Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: nuclear power

  • The International Renewable Energy Agency

    Speech delivered at the Conference for the Establishment of IRENA in Berlin on April 10, 2008

    Thank you, Hermann, for your kind words. As many of you will know, Hermann Scheer has been the driving force behind the creation of IRENA. Please join me in recognising that without his vision and unwavering commitment to the establishment of IRENA, we would not be here today.

    I should like to say how honoured and delighted I am to be delivering this speech. Many of you will have heard about the recent chaos at Heathrow Airport in London. But this conference was so important that I braved the potential horrors of Terminal 5 to be here today. To my great surprise, everything went smoothly, so I take that as a good omen for the success of this conference.

    The threat of global climate disaster Today we stand at a crossroads in history. Most climate scientists have sounded urgent alarms, warning us about the imminent threat of climate change, and the impending tipping point. David Wasdell, Director of the Meridian programme, in a book he co-authored called Planet Earth, We Have A Problem, describes the tipping point like this:

    “If we go beyond the point where human intervention can no longer stabilise the system, then we precipitate unstoppable runaway climate change. That will set in motion a major extinction event comparable to the five other extinction crises that the earth has previously experienced.”

    As climate change kicks in, the tropical and subtropical countries of Africa, South Asia and Latin America will heat up more and more, with temperatures becoming increasingly intolerable. Droughts will affect large parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Melting glaciers will flood river valleys and then, when they have disappeared, unprecedented droughts will occur. Poor, low-lying countries such as Bangladesh will find it much harder to cope with sea level rise than Holland or Florida.

    If current trends are allowed to continue, hundreds of millions of people in the poorer countries will lose their homes, as well as the land on which they grow their crops. And then there is the threat of diseases: By the end of the century 182 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone could die of diseases directly attributable to climate change, according to Christian Aid.

    Given the scale of this impending disaster, we have no choice but to embark upon a global renewable energy revolution, by replacing our carbon-driven economy with a renewable energy economy. The challenge we are facing now is how to switch to a more secure, lower-carbon energy system that does not undermine economic and social development, and addresses the threats of climate change and global inequality.

    Climate change is no longer just an environmental issue: it touches every part of our lives: peace, security, human rights, poverty, hunger, health, mass migration and economics. IRENA is a necessary condition for preventing climate disaster and ensuring global energy security and stability.

    I will be frank with you. Before now, I was sceptical whether the international community had the resolve to do what is necessary to prevent global climate disaster. However, the establishment of IRENA is more than the establishment of just another agency. In addition to its visionary goals, it will benefit from Hermann Scheer’s thirty years of expertise and dedication to the creation of this organisation.

    There have been indications that various governments have taken notice of the threat posed by climate change: the World Summit for Sustainable Development in 2002, the International Renewable Energy Conference in Bonn in 2004, and the Beijing International Renewable Energy Conference in 2005 are three examples. By taking the initiative in hosting this conference, the German government have proposed concrete steps where previously there was mostly talk. I hope you will join me in applauding their courage and foresight.

    Milton Friedman said, “In a crisis, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That… is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”

    Never before has humanity been so overwhelmed by such massive and urgent concerns. We are experiencing explosive population growth: the world’s population is forecast to reach 9.2 billion by 2050. Since 1992, there has been a 50% rise in world energy consumption. Another 50% rise is expected in the next fifteen years. We now know that if we remain locked into an inefficient, polluting, fossil-fuel based global economy, we will exhaust the Earth’s natural resources and we will accelerate climate change.

    So we have reached both an environmental and an economic tipping point. Which direction we choose to take will decide the fate of our planet. What is certain is that we must bring about fundamental change in our energy systems, with a renewed focus on energy security and lower, if not zero, carbon emissions.

    But we should be wary of using phrases like “the carbon-free economy”. So far, this expression has been used in relation to two technologies that fail to provide acceptable solutions to the energy crisis. The first is “carbon capture and storage”, or CCS technology. Not only is this technology still speculative, though it is projected for 2020, it is already clear that insufficient space exists to capture all the CO2 released. We can also say that implementing CCS will be much more expensive than providing energy from renewable sources.

    The second technology is nuclear power. The nuclear industry has attempted to “green-wash” itself by trumpeting its carbon neutrality, yet the deployment of nuclear power comes with tremendous – and, to my mind, unacceptable – risks, including large-scale nuclear accidents, the problem of waste, uranium storage, nuclear proliferation in general, and last but not least the high water consumption of nuclear power plants. As some of you may know, France was forced to shut down some of its nuclear reactors a few years ago, thanks to a shortage in cooling water. As we continue to experience worldwide water shortages, and as we look to a future in which these shortages are set to worsen, this is a significant risk factor in relying on nuclear power.

    Nuclear power is not a panacea to cure us of our energy worries. Quite apart from the safety concerns it poses, the substantial costs involved and the irresponsibility of burdening future generations with the problems of waste management, it is estimated that our usable uranium reserves will run out within five decades – and that is only if no new power plants are built. Attempts to “stretch” current reserves with various technologies carry incalculable cost. Similarly, proposals that have been made to extend the life of the fossil fuel energy system not only risk the ecosphere but also represent a mammoth financial burden to future generations.

