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Steven Barrowes, Ph.D.
Nuclear Engineer
Dr. Steven Barrowes is a nuclear engineer based in Salt Lake
City who strongly supports the creation of a temporary nculear
waste storage facility as a means of allowing the nuclear power
industry to grow to meet the needs of society. He is identified
as a member of the "speakers list" assembled by Private
Fuel Storage to speak in favor of the Skull Valley project.
The interview was conducted by program Producer Ken Verdoia on
the campus of the Univeristy of Utah.
Ken Verdoia: Okay, Dr. Barrowes. If we were discussing
any other form of industrial waste or industrial by-product, you
and I would not be sitting here today because it probably wouldn't
rise to the level of public concern. What is it about radiation,
nuclear, when they're put into the discussion that inflames the
rhetoric?
Dr. Steven Barrowes: Well, I think it's basically because
people have such a small understanding and they know that it can
be so destructive in the matter of bombs or possibly a nuclear
accident, they're just terrified of the unknown.
Verdoia: Let's consider then the constructive role now
of nuclear power because there, nuclear power plays an important
role in the nations' energy picture and I want you to help me
understand that. How important is it?
Dr. Barrowes: Twenty-one percent of our electricity is
coming from nuclear power, and by the way, we would have a national
energy crisis already if they hadn't got a number of nuclear plants
back on line, tuned up and operating well. 1999 had the highest
percentage of on time for nuclear plants in this country because
of certain companies that had been buying up the old plants, getting
them up and running again.
Verdoia: One of the issues, obviously, associated with
keeping those plants viable is the ability to deal with the spent
nuclear fuel rods. But rather than have me say that, I'd like
you to assess how important it is to be able to effectively deal
with the spent nuclear fuel rods.
Dr. Barrowes: Well right now they store those on site,
in almost every case and there's a limited amount of space to
store those on site and it's sort of Damocles hanging over your
head that soon as you run out of space, you're going to have to
shutdown that nuclear power plant, unless you can find some other
place to put that. There's a Praire Island plant up in Minnesota
that is facing that in 2007. That's their shutdown date. I don't
know the dates for the others around the country but it's a big
threat to the nuclear power industry.
Verdoia: Can this nation afford to lose its nuclear power,
electrical generation?
Dr. Barrowes: Well, they can't now. The the extra capacity
is very scarce right now, as we know from the California energy
crisis that affects a dozen western states. They've asked us to
conserve power and try to leave a little spare that can go towards
California. They've been having rolling blackouts a number of
times already this winter.
Verdoia: Time and again we've had it expressed to us that
the opposition to a spent fuel rod storage center in Utah is safety.
This is unsafe. Transportation is unsafe. Storage is unsafe. How
do you respond to that?
Dr. Barrowes: Well, the best response to that is to do
some scientific calculations of how unsafe is it and those calculations
indicate that rhetoric is greatly inflamed. If you take the transportation
of all the spent fuel in the country to this nuclear storage site
in the Goshute Reservation, the estimate of the number of people
who would die from that exposure is less then one person. It's
closer to zero persons. That doesn't sound so unsafe to me, and
if you lived in the Goshute Village four and a half miles from
this project, it would take you 20 years to get the equivalent
of one chest x-ray. And nobody is afraid to get one chest x-ray
if they think there's any need for that.
Verdoia: I'm going to throw out a couple of things that
our governor or his officials have said. "If it's so safe,
keep it where it is."
Barrowes: Well, it's kind of like any other business.
If they had to store all their waste on their business site, they
would run out of space and they would feel very persecuted by
this and they would feel like the country didn't want their business
to exist. That's the climate that this puts on the nuclear power
industry, to say "Store it all on your own site," and
you can't move it anywhere else.
Verdoia: "We didn't produce it. We don't benefit
from it. We don't want it here."
Barrowes: Well, we do benefit from it. Every person in
this state buys products that were made partly using nuclear power
to manufacture. Part of our power here is nuclear also because
Arizona has nuclear plants, California does and the power sharing
grid does not isolate us from that nuclear power. So we get it.
We are interconnected and we do need to respond because if California
has to shut down their manufacturing to a large extent from these
blackouts, we're going to feel the economic pinch. I guarantee
you. The whole country might feel that pinch. California has ten
percent of our population.
Verdoia: You've presented a very interesting set of statistics
today, where you assess what is the record of nuclear power industry
in North America as opposed to what other legal industries have
as their death toll.
Barrowes: Yes. Nuclear energy requires a very little in
terms of the actual tonnage of the fuel. You can run a 1,000 megawatt
plant for a year and have 38 tons of spent nuclear fuel to put
someplace, and then you have to replace it with 38 tons of new
fuel. You're going to have a million tons of ashes from burning
coal, if you do it with coal. Seven million tons of coal coming
in, I think that's the right number, but a million tons of ashes
to deal with and a lot of it is going up the smokestack that you
have to catch as many as you can, and dispose of them. I should
have my little book here, but I'm not totally sure I got those
right.
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