part of the earth. hello and some are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture in tonight's conversations with great minds half hour i'm joined by robert alvarez seasoned nuclear energy specialist which has everything from the daiichi disaster how to reform the u.s. energy plus the republican party continues their war on the middle class their strategy of raising taxes and cutting benefits of working people one of the issues we'll tackle in our weekly. and our bank of america and getting away without paying

up any in taxes while we the people have to shell out even more explains so i'd still take. for tris conversations of great minds i'm joined by robert alvarez senior scholar at the institute for policy studies for five years mr alvarez served as one of the sun its primary staff experts on nuclear weapons and helped establish the environmental cleanup program for the department of energy he also led teams to north korea to establish control of nuclear weapons materials in that country in light of the largest radiation detection at the daiichi plant japan is dealing with what may well turn out to be one of the worst nuclear crises on record to share his expertise on that and that whole spectrum of situations mr alvarez joins me here in

the studio robert alvarez welcome the program thank you for having me on your show thanks for joining us you know people who have done things as consequential as you have in your life we're really just pop out of nowhere i'm curious how did you get on this career path what brought you through to this point. well i mean the world bacteria stacked toward prac words. before i. joined the institute for policy studies about eight years ago i was in senior policy adviser to the secretary of energy and i did that for six years and while at the energy department as you noted i did a lot of did several things that including. going to north korea and trying to secure the spent fuel there and. was also involved in and strategic management of nuclear materials for the department. worker compensation for workers put in harm's way who made nuclear weapons those kinds of things and then for five

years before that i did more or less full time oversight and investigations on the civilian and military nuclear programs. for the senate committee on government affairs which was then chaired by senator john glenn and he was quite interested in and this and was also a senior member of the senate armed services committee so i had to do sort of dual duty before that i worked for thirteen years. for a national environmental advocacy group and that has since. gone away i guess called the environmental policy institute and worked in. before that and three level jobs in congress and you know sir went to college and got my college degrees and did very good in science and math and so and i've been involved in nuclear both civilian and military nuclear policy issues for about thirty six

years not. that substantial and. back on july sixteenth one nine hundred seventy nine president of president carter spoke to the nation and announced a new energy policy for the united states let's just take a listen here. so the energy crisis is real it is why it is a president danger to our nation back and we simply must face them but i have to say to you energy and title important point. i am tonight sending a clear. image your policy of the united states beginning this measure will never use. oil then we do seventy seven. of the biggest question to convert calling for the creation of this nation's first solo bank which will happen at a cheaper crucial twenty percent over energy coming from so look probably by the

year two thousand. by the year two thousand twenty percent solar when my wife and i were moving to vermont a decade or so ago we were looking at all these houses out of the country first time we really did and we kept coming across these solar off the grid houses every single one of them was built in seventy nine or eighty you're really one right you know because carter had given those energy tax credits and construction credits reagan took the whole program apart and took down the solar collectors and that's how the rooftop of the white house what happened to our energy policy then and where are we now with regard to national energy well i think the the u.s. government as a player in energy policy. was pretty much sidelined and that the major policy decisions affecting how much energy we use were comes from what its impacts are have been made by the marketplace and the marketplace is dominated.

by large fossil fuel companies principally all companies so what's happened and this is this sort of policy is perpetuated. i must admit. through the clinton administration that it is you know it is really had. made the situation much more serious and much more difficult and problematic i mean there are you know there are reasons why we have a huge military presence in the middle east where we are now in the midst of three conflicts and it has to do with the large amount of oil which we are dependent on and we we are we are about five point five percent of the world's population but we consume the most oil. you know about it but correct about twenty five percent of

our oil. is consumed by the american public and. a very large fraction of that i would say somewhere at least sixty percent comes from foreign sources so the situation is actually gotten worse when carter in seventy nine made that speech my recollection is the seventy four seventy five is generally estimated as the peak oil point for the united states that's right and during that decade we made the transition from being a net x. oil exporter we were actually exporting oil that's right there in the during the. nixon and ford of minnesota she's been thirty forty years and we had just started importing oil seriously i mean that was the oil shock in seventy two or seventy three you know but it kind of woke us up to it but we were and then we became that oil importer so when carter said we're never going to import more oil and we did seventy seven that must have been what ten percent of our oil maybe yeah and i think that proof that proved his prediction where the people are strong right it's

