Dr. Denis E. Beller
Cold-water Fisheries Benefits of Nuclear Power
Member of the American Nuclear Society (Public Information Committee)
Member of Trout Unlimited (Vice President-Programs, Southern Nevada Chapter)
(beller@lanl.gov, 702-895-2023)
Abstract
Energy multiplies human labor, increasing productivity. It builds and lights schools, purifies water and sterilizes mail, powers farm machinery and security systems, drives sewing machines and robot assemblers, powers life-saving medical procedures and research, and stores and moves information. But impacts of our choices for energy supplies and our ever-increasing need for more electrical power have been highlighted by recent events in the U.S. These events included a natural-gas explosion in New Mexico that eliminated twelve members of one family, rolling blackouts in California, and the September 2001 terrorist attack on America. For the sake of safety as well as energy and economic security, increased electricity supply should come from diverse sources. Those sources include coal, oil, natural gas, hydroelectric, and non-hydro renewables (e.g., wind, solar, and biomass). But nuclear energy is the only major sustainable energy source that can meet the growing demand for generation of clean, affordable, reliable, environmentally acceptable, safe, and sustainable electricity. The impact on our environment and on world economies will depend on our choices of future energy supplies.
In this presentation Dr. Beller will describe why we must and will build new nuclear plants in the U.S. and in other nations to supply the electricity needed for a better future for billions of people. He will discuss advantages and drawbacks of many sources of electricity and compare them to nuclear power. He will also describe in detail why the greatest benefit of nuclear power in the U.S. in the past thirty to forty years has been its impact on the environment, especially cold-water fisheries. It produces no acid rain and minimal CO2 and acid mine runoff, and it doesn't inhibit fish migration or natural water levels. Nuclear power plants require minimal land, they release no mercury, arsenic, or other heavy metals into the environment, and they produce so little waste that it has been easily and cheaply sequestered where it is created. Dr. Beller will detail these environmental benefits plus summarize hundreds of special projects to protect endangered species and enhance ecosystems. He will also reveal current plans to recover shutdown reactors, to finish uncompleted ones, and to construct new, advanced nuclear power reactors in the U.S., as well as global plans to develop the next generation of nuclear plants and waste reduction systems.
BIO: Denis E. Beller (Ph.D., Purdue Univ., 1986; M.S.N.E, Air Force Inst. of Tech., 1981; B.S.Ch.E., Univ. of Colorado, 1976) has a background in engineering design and analysis and in management of defense systems. Dr. Beller's research activities have included design and analysis of conceptual systems for nuclear effects testing with inertial confinement fusion, conceptual design of nuclear-pumped lasers, systems studies of long-term national and global deployment of nuclear energy, and formulation and testing of solid rocket propellants (including propellant formulations that were used in Operation Desert Storm). He also managed a rocket test facility, a nuclear detection laboratory that monitored radioactive emissions to support Safegaurd D of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and an intelligence division that collected and disseminated foreign science and technology information. After graduation from Purdue in 1986, Dr. Beller was a professor at the Air Force Institute of Technology, where he taught graduate nuclear engineering (weapons effects) to military officers for more than seven years. As a result of teaching, research, and professional activities, the faculty selected him as the first tenured military professor in AFIT's 70-year history.
Dr. Beller is currently enjoying a sabatical from Los Alamos National Laboratory to the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he coordinates university participation for a National research program for reducing, reusing, and recycling used nuclear fuel ("waste"). However, he is best known amongst the nuclear science and technology community as the co-author of an essay that the U.S. Congress credited in July of 2000 for "spark[ing] renewed debate of nuclear energy's role" as a non-emitting domestic energy source (see the Congressional Record, July 27, 2000).
Two years ago Dr. Beller co-authored an essay with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Dr. Richard Rhodes. "The Need for Nuclear Power" appeared in the Jan/Feb 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs, and it was republished in modified form in The Bulletin of the International Atomic Energy Agency (6/2000) and in Earth Times News Daily (7/2001). It has been cited in columns and op-eds in newspapers (e.g. the Washington Post) and on web sites worldwide. It has also been entered into the Congressional Record twice (once during Senate testimony for the budget for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, once during a House hearing on environmental benefits of nuclear power). Dr. Beller has spoken in many fora, including a presentation to Congressional staffers in the U.S. Capitol in May 2000, a public lecture during the Marie Curie Celebration in Michigan in October, at several universities, and to several local sections of the American Nuclear Society. Some of these presentations have resulted in lengthy, pro-nuclear articles in local newspapers. Dr. Beller has also appeared on National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting System debates on nuclear power and waste disposal.
