November 2006
It is widely accepted that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions must be sharply reduced to avert climate change. However, nuclear power is at best a very partial, problematic and unnecessary response to climate change:
• A doubling of nuclear power would reduce global greenhouse emissions by about 5%. A much larger nuclear expansion program would pose enormous proliferation and security risks, and it would run up against the problem of limited known conventional uranium reserves.
• The serious hazards of civil nuclear programs - the repeatedly demonstrated contribution of civil nuclear programs to weapons proliferation, intractable waste management problems, and the risk of serious accidents.
• The availability of a plethora of clean energy options - renewable energy sources plus energy efficiency - which, combined, can meet energy demand and sharply reduce greenhouse emissions. (See for example the reports produced by the Clean Energy Future Group).
Nuclear power and climate change
Author: Jim Green energyscience.org.au
A doubling of nuclear power would reduce global greenhouse emissions by only 5%.
Uranium is also a finite resource, just as fossil fuels are.
This information paper addresses the first of those arguments - the limitations of nuclear power as a climate change abatement strategy.
A limited response
Nuclear power is used almost exclusively for electricity generation. (A very small number of reactors are used for heat co-generation and desalination.)
Electricity is responsible for less than one third of global greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Uranium Institute, the figure is “about 30%”. 2 That fact alone puts pay to the simplistic view that nuclear power alone can ‘solve' climate change. According to a senior energy analyst with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Alan McDonald: “Saying that nuclear power can solve global warming by itself is way over the top”.
Ian Hore-Lacy from the Uranium Information Centre (UIC) claims that a doubling of nuclear power would reduce greenhouse emissions in the power sector by 25%. 4 That figure is reduced to a 7.5% reduction if considering the impact on overall emissions rather than just the power sector. The figure needs to be further reduced because the UIC makes no allowance for the considerable time that would be required to double nuclear output. Electricity generation is projected to increase over the coming decades so the contribution of a fixed additional input of nuclear power has a relatively smaller impact. Overall, it is highly unlikely that a doubling of global nuclear power would reduce emissions by more than 5%.
Moreover, that modest climate dividend assumes that coal is the reference point. But compared to most renewable energy sources and to energy efficiency measures, nuclear power produces more greenhouse emissions per unit energy produced or saved, in addition to its legacy of nuclear waste and the weapons proliferation risks.
Proliferation and security concerns
A very large increase in nuclear power, of the scale necessary to make a significant dent in greenhouse emissions, would create an enormous security and non-proliferation challenge. Feiveson 6 calculates that with a ten-fold increase in nuclear output, 700 tonnes of plutonium would be produced annually – sufficient for about 70,000 nuclear weapons (or 3.5 million weapons over a 50-year reactor lifespan).
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has considered a scenario involving a ten-fold increase in nuclear power output over this century, and calculated that this could produce 50-100 thousand tonnes of plutonium.
The IPCC concluded that the security threat would be “colossal.”
Former US Vice President Al Gore said in May 2006 that: “For eight years in the White House, every weaponsproliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program. And if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal ... then we'd have to put them in so many places we'd run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale.”
A temporary response: limited conventional uranium reserves
A very large increase in nuclear output would run up against the problem of limited known conventional uranium reserves.
According to the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the total known recoverable uranium reserves – reasonably assured reserves and estimated additional reserves which can be extracted at a cost of less than US$80/kg – amount to 3.5 million tones. At the current rate of usage – 67,000 tonnes per year – these reserves will last for just over 50 years.
Of course, the nuclear power industry will not come to an immediate halt once the known low-cost reserves have been exhausted. Other relatively high-grade, low-cost ores will be discovered, and lower-grade ores can be used. The NEA and IAEA estimate the total of all conventional reserves to be about 14.4 million tones. The OECD estimates that about 16 million tonnes of uranium are recoverable at costs less than US$260 per kilogram, including 12 million tonnes of “speculative resources”.
Uranium reserves in the range of 14-16 million tonnes would suffice for about 200 years at the current rate of consumption – but significantly less if nuclear power is to expand to the extent that it makes anything more than a minor contribution to climate change abatement. Large amounts of uranium are also contained in ‘unconventional sources' such as granite (4 parts per million), sedimentary rock (2 ppm) and seawater (up to 4000 million tonnes at 0.003 ppm). 12 It is doubtful whether uranium could be economically recovered from unconventional sources, and the extraction of uranium from such ultralow- grade ores raises further concerns in relation to the amount of energy required to extract the uranium and the greenhouse emissions expended.
Further reading:
Ian Lowe, 2005, Is nuclear power part of Australia 's global warming solutions?, Address to the National Press Club,
www.acfonline.org.au/news.asp?news_id=582.
Friends of the Earth et al., 2005, Nuclear Power: No Solution to Climate Change, www.melbourne.foe.org.au/ documents.htm.
Pete Roche, April 2005, Is Nuclear Power a Solution to Climate Change, www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/reports/index.php,
www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/reports/Nuclear_Power_April_05v2.pdf.
Brice Smith, 2006, Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change,
www.ieer.org/reports/insurmountablerisks.
Mycle Schneider (WISE Paris), April 2000, Climate Change and Nuclear Power, published by World Wide Fund for
Nature, www.panda.org/downloads/climate_ change/fullnuclearreprotwwf.pdf.
References
1 Clean Energy Future Group, Australia-wide and state reports at
wwf.org.au/ourwork/climatechange/cleanenergyfuture.
2 Uranium Institute, n.d., Responding to Global Climate Change: The Potential Contribution of Nuclear Power,
www.world-nuclear.org/climate.htm.
