Nuclear bailout

"Now, I know it's been long assumed that those who champion the environment are opposed to nuclear power. But the fact is, even though we've not broken ground on a new power plant -- new nuclear plant in 30 years, nuclear energy remains our largest source of fuel that produces no carbon emissions. To meet our growing energy needs and prevent the worst consequences of climate change, we'll need to increase our supply of nuclear power. It's that simple. This one plant, for example, will cut carbon pollution by 16 million tons each year when compared to a similar coal plant. That's like taking 3.5 million cars off the road."

Your post is completely OT.

Obama has shown through all of those policies that he is willing to trade away the morally right and economically best policies for the sake of political expediency.

Now he's done it with nuclear power. I wonder how many HCR reform votes the initial $52+ billion for the Republican's nuclear boondoggle bought him?

Obama needed to do nothing to let nuclear die.

No republicans are supporting HCR. Not a single one.

Obama supports nuclear because it is the only realistic solution with the scale and capacity to make even a modest dent in fossil fuel usage.

Nuclear power is a Republican energy choice. It has been a mainstay of their anti-environmental platform for 50 years; and just because we now have to tolerate the likes of Max Baucus, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson wearing a D after there name doesn't change a thing.

Hydro produces more carbon free energy than nuclear.

Renewable energy resources in aggregate DWARF nuclear power in their potential for carbon free energy going forward.


We do not need to build more nuclear power; doing so is a waste of scarce resources because renewables can deliver the same elctrons faster, cheaper, cleaner, and safer.

"Hydro produces more carbon free energy than nuclear."

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p1.html

Nuclear: 806 GWh
Hydro: 254 GWh
All other forms of renewable energy: 126 GWh

No form of power is "carbon free". Nuclear, hydro, and all renewable energy have carbon footprint. All are LOW CARBON sources of power (3% to 5% of CO2 per kWh compared to coal).

2006 (Latest year on chart)
Hydro = 29.73 quadrillion btus
Nuclear = 27.76 quadrillion btus

29.72 > 27.76

Geothermal and others 7.47

renewables 37.19

nuclear 27.76

37.19 is also greater than 27.76

http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/txt/ptb1101.html

As to "carbon free", there are times when the minor differences are relevant to a discussion . But unless there is a specific reason for doing so, I'm not going to qualify the term carbon free every time I use it. If you want to waste your time on that type of irrelevant nitpicking be my guest.

It has been long stated and known since the 1950's we build nuclear power in order to have plutonium for nuclear weapons. One must look beyond "clean energy (ie carbon neutral)" the costs of nuclear are too great to risk. Bringing nuclear power online will take too long to solve what we need today.


"A 1951 study undertaken by the AEC concluded that commercial nuclear reactors would not be economically feasible if they were used solely to produce electricity; they would be, however, if they also produced plutonium which could be sold. Utilities themselves were only mildly intrigued with the notion of being able to produce "too cheap to meter electricity," and only so long as someone else took over the responsibility for the waste products, and indemnified them against catastrophic nuclear plant accidents. The 1952 Annual Report for Commonwealth Edison is instructive on the former point:

"In last year's report, we announced that our com- panies, as one of four non-governmental groups, had entered into an agreement with the Atomic Energy Commission to study the practicability of applying nuclear energy to the production of power. The first year's study has been completed and a report has been completed and a report has been made to the Commission. Included in the report were preliminary designs of two dual-purpose reactor plants. By "dual-purpose" we mean that the plants would be primarily for the production of power but would also would produce plutonium for military purposes as a by-product. In our judgment, these plants...would be justified from an economic standpoint only if a substantial value were as- signed to the plutonium produced.""

http://www.neis.org/literature/Brochures/weapcon.htm

Far more economical, efficient, an easy to simply make a plutonium pile which you continually load new uranium slugs in and remove plutonium slugs. Essentially a bomb material factory.
US, Russia, UK, France & Israel all developed nuclear weapons BEFORE even having nuclear power (using 1960s era technology).

No nuke power = nuke bombs.

Having lived in and around the Grants Uranium Belt for sometime now and worked specifically on the matter as it relates to Tribal Nations for over two decades, you are correct. No weapons have come from a "commercial" power plant - like the one I grew up near, the Clinton (IL) Nuke plant. However, weapons have come from dual facilities like Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Hanford was both a weapons facility and power plant.

