The Social Construction of Ignorance: Cochran and the Fast Reactor Canard

Thomas B. Cochran is a lobbyist employed by the Natural Resources Defense Council, to attack nuclear power on a full time basis. As befits a Lobbyist, Cochran is well compensated. In 2006 Cochran was one of the 5 highest paid employees of the NRDC, with a total compensation package approaching $200,000. In 2006 the largest single foundation donor to the the NRDF was the Energy Foundation, an environmental funding NGO, that also funds many other anti-nuclear "environmental organizations. The NRDC has been a recipient of funding from the Pro-coal Joyce Foundation, which has served as a conduit for funding of pro-coal lobbying, and propaganda activities to a number of environmental organizations. The NRDC has also been the recipient of funding from the infamous Tides Foundation, which allegedly provides sub-rosa funding services between supposedly ideologically pure organizations and environmentally tainted funders. The NRDC also receives funding by the Ted Turner foundation, a funding source controlled by natural gas baron, Ted Turner, who along with T. Boone Pickens is on of the architects of the natural gas-renewables alliance.

Cochran is a long time critic of nuclear power, whose criticism seemingly do not squarely put him in the nay sayers camp. Cochran is not as obviously a fake expert as is Amory Lovins, but there are some red flags. Cochran is a Nuclear proliferation expert and nuclear proliferation canard has been a major item in the the anti-nuclear propaganda story. Alex DeVolpi writes,

A. David Rossin, a former DOE official who had substantial nuclear-technology experience before entering government service, writes that long ago he first heard from Tom Cochran of the NRDC the term “weapons-usable.” Rossin agrees that — despite the large body of contradictory evidence — the term is often applied by “today’s nonproliferation activists” indiscriminately to “all isotopes of plutonium."

The Hoffnagles offer a category of "denialist" strategies, Impossible expectations (and moving goalposts). it is fair to ask if the nuclear proliferation argument against nuclear power is not an anti-nuclear ploy. Since Cochran testified before the DoE Blue Ribbon Commission last week, it is legitimate to ask if his testimony amounted to knowledge pollution or if it expressed a fact and science based set of rational beliefs.

Cochran's testimony before the Blue Ribbon Commission included a challenge to the legitimacy of the Commission, that the Commission was not lawfully constituted:

The Commission membership is not balanced as required by law. First, let me make that we do not question the integrity of the members of the Commission, for which we have regard, and we recognize your dedication to public service. The issue arises from the legal requirement that committees under FACA be balanced in terms of the points of view represented, and from the common-sense view that if you desire to succeed you shouldn’t begin by locking out constituencies that you need for success. This commission is not balanced and important points of view are not represented on the Commission.

This objection appears to have been proforma, and intended to lay the groundwork for a subsequent propaganda anti-nuclear campaigns against the Blue Ribbon Commission report, which is likely to make recommendations that the NRDC and its fossil fuel industry paymasters oppose. Cochran articulated the NRDC's interests, as one of fair representation,

NRDC, other NGOs and individuals with long interest and sometimes active participation in federal policy related to the management and disposal of nuclear wastes share a range of views from a position that nuclear power should compete for market share without further federal subsidies to the belief that the role of nuclear power should not be expanded due to cost, proliferation, safety and waste management considerations. Many believe further nuclear subsidies carry high opportunity costs in mitigating climate change. The views of these groups and individuals are not represented on the Commission. . . .

Cochran then cleverly set the commission up for failure by suggesting who should be represented in its membership, and what it should try to accomplish. First,

Attachment 3 is a statement of Principles for Safeguarding Waste at Reactor Site. This statement was produced and circulated long before the formation of the Blue Ribbon Commission. It is signed by representatives of some 170 national and local groups in 50 states— a very large, thoughtful constituency that are actively participating in matters now under consideration by the Commission. In NRDC’s view these groups have essentially no representation on the Commission. The DOE and the Obama administration should have been aware of this statement, the long involvement of many of these organizations in the “issues under consideration” by the Commission, and should have made sure that they were represented on the Commission just as the nuclear industry is well represented.

The Commission cannot expect to be an effective voice in solving the nuclear waste problem if it excludes representation of important constituencies from participating in its discussions and formulating its recommendations. If you expect to reform the process for managing and disposing of spent fuel and nuclear waste, you best not begin by locking out of the process important constituencies whose inclusion is needed to reach a durable consensus on future policy.