3 Traub, James, June 13, 2004 , ‘The Netherworld of Nonproliferation', New York Times.
4 Hore-Lacy, Ian, May 04, 2006 , ‘Nuclear wagon gathers steam', Courier Mail.
www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/story/0,20797,19021383-27197,00.html.
5 Friends of the Earth et al., 2005, ‘Nuclear Power: No Solution to Climate Change',
www.melbourne.foe.org.au/documents.htm.
6 Feiveson, Harold, 2001, The Search for Proliferation-Resistant Nuclear Power , The Journal of the Federation of
American Scientists, September/October 2001, Volume 54, Number 5,
www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n5/nuclear.htm.
7 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 1995, Climate Change 1995: Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation
of Climate Change : Scientific-Technical Analyses, Contribution of Working Group II to the Second Assessment of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, R.T.Watson, M.C.Zinyowera, R.H.Moss (eds), Cambridge
University Press: UK .
8 Roberts, David, May 09, 2006 , ‘Al Revere: An interview with accidental movie star Al Gore',
www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/09/roberts.
9 Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 2004, “Uranium 2003: Resources,
Production and Demand”. Paris : OECD.
10 NEA & IAEA, 2004, op cit.
11 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1998, Uranium 1997: Resources, Production and
Demand , Paris : OECD. See also: Fetter, Steve, 1999, Climate Change and the Transformation of World
Energy Supply, Stanford University – Centre for International Security and Cooperation Report,
cisac.stanford.edu/publications/10228.
12 Uranium Information Centre, 2004, Supply of Uranium , Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper # 75,
www.uic.com.au/nip75.htm.
November 2006
About the author:
Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth. He has an honours degree in public health and a PhD in science and technology studies for his doctoral thesis on the Lucas Heights research reactor debates.
He is the author of the September 2005 report, ‘Nuclear Power: No Solution to Climate Change' , available at:
www.melbourne.foe.org.au/documents.htm
NUCLEAR ENERGY DEBATE
We should not be exporting uranium because you are exporting cancer
Not recognised among Australia's 100 most influential people, anti-nuclear campaigner Dr Helen Caldicott still stands tall on the world stage, Erin O'Dwyer writes. 'We've gone backwards decades under Bush and Howard'
Sydney Morning Herald
July 2, 2006
LIKE all our best intellectuals, Helen Caldicott is better known in the United States than at home.
In 1982, she silenced a crowd of 1 million people who gathered in New York's Central Park to hear her speak on nuclear disarmament.
But in 1998, when she addressed 1000 people in Engadine protesting against Sydney's Lucas Heights reactor, Caldicott was shouted down by hecklers.
It was a similar story last week when The Bulletin magazine listed 100 of the most influential Australians. Cookery writer Margaret Fulton and pop star Kylie Minogue made the cut. Helen Caldicott, the world's leading anti-nuclear voice, did not.
Yet she has been named as one of the 100 most influential women of the 20th century by the Smithsonian Institution, and she was nominated in 1985 for the Nobel peace prize.
Perhaps it's tall poppy syndrome. Perhaps it is sexism. Or perhaps Caldicott is unsung here simply because we have stopped listening to her message.
"In the '70s and '80s, Australia was very anti-nuclear," she says. "And I used to be very well listened to in Australia in the '70s and '80s. But we've gone backwards decades under the Bush Administration and under the Howard administration and it's been quite devastating."
This month Caldicott publishes her sixth book - Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer To Global Warming Or Anything Else (Melbourne University Press). It comes as the nuclear energy debate heats up amid increased awareness that Australia has about 40 per cent of the world's recoverable uranium resources.
Caldicott hopes the book will penetrate the political untruth that nuclear energy is a safe, green alternative.
"[People] think that it is the answer to global warming," she says, "but in truth it adds to global warming. It does not fix it."
Caldicott's message has always been simple. Nuclear energy leaves a toxic legacy to future generations because it produces not only global warming gases but also massive amounts of toxic carcinogenic radioactive waste. It is also far more expensive than other forms of electricity generation and can trigger proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Even worse, radioactive elements in nuclear-powered countries are already leaking - into the ground, into rivers and oceans, and into the food chain. Already 40 per cent of Europe's landmass is radioactive after Chernobyl, and increasingly so are its food supplies. Alarmingly that includes human breast milk.
Caldicott warns that as more people are exposed, cancers such as leukemia will become more common. So will genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis. "We should not be exporting uranium because by exporting uranium, you are exporting cancer," she says.
A pediatrician who specialised in cystic fibrosis, Caldicott first grabbed headlines protesting against French nuclear testing in the 1970s. She used her profile to mobilise trade unions and elicited an ACTU resolution to ban uranium mining.
After migrating to the US in the late '70s with her then husband Bill Caldicott, she became a faculty member of the Harvard Medical School. There she mobilised doctors and established Physicians for Social Responsibility with 23,000 influential members. It became one of the US's most powerful anti-nuclear lobby groups and won the Nobel peace prize in 1985.
Caldicott had resigned from the leadership group amid political power play and did not attend the ceremony. Yet she refused to let that devastating experience stop her. She went on to teach at leading universities and was honoured with countless awards and honorary degrees.
Three years ago, she established the Nuclear Policy Research Institute in Washington, known for its high-powered scientific symposiums. She has just been named as the inaugural winner of the Australian Peace Prize.
The journey hasn't always been easy. On the eve of her 50th birthday, Caldicott's marriage ended. All her anti-nuclear work was "ashes in my mouth".
She includes the break-up when asked about her personal milestones. She also includes the births of her six grandchildren. This is because, as a pediatrician, Caldicott's motivation has always been her children, her children's children and children everywhere. "It's one of the reasons I do the work I do," she says. "I practise global preventative medicine."
