The source article did not phrase the pop can analogy quite that way but I interpreted it to make it easier to read. Compare to “A Coke can will handily contain all the uranium needed for a legendarily high-powered U.S. lifetime of electricity“.

Elements are defined by the number of protons in the nucleus. The nucleus also contains neutrons, though. It is the differing number of neutrons with a given number of protons that result in isotopes of an element. Isotopes have natural occurring percentages so elements everywhere, including those in people’s bodies, come in isotopes. Isotopes in the minority percentages are often unstable, decomposing, giving off radiation in the process. Some may take thousands of years to do so, but many don’t. You also take in all kinds of elements from food, drink, air, etc. each day, so your isotope count is always fluctuating. When the unstable share of them decompose, you get radiation exposure. Apparently, there’s enough radiation from isotopes your own body decomposing that you can get a third or more of your daily exposure, depending on how much other nuclear radiation is around you.

The source articles are two very fascinating articles, the origin being a Wall Street Journal book review of Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy by Gwyneth Cravens that talks about the nuclear energy sector’s incompetency to promote itself, other factors giving it a bad rep, what the truth is and why it’s enough to be converting all kinds of green anti-nuke folks. Freakonomics then also wrote about it and tied it to another article called the Jane Fonda effect on how the movie The China Syndrome freaked out a whole generation against nuclear reactors.

I can be counted as a green anti-nuke convert from as late as before I started this blog in May 2007 (public access began in Jul 2007). However, I didn’t need the tour of the world’s nuclear reactors as did the author. The numbers I saw showed it, along with other things I had read and learned about nuclear energy. Just click on the Nuclear section here and rummage through the posts (stats and commentary) and combine it with not easily isolatable but easily found CO2 emissions in Global Warming. I sum it up via an analogy about how planes are the safest way to travel any way you measure it, though plane accidents always scare the crap out of us and get huge media. Freakonomics had some interesting numbers on similar impacts of nuclear media coverage versus other ways of dying, including from gas and electricity.

Looks like a fascinating read, this book, if you ask me. I’d love to read it but not now. I’m concurrently reading 19 books already, with #20 just gotten today about how to use psychology for better regulations as we are trying to convince behavioural change. I’ve been on this for some time on my own thinking now, as to me, regulation = behavioural change and behavioural change = psychology. I just didn’t know anyone out there had a lot of real life case studies until I heard Doug MacKenzie-Mohr today. But that’s my own new job story you don’t need to be bored with here. I’ll just put the nuclear book on my book wishlist for next year’s book budget.

The short ton mass of coal in the headline statistic was my interpretation since this was an American book. It’s only a 10% difference anyway. [Envirostats author]

Of course, nuclear power’s funnest fact is: zero carbon. But don’t hold your breath waiting for your coal-wed local utility to boast about it. “Clean & Green” is as far as most of them will go. And so, while right-thinking Americans fantasize about a solar-powered Seattle and a corn-fed Prius, smart countries from China and India to Finland are powering ahead with spectacular new 21st-century nuclear reactors.

Another cute bit of knowing jargon pops up in Richard Rhodes’s introduction to “Power to Save the World.” It neatly encapsulates 98% of public discourse about nuclear power: “secondhand ignorance.” Ms. Craven’s firsthand portrait of the devil we know won’t fix that by itself, but it is — appropriately — illuminating.

- Headline statistics from Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy by Gwyneth Cravens via the Wall Street Journal book review, Nov 20 2007

- Supporting material from Freakonomics! blog article Do Not Read This If You Are Anti-Nuclear Energy, Nov 21 2007

Holy nuclear Ontario! 51%??? And 16 of the country’s 18 reactors??? No wonder they were relatively low on CO2 emissions from electricity, cause I knew it wasn’t all hydro!

Anyway, nuclear was the source of about 15% of the world’s energy in 2006 (see Stat 0520) so Canada is average there. However, compare that to other countries’ reliance on nuclear energy for comparison in Stat 0521. France leads the way at 78% and is buying a lot of Canadian uranium assets, to be documented later.

It’s strange this statistic was found via an Australian source as I haven’t seen Statistics Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Environment Canada or the Canadian press. There is a wealth of Canadian nuclear and uranium information here I will blog in the future but if you want a preview for yourself, please click on the link below and read. Thank you. [Envirostats author]

- Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper # 3 by the Australian Uranium Association’s Uranium Information Centre (UIC), Oct 2007 

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) have come up with a magnificent interactive map showing the status of the various US nuclear reactors, past (no longer operating), present (currently in operations) and future (being built). Unfortunately, it is a bit biased due to some presentation of context cause anything the slightest bit negative about nuclear scares the crap out of most of us and gets the blood of the typical activist to the same temperature as a nuclear reaction itself.

The map presents negative information about leaks, damage and other concerns with each nuclear generator, which is, of course, what we want to know. It’s too bad it doesn’t just come out to state nothing was found for some of the generators rather than just leaving them blank as if no information were available rather than no negative information was present. You have to fill in the silence, basically, is what I’m saying. It’s media psychology. They know how to influence and manipulate as well as they know their science.