Secondly Cochran recommended goals for the commission,

The Commission should focus on getting the geologic repository program back on track. Regardless of whether U.S. nuclear capacity increases, decreases or stays approximately the same, and regardless of which nuclear fuel cycle is adopted or when, the United States needs one or more geologic repositories for the sequestering of spent fuel and high level radioactive waste for very long periods. Consequently, in our view the highest priority of the Blue Ribbon Commission is to get the repository program back on track. This should be the focus of your efforts and recommendations of your interim report. The issue of what is the preferred future fuel cycle can wait.

These two suggestions, taken together are a trap, likely to lead the Commission into failure in its assignment. The groups which Cochran recommends for inclusion in the Commission, undoubtedly include "Not in My Back Yard" (NIMBY) constituencies. The recommendation of a geologic repository program is likely to bring out NIMBY opposition in force.

Cochran then clearly joined the anti-nuclear cam by attacking the fast reactor option for closing the fuel cycle:

The wide spread use of fast reactors and a closed fuel cycle to burn selective actinides for waste management purposes has essentially no chance of succeeding within any policy time frame that is relevant to resolving either current nuclear waste storage issues or the problem of decarbonizing the U.S. electric power generation sector. Continued U.S. research and development (R&D) on advanced reprocessing will also fan global interest in plutonium separation and utilization technology and thereby increase nuclear weapons proliferation risks.

Closed fuel cycle schemes to reduce repository requirements typically require that on the order of one-third of the reactor capacity be comprised of fast reactors. The precise fraction is not important here—only to note it is a large fraction. To achieve such a balanced ratio of fast to thermal reactor capacity in the United States in the next few decades would require roughly that the next 50 gigawatts-electric (GWe) of reactor capacity built in the United States to be fast reactors, e.g., 50 fast reactors each about the average size of U.S. nuclear power reactors operational today. The Commission should acknowledge the fundamental reasons why this outcome is highly unlikely in the next few decades or for that matter in this century.
History has not been kind to fast reactors. They have cost considerably more than thermal reactors, and seem likely to stay that way, and have proven to be much less reliable than thermal reactors.

There are several acts of knowledge pollution here. First Cochran is aware that fast reactors are not the only plutonium burning option. If he is unaware of the Molten Salt Reactor actinide burning option, then his competence as a nuclear proliferation/nuclear arms control expert is open to question. In effect Cochran attempts to fines all plutonium burning breeder options by dismissing fast reactors. In doing so he ignores the potential nuclear waste disposal use of Molten Salt Reactors. Canadian Reactor Scientist, David LeBlanc has recently pointed out the developmental potential of the Denatured Molten Salt Reactor (DMSR). The DMSR could be quickly developed, because its design utilizes already mature, tested, technologies, it is highly safe, and can use any possible nuclear fuel. ORNL originally proposed the DMSR because it had outstanding proliferation prevention characteristics. These proliferation prevention features would undoubtedly undercut Cochran's objection to plutonium burning closed fuel cycle reactors, and thus would destroy his attempt to destroy the nuclear power option by setting the bar to high.

That Cochran is aware of the Molten Salt Reactor option is beyond dispute. He is a listed co-author report on the history and current developmental status of Fast Breeder Reactors, titled "Fast Breeder Reactor Programs: History and Status. " Cochran co-authored a chapter of that report which includes a discussion of the Molten Salt Reactor:

Although the highest priority was given to LMFBRs, several other types of breeders were considered, and reached various stages of development in the United States. In addition to the LMFBR, these included the gas (helium) cooled fast breeder, and two thermal-neutron reactor types, the light-water breeder reactor and the molten-salt breeder reactor (MSBR). The fast-neutron breeder reactors were designed to breed plutonium from uranium-238, while the thermal-neutron breeder designs were optimized to breed uranium-233 from thorium-232.

Perhaps the most interesting alternate concept explored in this early work was the molten-salt breeder, which still has advocates.47 In this reactor, the fuel and coolant are combined in a molten mixture of fluoride salts. The salt flows through the reactor core, through an intermediate heat exchanger, and then back to the reactor core. Molten-salt reactors were first proposed by Ed Bettis and Ray Briant of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) during the post-World War II attempt to design a nuclear-powered aircraft.48 Two molten-salt reactors were built at ORNL. The first was a prototype aircraft reactor, the 1.5 MWt Aircraft Reactor Experiment (ARE), which operated for 100 hours in October 1954. The second, the graphite-moderated 8 MWt Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE), operated between June 1965 and December 1969, demonstrating the technical feasibility of the molten-salt breeder concept.