like you wonder how you know you explain how we got here what speaking of energy it will watching this ongoing disaster in japan. any thoughts on the current status . of the day i and when i think it's important understand a. person like me i'm operating on fragmentary information and it's hard to piece together all the details and it's not clear that all the details are being made public. by the japanese government the japanese utility or the u.s. american authorities involved in japan and helping out what i can sort of i guess conclude on the basis of that limited information is that they've made some progress you know they've reestablished on site power which is extremely important but they're not out of the woods and there there has been there was

a lot of damage to the necessary infrastructure equipment necessary to. stabilize the situation and that really involves providing coolant for the reactor and the spent fuel pools and that is still not. there still not the area well it would seem like salt water is pretty corrosive start. well salt water i think was not on the top list of their menu of options and i think that was close to what you call hell mary auctions on the third day i visited that out of desperation because all other else other sources of water to cool off the these runaway reactions were not available to the. thought struck me today as i was watching a news report. they're expanding the evacuation zone that's right both the involuntary and the voluntary evacuation zone and i was and i used to live you're right. right

next door but within fifty miles or and and i was thinking you know where these people going to go we're talking about a million people in a country that is a fragment of the size of the united states with the. but only you know as you know it's even worse because of the the destruction and have it reach by the earthquakes and tsunamis i mean it's a very tragic and difficult situation and i certainly. have great sympathy for the survivors and the emergency responders and everybody is trying to pitch in to. keep people out of harm's way right now and try to restore some. some modicum of life support to the population. you know or persons thoughts going with them back in two thousand and two you were writing i

read a policy piece that you wrote about the dangers of spent fuel i call it nuclear waste spent fuel in pools that were basically open to the not the so open to the air but not protected by giant concrete columns and things like this turns out one of the things that we learned from president bush's interrogation programs when he got a hold of muhammad was that mohamed. originally had planned not to hit the world trade center with those two planes but to hit the indian point nuclear power plant and he abandoned that plan relatively late on the assumption that a there must be surface to air missiles protection which there weren't then and there are now and b. that the reactor casing would be so hard that even two planes might not go through it just be made out of aluminum. but what would happen if not even hit hit the reactor but what if you just hit the spent fuel pool well that was the concern that we rose in my mind in the mind of several of my colleagues

right after the nine eleven attacks because these pools are not under the thick containment. there are thirty four reactors that have elevated pools seventy to eighty feet above. or vermont yankee for example and daiichi and that. for example the vermont yankee plant which has an elevated pool has roughly five times the amount of spent fuel in all of the individual reactors. so so if they hit the waste for the nuclear waste pool is spent fuel pool. there would be not necessarily a tonic or i don't even think it is not at all but there would be an explosion that would it would be old and bob well what what we what we really i wrote this paper in january two thousand and two and inspired several my colleagues and i to do

a much more in-depth look at this time we published a paper in january two thousand and three and what we pointed out was that if something an earthquake or somebody or some people could cause the water to drain in these pools that the the zirconium cladding the metal of the surrounds the irradiated uranium which contains a great deal of radioactivity could result in a catastrophic fire releasing very large amounts of long live radiation and that we calculated that the radiation release would create a an area that's uninhabitable substantially larger than that created by the charitable acts. and what why these spent fuel pools are of concern if i may interrupt is that it was churn noble was just a reactor going and not all of the waste of the snow that we had but the reactor

itself had experienced a huge explosion and a fire that went on for roughly a week and it did positive a large amount of radioactive material and the bad actor in this cesium one thirty seven it has a half life of thirty years and if it's deposited in large substantial amounts nearby and you're standing near it it gives off penetrating radiation like x. rays gamma rays is what it gives off and and starts to radiate your whole body then once it's in the it's on the ground it starts to absorb in the environment as if it were potassium. and as that. as it stays the environment the plants the animals the foodstuffs concentrate the this radioactive material in the environment we have potassium in almost every part of our body that's right that's right every muscle tissue requires potassium so what resulted is that because of the cesium

