorism possible.

The power grid is much more vulnerable at substations -- that is a risk, but it's present regardless of where the power is coming from. It's not that hard for terrorists to take out the grid with a couple RPGs or even improvised explosives.

Attacking a nuclear power plant with a tuck or plane loaded with explosives wouldn't cause a nuclear blast if that's what people are worried about, it would be a "waste" of an attack if they had those resources. Worst case you'd get a meltdown, but it would take a massive coordinated effort and would result in probably zero loss of life (aside from the staff killed by their explosives).

If they did attack Indian point, we should all be thankful for their idiocy in wasting their ammunition on one of the strongest bunkers in the region with sparse staff. Aside from attacking an empty field or the ocean, that's probably the least dangerous target there could be.

Actually, Indian Point employs over 1,000 permanent workers, and there are 200 on-site contractors.
http://www.safesecurevital.com/faq.html

Just because it looks like a terror attack wouldn't work doesn't mean it won't.
Here's something I found from the Union of Concerned Scientists*
*Note that they're scientists. This is why suspicion of nuclear energy is very different from climate-denial.

http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/nuclear-plant-security/impacts-of-a-terrorist-attack#.WB50uNUrLIU

This report presents the results of an independent analysis of the health and economic impacts of a terrorist attack at Indian Point that results in a core meltdown and a large radiological release to the environment. We find that, depending on the weather conditions, an attack could result in as many as 44,000 near-term deaths from acute radiation syndrome or as many as 518,000 long-term deaths from cancer among individuals within fifty miles of the plant. These findings confirm that Indian Point poses a severe threat to the entire New York metropolitan area. The scope of emergency planning measures should be promptly expanded to provide some protection from the fallout from an attack at Indian Point to those New York area residents who currently have none. Security at Indian Point should also be upgraded to a level commensurate with the threat it poses to the region.

(The Union of Concerned Scientists in one of the sources my teacher listed as a recommendation, along with more overtly PRO nuclear organizations such as the American Nuclear Society, World Nuclear, Entergy Nuclear [Entergy apparently owns Indian Point, according to that article], the Nuclear Energy Institute etc.).

brimstoneSalad wrote:That's not really an issue, as discussed in that interview.
It's built to engineering specs to withstand any plausible Earthquake that could be expected in that region.
If there's a stronger Earthquake than that, the Earthquake will kill plenty of people, but even if it causes a meltdown I'm skeptical of any additional loss of life.
Nuclear meltdowns just aren't that dangerous.

A nuclear meltdown sounds pretty dangerous.

Wikipedia:

The effects of a nuclear meltdown depend on the safety features designed into a reactor. A modern reactor is designed both to make a meltdown unlikely, and to contain one should it occur.

In a modern reactor, a nuclear meltdown, whether partial or total, should be contained inside the reactor's containment structure. Thus (assuming that no other major disasters occur) while the meltdown will severely damage the reactor itself, possibly contaminating the whole structure with highly radioactive material, a meltdown alone should not lead to significant radioactivity release or danger to the public.[23]

In practice, however, a nuclear meltdown is often part of a larger chain of disasters (although there have been so few meltdowns in the history of nuclear power that there is not a large pool of statistical information from which to draw a credible conclusion as to what "often" happens in such circumstances). For example, in the Chernobyl accident, by the time the core melted, there had already been a large steam explosion and graphite fire and major release of radioactive contamination (as with almost all Soviet reactors, there was no containment structure at Chernobyl). Also, before a possible meltdown occurs, pressure can already be rising in the reactor, and to prevent a meltdown by restoring the cooling of the core, operators are allowed to reduce the pressure in the reactor by releasing (radioactive) steam into the environment. This enables them to inject additional cooling water into the reactor again.

So it isn't really dangerous on paper, but in practice it could be.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Gamma radiation is not as dangerous, because it passes through your skin. It goes in one side, and out the other. It interacts only weakly with matter.
Yes, it is ionizing, but it's unlikely to actually hit one of your molecules. It mostly just passes through all of the empty space in between the nucleus and the electrons in atoms.

I asked my teacher about this. According to her, gamma is dangerous, because it can easily penetrate the skin and do damage.
What makes it unlikely? That's not what she said.

*However, she seems to support Indian Point. I went up to her and it went something like this:
"So, I have some mixed feelings about Indian Point."
"A lot of people do."
Then, I talked about how it produces about a forth of the energy in the surrounding area, and how that's good because it replaces fossil fuels which cause climate change. She seemed to agree and be happy with that.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Alpha and beta radiation interact more readily, which is why they are easily blocked.