In 1972, ORNL proposed a major development program that would have culminated in the construction and operation of a demonstration reactor called the Molten Salt Breeder Experiment. The total program cost was estimated at $350 million over a period of 11 years.49 Those who would have had to approve the funding of the program were already heavily committed to the LMFBR, however. The ORNL proposal was rejected by the AEC partly because it wished to reduce the number of breeder candidates to be developed and because the breeding ratios projected for the molten-salt reactor were low compared to those foreseen for the fast-neutron reactors.50 In January 1973, ORNL was directed to terminate MSBR development work. The program was reinstated a year later, and in 1974 ORNL submitted a more elaborate proposal calling for approximately $720 million to be spent over an 11-year period. This proposal was also rejected, and, in 1976, ORNL was again ordered to shut down the MSBR program “for budgetary reasons.”

Thus clearly Cochran is aware of the MSBR's existence, and has some idea about its potential. Yet in his testimony before the Blue Ribbon Commission, Cochran omitted mention of the Molten Salt Reactor based closed end fuel cycle options. Given the statement on the Molten Salt Reactor which Cochran allegedly co-authored, the omission of mention of a Molten Salt Reactor closed fuel cycle option appears to have been deliberate. Cochran ignored important information, which would have given the the Blue Ribbon Commission an attractive option that would have offered a potential contribution to managing the problem of used light water reactor fuel, while also offering a potential source of low cost nuclear generated low carbon electricity. Thus even as he ignored the potentially attractive DMSR option, Cochran sought to block all use of closed end fuel cycle approaches to the LWR nuclear waste issue, by an attack on the LMFBR. This argument fails the standard, of rational fact and science based discourse.

A canard, is a story intended to distract its hearers from an important truth. Cochran's attack on fast reactors thus is a canard intended to distract the Blue Ribbon Commission from the promising solutions to the problems of current nuclear technology offered by molten salt nuclear technology. I can only conclude that Thomas Cochran engaged in deliberate acts of knowledge pollution during his testimony before the DoE's Blue Ribbon Comission on the Nuclear Future.

Blue Ribbon Commission Hearings: Makhijani and Knowledge Pollution

The so called Blue Ribbon Commission on the American Nuclear Future held two meetings on May 25 and 26. The Tuesday meeting featured Lobbyists of various strips, including a number of well known nuclear naysayers. But even the naysayers may have something to contribute. Arjun Makhijani, for example offered an account of the issues posed by used nuclear fuel in a once through fuel cycle. Makhijani, a well known nuclear naysayer, reviewed some, but by no means all of the facts, and the his selectivity was telling. Among the options which Makhijani failed to discuss, were recycling so called nuclear waste in CANDU type reactors, and using fissionable waste as LFTR start up charges. Makhijani clearly demonstrates that there is a large amount of fissionable material is still found in used nuclear fuel. Residual U-235 is about 0.68% of the total used fuel material resources, but that is already a concentration high enough to power Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors. In addition the used fuel contains about 0.99% plutonium isotopes, a majority of which are fissionable and can also be used as PHWR fuel.

In addition, while points to the fast breeder nuclear disposal option, Makhijani fails to note that in addition to LMFBR option and the the potential use of so called nuclear waste as PHWR fuel, the fissionable materials in used nuclear fuel can be used as start up charges for various types of Molten Salt Reactors.

Makhijani notes that the the existing american nuclear fleet can be expected to produce 100,000 tons of used nuclear fuel during its operational life. This would be the equivalent of 700 tons of U-235, and a 1000 tons of plutonium isotopes. Used as start up charges for LFTR one to one converters, this would potentially produce enough sustainable energy to power the entire United States economy at current high energy levels. No wonder Makhijani chose to ignore the MSR/LFTR fissionable byproducts disposal option, despite well documented proposals for Oak Ridge, and Moscow.

In addition to his neglect of promising options for the disposal of the potentially most dangerous constituents if used nuclear Makhijani vastly exaggerates the problems posed by nuclear fuel reprocessing, and the dangers posed by its consequences. For example, claims that fuel reprocessing would add one cent per kWh to electrical costs. But in fact the picture is more complex than that. In LFTR one to one converters, the cost of the start up charge is a one time expense. Once conversion begins, LFTR fuel related costs would decrease dramatically. One thousand tons of reactor grade plutonium, could potentially start LFTRs capable of producing 1000 GWs of electricity, enough to supply about 80% of American energy. Since there would be very little subsequent fuel costs given the LFTR, even Makhijani estimated 8 trillion dollar cost for processing the plutonium out of used nuclear fuel be offer quite a bargain.