This year Caldicott will turn 68. She is slowing down, spending less time on the world stage and more time with family at her Central Coast hideaway. But she refuses to go quietly, and has mastered the art of working smarter not harder.
Now, instead of rallying unionists and doctors, she maintains a contact book of the world's top opinion leaders and journalists. Three times during our interview she quotes Thomas Jefferson about a functioning democracy requiring an informed citizenry.
"In the old days it was grass roots and this time it's tree tops," she says. "I'm getting older and it's more efficient to educate the media because through them you get to millions of people."
Caldicott's motivation might always have been her family, but these days she is careful to spend more time with them.
The best example is the night Madonna called to chat about the medical dangers of nuclear power.
Caldicott was preparing a lamb roast for her family and said: "Madonna, I can't take your call right now. I'll have to talk to you later."
"My family has never forgiven me," she says with a laugh.
"But my children were resentful that I wasn't around much and I do think about that. I wish I had been.
"On the other hand, I was wanting to make sure that they had a future. Nothing you do comes without consequences."
See http://www.nuclearpolicy.org and http://www.helencaldicott.com
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/we-should......html
A dangerous liaison
The Age
by Andra Jackson
July 5, 2006
Australia's alignment with America is "dangerous" because the US now has a policy to use nuclear weapons on non-nuclear states with impunity, an anti-nuclear campaigner said last night.
Dr Helen Caldicott, founder of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, said this was the first time the United States had adopted such a policy.
America expected Australia "to fight alongside them in Iraq and probably against China if Taiwan becomes independent", she said. "America has 34 US bases in Australia. If there was an outbreak of nuclear war between Russia and America, we are targeted."
Australian-born Dr Caldicott was speaking in Melbourne where she was awarded the inaugural Australian Peace Prize by the Australian Peace Organisation.
ANDRA JACKSON
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/a-dangerous-liaison....html
Caldicott collects
The Australian
Strewth Column
July 04, 2006
by Jane Fraser
DEMOCRATS leader Senator Lyn Allison will present the inaugural Australian Peace Prize to Helen Caldicott at a cocktail party in Melbourne tonight, coinciding with the launch of her new book Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer . The Peace Organisation of Australia chose Caldicott because of her "commitment to raising awareness about the medical and environmental hazards of the nuclear age". Caldicott has been named one of the most influential women of the 20th century by the Smithsonian Institute, although she didn't make the cut in the 100 most influential Australians named last week by The Bulletin magazine. Other nominations for the prize included High Court judge Michael Kirby and former foreign minister Gareth Evans .
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19672777-25090,00.html
Campaigner attacks nuclear inquiry's credibility
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
7.30 Report
TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
Broadcast: 03/07/2006
Reporter: Kerry O'Brien
KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: Twenty-five years ago, Australian doctor Helen Caldicott was one of the most powerful and compelling figures on America's public stage. She founded a movement of more than 20,000 physicians and scientists against the nuclear arms race, and even her enemies had to acknowledge the potency of her appeal.
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: Don't believe what they're saying, watch what they do.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
KERRY O'BRIEN: In one disarmament rally in New York's Central Park in 1982, something like a million people turned out to hear her speak. But the end of the Cold War was pretty much the end of the movement, and the one-time Nobel Prize nominee eventually retired to the NSW Central Coast. Yet in recent years, she's sought to rekindle the spark of protest. And now, as the Australian Government launches its inquiry into the feasibility of nuclear power here, she's already moved to attack its credibility, with her own launch in Melbourne this week - a book called Nuclear Power is Not the Answer. I spoke with Helen Caldicott at her home near Gosford.
Helen Caldicott, can I begin with, I suppose, the most obvious question. You had an enormous following in the early 80s. The impetus of your campaign tended to peter out as the threat of nuclear holocaust dissipated. You retired to your coastal garden and to spend more time with family. Why the comeback?
DR HELEN CALDICOTT, ANTI-NUCLEAR ACTIVIST: Well, I, too, thought that the risk of nuclear war would just dissipate and go away and the main movers and shakers would get rid of the nuclear weapons and for a while there in the 90s, no-one really knew which direction it was going to take. And then Clinton was elected and Clinton didn't have the courage to take on the Pentagon. He was scared of them. He just let the matter lie. And now America and Russia still target each other on hair-trigger alert with thousands of nuclear weapons. And I'm trying to set up a conference with the Pentagon at the moment and the White House and the Russians to talk about the fact that we could be blown off the face of the earth tonight. And it's more serious now than it was at the height of the Cold War.
KERRY O'BRIEN: And yet, you found it very hard to reignite the spark this time round, haven't you? Why?
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: Because people think the risk's gone away. They're practising psychic numbing. Thank God it's all finished, we're friendly with the Russians. But the fact is the Russian early warning system doesn't work and by accident or by terrorist intrusion they could blow up the world tonight.
KERRY O'BRIEN: On nuclear power, on which your book is about to be launched, you say the arguments against nuclear power are overwhelming. You're not shaken by the fact that some highly-respected global warming campaigners say that the threat of greenhouse is so great that the risks of nuclear power are outweighed by the benefits that nuclear power on a large scale would deliver on greenhouse.
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: What are the benefits it would deliver? The fact is that the nuclear fuel cycle from A to Z, mining, milling, enriching, building the reactor, storing the waste for half a million years, produce a lot of greenhouse gases. So nuclear power, in fact, adds to greenhouse warming, does not detract, does not negate it, adds to it substantially.
KERRY O'BRIEN: But once a nuclear power station is built, it is then not adding to greenhouse, correct?