one thirty seven releases around turn noble the area that's considered uninhabitable for an indefinite period the rule of thumb is that cesium one thirty seven has a half life of thirty years it takes roughly ten years ten half lives rather for it to decay down to levels presumed to be safe three hundred years roughly hundreds of years yes that an area roughly the size of half of the state of new jersey was rendered uninhabitable i sure hope by chernobyl and what we estimated is that if they all firewood or her. were partially or fully drained that it could release many times more a radio cesium radioactive cesium then noble and resolved and land contamination that could be four times greater five times greater so so these concerns of india are well founded we're going to take

a break here we'll come back i'm curious was a communist well after the break part two of our conversations with great minds the nuclear specialist robert alvarez. let's not forget that we had an apartheid museum right here in the. oh and he never says there's a safe ready freedom. of

the animal. in the middle of our oral argument. of the woman. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else or see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw. i'm sorry is a big. welcome

back to conversations of great minds i'm joined by robert alvarez senior scholar at the institute of policy studies or does an expert on nuclear energy policy having written for several publications social science magazines or acknowledge a review in the washington post thanks for being with us robert thank. you so you made a point earlier that provoked a question in my mind you said was your pony i'm rods into which the nuclear fuel was inserted both for the reactor and then later kept there in the in the waste problems or it's going to fuel problems could ignite create a fire that would blow the contents the contain up into the air the this is all the more cesium in those dangers that are the the most the largest quantity.

zirconium if my memory serves me right ignites around twenty one hundred degrees fahrenheit well what goes on it beats in these pools i mean there was a pool explosion. at the pool in the fukushima daichi unit number four and what happens is that when the fuel is exposed and heats up it starts to go into the thermic in other words it's starts it's a very reactive metal and it starts to interact with the water and it oxidizes sort of russert yes and what it does is that it kills off the hydrogen from the molecules of the water a rapid acceleration is what's called in and fire exactly right and then is there tony and ignite somewhere around eight thousand two thousand degrees centigrade trying to convert this into fahrenheit but over on that those temperatures and then

it's sort of being fed by this hydrogen right so that's sort of what's up and the question that that which which i think would be in the neighborhood of around two thousand trees fahrenheit when there's some you know that's i was reading that recently. why zirconium that i mean that's like magnesium you know well it's a very reactive metal as long as it doesn't get heated up and but it's a very durable in terms of preventing the radioactive contents of the material that are created in a reactor from a scaping ice and so it has these kind of dual properties is that it's fairly good when you have it in a reactor as long as that doesn't overheat and then it becomes very reactive right it is but it soon as you lose the water from the spent fuel or reactor vessel or reactor of us or you're guaranteed it's going to start overheating is going to ultimately catch on fire and then i'll know you have this large generation of

hydrogen. once it starts to mix with oxygen somewhere and there's any any possibility of a spark it will go this is this why the nuclear power industry is on insurable why we have to ensure taxpayers are price anderson is it that well fatal flaws of the design i think that it's been a long standing under a law a long historical understanding about nuclear power is that in order for nuclear power to be commercialized in the united states it became impossible unless the government put a limit on liability for catastrophic accident so if you look in your home insurance policy you'll find that you're not covered for a new verb have gone for a nuclear going up and they put a cap on it so that if the. damage and harm exceeds

a certain little but i believe it's at this time approximately twelve billion dollars then the taxpayer has to come in and pay for the rest of it so that in those price answers that's right that's right senator schumer was unable because why is is wall street i know you wrote about this recently wall street was unwilling to fund any nuclear power plants and therefore they're having to come to the government to borrow money i don't know a street stop lending money for nuclear power plants. before the three mile island accident around one thousand nine hundred sixty nine hundred seventy seven and the reason that they stopped doing it was because. the costs of these plants kept soaring many plants were cancelled and they and investors lost huge amounts of money there was then the three mile island accident sort of really drove it home because while the accident itself didn't result in a catastrophic release then the containment worked. the

