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The Energy Spectator
Measuring America’s Default From World Leadership
On nuclear power, the U.S. is on the wrong side of history.
President Obama came away from the Korean trade negotiations last week looking much diminished. “U.S. Wields Less Clout at Summit” was the typical headline in the Wall Street Journal.
All this was attributed to many factors — the slow recovery of the economy, the failure of Keynsian spending, Obama’s election losses or the Federal Reserve’s egregious attempts to promote trade advantages by weakening the dollar. Meanwhile, the Koreans refused to be cowed, saying the fault lay with the U.S., which hadn’t given them enough to review the revisions made in the original agreement struck with President Bush.
Much is obviously due to the President’s egotism. As Charles Krauthammer pointed out on Fox News, “Obama constantly feels compelled reinvent the wheel.” He can’t accept anything from previous Presidents but must put his personal stamp on everything. Thus, he felt compelled to rewrite a perfectly suitable trade agreement handed him by the Bush Administration — and missed a deadline in the process. Meanwhile, Bush was winning loads of admiration by refusing to say a single unkind word about Obama during his book tour —- even as the new President has spent his entire two-year term blaming everything on his predecessor.
If you really want to see one of the underlying causes for America’s diminishing role in the world, however, take a look at another set of negotiations taking place in Washington right now between Korea and the U.S. over the 1974 Nuclear Fuel Treaty due for renewal in 2014.
At the time the original agreement was signed, the U.S. was leading the world in introducing nuclear power, the great new energy discovery expected to replace highly polluting coal. Korea, on the other hand, was a poor, Third World country, still recovering from the Korean War and ruled by Park Chung-hee, an autocrat who tried to make himself president for life before being assassinated in 1979.
Now flash forward 36 years. The U.S. has virtually abandoned nuclear technology, not having licensed a new reactor since 1976. We never recovered our nerve after Three Mile Island. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has shrugged off these fears and moved ahead. There are now 60 reactors under construction around the world, 20 of them in China, which only initiated a nuclear program in 2006. France, Russia, and Japan all have mature industries and are marketing their reactors and nuclear technology to more than 30 countries, including Vietnam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, and many others.
Last year, those mature industries suddenly encountered a fierce new competitor — South Korea. The Koreans have become a nuclear-happy country. They already get 40 percent of their electricity from nuclear (as opposed to our 20 percent) and are just getting into the business. Until 1995 they had the Japanese build reactors for them. Then they took an old design from Combustion Engineering (now a part of Japanese-owned Westinghouse) and designed the Korean Standard Nuclear Plant, a 1400-megawatt giant that has won praise throughout the world. The Koreans run their reactors at 95 percent capacity — the only country in the world that exceeds our excellent 90 percent capacity. (We still know how to run reactors, we just aren’t allowed to build them anymore.) All those years in which Korean students led the world in math and physics scores are finally paying off. The highest concentration of PhD’s in the world is in Seoul.
Last year the Koreans bid against France’s Areva and Japan’s Westinghouse for the largest contract ever offered — the job of building four new reactors in the United Arab Emirates. Although Areva and Westinghouse had much longer résumés, Korea shocked the field by winning the bidding at $20 billion. The whole country is now celebrating. Last month the government held National Nuclear Fair to introduce schoolchildren to the technology.
So after thirty years, the position of the two countries is almost completely reversed. Korea is now on the world’s cutting edge in nuclear technology while the U.S. is trying to plug leaks in 40-year-old reactors. Yet to our diplomats, nothing has changed. We’re still the masters of the universe.
Unfortunately, around 1974, we became obsessed with the idea that reprocessing spent nuclear fuel would lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world. Spent fuel, you see, contains small quantities of plutonium, the principal material for most nuclear weapons. If we isolated that plutonium during reprocessing, someone might steal it. The source of this anxiety was The Curve of Binding Energy, a book by New Yorker reporter John McPhee, in which his main source of information, maverick physicist Ted Taylor, predicted that “hundreds of explosions a year” could take place in American cities from stolen plutonium. In 1974, India did build a bomb with plutonium extracted from a research reactor given to them by the Canadians. And so, when we signed the agreement with Korea to supply them with nuclear fuel, we stipulated that they could not reprocess it.
On the other hand, reprocessing has become essential to any country such as Korea that is serious about a nuclear future. First, it eliminates the false problem of “nuclear waste” that has tied this country in knots. Reprocessing extracts the spent uranium and plutonium, which can be recycled as fuel, reducing the volume of spent fuel by 95 percent. France stores all its high-level waste beneath the floor of one room at Le Hague while we can’t find room to put ours in the whole state of Nevada. Most important for Korea, it has no domestic uranium supplies and must depend entirely on imports. Reprocessing can cut its fuel imports by 30 percent.