Yeah, it would be best if the isotopes produced alpha radiation, because that is blocked by the skin. Apparently beta particles have trouble penetrating through the skin but still can.
Alpha seems like it would be a lot more safe... Unfortunately, none of the isotopes I saw listed on Wikipedia from Indian Point leakages emit alpha radiation. It's mostly beta and some gamma.

brimstoneSalad wrote:The problem with a nuclear meltdown is that some radioactive iodine is created and gets into the air. Because your thyroid readily absorbs iodine, this can cause cancer. That's why it's important to take iodine pills if there's a large meltdown or a nuclear bomb nearby; this will compete with the radioactive iodine, and basically prevent your body from absorbing it, thus protecting you from the radiation.

Anyway, it's the dose that makes the poison.
The radiation dosages involved are very small, with the exception of iodine which can accumulate and which is very radioactive.
Radioactive iodine, however, has a short half life of only eight days. While that makes it more radioactive, it also means it disappears pretty fast.

In eight days, half is gone. In 16 days it's down to a quarter. In a month it's down to under 10%, then it another month it's under 1%.
In a year it's down to less than a trillionth or so the amount. Homeopathic amounts. Harmless.

Yeah, we learned about half lives. That's interesting, I should look into the half-lives of the isotopes.

brimstoneSalad wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131

If there is some kind of ridiculous melt down AND some kind of huge explosion which sends the radioactive material into the city somehow, all authorities need to do is distribute iodine pills and tell people to stay inside for a few days. If there's anybody very close to the explosion (which there isn't for Indian Point), they can be evacuated.
Nobody should drink water or eat food from the area until it has been tested (food and water need to be imported for a little while).

There' something called the "emergency planning zone" or something, which is about a ten mile radius around Indian Point that the government would evacuate people from. That area, from my understanding, includes millions of people.

brimstoneSalad wrote:That's ridiculous. We can only hope that if terrorists hijack a plane they will choose to fly it into the plant instead of into a building down-town.

Are you sure about that?

brimstoneSalad wrote:Tsunamis are not a problem on the East coast.
A hurricane is possible, but there's no reason to believe that would coincide with an Earthquake (unlike a tsunami). They have backup generators to cool the reactors in the case of loss of power.

The Fukushima disaster at the plant killed very few people. Deaths were from the Earthquake, the flooding, and the evacuation.

WHO put out a report on the issue, explained here:
http://science.time.com/2013/03/01/melt ... e-minimal/

Some people should be expected to die from cancer in the next fifty years, but not that many. Fewer than had the power been produced by coal, and fewer than will be killed by global warming.

Even accounting for the worst disasters, nuclear has a very low comparative death toll. Solar is worse (more factory workers dying from the materials used to make them, and people falling off roofs).

I know tsunamis don't happen on the east coast of America, but if an earthquake+tsunami caused Fukushima, I think we should be concerned about earthquakes regarding nuclear power plants.

Did Fukushima have backup generators?

The reason why solar energy causes less death per year is probably because there haven't been that many nuclear disasters. However, if for example, terrorists attacked Indian Point, that could kill hundreds of thousand of people. That would impact those yearly averages substantially.

Don't forget that wind energy causes the least deaths per year.
There's actually what seems like a really great wind energy project starting now, in which wind energy is transported from a windy region in Oklahoma to Memphis, Tennessee. That's an interesting way to solve the issue of intermittency when it comes to wind energy.
Here's the article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/huge-transmission-line-will-send-oklahoma-wind-power-to-tennessee/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20energy-and-sustainability%20%28Topic%3A%20Energy%20%26%20Sustainability%29

brimstoneSalad wrote: They overreacted based on radiation fear mongering. More people were killed by the evacuation itself than would have been harmed by the radiation.
Particularly, elderly and middle aged should have stayed home. Only young people should have left the area at worst. Older people will die from other things before they'll see an increased risk of cancer.

The cancers caused by this low level of exposure could take decades to form or longer.

Did they overreact, though? What makes you think the radiation from staying wouldn't be dangerous?
As I write that question, I'm reminded of that random beach in Brazil with more radiation than Fukushima... Hm...

Though, that documentary didn't come out until a few years after the Fukushima disaster.
Hm.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Indian point should update their facilities with modern cooling towers.
But switching to a coal plant would also create thermal pollution; it still has to be cooled. And the pollution created by the coal plant would kill far more people.

