Global warming:
Nuclear Power
No Solution
By Jim Green
11 April, 2005
Green
Left Weekly
Have
the nuclear industry and its supporters suddenly gained an environmental
consciousness? While they're not planning to close their dangerous,
polluting reactors nor begin dealing responsibly with their legacy of
toxic radioactive wastes, they are now professing deep concern about
climate change and argue that nuclear power is the only solution.
Even environmentalists
are turning to nuclear power, we're told. It's not true you could
count them on one hand but the nuclear boosters and the mainstream
media aren't letting the facts get in the way of a good story.
Proponents of nuclear
power downplay or ignore altogether the problems that would be exacerbated
by an expansion of nuclear power globally or the introduction of nuclear
power into Australia including nuclear weapons proliferation,
radioactive waste, and the risk of catastrophic accidents.
Nuclear weapons
proliferation
The peaceful
nuclear power and research sectors have produced enough fissile material
to build over 110,000 nuclear weapons. Australian uranium has resulted
in the production of more than 60 tonnes of plutonium, sufficient to
produce about 6000 nuclear weapons.
Supposedly peaceful
nuclear facilities can be and have been used in various
ways for weapons research and production. Of the 60 countries which
have built nuclear power or research reactors, about 25 are known to
have used their peaceful nuclear facilities for covert weapons
research and/or production a strike rate of about 40%.
Israel, India, Pakistan,
South Africa and possibly North Korea have succeeded in producing nuclear
weapons under cover of a peaceful nuclear program (details
at <http://www.mapw.org.au/nuclear-reactors/02green.html>).
Claims that the
international safeguards system prevents misuse of peaceful
nuclear facilities and materials are grossly overstated. Recent statements
from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency and US President George
Bush about the need to limit the spread of enrichment and reprocessing
technology, and to establish multinational control over sensitive nuclear
facilities, amount to an acknowledgement of the fundamental flaws of
the international safeguards system.
Retired Australian
diplomat Professor Richard Broinowski notes in his 2003 book Fact or
Fission? The Truth About Australia's Nuclear Ambitions that accounting
for Australian uranium exports is tenuous, and subject to distortion
or abuse.
Radioactive waste
Not a single repository exists for the disposal of high-level radioactive
waste, which is produced at an annual rate of about 10,000 tonnes in
nuclear power reactors worldwide. Technologies exist to encapsulate
or immobilise radionuclides to a greater or lesser degree, but encapsulated
radioactive waste still represents a potential public health and environmental
threat that will last for millennia.
The prospects for
transmutation using neutrons or charged particle beams to convert
longer-lived radionuclides into shorter-lived radionuclides or stable
isotopes are grim for a number of reasons.
Reprocessing spent
reactor fuel is polluting, and most of the uranium and plutonium arising
from reprocessing is simply stockpiled with no plans for its use. Separation
of plutonium from spent fuel poses a major proliferation risk
many tonnes of plutonium are stockpiled, and a typical 1000 megawatt
electric (MWe) reactor produces about 300 kilograms of plutonium each
year, enough to produce about 30 nuclear weapons.
Accidents
The more reactors,
the more accidents. The more accidents, the more likely significant
off-site releases of radioactivity. The new generation of passively
safe reactors face various obstacles, such as not being new or
passively safe! For example, so-called pebble-bed reactor technology
is a variation on the theme of high temperature reactors, which have
been investigated by many countries, abandoned in most, and successful
in none.
In addition to the
perennial problems of plant malfunction and human error, terrorism looms
large as a threat to nuclear plants and everyone working and living
in their vicinity.
Nuclear power proponents
deny the likelihood that the 1986 Chernobyl disaster has killed thousands
and will kill thousands more. They do this by hiding behind the complexities
of epidemiological studies and using those complexities to obfuscate.
However, using the standard risk estimates applied the world over, the
likely toll from Chernobyl will be some tens of thousands of deaths.
A non-solution
The world's 440
operating power reactors, with about 364,000 MWe of total capacity,
produce about 16% of the world's electricity. Coal, gas and oil account
for four times that amount about 64%. So to replace fossil fuel
generated electricity with nuclear power would require a five-fold increase
in the number of reactors, from 440 to about 2200. The cost of the additional
1760 reactors would be several trillion dollars.
The 2200 reactors
would produce enough plutonium each year to build roughly 60,000 nuclear
weapons. The annual production of high-level radioactive waste in the
form of spent fuel would increase to about 50,000 tonnes to be
safely and securely stored in those repositories that don't exist.
But what of the
benefits of closing all those fossil fuel fired plants? Electricity
generation is responsible for only a modest percentage of global greenhouse
gas emissions as low as 9% by some accounts. In broad terms the
replacement of all fossil fuel fired electricity plants with nuclear
power would be unlikely to reduce global greenhouse emissions by more
than 5-10% not even close to the 60% reduction required to stabilise
atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.
It is theoretically
possible that nuclear power could be used not only for electricity production
but also for other purposes such as producing hydrogen for transportation.
However, that would just make the task all the more impractical and
all the more alarming in terms of proliferation risks and radioactive
waste production. According to John Busby, about 200 nuclear reactors
would be required in Australia alone to produce both electricity and
hydrogen for transportation (<http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3039>).