While Korea has now moved way ahead of us on nuclear technology, to us it’s still 1974. And so, our diplomats are telling the Koreans they can’t reprocess their fuel. We’re afraid they might make a bomb with it. The Koreans say they are being treated “like criminals” and suggest it’s time to look at the relationship “through a new lens.” Nonetheless, we’re standing on past privilege. After all, this is our technology, isn’t it?
Just think, South Korea shares a peninsula with a madman who has already built a nuclear bomb and threatens to use it any time. North Korea has already attacked South Korean ships and crossed the demilitarized zone. It’s a wonder South Korea hasn’t built a bomb already. Theoretically, it is under our “nuclear umbrella,” but consider this. If North Korea dropped a bomb on Seoul tomorrow, does anyone really think we would retaliate by wiping Pyongyang off the map? Wouldn’t we appoint a committee to study the matter instead? Wouldn’t we have to file an environmental impact statement?
If our “nonproliferation experts” refuse to budge, it’s more than likely the Koreans will turn elsewhere. The Russians are already volunteering to supply countries with nuclear fuel and then take it back for reprocessing. “The Russians have a peculiar level of comfort with all things nuclear,” said a New York Times reporter recently, apparently not realizing it may be us who has a peculiar level of discomfort. Wouldn’t it be ironic if, after fighting a war in which we suffered 50,000 casualties to keep South Korea out of the Soviet orbit, we should now turn them over to the Russians because of our inordinate fear of all things nuclear?
It’s a sad story, as old as history — a young, upstart country with great ambitions for the future confronting an aging society that has lost its nerve and wants to live off the privileges of its past. Only this time we’re on the wrong side of history.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (30) | Leave a comment
More Articles by William Tucker
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Appleby| 11.15.10 @ 7:05AM
Ignorance can be cured; stupid is forever. We have the same problem in Toronto regarding modern incineration technology to dispose of trash and garbage; our Greenie (now lame duck) heirarchy shrieks hysterically at the very suggestion of building the type of incinerator that is used not only all over Europe but in surrounding communities to us -- and instead insists on trucking our trash and garbage to be dumped in a landfill IN MICHIGAN.
Michigander| 11.15.10 @ 7:55AM
And we appreciate it, cause for such a "green" country, you folks throw away some pretty good stuff!!
Alan Brooks| 11.16.10 @ 12:59AM
"America’s Default From World Leadership"
Began Jan 20th 1989 with the administration of Pantywaist From Kennebunkport.
(or was it Midland TX?
can't remember)
Ken (Old Texican)| 11.15.10 @ 7:13AM
Mr. Tucker
Thank you for that.
I am wondering though, shouldn't the new generation of our own nuke plants be more de-centralized "modular" units?
Louis Jenkins| 11.15.10 @ 8:24AM
I was wondering what happened to Combustion Engineering. Use to work for it back in the early 70s. It went the way of buffalo, which is exactly what our nuclear energy program did. Kind of like our Dept. of Energy. Only the budget keeps getting bigger, and for what? So we can fall farther behind? Obama needs to wake up!
Jobe| 11.15.10 @ 10:25AM
We are allowing organizational bureaucracies such as OSHA and the EPA, along with all of the various state rooted greenies to marginalize us. We have no one but ourselves to blame as we fall further and further behind the rest of the developed world.
Our educational system, awash in scams and gimmickry, has helped us tumble from a position of leadership to a position of embarrassment as far as the achievement of our students goes.
Happy obama, everyone.
winterhawk| 11.15.10 @ 8:39AM
I find it hypocritcal how the liberals talk about how far we are behind the "greening" fiasco. They say we should be in the lead. You never hear them talk about our lagging effort in nuclear energy which has "greening" beat all to hades. It's all about money. They are in a position to gain monetarially with the "greening" manure while the rest of us will be paying dearly. Greening has to be gone like global warming, liberlism and political correctness. All these things are bringing us to our knees.
Nunya| 11.15.10 @ 4:07PM
Hawk, keep in mind the "green" movement is all about power and control, not about the environment. It is Marxism at its core, but uses "the environment" for the reason government continually increases its power and control of people.
Rmm| 11.15.10 @ 9:18AM
It is way past time that the US 'sunset' its neurosis about building nuke power plants. The rest of the world has left us in the dust. In this void Greenies have been allowed to rush in with their hair-brained schemes about solar power, wind power, etc. that will not ever come close to meeting our energy needs. This is a no brainer and yet we can't seem to move away from our moratorium on new construction. We have left ourselves in a position of not having enough skilled welders in America to even build a new plant.