A further problem with Makhijani's account is related to his claim that ~12,000 to 14,000 nuclear bombs could be constructed from spent nuclear fuel. This assumes an error that is widely voiced by nuclear critics that the plutonium found in used nuclear fuel is easily weaponizable. First, while it has been demonstrated that fuel grade plutonium can produce nuclear explosions, this is not the same thing as saying that reactor grade plutonium is weaponizable. It has been argued that heat and radiation from a RGP device would rapidly render it inoperative. A strong case can be made that it is not. in addition, even a device made from RGP would require testing.

Thus given the great expense and difficulty of plutonium extraction from used reactor fuel, which Makhijan himself outlines, the reliability problems associated with RGP weapons, and the questionable yield, even if such a weapon worked at all, would be nuclear proliferators are likely to prefer lower cost, more predictable and reliable nuclear options. South Afriuica demonstrated in the 1970's and 80's that a low cost uranium enrichment program was possible, and could lead to the development of of reliable and predictable nuclear weapons. The successful South African proliferation model, as well as those followed by Pakistan and North Korea, suggest that focus on plutonium in used nuclear fuel as a proliferation too is highly misguided. Rather than focusing on the unlikely proliferation path that plutonium isotopes in used nuclear fuel provide, proliferation prevention efforts should focus on successful proliferation paths that are already in place. if we are incapable of stopping proliferation by low cost, tested methods, it is foolish to focuse on higher cost, and far more problematic proliferation methods. The entire proliferation issue as outlined by Makhijan is nothing but a canard habitually used by the anti-nuclear lobby.

in addition to his choice to ignore several promising technologies that could potentially disposed of most or even all fissionable materials and other actinides in used nuclear fuels, Makhijan chose to downplay the potential of fast breeder reactors. He does so by ignoring fast breeder programs in Russia and india, that are very close to yielding commercial prototypes. In particular the Indians plan to bring commercial fast breeders into serial production during this decade, and similar goals are possible for Russia. The Indians plan to bring as many as 320 fast breeders online by 2050, and use their surplus fuel to power Generation III+ PHWRs. Although Makhijan is undoubtedly aware of Indian plans,he focuses instead on,

Japan’s commercialization date for sodium-cooled breeders is now2050.

And instead of focusing on promising Molten Salt Reactor technology, Makhijan suggests

If we are going to develop long-ter nuclear technologies, why not focus on nuclear fusion, which has almost none of the disadvantages of fission?

In fact one of the most promising schemes for fusion development, the so called fusion-fission hybrid, uses molten salt technology that similar to that which would be also used in the LFTR, and indeed at a significant level of investment the LFTR can be ready for serial manufacture in factories within 10 years, so it would not be even a particularly long term project.

Arjun Makhijani, despite his pose as a voice of science and reason, is thus another agent of knowledge pollution, who seeks to spread doubt and confusion about important issues.

The Blue Ribbon Commission has its work cut out for it, if it is to get past the Knowledge polluters.

The Social Construction of Ignorance: Knowledge Pollution and Nuclear Power

In the first essay in this series, I focused on a complaint by Stephen Gloor, that Rod Adams has engaged in a form of denialism in his advocacy of nuclear power. Gloor failed to demonstrate his case against Adams with actual quotations, and instead rested his argument on a series of unproven charges. I agued that not only were Gloor's charges unproven, but that there is ample evidence in Adams writings that they are completely false. Indeed it would appear that Gloor's charges against Adams had an ironic aspect.

In the second essay of this series, I suggested that "denialism" is a form of knowledge pollution, and pointed to the writings of the Hoofnagel brothers and Kenneth Boulding for a better understanding of what constitutes knowledge or information pollution.

In his essay, The Pollution of Information, Kenneth Boulding offers what my be described as a brief attempt at a phenomenology of knowledge pollution. Kenneth Boulding notes that

we can speak of information pollution when the information system produces images of the world which are unrealistic in the sense that they do not correspond to some external reality.

He adds

information is polluted when people tell lies or when error is perpetuated.

In addition Boulding points to another form of knowledge pollution

what might be described as ignorance, when we do not know things which would get us out of trouble if we did know them.

Boulding points out three cases examples of the production of knowledge pollution: The first is to be found in the operation or rather the dysfunction of the price system.