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: No, but you've got to make the fuel, Kerry. You've got to enrich the uranium, you've got to dig it up and the quality of uranium will be declining rapidly over time and it's going to produce, use a huge amount of fossil fuel to enrich it. So soon, in a decade or two, a nuclear power plant will produce as much CO2 as a similar sized gas-fired plant. So the argument is fallacious, but the nuclear industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to convince people that nuclear power is the answer to global warming, which it's not.
KERRY O'BRIEN: But some highly credible scientists, eminent scientists, are swayed by the argument.
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: Name them. Which ones?
KERRY O'BRIEN: Well, I'll tell you. James Lovelock is a powerful environmentalist and scientific voice, isn't he? When he calls for a massive expansion in the world's nuclear energy programs because he believes it's the only option left to stem the rapid advance of the greenhouse threat, I mean, is he dumb on this?
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: He's off the tracks. I've spoken to James Lovelock several times. He thinks that oxygen causes cancer, although he's a medical scientist. And he said, "Look, the way to heat my house is to put nuclear waste in my basement". So he wasn't open to reason or understanding. He's right on greenhouse warming, absolutely. He's totally wrong on nuclear power. And nuclear power from a medical perspective will, over time, induce epidemics of cancer and leukaemia and genetic disease forever more. And if he's a medical scientist he should indeed be concerned about that.
KERRY O'BRIEN: No-one can doubt Tim Flannery's scientific and environmental credentials. He says James Lovelock has a point on nuclear power. Flannery, too, is coming to see nuclear power as possibly a lesser of evils with regard to greenhouse in Australia.
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: You don't replace one evil with another, Kerry.
KERRY O'BRIEN: If it's the lesser of evils?
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: It's not the lesser of evils. The generation of nuclear power is the only electricity generation that can destroy a city. There are two huge nuclear reactors 35 miles from Manhattan. They were targets for the 9/11 terrorists. If one of those goes and the wind blows towards Manhattan, that's the end of the financial capital of the world.
KERRY O'BRIEN: If all the arguments against nuclear power are as overwhelming as you assert, particularly the economic arguments like the need for massive government subsidies, surely those arguments have to win the day? In which case, what have you got to worry about?
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, Wall Street is very reluctant to invest in nuclear power. Standard & Poor's now - they are very allergic to it. And really, it's a socialised industry. The Energy Bill of 2005 in the US allocated $13 billion to subsidise nuclear power. It can't operate without huge government subsidies. So it's a socialised industry and a capitalistic society. And if the government keeps subsidising it, then I guess they can build a few reactors but certainly not enough to make any difference to global warming, not that they will anyway in the long term.
KERRY O'BRIEN: You attack the nuclear industry for propagandising, but haven't you been guilty of setting out to manipulate your audiences over the years in the way you have sold your case, at times, dare I suggest, to harangue, generate fear, to push your arguments to the limits, to enlist the public to your cause?
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: How?
KERRY O'BRIEN: I've seen you give speeches to audiences.
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: And?
KERRY O'BRIEN: I would say promoting fear by painting very fearful cases of the picture that you paint of a nuclear holocaust, the picture that you paint in this interview of nuclear accident, isn't that pushing at emotions?
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: Kerry, I don't want the only life in the universe to be destroyed and it's possible to do that now and it makes me scared and I'm a paediatrician having taken the Hippocratic oath. All the world's children are potentially my patients. I'm practising global preventative medicine. And so I have to speak the truth. And if it makes people frightened...you know, it's hard to speak this stuff, because it's boring, you know, and if you've got an audience and you're giving them fact after fact, they sort of go to sleep. So you have to be an actress, too, to wake them up and get them to face reality. Like getting a person to stop smoking. I've done that lots of times by scaring them and they hate me. But you know what, they stop smoking. This is practising preventative medicine.
KERRY O'BRIEN: Coming back to your personal motivation. You say in retirement you became depressed, did you honestly ask yourself whether a part of that depression was simply that you missed the fray?
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: Partly and partly because I'm pretty intuitive to my detriment. And I know what's happening, I can see what can happen in the future. I'm not good at denial, I'm not.
KERRY O'BRIEN: You've talked before about the personal cost to your family of your years of campaigning. What's been the worst of that personal cost?
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: I lost my marriage.
KERRY O'BRIEN: Worth it?
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: It's hard to know, really, isn't it? I mean, it was my destiny to do this work and it kind of still is. I knew from a child that I would do something like this.
KERRY O'BRIEN: But isn't that - look, I'm not suggesting that this is so in your case, but when a person talks about their destiny, isn't there a little bit of a danger in that that you kind of can persuade yourself to all sorts of things because you say it's your destiny?
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: I couldn't not have done it, Kerry. I read On The Beach when I was 15. And that was the turning - I lost my innocence. I lived in Melbourne. I could feel the bombs exploding shortly after that. We could destroy life on earth. Then I did medicine at the age of 17, I learned about genetics and radiation. It was so obvious to me and Russia and America were blowing up bombs in the atmosphere and the fallout was falling down and Linus Pauling said children would get leukaemia and cancer, medically it's obvious. Now, I could practise medicine, I could have stayed at Harvard and done really well. I had a great boss. But I could see beyond pouring stuff into test tubes and treating individual patients. What was the use of caring for my patients so carefully if, in fact, they had no future?
KERRY O'BRIEN: And so here you go again?
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: Yeah.
KERRY O'BRIEN: Helen Caldicott, thanks for talking with us.
DR HELEN CALDICOTT: Thanks, Kerry.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1677668.htm
NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT A SAFE, CLEAN OR GREEN SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE.