Closing Indian point either means the power needs to be replaced (and will be replaced by gas, oil, or coal), or there will be instability in the grid and humans will suffer.

According to my teacher, adding a cooling tower is one of the requirements for Indian Point to meet to get re-licensed. If it doesn't get re-licensed, which I believe that will expire at the end of the year, it will shut down.

That's a good point about a coal plant. I definitely don't want to switch to a plant that emits no greenhouse gases to one that emits the most.

brimstoneSalad wrote: This is why there are people there to supervise the reactors and maintain the facility.
If it were left abandoned to run on its own, it might have a meltdown.

It poured 3,000 gallons of oil into the river even with supervision.
People make mistakes. With Indian Point, a mistake or lack of necessary supervision and carefulness seems like it could potentially cause serious issues.

brimstoneSalad wrote:This doesn't sound like a problem.

Sometimes numbers that seem really large like that aren't actually very relevant when you put them into context. However, according to my teacher, that is a problem... IF people were exposed to the radiation.

brimstoneSalad wrote:This is why they have multiple backups.
I just see a system of redundancy that is working.
"Close calls" are great exaggerations for yellow journalists.

What if the second backup didn't work, though?

brimstoneSalad wrote:It's well worth the minimal risk.
Indian Point probably won't melt down. If it does melt down, it's not that big of a deal considering how much power it has produced and how many lives and emissions it has saved from the alternatives.

It's totally sensible to update the plant. Not sensible to close it.

How minimal is it, really?

brimstoneSalad wrote:I don't see this as a problem.

Fear mongers like to avoid citing actual numbers, like how much of these were found. The dose makes the poison.

Cesium 137 has a long-half life of 30 years, it's not very radioactive, and it doesn't stay in the body for long if you ingest it (the biological half-life is 70 days). Tritium likewise has a short biological half-life of a week or two, and a longer radioactive half-life of about 12 years.

Strontium-90 is actually dangerous. It's half-life is about the same as Cesium 137, but it can be absorbed into bones if ingested. That means people should avoid eating food from these areas.

For that to mean anything in an epidemiological sense, we'd need to see hard numbers on how much was released and whether any human exposure is expected. It's unlikely anybody is growing crops in this radioactive material and eating it. It's also unlikely that it's making it into human consumed groundwater.

Oh, a longer half-life makes it more dangerous? Why is that? Does that just mean it'll take longer for you to develop cancer?
Well, Cesium-137 is one of the few leaked isotopes that emits both beta and GAMMA radiation, which seems dangerous to me.

Wikipedia:

Caesium-137 has a half-life of about 30.17 years.[1] About 95 percent decays by beta emission to a metastable nuclear isomer of barium: barium-137m (137mBa, Ba-137m). The remainder directly populates the ground state of barium-137, which is stable. Ba-137m has a half-life of about 153 seconds, and is responsible for all of the emissions of gamma rays in samples of caesium-137. One gram of caesium-137 has an activity of 3.215 terabecquerel (TBq).[3]

The main photon peak of Ba-137m is 662 keV.[4]

To be fair, 95% of it is beta radiation, not gamma. But there is still some gamma in there, and it has a pretty short half-life.

The other leaked isotope from Indian Point that emits gamma decay is Cobalt-60, and it has a much shorter half life (a bit over five years).

Wait, strontium-90 is dangerous? According to Wikipedia, it almost always undergoes beta decay, but very rarely also produces gamma rays.

Naturally occurring strontium is nonradioactive and nontoxic at levels normally found in the environment, but 90Sr is a radiation hazard.[3] 90Sr undergoes β− decay with a half-life of 28.79 years and a decay energy of 0.546 MeV distributed to an electron, an anti-neutrino, and the yttrium isotope 90Y, which in turn undergoes β− decay with half-life of 64 hours and decay energy 2.28 MeV distributed to an electron, an anti-neutrino, and 90Zr (zirconium), which is stable.[4] Note that 90Sr/Y is almost a pure beta particle source; the gamma photon emission from the decay of 90Y is so infrequent that it can normally be ignored.

90Sr has a specific activity of 5.21 TBq/g.[5]

Oh, it's only more dangerous when ingested. Why wouldn't cesium-137 be dangerous when ingested as well?