Yet the public was unaware for decades what went on at Hanford. That is a fact. It is also a fact one Tribe was forcefully removed. Twelve other Tribes lost their homeland, their treatied hunting, fishing and gathering lands, their place of genesis, the place where their ancestor rest. The fish, the land, the animals, the ancestor buried are all radioactive. Hanford spewed toxins for decades and changed the entire ecosystem. The data confirms this in and around Hanford.

It is a fact when the mines open in place like the Navajo Reservation and the Laguana Pueblo, they open b/c we are told it's for power. Yet the reality is places like Sandia Labs and Los Alamos Labs are near the Grants Uranium Belt for a reason. They are close to the source. They need both Uranium and Plutonium.

Yes nuclear power is cleaner than coal from a carbon perspective...but that is only one of the many issues we must address before we make a decision. To me nuclear power is not an option for many reasons. One is the direct tie to the nuclear military complex. Another is the method of open pit mining down in and around the Grants Uranium Belt, another is the fact the Navajo Nation has over 150 Uranium tailings piles on their land and nobody is reponsible for clean up. The mining company changed names and therefore "doesn't exist", the EPA deems the area not populated enough (yet a million live on the rez) to worry about, the NRC is not liable, etc, etc. Meanwhile a generation of men are gone in areas where mining occurred. Cancer clusters due to radioactive dust. Just b/c those in DC don't care enough to ensure safety to miners out "in the desert waste lands of the Southwest" or as President Nixon called it "a national sacrifice area for US energy".


I mean we (the world) won't let Iran and other nations have nuclear power b/c that means they have nuclear weapons. Yet you won't see the link to the same claim for the USA??????

This country lied to us at least once about the dual purpose of a Nuclear Facility (Hanford). Why won't it again with this new round of "power plants?"

Only a single plant was built and it completely sucked. Had lower operating efficiency and higher cost than the "pure weapons" plants.

Could the US build bombs from commercial power reactors? Sure. Will we? Not a chance
1) US is reducing nuclear arsenal not expanding it. Plutonium unexploded bombs can be "recycled" into new pits nearly infinitely. So even if we "modernize" our warheads there is no need to produce anymore weapons grade plutonium

2) From decommissioned weapons the US has retained 24,000 plutonium pits. http://www.lasg.org/technical/itsthepits.htm If we wanted to expand our nuclear arsenal we could start by installing those pits into new weapons.

3) We have a classified amount of unprocessed plutonium that new pits could be constructed from. The amount is unknown but some reliable groups put it at enough to make 20,000+ more warheads.

3) Even if we needed more than 50,000+ nuclear weapons (10,000 current arsenal + 24,000 plutonium pits + 20,000 potential plutonium pits) we would simply use a plutonium pile at a DOD facility to produce more weapons grade plutonium.

Personally I would like to see those 24,000 pits converted into MOX fuel so it can never hurt anyone in the future.


The nuclear fuel value of those 24,000 pits (assuming each one 3kg on weapons grade plutonium) is a lot.
Nuclear fuel costs about $2,500 per kg. Weapons grade plutonium is down-mixed in MOX to about 7% by weight. Thus 24,000 weapon cores can make about one million kg of nuclear fuel. Thats worth about $2.5 billion. At 60 MWd/MTU burnup a million kg of reactor fuel will produce slightly less than a trillion kWh of electricity.

Now imagine if we got rid of the classified plutonium stockpile and cut nuclear arsenal by 90% and converted all that into fuel.

The simple (and scary) reality is nuclear power is not a requirement for nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are magical and US scientists are that much smarter than the rest of the world. We developed them in 1950s without any advanced technology. Any nation that wants nuclear weapons will eventually get nuclear weapons.

You go through one gate to get to either site. Weapons on the left, power on the right. Your argument is based on a technicality based on ownership of parts of a large nuclear facility. We never really did give atomic knowledge to the scientist completely, the military has always had control.

The US, Russia, UK, France all detonated nuclear weapons (the US offensively) before building their first commercial power reactor.

There is nothing in history that suggests nuclear power is necessary for making nuclear weapons.