    Renewable energies, on the other hand, avoid many of these problems, and even create a plethora of opportunities – economic, environmental and social. Renewable solutions are affordable, available and a moral imperative. With the benefits to poorer countries of decentralized, indigenous energy sources, and the affordability of implementation that has been demonstrated by the latest research, we will be working toward solving the two great threats to our continued survival: environmental degradation and global inequality. Renewable energies provide a realistic solution to both. And, as the example of Germany shows, the employment benefits are staggering: Germany has created some 250,000 new jobs by its accelerated introduction of renewable energy in less than ten years.

    The advantages of renewable energy

    Traditional sources of energy, which account for 60% of the current commercial energy supply,are becoming scarce. But renewable energy provides sustainable, safe, affordable power that does not run out and does not pose a risk to ourselves or to the environment. For these reasons, the creation of IRENA is necessary and urgent.

    The arguments that renewable energy does not provide sufficient or affordable alternatives to traditional energy sources have been exposed as flawed and false. Furthermore, the cost of finite conventional energies will continue to rise as the sources dry up. But, as we will all have read in Herman Scheer’s books, The Solar Economy and The Solar Manifesto, renewable energy costs will generally go down, as they consist almost exclusively of technology costs. Mass production and technological innovation will bring dramatic decreases in cost. So we should not see the promotion of renewables as a burden: we should see it as a unique economic opportunity – one that will reward those who get on board early. IRENA will be instrumental in encouraging research and development to facilitate its affordability and implementation, and for this reason, the creation of IRENA is necessary and urgent.

    As we have heard today, countries in the Global South enjoy little or no energy security. But a renewable energy revolution will have crucial economic and social benefits for the poorest countries in the world. Home-grown renewable sources provide developing countries with the means by which to insulate themselves against rising energy prices elsewhere in the world. And with a decentralised renewable network there would be no need for expensive grid solutions.

    In promoting these decentralised energy systems, we will be helping to prevent political and military conflicts sparked by scarcity of resources. We will be giving the developing world true and lasting energy security. For this reason, the creation of IRENA is necessary and urgent.

    Renewable energy stimulates economic growth and local job creation. In 2007, more than $100bn was invested worldwide in renewable energy technology. By 2006, 2.4 million jobs were created. Since renewable energy installations are less complex to operate than conventional facilities, plants can be managed by local workforces as part of a decentralised system.

    Only renewable energy offers the possibility of true energy efficiency. Whilst in the global supply chains of conventional energies, from mines and wells to customers, there are large energy losses, the short supply chains that are possible in the renewable model will lead to a drastic reduction in wastage. To make short energy chains feasible will require investment in research and development of storage technologies, and this is an area in which IRENA will be of vital importance. So for this reason, too, the creation of IRENA is necessary and urgent.

    In addition to reducing the burden on the Earth’s natural resources, renewable energies reduce pollution, because renewables mostly result in only very small greenhouse gas emissions.

    So whilst conventional fossil and atomic energies continue to endanger the health of the planet, risk sparking conflict over declining resources, and require high water consumption and ever-increasing costs, renewable energy sources do not bring with them these negative effects. The representative from Senegal today spoke of “ridding ourselves of the tyranny of oil”.

    Renewables are the only solution to the three key global energy challenges: energy security, cost efficiency and environmental protection. The task now is to create policies that make investment in renewable energies an attractive proposition at national and international levels. For this, the creation of IRENA, as you may have guessed by now, is necessary and urgent.

    Moving forward with renewable energy

    Notwithstanding all these advantages, there is still unjustifiable political prejudice against renewable energy. While conventional energies enjoy political privilege, including large amounts of public money for research and development, military protection of the supply chain and $300billion in global annual subsidies, renewable energies are discriminated against. Though intergovernmental institutions exist to promote atomic energy – for example the IAEA and EURATOM – not one exists for the promotion of renewables. Renewables need an institutional base at international level to provide a reference point – an intergovernmental agency to advise governments in drawing up policies and strategies – to address the current imbalance between traditional and renewable sources.

    To date, the International Energy Agency, the IEA, despite its significant expertise, is seen by the developing countries as a “club for the rich”, and their influence and activity is limited to the OECD countries. The IEA only recently showed interest in renewable energy sources. Other existing networks have no mandate to advise governments on the accelerated introduction of renewable energy.

    It is not as if this is a sudden or unexpected crisis. We have known the limitations and damaging consequences of conventional energies for over thirty years. As Hermann Scheer puts it, the result so far has been “talking globally, postponing nationally”, with the effect that the introduction of renewable energies has not been nearly fast enough. Despite clear indications that renewable energy was the inevitable way forward, we have not met the challenges set at Rio in 1992.