In Australia, building
nuclear reactors would not only be irresponsible and impractical as
a means of addressing climate change, it would also be illegal because
the Howard government outlawed the construction of nuclear power reactors
in the 1998 Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act.
Interestingly, the government made nuclear power illegal with little
or no prompting from environmental and anti-nuclear groups.
Even if a future
government attempted to push ahead with construction of nuclear power
reactors, the public opposition would be immense. The only serious proposal
to build a nuclear power plant in Australia at Jervis Bay in
NSW in the late 1960s was defeated by public and political opposition.
The Jervis Bay project
was driven by then-Coalition PM John Gorton, who later admitted that
the intention was not only to produce electricity but also to produce
plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Claims that nuclear
power is greenhouse free are nonsense. Substantial greenhouse
gas generation occurs across the nuclear fuel cycle. Nonetheless, fossil
fuel derived electricity is considerably more greenhouse intensive
for the moment.
Emissions per unit
energy from nuclear power are about one third of those from large gas-fired
electricity plants. However, this comparative benefit of nuclear power
is substantially eroded, and eventually negated altogether, as higher-grade
uranium ores are depleted and lower-grade ores are mined. Most of the
Earth's uranium is found in very poor grade ores. That trend would of
course be hastened in a scenario in which nuclear power replaces large
numbers of fossil fuel fired electricity plants. (For discussion on
the economic and energy costs associated with declining ore grades,
see the detailed study at <http://www.oprit.rug.nl/deenen>.)
Even at the current
rate of consumption, low-cost uranium reserves will be exhausted in
about 50 years according to John Carlson from the Australian Safeguards
and Non-proliferation Office, the disgraceful nuclear regulatory agency
which acts more like a pro-nuclear PR agency.
At this point in
the argument, nuclear boosters such as Carlson pull out their trump
card the wondrous plutonium economy in which fast breeder reactors
produce more plutonium fuel than they consume and nuclear power
may yet be too cheap to meter! However, most plutonium breeder R&D
programs have been abandoned because of technical, economic and safety
problems. In any case, the weapons proliferation risks of a plutonium
economy are totally unacceptable. Nuclear fusion also poses proliferation
risks, and faces seemingly insurmountable technical and economic problems.
Renewable energy
Renewable energy
sources typically generate considerably less greenhouse emissions per
unit energy than nuclear power and, of course, energy efficiency is
a clear winner when comparing greenhouse gas abatement costs. According
to the US Critical Mass Energy Project, every dollar invested in energy
efficiency is up to seven times more effective in reducing carbon dioxide
emissions than nuclear power.
Last year the Clean
Energy Future Group which comprises renewable energy companies
and the Worldwide Fund for Nature produced a comprehensive paper
called A Clean Energy Future for Australia that details
how major greenhouse gas emissions reductions can be achieved (<http://www.wwf.org.au/News_and_information/
Features/feature10.php>).
The Clean Energy
study found that Australia can meet its energy needs from various commercially
proven fuels and technologies while cutting greenhouse emissions by
50% by 2040. Focussing on stationary energy sources, because of their
large contribution to greenhouse emissions in Australia, the Clean Energy
study envisages the following energy mix by 2040:
> natural gas provides 30% (including cogeneration of electricity
and heat) of Australia's electricity demand;
> biomass
from agriculture and plantation forestry residues provides 26%;
> wind
energy provides 20%;
> photovoltaic
and solar thermal systems provide 5%;
> hydroelectricity
provides 7%; and
> coal
(9%) and petroleum (1%) continue to play a minor role in electricity
generation.
A range of other
benefits would flow from the Clean Energy report's recommendations,
including rural employment growth, growth in exports, reductions in
household and business operating costs, and benefits to the environment
and public health through the reduction not only of greenhouse gases
but also other pollutants.
A report by the
Australia Institute maps out a realistic plan to achieve a 60% cut in
greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector (including transport)
by 2050 (<http://www.tai.org.au/WhatsNew_Files/WhatsNew/DP48sum.pdf>).
Many similar reports have been produced overseas.
The extent to which
renewable energy sources can replace fossil fuels and nuclear power
depends to a significant extent on investment in research and development
programs. The Howard government provides fossil fuel industries with
$9 billion in subsidies annually, according to a 2003 report from the
UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures. By contrast, the Howard government:
Closed the Energy Research and Development Corporation in 1997-98. The
ERDC had invested almost $100 million in 350 energy innovation ventures
since it was created in 1990. The government then reneged on a commitment
to meet existing ERDC funding commitments.
Withdrew funding
from the Co-operative Research Centre for Renewable Energy in December
2002.
Introduced the Mandatory
Renewable Energy Target but set the target at a measly 2% (closer to
1% when non-renewable interlopers and creative accounting are factored
in).
Appointed a Rio
Tinto employee as the government's chief scientist.
Allowed fossil fuel
companies to buy their way onto the Australian Bureau of Agricultural
Resource Economics panel dealing with climate change issues.
Small wonder that
the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported in 2004 that the proportion
of Australia's overall energy consumption from renewable resources declined
in the 10 years 1991-2001 from 6% to 5.7%.