Building a bomb isn't that difficult. Can a bunch of high-school dropouts in a garage build one? No.
Can any nation with well trained physicists (US student Visa program for the win) and 1950s era technology? Yes.

You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

Even if you could make the argument to limit nuclear power on proliferation risk, expanding nuclear power in countries that already have nuclear power doesn't increase proliferation risk.
If Finland or Sweden wanted nuclear weapons bad enough there is nothing the world could have done to stop them (just as we couldn't stop China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and pretty soon Iran).

A country has and will build bombs w/o nuclear power plants. We did as well as others. I don't refute this.

But what I am saying is that nuclear power plants have been a "cloak" for nuclear weapons development especially in the era of no nuclear weapons. It is the same logic we used on Iran. As for a country like Israel, our alley doesn't need nuclear power, b/c we (along with France and others) supplied them with the source for their bombs. We and the rest of the world select who we give the source to and who we prohibit from having it.

Hanford was a cloak for weapons development. First the cloak was nobody knew what it was, then after the concerns of the nuclear bomb hit a national movement (the 1970s push) you see Hanford include a nuclear power plant that is "non military", yet it never really stopped producing bombs. It just didn't need the weapons reactors b/c it could use the power plant for the fuel it need for weapons. This is when the AEC, NRC and DOE got very inter-twined in zero checks and balances inside the government. The DOD wanted it that way so they could control what AEC and then NRC. Remember today energy is a matter of "national security". They don't have to tell you what a facilty does.

It's all documented and out their. So are the health impacts.

You bring up good points, but you seem to dodge the actual points I bring up.

For me, I am done with the argument that 'we must b/c you can't stop the world from gaining nuclear bombs/power.' Really? We developed it. We are the ones who have pushed the envelope to the Nth degree in nuclear technology. If we stop I do believe the world will stop. Why not give it a try? Most countries and rogue groups got their technology from one of two places the former USSR and the USA. The USSR only had the bomb b/c we did, or so the story goes. Clearly building a bigger arsenal and risking our future on nuclear power for me has no point.

As to your point "expanding nuclear power in countries that already have nuclear power doesn't increase proliferation risk." That is only one concern. Still we have the mining, the transport of waste, the reality that all nuclear sites have leaked waste often and without regard to public safety, the resources used like water are great. Again, nuclear while "carbon neutral" (debatable when you look at the entire cycle of nuclear power (mining, transport, storage) it has many other risks which for me outweigh its claim of carbon neutrality.

I always wondered why the ecosystem around the Clinton Nuclear Power Plant had the highest population of albino deer. Genetic mutation due to contaminated water (lake used to cool the plant) is the reason. One can look at the cancer clusters around any uranium mining operation, power plant, or weapons facility and realize carbon neutral is not the only thing we need to look at.

The reality is until we convert our existing stockpile of weapons grade plutonium into reactor fuel and burn it up we could expand our arsenal tomorrow by 500% without producing a gram of weapons grade material.

Ending nuclear power in the US will not make the 24,000 stockpiled plutonium pits go away. These are "weapon ready". Drop them into a new bomb assembly and you have a new nuclear weapon.
Ending nuclear power in the US will not make the tons of bulk stored weapons grade plutonium go away (amount and enrichment level classified).
Ending nuclear power in the US will not make the hundreds of tons of HEU (High Enriched Uranium) go away (useful for making nuclear tamper or boosting yield).

I am not saying nuclear weapons aren't an issue. We should work to REALLY reduce the arsenal (not just disassemble bombs). I simply dispute the idea that we are going to use power reactors to build new bombs.

1) If we want to build new bombs we can use our existing material in stockpile to build tens of thousands. We are only limits by bomb manufacturing capacity.
2) If we wanted more material we wouldn't use power reactors. They are horribly inefficient for making weapons grade material. It can be done (not saying it can't) but there are far easier methods.
3) If we have a "cold war 2.0" we will simply build a new Hanford and classify it. Trying to produce weapons grade material at hundreds of power plants across the country is silly and pointless.

Many of our reactors can't burn MOX fuel, however we could start a MOX production plant and begin converting those 50,000+ potential nuclear weapons into fuel for export to countries like Japan.
Until the weapons grade material is gone the bomb isn't gone. It is simply disassembled. If you want to reduce your future arsenal that is what we should be doing.