    Paying lip service to renewable energy is no longer sufficient. We now require concrete action. The delays in investment and adoption of renewable energies have been environmentally and economically inexcusable. We have the tools to expose the fossil fuel industry’s claims that renewables are expensive and inadequate as false. Promoting renewables must now become a global and universal priority, and IRENA is a necessary condition for that goal. If we intend to embark on the renewable energy revolution, we cannot do it without IRENA.

    IRENA will work toward improved regulatory frameworks for renewable energy through enhanced policy advice, improvements in the transfer of renewable energy technology; progress on skills and know-how for renewable energy; it will be able to offer a scientifically sound information basis through applied policy research; and better financing of renewable energy.

    Germany has shown great leadership and vision in spearheading the renewable energy revolution. We must grasp firmly the hand that is being offered to us and embark upon this revolution to prevent global climate disaster. I thank the German government for this opportunity, and Hermann Scheer for his outstanding work. Also on behalf of the World Future Council, of which I am the Chair, I urge each of you support the establishment of IRENA as heralding a new world order, in which we can look forward to safe, affordable, secure and stable energy sources for all.

    I was delighted today to see the discussions quickly focus on substantive and practical issues. It seems as though many countries are keen to begin working.

    I would like to finish by quoting Dr. Scheer:

    To be able to discuss energy as a separate matter is an intellectual illusion. The CO2 emissions are not the only problem of fossil energy. The radioactive contamination is not the only problem of atomic power. Many other dangers are caused by using atomic and fossil energies: From the polluted cities to the erosion of rural areas; from water pollution to desertification; from mass migration to overcrowded settlements and the declining security of individuals and states. Because the present energy system lies at the root of these problems, renewables are the solution to these problems. That means: Nothing is macro-economically better and cheaper than the total substitution of conventional energies by renewables. We need a hard-line strategy for soft energies.

    Hermann’s words show that this is the over-riding moral imperative of the century: the time has come for decision-makers in politics and economics to embrace this opportunity.

    There is no time for further excuses, postponement, or procrastination. This is a time for courage and leadership, and for positive and immediate action.

    We have an obligation to future generations upon which we must not renege. For their sake, I urge you to take full advantage of the current political momentum and give your full support to the creation of IRENA.

    Bianca Jagger is Chair of the World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org).

  • Nuclear is Uneconomical

    Existing technologies for more efficient end-use can save three-fourths of U.S. electricity at an average cost of around 1 cent per kilowatt-hour–cheaper than running a coal or nuclear power plant, let alone building one. Scores of utilities have demonstrated and implemented at scale, rapid, large, predictable, and extremely cheap “negawatts” (saved electricity). California’s per-capita use of electricity has been flat for 30 years while per-capita real income rose 79 percent. Firms like DuPont, Dow, and IBM are saving billions of dollars by cutting energy intensity, sometimes as fast as 6-8 percent a year.

    My household saves 90 percent of electricity and 99 percent of space and water heating energy with a 10-month payback using 1983 technology. My team’s redesign of some $30 billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors normally finds energy savings of 30-60 percent in retrofits (paying back in about 2-3 years) and 40-90 percent in new installations (typically with lower capital cost). A detailed road map for eliminating U.S. oil use by the 2040s, led by business for profit (“Winning the Oil Endgame”), shows how to save half of U.S. oil and gas at average costs one-fifth and one-eighth of current prices. Implementation is already underway. And each of the 60-80 known obstacles to implementing energy efficiency can be turned into a business opportunity.

    On the supply side, “micropower”–small-scale generation that emits little or no carbon dioxide–provided one-sixth of the world’s electricity and one-third of its new electricity in 2005, meeting from one-sixth to more than one-half of all electrical needs in 13 industrial countries. The smaller of micropower’s components, distributed renewable sources of electricity, was a $56 billion global equipment market in 2006, while the larger, combined-heat-and-power, was probably even larger. Micropower added four times the electricity and 8-11 times the capacity that nuclear power added globally in 2005, now produces more electricity than nuclear power does, and is financed by private risk capital. Micropower plus “negawatts,” which are probably about as big, now provide more than half of the world’s new electrical services.

    Nuclear power is unnecessary and uneconomic, so we needn’t debate its safety. As retirements of aging plants overwhelm construction, global capacity and output will decline (as they did slightly in 2006). Most independent analysts doubt the private capital market will finance any new nuclear plants. Even in the United States, where new subsidies would roughly repay the next six units’ entire capital cost, Standard & Poor’s said this wouldn’t materially improve the builders’ credit ratings. I expect this experiment will be like defibrillating a corpse: It’ll jump, but it won’t revive.

    Nuclear power’s market meltdown is good for global development: Saving electricity needs around 1,000 times less capital and repays it about 10 times faster than supplying more electricity. Shifting capital to saving electricity can potentially turn the power sector (now gobbling one-fourth of global development capital) into a net funder of other development needs. Further, an efficient, diverse, dispersed, and renewable energy system can make major supply failures, whether caused by accident or malice, impossible by design rather than (as now) inevitable by design.