Bill| 11.15.10 @ 9:33AM
Now why would we want to build anything that is so sensible and would provide clean energy to this country as well as employment. Why I ask would we want to do something like that when we can spend tax payer dollars to litter the land scape with wind mills? Did not our ancestors use windmills to provide power.... hmm and I think they also had limited income and road horses. What a novel idea. Vote the idiots out !!
Eric Cartman| 11.15.10 @ 9:46AM
We have had a case of the stupids ever since Three Mile Island - where no one, not one single person, furry animal, twig or rock was injured or even had a hair mussed.
The stupidity, of course, is aided and abetted by the Democrats and Lefty Eco-freaks who want us to return to mud huts and grass soup - its so natural! They are the main reason we are the cavemen at the nukefest. It's by far the safest power source out there and our "leaders' should be promoting it , but what we get are Liberal Aholes like Reid paying off the barflys, lounge lizards and gamblers to stumble out of the burlesque show every now and then to protest storing the waste at a desert mountain they sort of know about because it has a funny name - sounds like what they do every morning slouched over the toilet, "Yuuuccccaaaaa"
We better get a case of the smarts real soon.
Appleby| 11.15.10 @ 11:55AM
We used to have a bumper sticker that said "More people died at Chappaquiddick than died at Three Mile Island."
Eric Cartman| 11.15.10 @ 12:50PM
LOL - Ain't that the truth. And there was less pollution.
Mistral| 11.15.10 @ 10:15AM
In the first place Americans have to unseat this Indoneseo-Kenyan tresspasser in the Whitehouse. Both he and his wife look like a couple of bucolic simpletons on the public stage, bowing, scraping, smiling inanely and dressing up as though they are afraid to offend the mahomaten world.
After that the greatest need is to find an intelligent and genuine American who wants to lead the US into the 21st century properly as President putting behind us all the left wing propensities for destroying American people before they are born; incriminating those with entrepreneurial skills; outlawing the use of fossil fuels; encouraging by every means mass illegal entry into the country and buying into ruinous vogue politically correct programmes such as global warming and the subjectively alleged normalcy of homosexual behaviour which is now being dicatatorially imposed on the overwhelming majority of us at every level of the social & educational infrastructure at immense cost. We also need to bring the troops home and let mahomatens pay for & organise their own security with only themselves to blame when everything goes wrong. Moreover, it is time the US stopped funding the corrupt and inept anti-American UN asking it to leave New York and find a new home - perhaps Karachi would be a more suitable venue.
Indeed, a thoroughly intelligent and proudly American President is required urgently.
Bob K.| 11.15.10 @ 10:16AM
Nuclear technology as we use it in the USA is safe.
Here in NE PA the Berwick Nuclear Power Plant, on the Susquehanna River( about 80 miles up river from Three Mile Island) has been generating clean and reasonably priced electric power since 1983. It competes with Coal Generating Plants in the area and with some ugly Wind Farms on nearby mountain ridges which are subsidized by the government. The nearest utility is required to purchase the electricity generated by them. One way the utility profits from this is by taking this electricity and expanding it's reach into the northern suburbs of Washington DC and selling it there; thereby helping to subsidize in turn the federal bureaucrats who oversee the Nuclear Industry!
I don't work for the nuclear industry so I can state that they have been a good neighbor here. The Berwick Power Plant even has a 1200 acre Environmental Wetlands Park open to the public.
Here is a link to it if you like:
http://www.pplweb.com/susquehanna+riverlands/
There have been some minor problems which were handled in a routine manner but no evacuations were ever considered.
Stan Redmond| 11.15.10 @ 10:27AM
Didn't you all see that scary drama "China Syndrome." If ever there was a movie to dictate national energy policy that was it.
JimH| 11.15.10 @ 11:03AM
We have hundreds of miners dying annually around the world from accidents, thousands more from disease induced by mining; We have smoke and ash spewed out by coal burning furnaces; We have homes, sometimes neighborhoods blowing up due to gas leaks; We have numerous oil drilling, refining and transporting accidents along with the pollution generated by burning this valuable chemical feedstock for fuel; We now have thousands/millions? of acres of land that could be used to grow food diverted to grow ethanol; We have windmills which are a blight on the landscape and slaughter birds; And we are told nuclear power is dangerous? Much of this attitude is the result of a woeful failure of public education and a over abundance of lawyers.
Bob K.| 11.15.10 @ 3:08PM
Well said!!
We have seen much of this here in the Anthracite Coal region and Northeast PA and we are probably going to see more when the Marcellus Shale natural gas exploration really gets going.
Yosemeti Sam| 11.15.10 @ 11:44AM
" Measuring America’s Default From World Leadership ...."
Um, full view ZERO-SUM reality of Americas'
declining fortunes.