Tritium, according to Wikipedia:

Tritium is an isotope of hydrogen, which allows it to readily bind to hydroxyl radicals, forming tritiated water (HTO), and to carbon atoms. Since tritium is a low energy beta emitter, it is not dangerous externally (its beta particles are unable to penetrate the skin),[20] but it can be a radiation hazard when inhaled, ingested via food or water, or absorbed through the skin.[21][22][23][24] HTO has a short biological half-life in the human body of 7 to 14 days, which both reduces the total effects of single-incident ingestion and precludes long-term bioaccumulation of HTO from the environment.[23][25] Biological half life of tritiated water in human body, which is a measure of body water turn over, varies with season. Studies on biological half life of occupational radiation workers for free water tritium in the coastal region of Karnataka, India show that the biological half life in winter season is twice that of the summer season.[26]

So according to this, a short half-life is healthier.
And tritium is dangerous when ingested.

Caesium-137 reacts with water, producing a water-soluble compound (caesium hydroxide). The biological behavior of caesium is similar to that of potassium and rubidium. After entering the body, caesium gets more or less uniformly distributed throughout the body, with the highest concentrations in soft tissue.[9]:114 The biological half-life of caesium is rather short, at about 70 days.[10] A 1972 experiment showed that when dogs are subjected to a whole body burden of 3800 μCi/kg (140 MBq/kg, or approximately 44 μg/kg) of caesium-137 (and 950 to 1400 rads), they die within 33 days, while animals with half of that burden all survived for a year.[11]

Accidental ingestion of caesium-137 can be treated with Prussian blue, which binds to it chemically and reduces the biological half-life to 30 days.

This also seems to suggest that a shorter half-life = safer.
In addition, this seems dangerous if ingested as well.

Ok, so people shouldn't drink the water etc.. But people still will, so... What then?
However, the article doesn't actually say people were EXPOSED to the radiation. There was just a leak. It may not have contaminated the water, right?

Generally confused.

^Also, I forgot to mention:

I also asked my teacher about nuclear waste. Actually, she brought it up, and I told her that I heard all of the world's nuclear waste could fit into a football field. She said it depends on how you store it, and they don't store it in a way in which that would be possible. She said they are stored in dry cask storage and are then moved to spent fuel rod pods after some time.
She said it's a concern with Indian Point in that they've basically run out of storage space.

She also encouraged me to fact check that article by the Guardian about the amount of fish killed. There seem to be some conflicting statistics about that- one even had like 200 or 300 million or something, but they are including eggs are larvae. I'll look into that more.

Another thing is that Indian Point uses 2.5 billion gallons of water a day, which it twice NYC's total daily consumption. I believe that was in one of the articles and it was confirmed with another source.

EquALLity wrote: Actually, Indian Point employs over 1,000 permanent workers, and there are 200 on-site contractors.
http://www.safesecurevital.com/faq.html

That's still small compared to a dense metropolitan target.

We could figure out the equivalent if you want, but you'll have to help me find the numbers.

For example,
Assuming Indian point's containment shell is steel reinforced cement, we need to know how thick it is to estimate the energy it would take to seriously compromise that.
Then we could look at how much damage that amount of energy would do directed to a densely populated civilian target in the city.

The reactors at Indian Point are protected by containment domes made of steel-reinforced concrete that is four to six feet thick, with a carbon steel liner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center

It is. Might not be quite that thick, though, when I follow the source.

This bomb could probably penetrate it, although I'm not sure given the liner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-109_bomb

The BLU-109/B has a steel casing about 1 inch (25.4 mm) thick, filled with 530 lb (240 kg) of Tritonal.

That doesn't mean that would be adequate to actually take the thing out. This is usually for punching a hole then detonating inside to kill personnel in a bunker. And it should be remembered that it's a bomb that's dropped from a high altitude, so it also carries a significant amount of kinetic energy (the whole thing weighs nearly a ton, and is designed for a precision strike).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritonal

The 87 kg of tritonal in a Mark 82 bomb has the potential to produce approximately 863 MJ of energy if detonated.[2]

I think that would amount to 2,380 megajoules from that bunker buster.
Around a half-ton TNT equivalent of energy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAYVMXYYAp4
This is one ton, pretty close, to give you a sense of perspective on how powerful such a weapon would have to be.

A plane crashing doesn't come very close.

You may remember the formula for kinetic energy:
1/2 * 439,985 kg * (256 m/s)^2 = about 689 megajoules.
The jet fuel being burnt does... but that would just be splashing around outside if the plane just exploded and went to pieces on site.