    The nuclear phaseout will also speed climate protection, because buying negawatts and micropower instead will save 2-10 times more carbon per dollar, and will do so more quickly. And it can belatedly stem nuclear proliferation, too, by removing from commerce a vast flow of ingredients of do-it-yourself bomb kits in civilian disguise.

    This would make bomb ingredients harder to get, more conspicuous to try to get, and far costlier politically if caught trying to get, because the motive for wanting them would be unmasked as unambiguously military. Focusing intelligence resources on needles, not haystacks, would also improve the odds of timely warning. All this wouldn’t make proliferation impossible, but it would make things far more difficult for both recipients and suppliers.

    Thus, acknowledging and accepting the market collapse of nuclear power is an important step toward a fairer, richer, cooler, and safer world.

    Amory B. Lovins is the Cofounder, Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

  • Nuclear Power: No Solution for Global Warming

    There is simply no way global warming can be stopped without significant reductions in the current energy consumption levels of developed countries. Whatever else one could say about nuclear power in the old days, it was certainly not considered environment-friendly. Over the past few years, however, a number of so-called environmentalists, generally Western, have come out in support of nuclear power as an essential component of any practical solution to global warming. Predictably, flailing nuclear establishments everywhere have grabbed this second opportunity to make a claim for massive state investments and resurrect an industry that has collapsed in country after country due to its inability to provide clean, safe, or cheap electricity. But just as the old mantra”too cheap to meter” proved ridiculously wrong, the claims that nuclear energy can contribute significantly to mitigating climate change do not bear scrutiny.

    Most prominent of these so-called environmentalists turned pro-nuclear advocates is James Lovelock, who propounded the Gaia hypothesis of the Earth as a self-regulating organism. Last year he entreated his”friends in the [Green] movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy.” Lovelock’s article had several factual errors. For example,”nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources” One wonders which of the many renewable energy sources promoted by the Green movement – photovoltaics, wind energy, and so on – has had an accident that even remotely compares with Chernobyl.

    Even more inexplicable is the assertion: “We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen.” Despite such nonsense, Lovelock’s article was circulated widely, both by the nuclear lobby and by other environmentalists who were either confused or felt that this sort of argument had to be refuted strongly.

    Lovelock’s bloomers aside, the fact that some environmentalists have endorsed nuclear power as a solution to global warming deserves serious consideration and response. The enormity of the potential impact of climate change adds to this imperative.

    Two implicit but flawed assumptions underlie most claims about the significance of nuclear energy for the climate-change issue. The first is that climate change can be tackled without confronting and changing Western, especially American, patterns of energy consumption – the primary causes and continuing drivers for unsustainable increases in carbon emissions and global warming. This is plain impossible; there is simply no way global warming can be stopped without significant reductions in the current energy consumption levels of Western/developed countries. Efforts by various developing countries to match these consumption levels only intensify the problem.

    The second flawed assumption is that the adoption of nuclear power will lower aggregate carbon emissions. In a strictly technical sense, each unit of electricity produced by a nuclear plant would cause the emission of fewer grams of carbon than a unit of electricity generated by thermal plants. (A false myth often propagated by the nuclear lobby is that nuclear energy is carbon free. In reality, several steps in the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining to enrichment to reprocessing, emit copious amounts of greenhouse gases.) And so, the assumption goes, installing a large number of nuclear power stations will lower carbon emission rates.

    The problem is that the assumption holds true only if all else remains constant, in particular consumption levels. But that is never the case. In fact, there is no empirical evidence that increased use of nuclear power has contributed to actually reducing a country’s carbon dioxide emissions. The best case study is Japan, a strongly pro-nuclear energy country. As Japanese nuclear chemist and winner of the 1997 Right Livelihood Award, Jinzaburo Takagi pointed out, from 1965 to 1995 Japan’s nuclear plant capacity went from zero to over 40,000 MW. During the same period, carbon dioxide emissions went up from about 400 million tonnes to about 1200 million tonnes.

    There are two reasons why increased use of nuclear power does not necessarily lower carbon emissions. First, nuclear energy is best suited only to produce baseload electricity. That only constitutes a fraction of all sources of carbon emissions. Other sectors of the economy where carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are emitted, such as transportation, cannot be operated using electricity from nuclear reactors. This situation is unlikely to change anytime in the near future.

    A second and more fundamental reason is provided by John Byrnes of the University of Delaware’s Centre for Energy and Environmental Policy, who observed that nuclear technology is an expensive source of energy service and can only be economically viable in a society that relies on increasing levels of energy use. Nuclear power tends to require and promote a supply-oriented energy policy and an energy-intensive pattern of development.

    The high cost of nuclear power also means that any potential decreases in carbon emissions due to its adoption are expensive, certainly higher than energy efficiency improvements as well as other means to lower emissions from thermal power plants.

    One other argument advanced by some of these so-called environmentalists is that nuclear power is just an interim solution while better solutions are worked out. The idea is wholly at odds with the history of nuclear establishments around the world and completely underestimates the remarkable capabilities of powerful institutions to find resources for continuing existence and growth. Once such institutions are established, they will find ways to ensure that they are not disempowered.