That would be all weapons grade nuclear materials in this country would be burned off for power (no new mining) and that we would only do this until a new/better method was found, or till we actually got rid of all nuclear weapons and weapons grade materials. I might agree. B.c it would mean a commitment to move beyond nuclear once and for all, or at least till we address all concerns.

Unfortunately, I feel as if we haven't looked for a new energy source for the past 30 years. Having the NASA as your avatar reminds me of my dad work at Lewis Research Facility in the 70s/80s. In the Carter years NASA did a lot on solar and wind. But then NASA didn't focus as much on it, priorities changed. It seems like little was done in the past 20 years for new energy solutions...we seem to have a major gap between what we use and the next big thing (they are all on the drawing board, still). I almost think the hype over "clean coal" and nuclear is really buying time for hydrogen fuel cells, wave technology and others to make a 20 year leap in lost R&D.

At 38 I feel as if the dialogue of nuclear power is so 1980. It didn't work then and now we want to bring it back. It is like CCS, how is CCS a break through? I am biased b/c I see daily the impact of a government who didn't care the last time we had a push for Uranium in this country and we will do it again b/c who really cares about an Indian?

As for nuclear bombs, I again think that is so 1980s. Yes a it is more dangerous for a rogue nation or a group to access a nuclear device. But I firmly believe the "super powers" have weapons that have gone beyond nuclear. As my dad said, any technology you see is actually 20 year declassified military technology. Of course this was in the 80's and he was referring to satellite images (the ones we saw versus the spy technology). I suspect the same is true for weapons today.

Finally I leave you with a traditional Dineh (Navajo) story. When first man and woman come upon Creator, Creator held out his hands and told the couple to choose. Both hands had a yellow powder. The couple chose, and Creator said, you have chosen maze - source of life for you form now till time ends. It will nourish you. As for the other yellow powder, Creator said, it must never see the light of day. It must always be underground and protected." To the traditional Dineh, to this day, they believe that other yellow powder to be Uranium.

To the traditional Dineh, when the white man pulled the Uranium out from under the ground in Arizona, Idaho, and New Mexico they broke the promise to the Creator and thus have created a world that is on a path of uncertainty. We have gone against the flow of the Earth, if you will.

Interesting enough I've found many Tribal Nations whose homelands are near Uranium seams have similar stories of Creation.

However we could adopt a model similar to UK and reduce our arsenal by 90% (getting Russia to agree also).

Burn up excess weapons grade materials and save a lot of money (nuclear warheads are high maintenance items contrary to popular opinion).
* They use Tritium gas to boost yield but Tritium has a short half life so they need to be replenished.
* Tritium decay produces Helium which blocks neutrons so that needs to be scrubbed.
* Plutonium core puts out about 14 watts of thermal heat constantly. This dries out explosives which need to be replaced.
* Wiring, components degrade over the decades.

Since a nuclear weapon has to work when you want it to without fail this requires a massive amount of maintenance, testing, replacement, retrofit on a near constant basis.

I doubt we have anything more powerful than nuclear weapons. We have spent last three decades making nuclear weapons LESS powerful. Even "less" powerful they are plenty powerful enough. There is no real need to make something more powerful. For what purpose? To destroy another nation? Unless you can deflect their nukes each nation simply kills the other.

About Hydrogen Fuel Cells:
Hydrogen isn't a fuel it is a liquid battery. Need to get energy to make hydrogen from somewhere.

> Finally I leave you with a traditional Dineh (Navajo) story.
> ...
> As for the other yellow powder, Creator said, it must never see the
> light of day. It must always be underground and protected." To the
> traditional Dineh, to this day, they believe that other yellow powder
> to be Uranium.

Damn those inaccurate modern legends!

If the Creator had only talked about "dull silvery metals" or the processes
that are required to turn (non-yellow) uranium ores into "that other yellow powder"
then people might have realised their folly in time!

:rofl:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_ores)

You assert nuclear power isn't ESSENTIAL to the production of nuclear weapons when challenged with the fact that nuclear weapons proliferation is related to nuclear power.

The "not essential" argument fails to address 2 points:
1) the dependence on nuclear power creates a dependence on nuclear fuel. The dependence on nuclear fuel creates an environment that encourages the development of processing technologies in the name of energy security. Ownership of processing technologies enables the development of reprocessing technologies.