The debate, framed by government and the nuclear industry in opposition to coal power, is a radioactive smokescreen to expand uranium mining.
The nuclear energy cycle is far from being safe or greenhouse gas emission-free. Even if it were, nuclear power addresses the source of only around 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions – electricity production.
WWW.Weapons, Water and Waste.
Nuclear power provides all the fuel and infrastructure required to make nuclear weapons ( if it weren't for uranium mines and nuclear reactors there would be no nuclear WMDS threatening our planet)
Nuclear power uses vast amounts of water , (up to 153 million litres of water per day from the Great Artesian Basin is proposed by BHP Billiton for Olympic Dam mine alone, along with a proposed 400 megawatt power station)
Nuclear power uses vast amounts of chemicals (including ammonia, sulphuric acid, kerosene, lime) in the process of mining and milling uranium
Nuclear power uses vast amounts of fossil fuels, from mining, milling, treatment, enrichment, fuel reprocessing, reactor construction, reactor decommissioning and all related transports
Uranium enrichment for nuclear fuel is energy intensive
All reactors themselves will eventually become nuclear waste
After 50 years of the nuclear industry there remains NO proven storage or management solution for nuclear wastes, some of which remain deadly for up to 4.2 billion years
Nuclear energy, particularly reactor construction and decommissioning, is extremely expensive and diverts funds from safe, clean sustainable and existing alternatives
Nuclear reactors, storage sites for spent fuel and transports of nuclear wastes by road and sea, especially plutonium and spent fuel rods, are recognised by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency and the nuclear industry (including ANSTO) as security and terrorism risks
Germany , a world leader in solar energy, is set to reduce its CO 2 greenhouse gas emissions to one fifth of current levels by 2050 - whilst phasing out nuclear energy
THERE IS NOTHING SAFE, CLEAN OR GREEN ABOUT NUCLEAR POWER
Real energy solutions consist of:
- De-centralised energy generation (domestic solar and wind)
- Greater energy efficiency
- Energy conservation
- Investment and subsidised development of a combination of existing sustainable energy sources (solar, wind, geothermal, non-native forest biomass and wave power generation)
- Investment and development of new technologies such as photovoltaic sliver cells [link]
See www.foe.org.au/documents.htm for the report “Nuclear No Solution to climate Change”
DOWNLOAD BROADSHEET
Nuclear is the problem not the solution
Our planet, its ecology and our society are faced with the incredibly serious problem of climate change. Already temperatures and seas have risen, global ice is melting, species have become extinct, storm damage has broken all records, annual deaths are measured in hundreds of thousands.
The future looks far worse with predictions of wide spread ecosystem collapse, increased spread of tropical diseases, huge numbers of extinctions, millions of refugees fleeing effected areas, flooding of our coasts, and storm damage equaling human economic output by 2060.
Sadly all this will have been caused by our own hands due to our increasing the level of Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases allow energy from the Sun to reach the earth but trap the heat the sunlight
generates. These gases include CO2, released from and clearing and burning of fossil fuels, and methane CH4) released from agricultural practices such as growing cows, sheep and rice.
We have no choice but to reduce our Greenhouse gas emissions. In this context the nuclear industry have sort to position themselves as the solution to climate friendly energy.
“With carbon emissions now threatening the very stability of the biosphere, the security of our world requires a massive transformation to clean energy. ‘Renewables' like solar, wind and biomass can help. But only nuclear power offers clean, environmentally friendly energy on a massive scale”
This quote from the World Nuclear Association is part of a huge propaganda push by the Australian government and the international nuclear industry.
Even some of the world's most prominent environmentalists are talking about nuclear power as a solution to global warming. “There is no sensible alternative to nuclear power if we are to sustain civilisation” writes James Lovelock, pre-eminent world leader in the development of environmental consciousness.
ENVIRONMENTALISM
The propaganda push is an astonishing distortion of the facts and a bizarre perversion of environmentalism. Environmentalism can essentially be summed up as the idea that each generation should leave the earth in the same condition it was in when it inherited it. This is known as sustainability. What some people who call themselves environmentalists are doing is to say that we have to choose between two environmentally unsustainable industries. These people are not environmentalists. The continuation of the nuclear industry will leave a legacy of contamination and destruction that will threaten all life on earth.
The continuation of the fossil fuel industry at levels above the carbon cycle of the earth will severally damage the earth's life support systems. This fact isn't in dispute by proponents of nuclear power as a solution to climate change. What is being proposed is that we have no choice but to swap one form of disastrous pollution for another. There is an alternative we can pursue energy conservation and sustainable clean renewable alternatives.
The concept of the nuclear industry as saviour of the planet leaves the writer of this article almost speechless. It is so disastrous for the environment that I am left thinking that its just propaganda. They don't care about the environment, and are just using the situation to the advantage of there industry so as to maximise there own profits.
NUCLEAR WONT SOLVE THE PROBLEM
However, nuclear power is neither a viable solution to world energy needs, nor to global warming.
At Present there are 442 nuclear reactors in operation around the world. If as the nuclear industry suggests, nuclear power where to replace fossil fuels on a large scale, it would be necessary to build 2000 new 1000-megawatt reactors. Considering that no new nuclear plant has been ordered in the US since 1978 this proposal is less than practical. To put this in perspective: it takes 10 to 15 years from inception to build a single nuclear reactor. It simply isn't feasible to build enough new nuclear reactors in the time scale that they are needed.