    For nuclear power to make a significant dent in global warming, nuclear capacity must grow manifold (ten-plus). The notion that nuclear power can increase manifold from current levels and then be phased out is wishful thinking, to say the least. Such a projection also completely ignores existing realities – uncompetitive costs, safety concerns, the unresolved problem of radioactive waste, and the link to the bomb – that come in the way of any significant expansion of nuclear power.

    Global warming is a serious issue. Providing ill-thought out answers is no way to address such a grave problem.

    Originally published by The Friday Times.

  • Nuclear Power is the Problem, Not a Solution

    There is a huge propaganda push by the nuclear industry to justify nuclear power as a panacea for the reduction of global-warming gases.

    At present there are 442 nuclear reactors in operation around the world. If, as the nuclear industry suggests, nuclear power were to replace fossil fuels on a large scale, it would be necessary to build 2000 large, 1000-megawatt reactors. Considering that no new nuclear plant has been ordered in the US since 1978, this proposal is less than practical. Furthermore, even if we decided today to replace all fossil-fuel-generated electricity with nuclear power, there would only be enough economically viable uranium to fuel the reactors for three to four years.

    The true economies of the nuclear industry are never fully accounted for. The cost of uranium enrichment is subsidised by the US government. The true cost of the industry’s liability in the case of an accident in the US is estimated to be $US560billion ($726billion), but the industry pays only $ US9.1billion – 98per cent of the insurance liability is covered by the US federal government. The cost of decommissioning all the existing US nuclear reactor s is estimated to be $US33billion. These costs – plus the enormous expense involved in the storage of radioactive waste for a quarter of a million years – are not now included in the economic assessments of nuclear electricity.

    It is said that nuclear power is emission-free. The truth is very different.

    In the US, where much of the world’s uranium is enriched, including Australia’s, 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 50per cent of global warming.

    Also, this enrichment facility and another at Portsmouth, Ohio, release from leaky pipes 93per cent of the chlorofluorocarbon gas emitted yearly in the US. The production and release of CFC gas is now banned internationally by the Montreal Protocol because it 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, robotic 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. .

    Contrary to the nuclear industry’s propaganda, nuclear power is therefore not green and it is certainly not clean. Nuclear reactors consistently release millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the air and water each year. These releases are unregulated because the nuclear industry considers these particular radioactive elements to be biologically inconsequential. This is not so.

    These unregulated isotopes include the noble gases krypton, xenon and argon, which are fat-soluble and if inhaled by persons living near a nuclear reactor, are absorbed through the lungs, migrating to the fatty tissues of the body, including the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs, near the reproductive organs. These radioactive elements, which emit high-energy gamma radiation, can mutate the genes in the eggs and sperm and cause genetic disease.

    Tritium, another biologically significant gas, which is also routinely emitted from nuclear reactors is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen composed of two neutrons and one proton with an atomic weight of 3. The chemical symbol for tritium is H3. When one or both of the hydrogen atoms in water is displaced by tritium the water molecule is then called tritiated water. Tritium is a soft energy beta emitter, more mutagenic than gamma radiation, that incorporates directly into the DNA molecule of the gene. Its half life is 12.3 years, giving it a biologically active life of 246 years. It passes readily through the skin, lungs and digestive system and is distributed throughout the body.

    The dire subject of massive quantities of radioactive waste accruing at the 442 nuclear reactors across the world is also rarely, if ever, addressed by the nuclear industry. Each typical 1000-megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 33tonnes 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 be an attractive target for terrorist sabotage as it travels through 39 states on roads and railway lines for the next 25 years.

    But the long-term storage of radioactive waste continues to pose a problem. The US Congress in 1987 chose Yucca Mountain in Nevada, 150km northwest of Las Vegas, as a repository for America’s high-level waste. But Yucca Mountain has subsequently been found to be unsuitable for the long-term storage of high-level waste because it is a volcanic mountain made of permeable pumice stone and it is transected by 32 earthquake faults. Last week a congressional committee discovered fabricated data about water infiltration and cask corrosion in Yucca Mountain that had been produced by personnel in the US Geological Survey. These startling revelations, according to most experts, have almost disqualified Yucca Mountain as a waste repository, meaning that the US now has nowhere to deposit its expanding nuclear waste inventory.

    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.

    The incubation time for cancer is five to 50 years following exposure to radiation. It is important to note that children, old people and immuno-compromised individuals are many times more sensitive to the malignant effects of radiation than other people.

    I will describe four of the most dangerous elements made in nuclear power plants.

    Iodine 131, which was released at the nuclear accidents at Sellafield in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the US, is radioactive for only six weeks and it bio-concentrates in leafy vegetables and milk. When it enters the human body via the gut and the lung, it migrates to the thyroid gland in the neck, where it can later induce thyroid cancer. In Belarus more than 2000 children have had their thyroids removed for thyroid cancer, a situation never before recorded in pediatric literature.