2) The political landscape of the world changes rapidly. Having an existing nuclear infrastructure and knowledge base ENCOURAGES countries that are faced with political challenges to pursue a nuclear solution that would not otherwise be practical for them.

Both of those factors can find strong public support on the foundation of national pride and national chauvanism. Having a nuclear program AND weapons can easily be framed for internal public consumption as almost a rite of passage that a nation with a siege mentality can rally behind, creating a momentum that wouldn't exist with secretive programs that bring no glory to the leaders.

Nuclear power and nuclear weapons proliferation are inextricably linked and it is the height of irresponsibility to claim that the are not in order to promote the sale of nuclear power plants.

"... expanding nuclear power in countries that already have nuclear power doesn't increase proliferation risk."

The US going from 104 to 154 reactors doesn't change proliferation risk.
Finland going from 5 to 6 nuclear reactors doesn't change proliferation risk.

China adopting nuclear power doesn't change proliferation risk (seeing as they already have fusion weapons).

We are at a crucial time in human history and the choices we make today are going to have far reaching implications.

What the effort to expand our nuclear fleet equates to is the attempt to use nuclear power to meet climate change needs. We are a leader in the world and where we go, other nations follow.

Additionally, by expanding our fleet we are ENCOURAGING the development of an entire commercial infrastructure devoted to building nuclear reactors. People like you are setting their life up to revolve around building more reactors - enough will never be enough for that is the nature of the capitalistic beast we must harness to accomplish the goal you set. Once unleashed that beast cannot be chained. Companies like Mitsubishi and Areva aren't promoting nuclear power out of a sense of altruism and dedication to bettering the human condition, they are behaving precisely as a corporation must behave - they are promoting nuclear power in pursuit of profit.

So the reasoning which underpins the idea that we will *only* build in nuclear states is as flawed as the idea that nuclear power isn't necessary for nuclear weapons.

What do you think of Dubai setting out to develop nuclear power?

So it's even better...it's the kind of capitalism in which the State (the taxpayer) pays for the building, insurance, and operation of a nuclear power plant, while Commonwealth Edison or Duke Energy gets the profit.

Did we not just learn about big bailouts and giving industry all the start up money, covering all the risk, thus leaving the industry with no moral/financial obligation to do it "right?"

It may not be the best way....but it is the argument this country gives on why Iran should not have nuclear power (b/c power = bombs).

And again - nuke proliferation is only ONE issue. What about all the releases at Hanford, the documented disregard for people in the southwest for decades of mismanaged nuclear industry still to this very day?! The health cluster around nuclear facilities like Hanford, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge?

What about the risk factors of transport of waste? Where does the waste go? WIPP? No thanks not in my state! WIPP is low level, or supposed to be. Or even the simple reality when a forest fire/wild fire goes up in a place like Hanford or the forests around Los Alamos (Taos Pueblo area) the fire is radioactive. I know, I fought the wildfire at Los Alamos more than a decade ago. The feds shut down all air monitors, except the sovereign Nation of the Pueblo of Taos. Their air quality data from that fire is something the feds don't want anyone to see. The feds have suppressed the Tribe from publicly releasing it (National Security).

It is simple things like that which make me not trust the nuclear industry.

Our arsenal in 2012 will technically be 2400 warheads. Sounds good right? Except that is 2400 "active" warheads. We will have another 2600 "inactive weapons.
Then you add in the 24,000 pits which can be used to produce more warheads. The tons and tons and tons of plutonium made at Hanford which would produce an estimated 20,000+ more.
That would put our arsenal at 30% higher than the peak of cold war without a single reactor needed.

Still raw number of warheads is meaningless. The same plutonium pit can make a 30kt weapon or a 50 megaton (50,000 kt) weapon. Over the last three decades we have been moving to lower yield weapons.
If we wanted to we could reverse that trends. So not only could we have 50,000 warheads we could make them all 100x larger than average warhead today.
We could increase destructive yield of nuclear arsenal by a couple thousand percent through combination of higher yield AND more bombs.
All that without producing a single gram more weapons grade material.

BTW Hanford was a weapon plant. Converting raw spent fuel into bombs requires lots of caustic chemicals and processes. The reactor part is the "easy part". Any fuel will only have a small percentage of Plutonium. Extracting that results in a lot (101%+ due to added chemicals) waste.