The mass of the concrete shell and steel far exceeds that of the plane itself. Over 100 times its mass, most likely (based on my crude calculations assuming a cylinder with no top). It would probably be like a motorcycle hitting a semi.

A dome shell also distributes force very well, and so does an easily crumpled giant aluminum can (meaning it doesn't have the piercing power of artillery). It's dubious that even a 747 would take it out, and it's much harder to hijack those these days. (The US military also provides air defense for the site already, so it's very unlikely any kind of threat would come by air).

If you're not just a nutty suicidal jihadist, but you have means and access to that kind of explosive and the expertise and men to coordinate such an attack, it's actually much more damaging to put it in a bunch of cans with nails covered in biological agents (like shit, or something more sophisticated) and distribute it around the city in densely populated areas with time delay fuses.

Or millions of other plots that would kill far more people. It's very difficult to think of a plot that wouldn't be more effective than this absurd attack on a nuclear power plant.

EquALLity wrote: Just because it looks like a terror attack wouldn't work doesn't mean it won't.

When it looks like a cement and steel containment shell, unless that's all a prop, then it probably does.
Remember, Indian point just has to be harder to attack than the next best target.

Can you find a detailed proposed scenario of how these hypothetical terrorists are supposed to do this?
Chances are you'll find that it's just people speculating on what seems reasonable or "possible" (AKA scary) without any sound basis in reality.

EquALLity wrote: Here's something I found from the Union of Concerned Scientists*
*Note that they're scientists. This is why suspicion of nuclear energy is very different from climate-denial.

They're also inordinately concerned about transgenic food. I'd have to look more into the group, but they sound like left wing nuts trying to come across as reasonable and advocating a "middle-ground" (while in fact just perpetuating these fears without employing anything resembling actual science).

the plants remain vulnerable, both to air attacks and to ground assaults by large terrorist teams with paramilitary training and advanced weaponry.

I am forced to conclude that these people are morons, or just dishonestly fear mongering (I'm not sure why).
New York City is also vulnerable to large terrorist teams with paramilitary training and advanced weaponry, and while I'm at it, flying sharks with laser beams on their heads.

This is not how terrorism works. Terrorism is inherently conspiratorial. The U.S. government can't keep secrets under wraps, and people planning to do harm to innocent civilians as part of a terror plots certainly can't. People have consciences, and the larger your team has to be, the more likely you get a leak.

Terrorism is usually done in teams of one or two, often a lone wolf, rarely more than that except as occasionally administers by the terrorist generals.

The estimation you quoted also requires optimal weather, meaning that this team of terrorists with paramilitary training and advanced weapons also has the magical power to predict the weather with supernatural accuracy.

To their credit, they at least mention that in the article (although to their discredit, they clearly fabricated this whole thing based on equally improbable notions, and promoted that as their headline despite knowing it's unrealistic):

Attacks capable of causing the peak consequences that we calculate would be difficult to achieve because of inaccuracies in weather forecasts, restricted windows of opportunity and other factors, but remain within the realm of possibility.

(You should read it if you haven't. Most things like this can be debunked referencing the source material and their methods critically).

I can understand the desire to improve the already quite good security at the site, but I think it's asinine given we have so many other vulnerabilities more easily exploited, it's like barring all of your windows when you don't even lock your doors, and it assumes a level of competence and organization we've never seen from terrorists. 9-11 was only made possible by the extreme degree of incompetence exhibited by the US government and its allies (a problem that has now been remedied).

We might as well spend trillions building a border wall, or installing a giant net around our coasts so sharks can't get in. None of these things will fix very real problems of national security.

If you can cite the other specific arguments and the details of the analysis (like what kind of remediation it involved, and the nature of the supposed attack) I can address it better.

EquALLity wrote: A nuclear meltdown sounds pretty dangerous.

It's just the fuel rods getting too hot and melting into the substrate (steel, cement, rock) until it's too diluted with neutron capturing elements to continue the chain reaction.
It's not really scary unless you're in it.

Some of the elements are volatile at those temperatures, that's all, so they can spread on the wind in trace amounts.
The issue is not some burst or radiation coming from the meltdown, as people might imagine (like a bomb).

Wikipedia wrote:For example, in the Chernobyl accident, by the time the core melted, there had already been a large steam explosion and graphite fire and major release of radioactive contamination (as with almost all Soviet reactors, there was no containment structure at Chernobyl).