Thanks to: WACKO environmentalists, corporate AVARICE, LEFTOID politicos, HOLLOWwood sandbox casuist allegorists, LEFTOID casuist media - aka PEN1. And sclerotic SPOOKY dudes.
Including MYOPIC Presidents past and present.
THE necrotic disease carriers upon AMERICAs' future body of hopes for it's OWN POSTERITY.
ABNCP| 11.15.10 @ 11:46AM
Beat up at home and beat up abroad. Obama is just starting on a long losing streak. We have put an empty suit in as President of our country. The man has no experience. No executive experience, no management experience. He didn't even have the management experience of being a small town Mayor in a place, I don't know say Wasilla Alaska.
He has no diplomatic experience. He was so far over his head at Seoul and at the G20 meeting it was embarrassing for this country. He would have been much more effective being outside leading the anarchists and communists like the Chiago thug community organizer that he is qualified to be. He has no military experience. His hand picked Commander for Afganistian, General McChristal, finally could not stand the man and made sure his feelings were made public. This fool has to go.
Richard| 11.15.10 @ 11:54AM
The enviro wackos control the Dem party and the Dem party has killed any hope of new nuclear power plants (I will admit some RINOs have helped). This is a great example of liberalism making its adherents stupid--they refuse to look at facts because they are sooo inconvenient.
Perusha The Offender| 11.15.10 @ 1:10PM
Ah, the ongoing nuclear energy story. May it entertain us all in its “eternal return”, a la Nietzsche!
Reading this article made me just dip into an old (1981) tome by Bucky Fuller, “Critical Path”, which made quite an impression on me almost 30 years ago. I’m sure old Fuller was one of the key figures “waking up” Americans to the danger of atomic energy.
As I recall, he likened it to burning your house to get energy.
He was so “extreme”, at the age of 85---a typical old crank?
Here is, though, one great quote that I earmarked---
“In reality, I never ‘leave home’. My backyard has just grown progressively (Progressively!) bigger and more globular (Global!) until now the whole world is my spherical backyard. ‘Where do you live?’ and ‘What are you?’ are progressively (there it is, again!) less sensible questions. ‘At present I am a passenger on Spaceship Earth,’ and ‘I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category, a highbred specialization. I am not a thing---a noun. I am not flesh. At eighty-five, I have taken in over a thousand tons of air, food, and water, which temporarily became my flesh and which progressively (again!) disassociated from me. You and I seem to be verbs---evolutionary processes. Are we not integral functions of the Universe?’” Page 131-132
A THOUSAND TONS of stuff, in and out!
Perhaps this is what began my own random habit, when inhaling to say, “Here I come”, and when exhaling, “There I go.”
HERE---I go, again.
THERE.
Ken (Old Texican)| 11.15.10 @ 1:49PM
Mr. Tucker,
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES...should only have to explain...after the fact...that "this is the way it is GOING to be."
Unstated of course..."Eurabia, kiss my butt. China, Korea, Japan, you cannot sell here any more."
"...You guys can kiss my butt also."
Screw globalism!
Not so much an idiot as you| 11.15.10 @ 2:17PM
If nuclear energy is so great, how come, by law, the liability for a nuclear accident is limited to $10 billion? Beyond that the federal government, i.e., we the taxpayers, have to pick up the tab.
Shouldn't the nuclear industry itself be fully responsible? Why should you or I have to subsidize their risk?
Mark G| 11.15.10 @ 2:26PM
"Silly humans. They understand the Atom and yet they still light stuff on fire to produce power. So filthy and crude."
"Until you master your fear of the Atom you will be a second class people. Move on up to Star Power!!"
--- Space Alien
Not so much an idiot as you| 11.15.10 @ 2:32PM
So now we have to accept the opinions of "Space Aliens" as legitimate? Sarah Palin isn't enough?
A good deal of the reason why the human race is not yet ready to adopt nuclear power wholesale is that we do not understand the Atom sufficiently to be able to control it safely.
Observant| 11.16.10 @ 5:54PM
Apparently 'not so much...' hasn't been paying attention to the rest of the world which has widely and enthusiastically adopted nuclear power, and apparently seems to be able to control it, too. 'Not so much...' should change his/her name to 'More of an...'
MoeBlotz| 11.15.10 @ 2:38PM
My dear departed sister worked for Argonne National Laboratory in late 1970s and she quoted a line for all time,"A little nukie never hurt anybody."
Irreverent| 11.15.10 @ 2:40PM
Perhaps she meant "nookie".
Nite| 11.15.10 @ 7:40PM
Obama is in over his head. The radicals in his administration are NO better. His lack of knowledge really showed on this foreign trip. He is operating from an extremely weakened position now.