    Strontium 90 lasts for 600 years. As a calcium analogue, it concentrates in cow and goat milk. It accumulates in the human breast during lactation, and in bone, where it can later induce breast cancer, bone cancer and leukemia.

    Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600 years, concentrates in the food chain, particularly meat. On entering the human body, it locates in muscle, where it can induce a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma.

    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 any country with a nuclear power plant can theoretically manufacture 40 bombs a year.

    Nuclear power therefore leaves a toxic legacy to all future generations, because it produces global warming gases, because it is far more expensive than any other form of electricity generation, and because it can trigger proliferation of nuclear weapons.

    Helen Caldicott is an anti-nuclear campaigner and founder and president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, which warns of the danger of nuclear energy.

    Originally published by the Australian.

  • Nuclear Plants are Still Vulnerable, Panel Says

    Three and a half years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the government has failed to address the risk that a passenger plane flying at high speed could be deliberately crashed into a commercial nuclear plant, setting off fires and dispersing large amounts of radiation, a long-awaited report by the National Academy of Sciences has concluded.

    Officials at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have maintained that such an attack is improbable and that detailed analyses of the consequences of such attacks are unnecessary. Experts at the nation’s premier scientific body said those judgments are flawed.

    “There are currently no requirements in place to defend against the kinds of larger-scale, pre-meditated, skillful attacks that were carried out on September 11, 2001,” a panel of scientists said, even as it agreed such an attack would be difficult to pull off.

    Academy officials battled the government for months to make their declassified conclusions public — and the version released yesterday charged that federal secrecy edicts designed to keep information from terrorists were paradoxically hurting efforts to defend against such attacks.

    Restrictions on sharing information imposed by the NRC had kept the industry from addressing vulnerabilities, the report said.

    As a result, government labs and independent researchers have sometimes worked at cross-purposes, searched for solutions that others had already found and duplicated complex analyses.

    NRC spokesman Scott Burnell said the agency “respectfully disagrees” that there are no provisions to deal with major attacks.

    Security measures have been upgraded since 2001, and the agency continues to analyze risks, he said. But he emphasized that such attacks are improbable and that other agencies are guarding against them.

    “We do believe that the possibility of a successful attack using commercial aircraft is very small,” he said. It is impractical to ask commercial plants to defend against such attacks, Burnell concluded. But he said plants are aware of the risk and are implementing measures to deal with worst-case scenarios.

    As to the complaint of excessive secrecy, Burnell said the commission has to implement the law, which requires controls on information that could be misused. The debate is not over classified information but rather over sensitive data that ought not to be publicized.

    In an earlier interview, E. William Colglazier, executive officer of the academy, said the nuclear agency’s guidelines for this classification are vague. Even when officials agreed that certain details in the report are not secret, he said, they had argued that chunks of non-secret information, when presented together, constituted “Safeguards Information.”

    The report said government scientists and independent researchers had conducted analyses of threats without knowing that others were doing the same.

    Burnell acknowledged that “the system was not perfect” but said that as more people receive security clearances such bottlenecks could be reduced. The commission has indicated it is seeking to increase access to information.

    To the relief of the industry, the academy report disputed a characterization that the commission used in a letter to Congress on March 14. The letter implied that the academy was recommending moving spent nuclear fuel from large pools to dry storage casks. Industry believes that the pools are as safe as the casks and that moving the fuel is not worth the expense.

    Louis J. Lanzerotti, chairman of the academy’s report, said that his panel had called for analyses of large attacks and that those results might prompt the commission to move fuel to dry storage at some plants.

    Although dry storage has advantages, the risk of major attacks could be sufficiently addressed by changing how spent fuel is stored in pools and by installing water sprays to control fires, said the academy’s Kevin Crowley, the study coordinator.

    Originally published by The Washington Post

  • An Orwellian View of Nuclear Energy: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Nuclear Energy is Green

    In George Orwell’s classic novel, 1984, the government uses the slogans war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength. Now, Nicholas Kristof (New York Times, April 9, 2005) would have us believe that nuclear energy is green.

    Kristof’s argument that “nukes are green” is out of touch with reality. Kristof would have us believe that the truly green energy sources – solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal – are no match compared to the benefits of nuclear power. He argues that nuclear power produces no greenhouse gases. Presumably, in Kristof’s logic, the gigantic steam towers, reactor buildings and nuclear fuel spring from the earth as naturally as the sun shines and the wind blows.

    Kristof offers an extremely narrow examination of the issue. He fails to consider that the construction of a nuclear plant, as well as fueling, decommissioning and storage of spent fuel, relies heavily upon fossil fuels, which generate vast quantities of greenhouse gases. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Energy Information Administration says the global strategy to mitigate carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions, besides conservation programs, should include retiring coal-fired plants in favor of natural gas and renewables and not to construct new nuclear plants.