Another thing might be to note what they think typical coal power plants around the country might exhibit for potential safety concerns. That, would really be interesting! Or something similar could have been commented on for typical buildings, manufacturing plants, etc. If you took a sample of anything from regular buildings to manufacturing plants and such, even though they passed inspection whenever it was last done, there will be defects, leaks, cracks, whatever. Now, nuclear plants face a different set of problems with much different and worse consequences, but no nuclear power plant is going to be expected to operate perfectly during its lifetime. What are some of these leaks and such really doing to the environment is what we need to know, and how atypical this might be of a generally well cared for nuclear generator, not just a freak you out statement of leaks happening at some reactor.

Please note that while I’m not one against nuclear energy as what I have seen have convinced me of its value as being one of the more viable, if not most viable, non-petroleum fuel source the world should tap into for at least the medium-term future, I am not against posting a good argument on the other side to share, either. I just wish this could have been a better argument, in the true sense of the word, rather than just being on the scare tactic side, but it is a superb piece of work and kudos to the UCS for it.

Oh, too bad for Greenpeace and their old skool map shown in Stat 0519 barely a week ago. They wasted their much valued resources (it has to be with all their canvassers I see on the streets these days!) on a far inferior version of this product.

Minh Tan
Envirostats author

- Union of Concerned Scientists

This is a commentary and a statistic, but not classified as such because it is a breaking story, about politics rather than environmental impact and is something I want to comment on.

The story is about how Friends of the Earth finally broke through via the Freedom of the Information Act in Britain to obtain the information in the title, but not yet completely, which was the reason for the slight vagueness of the “most of at least £50 million” bit, paraphrased by me for grammatical flow from “the Government provides at least £50m a year for research into agricultural biotechnology, largely GM crops and food”. It’s a political story more than anything else because £50 million or £1.6 million are relatively nothing for what government spends on anything worth making a fuss about like this. The political aspect is how the Government did this hypocritically despite of “repeated promises to promote environmentally friendly, ’sustainable’ farming”.

So what of it then? No, that’s not me putting words in your mouth to give myself a segué. That’s me thinking out loud. The headline statistic, though, gave me an environmental statistics platform, of sorts, to talk about an environmentally related issue of genetically modified (GM) crops and food.

So far, I haven’t been convinced one way or another of GM crops. I do believe in science and progress, but not carelessly as industry so often does for the sake of profit. My stand is somewhat the same towards nanotechnology, but much more leaning towards pro-nanotechnology whereas I am still in the middle with GM crops. That is because I am not nearly as knowledgeable about biology and genetics that are quite helpful towards understanding potential impact of GM crops, as I am about molecular chemistry and quantum physics that are quite helpful toward understanding nanotechnology, although both GM crops and nanotechnology require knowledge in disciplines other than those mentioned here to fully appreciate*. However, I believe both fields have to be supported and monitored, hopefully not to the point of regulation but I am not optimistic that is avoidable, if we are to make the most of the opportunities they present rather than suffer the consequences of the disasters they could be. The support component of that last sentence is why I really asked “what of it then” of this post’s headline. It didn’t really matter too much to me, given the values I saw here.

Now, if you want to make it a philosophical question of what I thought about the numerical values relative to each other, then sure, I’ll give you an opinion. I think it’s good that the British government spent that much on GM crops relative to organic research. The organic industry is thriving on its own. It doesn’t need government help. What it does need is government regulation to certify organic claims, although my approach would be to let the industry certify itself and then have government comment on it before settling it. Industry can decide how honest it thinks it should be if it were to hope to keep on thriving, to start, rather than government telling them. GM crops, on the other hand, needs government intervention because companies creating the crops are making it their proprietary rights, doing things like selling rice to farmers in poor countries to guarantee themselves a share of the farmers’ work. I don’t care if it is proprietary technology or whatever, I don’t approve of reaping its benefits in this manner. You don’t pick on the poor to enslave them and that’s that. As far as I’m concerned, GM crop is something the government should be funding research because their successful discoveries should be “public” and public goods. It should be the government of a country that provide successful solutions to their farmers’ crop problem, or the farmers of another nation. There are some real serious threats with GM crops. There’s only a threat of dishonesty with organic agriculture.

But whether you agree with me or not, we can both sleep well tonight knowing it’s only spare change that got committed. And if you are vehemently opposed to GM crop, and British, you can at least take some comfort your government was open-minded enough to look into it despite the bad rap it consistent gets. If it behaved the same way on everything else, something like compact fluorescent bulbs might never have seen the light with the mercury in them. Instead of the commitment to GM crops, though, you should be worried about its dishonesty to hide it and protect this commitment so well rather than the fact they do it.

Minh Tan
Envirostats author

* I am facing a similar dilemma with nuclear technology, but I leaning even more to one side, pro-nuclear, than I am leaning with nanotechnology because I have seen quite some convincing statistics about nuclear energy whereas with nanotechnology, I have only seen case studies of benefits and risks, with nothing quantifying them.

- The Independent, Oct 28 2007

Compare the values with the world value of 15% used being supplied by nuclear reactors. Most of the countries without nuclear power electricity also tend not to use nearly as much electricity as those that do, which is why the 15% value exists despite only 30 of some 220+ countries having nuclear power generated electricity. If the countries were closer in parity for electricity used, in total or per capita, the value expected for 30 of 220+ countries would be a lot smaller than 15% given it’s only 2% in some countries like China.

But look at France! Or Belgium! Wow! Talk about a completely different “grid” than what we have here in North America!

Please compare to Stat 0519 for nuclear reactor distribution among countries if you want to do some comparative capacity calculations.  [Envirostats author]

-  The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), via Science Daily, Oct 24 2007