Furthermore, Jan-Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith argue:
“The use of nuclear power causes, … under the most favourable conditions, approximately one-third as much CO 2 -emission as gas-fired electricity production. The rich uranium ores required to achieve this reduction are, however, so limited that if the entire present world electricity demand were to be provided by nuclear power, these ores would be exhausted within three years. Use of the remaining poorer ores in nuclear reactors would produce more CO 2 emission than burning fossil fuels directly.” ( Nuclear Power: the Energy Balance www.oprit.rug.nl/deenen/ )
NUCLEAR AS POLLUTER
In the US , where much of the world's uranium is enriched, the enrichment facility at Paducah , Kentucky , requires the electrical output of two 1000-megawatt coal-fired plants, which emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for 50 per cent of global warming.
This facility and another at Portsmouth , Ohio , release from leaky pipes 93 per cent of the chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gas emitted yearly in the US . CFC gas is the main culprit responsible for stratospheric ozone depletion. But CFC is also a global warmer, 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
In fact, the nuclear fuel cycle utilises large quantities of fossil fuel at all of its stages – the mining and milling of uranium, the construction of the nuclear reactor and cooling towers, decommissioning of the intensely radioactive reactor at the end of its 20 to 40-year operating lifetime, and transportation and long-term storage of massive quantities of radioactive waste.
NUCLEAR ISNT SAFE
Nuclear power isn't as proponents claim - safe. Human error, natural disasters, terrorism and war can prove catastrophic. Humanity seems to have a very short memory. After the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 in the Ukraine the international case for nuclear power was basically lost.
“In Spring 1986 the world's worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, 80 kilometres North of Kiev in the former USSR . On 26 April 1986 at 1:23 AM a core meltdown occurred at reactor no 4, creating a chemical explosion and a fireball which blew off the reactors 1000 ton shell and concrete lid. Some 190 tons of highly radioactive uranium and graphite were expelled, spewing radioactive substances to a height of more than one kilometre into the earth's atmosphere.
It is estimated that the explosion released more than 200 times the radioactive fallout of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, spreading radioactive fallout over large parts of the northern hemisphere.
The radioactive by product of the Chernobyl plant explosion will remain in the affected area for some 48000 years. An Official exclusion zone around the plant remains in place, extending for 18 miles. It is one of the most dangerous regions on earth.”
Info courtesy of a backgrounder on Chernobyl prepared by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. www.wagingpeace.org
“At least 3 million children in Belarus , Ukraine and the Russian federation require medical treatment due to the Chernobyl accident. Not until 2016, at the earliest, will we know the full number of those likely to develop serious medical conditions.”
Kofi Annan Secretary General of the United Nations
What is astonishing about Chernobyl isn't that it happened, or how bad it was. What's astonishing is that it only released some 3% of the radiation in the reactor core. If all the radioactive material had been released Europe would now all be a radioactive wasteland. If Europe had had reactors during world war two it would now be totally uninhabitable.
Nuclear isn't safe. Nuclear is the single most dangerous activity that humanity continues to engage in. To make matters worse, a study released last week by the National Academy of Sciences shows that the cooling pools at nuclear reactors, which store 10 to 30 times more radioactive material than that contained in the reactor core, are subject to catastrophic attacks by terrorists, which could unleash an inferno and release massive quantities of deadly radiation -- significantly worse than the radiation released by Chernobyl, according to some scientists. This vulnerable high-level nuclear waste contained in the cooling pools at 103 nuclear power plants in the US includes hundreds of radioactive elements that have different biological impacts in the human body, the most important being cancer and genetic diseases.
NUCLEAR IS EXPENSIVE
Nuclear power isn't cheap as proponents cheap. In fact if all environmental costs are included it's astonishingly expensive.
Nuclear energy has received huge subsidies since its inception: government-funded R&D, uranium enrichment, security systems, and insurance from accidents. In the USA the latter subsidy was institutionalized by the Price-Anderson Act which initially limited the liabilities of a single nuclear accident to $560 million.
Much of the data claiming that nuclear energy is cheap comes from industry and government sources that cannot be verified. But we now have much better data from two countries where the electricity industry has been corporatised and privatized: USA and UK . Here the market has revealed the real costs of nuclear energy.
In the USA , no nuclear power stations have been ordered since 1978, primarily because of poor economics. (Initially the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 discouraged nuke building, but memories of that accident have faded and nowadays it is economics that rules out this technology.) However, there are signs that the Bush administration may be preparing to grant a new round of massive subsidies to nuclear power.
A 2003 report on "The Future of Nuclear Power" (to access the report, just Google the title) from an MIT team estimated that a hypothetical new nuclear power station in the USA could produce electricity at US 6.7 c/kWh (Aus 9 c/kWh). For comparison, wind power in the USA is currently priced in the range 4-5 c/kWh, and Aus 7-9 c/kWh in Australia depending upon siting and size of wind farm.
In the UK , when the electricity industry was deregulated, nuclear energy had to be subsidised from a levy on electricity amounting to 1.2 billion pounds sterling per year. That is equivalent to a subsidy on each unit of nuclear electricity of UK 3 p/kWh (about A 6 c/kWh), making the total cost of a unit of nuclear electricity almost double the price of wind power at excellent sites in the UK .
Nuclear power plants produce dangerous amounts of radioactive emissions, leave a legacy of massive amounts of nuclear waste, and can be used to produce nuclear weapons. Each typical 1000-megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 33 tonnes of thermally hot, intensely radioactive waste per year. Already more than 80,000 tonnes of highly radioactive waste sits in cooling pools next to the 103 US nuclear power plants, awaiting transportation to a storage facility yet to be found. This dangerous material will travel through 39 states on roads and railway lines for the next 25 years.