    Kristof also fails to accurately analyze the economics of the nuclear industry. Monstrous government subsidies have kept the industry afloat. Without massive subsidization, the nuclear industry’s insurance liabilities would have driven the industry into the ground years ago. The IAEA Energy Information Administration reports that “new nuclear power plants presently cost more to build than do fossil fuel plants. This includes fossil fuel plants such as those fired by natural gas, a fuel that carries lower environmental costs…”

    Combined costs of new nuclear plants with the unknown yet enormous costs to store the more than 45,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste produced to date, promises to handicap future generations with a gargantuan debt. If nuclear energy is accepted as green and reactors multiply across the world, future generations can expect not only an economic nightmare, but also the potential for accidents such as Chernobyl, calamitous terrorist attacks and an environment strewn with radioactivity.

    Kristof is dead wrong in suggesting that burdening future generations with nuclear wastes buried underground is more reasonable than burdening them with a warmer world in which Manhattan is submerged under 20 feet of water. Endorsing nuclear energy as green and calling for an expanded national presence for nuclear energy will not solve the global warming crisis, it will only exacerbate it. Accepting nuclear energy as green will increase the number of targets terrorists might strike; increase the amount of viciously radioactive waste in need of heavily protected long-term storage; and increase the amount of ozone depleting gases emitted into the atmosphere.

    Replacing fossil fuels with truly renewable energy sources could be accomplished with government subsidization for a fraction of what the US is currently spending to subsidize the nuclear power industry and to secure our access to Middle East oil through military intervention and foreign aid.

    Unless war is peace and freedom is slavery, then nuclear energy is not green. Policy makers must realize they need not choose between two poisons: burdening future generations with nuclear wastes buried underground or burdening the future with a warmer world submerged under water. Kristof glosses over the true viability of clean, renewable energy sources. With sufficient funding, research, and legislative support, future generations won’t have to face the bleak Orwellian future that Kristof implies is inevitable.

    Luke Brothers is the Communications and Outreach Associate at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).

  • Nuclear Power Still a Deadly Proposition

    While Vice President Dick Cheney is actively promoting nuclear power as a significant plank in his energy plan, he claims that nuclear power is “a safe, clean and very plentiful energy source.”

    The Nuclear Energy Institute, the policy organization of the nuclear energy and technologies industries, is currently running an energetic campaign for the revivification of nuclear power. Ubiquitous TV and radio ads carry the admonition that “Kids today are part of the most energy-intensive generation in history. They demand lots of clean electricity. And they deserve clean air.”

    Also, a consortium of 10 U.S. utilities has requested funding from the federal government for the construction of new reactors based on a European design, and they hope to receive government approval by 2010. This is a major policy change since no new nuclear reactors have been ordered in the United States since 1974.

    Nevertheless, the claims of the Mr. Cheney and the nuclear industry are false. According to data from the U.S. Energy Department (DOE), the production of nuclear power significantly contributes both to global warming and ozone depletion.

    The enrichment of uranium fuel for nuclear power uses 93 percent of the refrigerant chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gas made annually in the United States . The global production of CFC is banned under the Montreal Protocol because it is a potent destroyer of ozone in the stratosphere, which protects us from the carcinogenic effects of solar ultraviolet light. The ozone layer is now so thin that the population in Australia is currently experiencing one of the highest incidences of skin cancer in the world.

    CFC compounds are also potent global warming agents 10,000 to 20,000 times more efficient heat trappers than carbon dioxide, which itself is responsible for 50 percent of the global warming phenomenon.

    But nuclear power also contributes significantly to global carbon dioxide production. Huge quantities of fossil fuel are expended for the “front end” of the nuclear fuel cycle — to mine, mill and enrich the uranium fuel and to construct the massive nuclear reactor buildings and their cooling towers.

    Uranium enrichment is a particularly energy intensive process which uses electricity generated from huge coal-fired plants. Estimates of carbon dioxide production related to nuclear power are available from DOE for the “front end” of the nuclear fuel cycle, but prospective estimates for the “back end” of the cycle have yet to be calculated.

    Tens of thousands of tons of intensely hot radioactive fuel rods must continuously be cooled for decades in large pools of circulating water and these rods must then be carefully transported by road and rail and isolated from the environment in remote storage facilities in the United States . The radioactive reactor building must also be decommissioned after 40 years of operation, taken apart by remote control and similarly transported long distances and stored. Fully 95 percent of U.S. high level waste — waste that is intensely radioactive — has been generated by nuclear power thus far.

    This nuclear waste must then be guarded, protected and isolated from the environment for tens of thousands of years — a physical and scientific impossibility. Biologically dangerous radioactive elements such as strontium 90, cesium 137 and plutonium will seep and leak into the water tables and become very concentrated in food chains for the rest of time, inevitably increasing the incidence of childhood cancer, genetic diseases and congenital malformations for this and future generations.

    Conclusion: Nuclear power is neither clean, green nor safe. It is the most biologically dangerous method to boil water to generate steam for the production of electricity.

    Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician, is president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and author of The New Nuclear Danger, George Bush’s Military Industrial Complex (The New Press). She lives near Sydney, Australia.

    Originally published by the Baltimore Sun.