It wasn't just the lack of containment, but also the way the reactor was designed and it's use of carbon to moderate the reaction (very foolish by modern standards), which caused the radiation to be spread very widely since when the carbon overheated it exploded. We don't do that anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite-moderated_reactor

And we don't do what Fukushima did either (put backup generators below grade where they can easily flood).

Wikipedia wrote:Also, before a possible meltdown occurs, pressure can already be rising in the reactor, and to prevent a meltdown by restoring the cooling of the core, operators are allowed to reduce the pressure in the reactor by releasing (radioactive) steam into the environment. This enables them to inject additional cooling water into the reactor again.

EquALLity wrote:So it isn't really dangerous on paper, but in practice it could be.

No, this steam is fine, it's just tritium and deuterium.
Not all radioactivity is created equally. Radioactive water will diffuse into the environment, and doesn't meaningfully affect people.

EquALLity wrote:I asked my teacher about this. According to her, gamma is dangerous, because it can easily penetrate the skin and do damage.
What makes it unlikely? That's not what she said.

Gamma is dangerous in the environment, but people are rarely if ever exposed to meaningful levels.

Gamma rays interact only very weakly with matter unless it has a very large/heavy nucleus.
If you have a gamma emitter in your body, it's about the same as it being anywhere else, and it's much safer than an alpha or beta emitter because most of the radiation will leave your body without affecting you (and radiate your neighbor).
It can give you cancer like any ionizing EM radiation, it's just unlikely to collide with your molecules.

Higher energy photons are even more benign, even potentially passing through the entire Earth without interacting with matter (although that's a long way to travel without hitting anything).

What we're worried about in terms of radiation is not so much environmental radiation that is hitting us from outside, but from radioactive materials that get into our bodies from the environment and radiate us from inside with alpha and beta radiation where it can do serious damage.

EquALLity wrote:Yeah, it would be best if the isotopes produced alpha radiation, because that is blocked by the skin.

Alpha can be blocked by a sheet of paper, but you have this totally backward: that can be the worst kind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_decay#Toxicity

When you read something as being "blocked", read it instead as being "absorbed", or "colliding" like an automobile accident.
The reason Gamma is so harmless be comparison is because is does not get absorbed by other atoms in your body. Gamma has a very long mean free path, which means it will probably make it out of your body and away from you before it collides with something and does damage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_free_path

You may want alpha and beta emitters around you, but you do not want them IN you, and that's how radioactive fallout harms people.

EquALLity wrote:There' something called the "emergency planning zone" or something, which is about a ten mile radius around Indian Point that the government would evacuate people from. That area, from my understanding, includes millions of people.

There are sound evacuation plans. What would be better is if people just weren't afraid of radiation, it was made optional, and only encouraged for young people.

EquALLity wrote:Are you sure about that?

I'm pretty sure about that, yeah. I think fewer people would be hurt that way.

EquALLity wrote:I know tsunamis don't happen on the east coast of America, but if an earthquake+tsunami caused Fukushima, I think we should be concerned about earthquakes regarding nuclear power plants.

I don't think there's any reason to be, given how unlikely it is. Even with the occasional disaster (which kills very few people), Nuclear is safer.
We play the odds every time we get in a car, every time we walk, swallow, etc.
We do this because the benefits outweigh the risks. These risks are minuscule here.

While the risk of earthquake may be highest for this plant, that has to be taken into perspective. It's one in tens of thousands that there would be an Earthquake strong enough to cause problems, and the outcome isn't the disaster people think it would be.

EquALLity wrote:Did Fukushima have backup generators?

Yes, they were flooded. This was bad engineering. I see no such problems at Indian Point.

EquALLity wrote:The reason why solar energy causes less death per year is probably because there haven't been that many nuclear disasters. However, if for example, terrorists attacked Indian Point, that could kill hundreds of thousand of people. That would impact those yearly averages substantially.

If the sun gets mad that we're sucking up all of its light for power without permission, and then sends a solar flare to wipe out the Earth, that will increase the death toll for solar.
I don't find that probable either, though, so I'm sticking with the data we have and what's probable.

EquALLity wrote:Don't forget that wind energy causes the least deaths per year.

Not sure where you got that.
Deaths per year don't matter, what matters is deaths per Gigawatt year output (or some other consistent measure of power output). We pay for our energy, no matter its proximal source.

Don't forget the massive number of birds killed by these turbines, and the waste generated. Remember that EROEI is important too. Nuclear beats everything but Hydro and Coal there, which both have higher death tolls than nuclear (a dam breaking is scary).