NO SOLUTION FOR NUCLEAR WASTE
No solution to the problem of storage of nuclear waste exists. Nuclear waste needs to be isolated from the elements for thousands of years. The cost of doing this is simply staggering. Seismic activity, adverse weather, and wars pose serious and real threats to any nuclear waste store. Communities across the world intensely resist the dumping of nuclear waste in their backyard.
Plutonium 239, one of the most dangerous elements known to humans, is so toxic that one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. More than 200kg is made annually in each 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant. Plutonium is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in the liver, where it causes liver cancer, and in the bone, where it can induce bone cancer and blood malignancies. On inhalation it causes lung cancer. It also crosses the placenta, where, like the drug thalidomide, it can cause severe congenital deformities. Plutonium has a predisposition for the testicle, where it can cause testicular cancer and induce genetic diseases in future generations.
Plutonium lasts for 500,000 years, living on to induce cancer and genetic diseases in future generations of plants, animals and humans. Plutonium is also the fuel for nuclear weapons – only 5kg is necessary to make a bomb and each reactor makes more than 200kg per year. Therefore every country with a nuclear power plant can theoretically make 40 bombs a year.
FUEL FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS
The international nuclear safeguards system has been discredited time and time again. Retired diplomat Professor Richard Broinowski, in his 2003 book Fact or Fission? The Truth About Australia's Nuclear Ambitions , details how the safeguarding of Australian nuclear exports has been steadily weakened in many ways. He argues that accounting for Australian nuclear exports is “tenuous, and subject to distortion or abuse.”
“Uranium mining is a risky business that threatens the health of workers, local communities and the surrounding environment. It takes a naturally occurring hazard that has effectively been in a geological cocoon and concentrates this in a powdered form that can move through wind and water. It interrupts the flow and reduces the quality of ground and surface waters at the mine site and releases gases that can cause cancer and other diseases. It also creates large amounts of long lived radioactive waste product known as tailings. These routinely contain around 80 per cent of the radioactivity of the original uranium ore and are difficult to control and isolate. They pose a direct threat to humans and the wider environment for thousands of years”.
With the push for nuclear energy and a tripling of the price of uranium there is a massive push on for an increase in uranium mining in Australia . Western Mining Corporation is proposing to triple the size of the Roxby mine in South Australia , taking it from about 10 per cent to 30 per cent of world output. This proposal involves a huge open cut mine and water usage for one day of at least a massive 100 million litres – in the driest state of the world's driest continent.
The Great Artesian Basin supports many mound springs – unique arid land habitats that have world-class natural and cultural significance which support unique, rare and delicate micro flora and fauna. They have been adversely affected by WMC's water take. They are also culturally significant for the Arabunna, the traditional Aboriginal custodians of the land.
The Arabanna have a long history of opposing uranium mining on their land. WMC has a long history of divide and conquer, finding Aboriginal people they can negotiate with for mining. The situation is so severe that Arabunna elder Uncle Kevin Buzzacott attempted to charge Hugh Morgan, previous WMC CEO, with genocide.
The nuclear industry is currently at full tilt promoting the fantasy that nuclear power is an answer to global warming, with the Australian government's enthusiastic backing in its quest to increase uranium mining. Not only is nuclear not an answer to the world's energy crisis, it will leave a toxic legacy for all future generations; it produces global warming gases, it is far more expensive than any other form of electricity generation, and it produces the materials for nuclear weapons.
Hillel Freedman, Nuclear Free Australia ( www.nukefreeaus.org )
Reading : Hot Politics Testing Times – a feature on nuclear issues in Australia available with the June edition of Friends of the Earth's publication C hain Reaction .
Acknowledgements.
The author wishes to acknowledge reprinted material from articles by Mark Diesendorf and Helen Caldicott Resources
Nuclear Free Australia www.nukefreeaus.org
Future Energy www.futureenergy.org
Sustainability Centre www.sustainabilitycentre.com.au
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation www.waging peace.org
Nuclear Policy Research Institute www.nuclearpolicy.org
World Information Service on Energy (WISE) www.antenna.nl/wise
Nuclear what then are the alternatives?
Adrian Whitehead futureenergy.org
We have exposed the lies behind the claims of the nuclear industry and will paint a picture of how we can create a would which is climate friendly and socially just through the adoption of renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Renewables can they do they do it? Yes they can!
A clean energy future is possible. This future has two key elements, energy efficiency and renewable energy. Implementing energy efficiency is the most cost effective way of reducing Greenhouse gases however we will still need power even if massive energy efficiency gains are made.
The home is a good place to start. People have built homes for decades that require no or almost no heating or cooling other than that of the sunlight or air flow. It would be easy for government to mandate all new homes to be built to these standards and old homes improved on sale or new leasing agreement. Yet governments don't and instead people put air conditioners on their homes which in turn fuels the demand for new power stations to meet growing peak electricity demands at summer time.
Other opportunities exist including improving lighting efficiency and use or buying energy efficient white goods.
Likewise in business there exists huge opportunities to improve efficiencies. Alcoa, which uses 28% of Victoria 's power, and is subsidised 100 million dollars per year to do this, could improve the efficiency of its Portland smelter by 30% by using modern equipment. Many business could save large amounts money by simply looking at improving the efficiency of their heating and cooling and lighting within their building stock. Urban design and the provision of good public transport and freight infrastructure are also critical to reducing our energy use.
Renewables already supply 21% of the worlds energy (mainly hydro and biomass), with wind power and solar power growing annually at 30% and 20%.
Today you can buy electricity made from 100% renewable sources but you will need to pay a bit more for it. The only reason renewables can't compete on price with coal or gas is that the damage that coal or gas do to the environment and people are not factored into the price.