The

second source of information pollution results from the development of large scale organizations and the inevitable hierarchy which results. A hierarchy pollutes information, again because of a kind of distortion of the payoffs. A person rises in a hierarchy by pleasing his superior. He frequently pleases his superior by telling him what that superior wants to hear. Even at the subconscious level, therefore, there is a constant tendency for hierarchy to corrupt communications, and for necessary information to be filtered out before it reaches the top decision makers. The bigger the organization, the more likely are its top decision makers to be living in a wholly imaginary world.

Despite its disfunction,

The market, interestingly enough, even though as we have seen it has its own problems of information pollution, is itself a certain safeguard against hierarchy, simply because it permits the coordination of many different organizations without hierarchical control.

A third source of information pollution originates from

the problem of saliency. All human beings suffer from some kind of information overload, and under these circumstances it is the dramatic and salient information which breaks through the barriers that we all set up against information input. Hence our images of the world are perverted in the direction of the dramatic and away from those things which happen to be true and important but are not dramatic.

Bouldomh adds,

The only remedy for this form of information pollution is social science, and indeed the whole scientific revolution depends essentially on the development of techniques of sampling and testing which are designed to purify the information streams from error. Science is a kind of sewage plant of the information system, oxidizing error into harmless gas and returning a purer flow of information back into society.

Given that Boulding himself seems to acknowledge the inadequacies of Boulding's account of information pollution, I am going to attempt to suggest a relationship from the Hoofnagles' account of "denialism" and Bouldings of information pollution. First "denialism" attempts to use the effects of information overload, to prevent effective social responses to bad news, that suggests that business as usual may not be in order.. This is is obviously the case for the with the by now well documented disinformation campaign of the tobacco lobby. Exxon Mobil deliberately decided to emulate the tobacco lobby's disinformation campaign in order to spread doubt about Anthropogenic Global Warming, The point of such campaigns is to protect the marketing of products that carry a high social cost, that is not reflected in the market cost.

"Denialist" campaigns do not succeed in a vacuum. Smoking is extremely addictive behavior, and as the Bill Wilson and company long ago taught us, denial is a useful tool in avoiding the difficult decision to give up an addictive behavior. The Tobacco Lobby was able to fend off efforts to transfer some of the social costs of smoking to the market cost of cigarettes for a long time. In the case of fossil fuels, the fossil fuel lobbies have so far successfully avoided including the cost of carbon mitigation in the market cost of fossil fuels. Our current way of life is dependent on fossil fuels, and the notion that we are doing serious damage to the climate by greenhouse gas emissions, suggests that large, and even unfathomable changes will occur in our lives during the near future. The potential immensity of the change, and our potential for loose are something we would prefer to not think about. We really don't want to change. Thus the denialist campaign against the AGW concept strikes a responsive cord in the minds of many people who are comfortable with a way of life in which fossil fuels play a prominent role. My name is Charles B., and I am addicted to a way of life that requires the burning of an immense amount of coal, oil, and natural gas.

Denialism is not always motivated by market consideration. For example, the belief of a former President of South Africa, that AIDS was not caused by the the HIV virus. The issue here is that if people acknowledged the relationship, they would be forced to give up or modify certain sexual practices. The issue of behavior change thus lies at the heart of the denial of a AIDS-HIV relationship

The controversy over evolution would seem to involve beliefs, rather than behavior. But in this case, there is a behavioural component, that has to do with the distribution of authority in certain religious communities, and the boundaries of religious and secular knowledge. Fundamentalist preachers question evolution because their most cherished doctrine, the tithe, does not seem connected to the survival of the species. Ironically, the Tithe itself evolved in Judaism, and later Christianity.

If opposition to nuclear power is a form of denialism, what is it exactly that is being denied? Nuclear critics rest their cases on several arguments.

* Nuclear power is unsafe

* The problem of nuclear waste is a huge problem that threatens the future survival of people and indeed all life on earth.

* There is no known solution to the problem of nuclear waste.

* Nuclear power leads inevitably to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Nothing short of outlawing the use of nuclear power can prevent inevitable nuclear wars.

* Unlike renewable electrical generation sources, nuclear power is hugely expensive.

* It takes too long to build nuclear plants. We can never mitigate AGW in time if we choose to use nuclear power.

What we find in every case of denialism we have looked at, the denialist rejects information that is the consensus of scientists. If we thus find that these views of nuclear critics contradict the conclusion of scientists, then we can begin making the case that the anti-nuclear stance is a form of denialism. I will next attempt to review the relationship between the scientific views on the issues raised by nuclear critics.