a multi-billion. dollar investment was lost in less than an hour that's that's right and that's the end at this time wall street still won't touch these reactors with a ten foot pole and so you'd think that the advocates of the free market. would not be the advocates of nuclear power are they seem to be this is all i think it's about getting to it's a big driver is a big contradiction because those who do advocate you know what's role of the government here are insisting on unfettered access to the u.s. treasury for nuclear power which makes no sense yeah i mean you suggested that the the energy department should be reorganized i think most americans don't understand that the energy department is the is also the department where you work that makes bombs that's right and if you take a look at the energy department's budget request. for many years and it's not unique to the obama administration but for many years. what you'll find is that

actual energy activities that is to say. that the partment helps manage power mark and you ministrations public administration in the western states has its petroleum reserve the energy information administration and the single largest aspect of its energy related programs is research and development spending those programs all together make up less than twenty percent of the energy department's budget sixty percent and sometimes up to two thirds of the budget. are spent. essentially maintaining thousands of nuclear weapons a large fraction of which have already been discarded by the military but we haven't gotten around to taking them sharky handed over to g.o.g. that are part of what i've been advocating that yes and there's there are historic reasons why this came about is that the energy department was created largely by

merging it with. the atomic energy commission and there was a big debate shortly after world war two about whether the military should should have absolute control over. the atom so to speak and there was a sentiment that was supported that led to what we believed to be civilian control but in looking back the military got everything it wanted and then some. so and they got rid of this liability yeah i love it so you know i kind of look at what the that the the nuclear weapons enterprise of the department of energy is like a millstone and if the department can jettison that and put it where it belongs in the defense department and let them sort of have to come to terms with their rather large expenses of maintaining thousands of nuclear weapons. we have

a chance of restructuring the department of energy so it can actually make a meaningful difference in our energy policy so yeah i'm sure in a new a new and better energy future for america it would actually be economy energy department and to that point. this year the oil industry which in the united states is actually mostly foreign arms of b.p. and shell absolutely you know industry is going to get three billion dollars gift from the taxpayers and how much is going to renewables. well right now if you look at the energy hundred g. r. and d. portfolio of the apartment of energy. it's about. five point seven billion something like that. one third the single largest amount was going for nuclear energy and it's because. that money goes to department of energy nuclear sites doesn't go to the nuclear power plants. to say second biggest. it's

going to conservation which is a real i think bright spot in the picture and then the third larger amounts going for fossil fuels and then all the other renewables and more benign energy get the rest so that so with three billion is going to just oil as part of fossil fuels the wind solar everything else must be right i mean what what happens is that when you start to poor more money into things like fossil fuels and nuclear and has the effect of taking the oxygen of the room for everybody else this i'm assuming that you think that the policy should be. yes i think so i mean i think that that we should you know we have a we have a large antiquated nuclear infrastructure that's owned by the federal government that is largely unneeded at this point in time and it's going to take a considerable expense to clean it up i'm not trivializing the importance of

dealing with the mess because we have sites out there like in hanford washington which are headed for it is considered the most contaminated zone in a western hemisphere i wrote about how the native americans in that area were for that sign of cancer well and they're put in extraordinarily high risk so we need to do that cleanup but at the same time we shouldn't have this tail wagging our energy policy dog it's that simple can we ever develop a permanent safe way to deal with all the nuclear waste that we generated from our weapons and our energy policies i think we can i think that that geologic disposal can work. i don't think you come out of it was never going to work because in truth it was a decision made by congress and not by scientists and it was made because of.

the pressure from other states a bit more in their backyards on the eve. of the eighty eight elections and i thought time to bet i had one electoral vote and a fairly and not so strong congressional delegation and that's changed now so they were the talking they got to tell but i think that we really i think geologic disposal is a viable way to go we need to take our time to do it right we need to do it in a way where we can. gain public trust in our efforts so that we are not trying to rush things and do things because. in new york i'm out and we owned it we crap it up it's out west who cares you know that kind of logic and but it's very important that we do this in the mean time i think that was respect to nuclear power in particular which has generated the largest concentrations.