EquALLity wrote:What makes you think the radiation from staying wouldn't be dangerous?
As I write that question, I'm reminded of that random beach in Brazil with more radiation than Fukushima... Hm...

The levels were not very high, and the fallout was not particularly bad. Evacuation and displacement were probably more harmful.

EquALLity wrote:According to my teacher, adding a cooling tower is one of the requirements for Indian Point to meet to get re-licensed. If it doesn't get re-licensed, which I believe that will expire at the end of the year, it will shut down.

I don't think holding a gun to their heads over the plant closure is appropriate, although I think it should have a cooling tower. That's like the tea party threatening a government shutdown.

EquALLity wrote:It poured 3,000 gallons of oil into the river even with supervision.

That has nothing to do with it being nuclear. A coal plant could have done the same.

EquALLity wrote:

brimstoneSalad wrote:This doesn't sound like a problem.

Sometimes numbers that seem really large like that aren't actually very relevant when you put them into context. However, according to my teacher, that is a problem... IF people were exposed to the radiation.

That doesn't make it a problem. It makes it potentially a problem IF they were exposed. The other question you must ask is how much.
Everything is harmful, nuclear much less so than other sources of power.

EquALLity wrote:What if the second backup didn't work, though?

Then the third backup can take over.

Guess what happens if the third one doesn't work.

As I understand it, there are four backups. And they aren't below grade (so they won't flood). And with serious safety features.

http://observer.com/2013/09/why-indian-point-wont-kill-you/
This is a good article putting the risk in perspective (and addressing the absurd fear-mongering predictions that were made about Indian point and a terrorist event; the author has apparently read more details on their supposed scenario than I have).

EquALLity wrote: How minimal is it, really?

You have a better chance of being eaten by a shark.
The proposed doomsday scenarios are absurd.

EquALLity wrote: Oh, a longer half-life makes it more dangerous? Why is that?

A long biological half-life makes it more dangerous.
The element is still radioactive. Biological half-life just means how long it stays in your body until you poop or pee it out.

The most dangerous radioisotopes have a LONG biological half-life, and a SHORT radiological half-life (meaning they decay faster and emit more radiation).

You might want to reread my description with that in mind. And with what I explained earlier on beta radiation vs. gamma.

EquALLity wrote:Why wouldn't cesium-137 be dangerous when ingested as well?

You poop or pee it out. It doesn't stick around in your body.

Compare Fluoride and Lead.

EquALLity wrote:So according to this, a short half-life is healthier.
And tritium is dangerous when ingested.

No, a short biological one. A short radiological half-life is more dangerous.
Tritium isn't very harmful unless ingested in very large amounts or for a long time. Otherwise, you pee it out like any other water.

EquALLity wrote:Ok, so people shouldn't drink the water etc.. But people still will, so... What then?

Even if it's in the water, they can drink the water, it's probably fine. It's incredibly diluted.

EquALLity wrote: I also asked my teacher about nuclear waste. Actually, she brought it up, and I told her that I heard all of the world's nuclear waste could fit into a football field. She said it depends on how you store it, and they don't store it in a way in which that would be possible. She said they are stored in dry cask storage and are then moved to spent fuel rod pods after some time.
She said it's a concern with Indian Point in that they've basically run out of storage space.

It isn't stored like that, but the actual storage isn't that much less dense. The only thing is that they need to be kept cool for the first few years as the more radioactive elements decay.

EquALLity wrote:She also encouraged me to fact check that article by the Guardian about the amount of fish killed. There seem to be some conflicting statistics about that- one even had like 200 or 300 million or something, but they are including eggs are larvae. I'll look into that more.

Good for her. It's mentioned in the article I posted.

EquALLity wrote:Another thing is that Indian Point uses 2.5 billion gallons of water a day, which it twice NYC's total daily consumption. I believe that was in one of the articles and it was confirmed with another source.

What for, where does it come from, and where does it go? It there not enough water to spare in that region?

Since I wanted to ask a few questions about nuclear and this topic's title pretty much sums it up, I'm reviving it rather than creating a new one. Specifically it's about neutron-capturing isotopes of non-fuel elements.