If you want to be anti-nuclear that is one thing. No problem. Never going to convince 100% of the people.
Using Hanford and "we could build nukes" as arguments though is pretty weak.

those are also issues I've pointed out. I don't agree with your weapons logic, since the government has said throughout the 80s and 90s our arsenal was outdated (hence Star Wars) and thus we need next generation. That talk is heard here in Albuquerque, next to Sandia and Los Alamos labs. The talk is of next generation weapons.

In short, why do you believe that the USA will follow your logic? We tend to do what we don't need to do. So even if WE don't need more raw materials for weapons...what about those countries that do? What about our intersts outside this country? Might they need the supply of uranium/plutonium? You yourself brought up the issue of Israel and how they are an example of a nation which has nuclear weapons w/o a nuclear energy program. I ask again where did they get their bomb? Might they and other countries (which we occupy or have an interest in protecting) need more nuclear bombs which we will ultimately supply?

You are right we don't need to build another weapon...but when has that logic stopped the USA before? I'll drop the nuclear power = nuclear arms as there are other issues which you don't take into account I feel when you claim nuclear is a good/clean option.

Again, besides the weapons issue. Nuke power has many problems. In the 4 corners it is the mining, the transport, the storage, the testing which will again see drastic impacts on this part of the country, just to help out good ol' California and other States. Even though the State of NM and many Tribes are against nuclear power, national security issues of our energy will trump any State or Tribal authority. The foundation is set for this. The battles have begun in AZ, NM and on tribal land over uranium claims. And Bruce Babbitt still has a heavy hand in it all (as his family owns most mining claims on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon) along with some pretty powerful people.

We did not do nuclear power right the first time when the nation switched form nuclear weapons development to nuclear power. In fact the mining came from the same place and was done the same way - without regard for human life. But realty is most of the country doesn't care b/c you didn't see the direct impact of your power. The direct impact of the nation's nuclear power was 1000 of miles away possibly in an area most still call a 'waste land', as Commonwealth Eddison sated in a full page Chicago Tribune ad in support of Yucca Mtn. Yet that wasteland now has major US cities like Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Denver, Salt Lake City, and trendy places to live like Telluride, Santa Fe, Taos, not mention cities like Albuquerque, Gallup, Grants, Flagstaff, Winslow. And about 16 sovereign Nations as defined by US Indian law and federal treaties.

So in reality why should IL, CA, the East coast care about the impacts of nuclear power it has been assured the risk is not in you back yard...it is in mine. Even transport routes will go through minority dominated populated areas b.c we don't want the white man to bear the burden of their power. We are willing to risk National Parks like Grand Canyon, Escalente, Zion, Bryce, Arches, Canyonlands for power. (some still run by BLM so mining can occur in a National Park)

What scares me the most, is your nor I will ever have a say b/c this will all be done in the interest of national security. It will be done (already has been done) by allowing stimulus dollars to be rolled out in a matter of months for "new but yet unproven technologies that have been hampered by rules and regs and oversight." It will be done under the New Source Review section of the Clean Air Act. In short the government will suspend the rules and rush out new technologies without the tested R&D. I sat in a meeting with the the top brass of EPA just last month and heard them say it (Clean Air Act Advisory Committee). We can wake up tomorrow and see a National Park like Escalente in S. UT sold to Peabody Coal or Kerr McGee as it is the BLM, not NPS that runs the park (thanks to Babbitt and Clinton). That park has the richest untapped seam of coal in the US outside the HPL land on Navajo/Hopi. On the HPL Peabody already has the world's largest open pit coal mine, and uses millions of gallons of water a day for a coal slurry line. Escalente also has a lot of Uranium mining claims that can be acted on at any time the BLM says OK. They did it with coal, they did it with uranium...nothing will convince me they'll do it safe or better this time around.

It may be all safe and good. But I assure you we are about to rush untested technology in nuclear and clean coal in the name of national security of our energy.

To me that should worry us all. The democratic process and our environmental laws will be ignored again.

To define something as safe or clean you must look at all the risk and entire cycle. Adoption of the precautionary principle is step one for energy solution decision making, not a cost-benefit analysis.