Despite this wind power (the cheapest form of renewable electricity production) will be cost competitive or cheaper with electricity produced from gas plants in 10 years and coal power plants in 15 years due to technological improvements and scales of production.
The doubling of peak electricity pricing would enable new solar photo voltaic cells designed here in Australia to produce electricity for the market at a profit, and send a price signal to those using air conditioners
to insulate and use external blinds instead.
Supplying our energy needs with renewables will require a mix of different types, some reworking of our power grids which are design to feed power in from large centralised coal plants, and the use of some peaking power such as hydro. Wind and solar are viable now, while wave power, geothermal "hot dry rocks", and others are close to commercial production, despite a lack of government support for the renewable sector in general. It is simply a matter of investing the billions of dollars in renewables and not spending them on building new nuclear or coal power plants.
Can we afford to? We have no choice, any failure to act and spend the required money now will only increase the magnitude of the disaster we face, and the billions and billions of dollars dealing with the problems.
Goesquestration, the storage of CO2 in underground, is touted as the saving grace of the coal industry. The technology is 20 to 30 years away for implementation, time we don't have if we want to prevent the worst of climate change. Goesequestration if proved technically feasible would add between 6-8 cents per kW hour to the cost of coal electricity which is already 3-4 cents per kW hour, making more expensive than wind power today which cost between 7-9 cents per kW hour.
Many experts are predicting we are either in or 2-3 years away from reaching global peak oil production, the amount of oil produced reduce fall from then on. Oil demand is still growing so oil will become very expensive and prohibitive as a transport fuel. This gives us the possibility of moving our transport sector to a clean energy, though some are suggestion converting coal to a liquid to replace oil and using nuclear power to provide the energy to do it.
Energy efficiency and renewable technology provide the world with an opportunity to provide and clean, sustainable and socially just energy future for the world.
Adrian Whitehead Futuerenergy.org
(www.futureenergy.org)
ARTICLES
1 Clean, green ... and nuclear?
2 Unclean industry is no white knight
3 Nuclear is no solution to climate change!
4 Nuclear power is the problem, not a solution
1 Clean, green ... and nuclear?
The Age
February 28, 2005
<www.theage.com.au/news/National/Clean-green--and-nuclear/2005/02/27/1109439449998.html>
Some environmentalists are starting to contemplate the unthinkable: perhaps one answer to global warming lies in turning to nuclear energy. By Liz Minchin. MORE
2 Unclean industry is no white knight
By Don Henry
Executive Director, Australian Conservation Foundation
Australian Financial Review
February 22, 2005, p,63.
The Kyoto Protocol has finally become reality. Now it's time to move beyond first steps and start making the dramatic cuts in greenhouse pollution that are needed to address climate change. Scientists tell us we need to cut our greenhouse pollution by more than 60% by the middle of this century to stabilise the earth's climate. We must begin charting a course for achieving these cuts. MORE
3 Nuclear is no solution to climate change!
Jim Green
(This article is from the new issue of Chain Reaction, the magazine of Friends of the Earth, Australia. This issue of Chain Reaction has a special supplement on nuclear issues. Subscription enquiries: ph (03) 9419 8700, <chainreaction@green.net.au>.
The nuclear industry and its supporters have suddenly discovered an environmental consciousness. No - they're not planning to close their dangerous, polluting reactors nor to begin dealing responsibly with their legacy of toxic radioactive wastes. But they do profess deep concern about climate change - and argue that nuclear power is the only 'solution'. MORE
4 Nuclear power is the problem, not a solution
Helen Caldicott
13apr05
THERE is a huge propaganda push by the nuclear industry to justify nuclear power as a panacea for the reduction of global-warming gases. MORE
Research on nuclear power / climate change.
These papers vary in focus and quality but all have something useful to add to the debate.
World Information Service on Energy (WISE) and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS), February 2005, "A back door comeback: Nuclear energy as a solution for climate change?", Nuclear Monitor #621 & #622, <www.antenna.nl/wise>.
Available via website or from Jim Green <jim.green@foe.org.au>
Mycle Schneider (WISE Paris), April 2000, "Climate Change and Nuclear Power", published by World Wide Fund for Nature, <www.panda.org/downloads/climate_ change/fullnuclearreprotwwf.pdf>.)
Following report available from Jim Green <jim.green@foe.org.au>. And/or see the updated, detailed material at <www.earthlife.org.za>
Richard Sherman & Richard Worthington, March 2001, "Pretenders and Providers: Why Nuclear Power Doesn't Make Climate Sense", published by Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Partnership (a project of Earthlife Africa Johannesburg) in co-operation with Earthlife Africa Cape Town and Koeberg Alert.
Is Nuclear Energy the Silver Bullet?
ABC Radio National, 'Earthbeat', Saturday 11 September, 2004.
<www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/stories/s1193765.htm>
Climate Change Briefing: Nuclear power is no solution to climate change: exposing the myths
Friends of the Earth Scotland, January 1998
Exposing the myths: Nuclear power is economical and cost effective; does not produce CO2; is safe; is sustainable; can provide an endless source of energy; makes a vital contribution to energy supply.
Nuclear Energy: No Solution to Climate Change
Greenpeace
<www.greenpeace.org/~comms/no.nukes/nenstcc.html>
Nuclear Power and Climate Change
Friends of the Earth - UK
September 2000
<www.foe.co.uk>
More sympathetic to nuclear power ...
Steve Fetter, 1999, "Climate Change and the Transformation of World Energy Supply", Stanford University - Centre for International Security and Cooperation Report, <cisac.stanford.edu/publications/10228>.