- In a nuclear reactor, not only the fuel is burned, but also some isotopes in control rods, which are made of atoms with a high neutron capture cross section in order to control the nuclear reaction, and are often made of silver, indium and cadmium. Those are non-abundant elements and once the cadmium is depleted it cannot be used again as control rod material. I'm not really worried about running out of uranium fuel but I don't know about elements used in control rods, could they instead be the limiting factor of nuclear power? Especially considering they have many other applications unlike uranium. Another type of control rod is steel enriched with boron, an element apparently much more common than the other three mentioned before (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust almost 10 million metric tons of boron are produced compared to 27,000 silver, 655 indium and 23,000 cadmium although probably only the later is of a really significant concern because of its considerably higher neutron capture cross section compared to the other two).
- Cobalt-60 is used as a gamma-ray emitter for irradiation-based sanitation. It is synthesized from cobalt-59, the only stable isotope found in nature. However, cobalt is a precious material and I'm worried about burning an element with many other uses (although the deployment of sulfur-based batteries in the future could reduce our cobalt needs a little bit). I think reusing what comes out the waste stream is important for sustainability but I'm worried about pathogens and problematic chemicals and gamma rays could be a way to destroy them. But emitting gamma rays to sanitize the waste stream would imply burning cobalt and I'm concerned it might not be sustainable, and research actually told me that nuclear physics are necessary to produce them, so whatever alternative would still need to burn atoms. It might not be a problem if we can get gamma-rays in an economic way using abundant elements we're virtually never going to run out of, but I'm not sure that burning cobalt for that is sustainable. There may be a few alternatives, but as described in Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation#Technology) X-rays don't penetrate matter deep enough and caesium-137 from nuclear power plants is impractical and produced in insufficient amounts for food irradiation, so we're not gonna use it for waste stream irradiation either.

(Also I just watched anti-nuclear power nonsense on the TV because I eat in the same room as my father who can't stand having the TV turned off and what he happened to watch was anti-nuclear mongering. They notably mentioned the radioactive "cloud" from Russia that came to Europe last November that was actually harmless, as if it showed the "truth" to the French who've been lied to about the safety of nuclear power I abstained from commenting by fear of backlash. Wanted to get that off my chest.)

Good call reviving the topic.

Canastenard wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 8:13 am which are made of atoms with a high neutron capture cross section in order to control the nuclear reaction, and are often made of silver, indium and cadmium.

Or boron, which is very common and which we'd never run out of (which you mentioned).
You can use anything to capture them, really, higher atomic mass just means there's a higher chance of capture per nucleus. You can use more of a lighter element. That's an issue of reactor design.
The limitations would probably be for very small reactors, but in theory they could be designed to change shape (thus diffusing neutrons into the ground around it) instead of having control rods inserted.

Canastenard wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 8:13 am - Cobalt-60 is used as a gamma-ray emitter for irradiation-based sanitation. It is synthesized from cobalt-59, the only stable isotope found in nature. However, cobalt is a precious material and I'm worried about burning an element with many other uses

We can probably create more gamma ray emitters in breeder reactors if we really need to.
Beta radiation works for sterilization too, though.

Canastenard wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 8:13 am X-rays don't penetrate matter deep enough

You can probably press a thin layer to sterilize with X-rays if you want to.
Waste streams, unlike food products, are more malleable.

Sorry to hear you had to suffer through the propaganda show.

brimstoneSalad wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 1:25 amWe can probably create more gamma ray emitters in breeder reactors if we really need to.
Beta radiation works for sterilization too, though.

How exactly would breeder reactors be an alternative source of gamma radiation? Maybe they have an abundant by-product that could be used as an abundant source of gamma-decaying atoms that classic nuclear reactors don't produce, and which one(s) precisely?

What about beta rays instead as you mention? I thought about strontium-90 but it is produced in lower amount than caesium-137 in spent nuclear fuel. Maybe if we increase the use of nuclear power we could get enough caesium-137 for sanitation purposes, but with its high solubility it's probably too much of an environmental gamble. An according to the French Wikipedia page about strontium-90 its beta emissions doesn't penetrate matter deep at all.

I also found something that worries me a little, it's about krypton-85 released from spent nuclear fuel when it is reprocessed. As a gas is goes to the air after escaping the solid spent fuel and makes it more radioactive. If we increase spent fuel reprocessing then I worry it might significantly increase the radioactivity of the air around it, which is undesirable since it would undermine one of the strengths of nuclear power which is lack of air pollution and good safety record. At least it probably wouldn't be as bad as the chemical pollution produced by fossil fuel burning and doesn't contribute to climate change, but considering how scared of nuclear power a large portion of the population is, adding another element of concern is something we really don't want. Maybe it might be reasonable to reproced used fuel that's as old as possible in order to lower the amount of radioactive krypton released in the air.