  • Nuclear Weapons in Iran: Plowshare or Sword?

    A recurring fear haunts the West’s increasingly tense confrontation with Iran: Is its work on civilian nuclear power actually a ruse for making a deadly atomic arsenal, as has been the case with other countries?

    Next month, the United Nations plans to take up that question at a board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna . The diplomatic backdrop includes possible sanctions and even the threat of war.

    “If Iran goes nuclear, you worry that Hezbollah goes nuclear,” said Paul Leventhal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a private group in Washington , referring to the Iran-backed terrorist group.

    The Iranian crisis, and related ones simmering in North Korea and also around Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani expert who recently confessed to running nuclear black markets, are giving new urgency to limiting proliferation, a central danger of the atomic era. Recently, international inspectors discovered that North Korea may have clandestinely supplied uranium to Libya , demonstrating how an aspiring state can secretly reach for nuclear arms.

    The development of such arsenals is often hard to hide, because it takes place in large industrial complexes where nuclear power and nuclear weapons are joined at the hip – using technologies that are often identical, or nearly so. Today, with what seems like relative ease, scientists can divert an ostensibly peaceful program to make not only electricity but also highly pure uranium or plutonium, both excellent bomb fuels.

    Experts now talk frankly about a subject that was once taboo: “virtual” weapon states – Japan, Germany, Belgium, Canada, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Taiwan and a dozen other countries that have mastered the basics of nuclear power and could, if they wanted, quickly cross the line to make nuclear arms, probably in a matter or months. Experts call it breakout.

    The question now, driven largely by the perception that the world is entering a dangerous new phase of nuclear proliferation, is whether the two endeavors can be separated. And as difficult as that may seem, new initiatives are rising to meet the challenge.

    Last year, North Korea stunned the world by withdrawing from the Nonproliferation Treaty. It was the first time a nation had dropped out of the 1968 pact, setting a grim precedent and prompting warnings of the accord’s demise.

    If another virtual power crosses the line, experts fear, it could start a chain reaction in which others feel they have no alternative but to do likewise.

    Yet a country like Iran can retain its virtual-weapons status – and the threat of breakout – even if the International Atomic Energy Agency gives it a clean bill of health. That kind of quandary is driving the wider debate on ways to safeguard nuclear power, especially given that the world may rely on it increasingly as worries grow about global warming and oil shortages.

    “We can’t give absolute guarantees,” said Graham Andrew, a senior scientist at the agency. “But there will be technological developments to make the fuel cycle more proliferation-resistant.”

    Other experts agree. “The future looks better than the past in terms of this whole problem,” said Rose Gottemoeller, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “At the moment, it’s a very, very fast-moving arena that a lot of people are into and thinking about.”

    The central compact of the nuclear age – what critics call a deal with the devil – is that countries can get help from other nations in developing nuclear power if they pledge to renounce nuclear arms. That principle was codified in the 1968 treaty and has produced a vast apparatus of the International Atomic Energy Agency that not only helps nations go peacefully nuclear but also monitors them for cheating.

    But surveillance has proved far from perfect, and states have proved far from trustworthy.

    “If you look at every nation that’s recently gone nuclear,” said Mr. Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute, “they’ve done it through the civilian nuclear fuel cycle: Iraq , North Korea , India , Pakistan , South Africa . And now we’re worried about Iran .”

    The moral, he added, is that atoms for peace can be “a shortcut to atoms for war.”

    Moreover, the raw material is growing. The world now has 440 commercial nuclear reactors and 31 more under construction.

    Experts say Iran provides a good example of the breakout danger. With the right tweaks, its sprawling complex now under construction could make arms of devastating force. Recently, mistrust over that prospect soared when inspectors found that Iran had hidden some of its most sensitive nuclear work as long as 18 years.

    In the central desert near Yazd , the country now mines uranium in shafts up to a fifth of a mile deep.

    At Isfahan , an ancient city that boasts a top research center, it is building a factory for converting the ore into uranium hexafluoride. When heated, the crystals turn into a gas ideal for processing to recover uranium’s rare U-235 isotope, which, in bombs and reactors, easily splits in two to produce bursts of atomic energy.

    Nearby at Natanz, Iran aims to feed the gas into 50,000 centrifuges – tall, thin machines that spin extraordinarily fast to separate the relatively light U-235 isotope from its heavier cousin, U-238. It recently came to light that Iran had gained much help in making its centrifuges from Dr. Khan and his secretive network.

    Iran says it wants to enrich the uranium to about 5 percent U-235, the level needed for nuclear reactors.

    But enrichment is one place that good power programs can easily go bad, nonproliferation experts say. By simply lengthening the spin cycle, a nation can enrich the uranium up to 90 percent U-235, the high purity usually preferred for bombs.

    Moreover, a dirty little secret of the atomic world is that the hardest step is enriching uranium for reactors, not bombs. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, an arms control group in Washington , said the step from reactor to weapon fuel took roughly 25 percent more effort.

    The whirling centrifuges at Natanz could make fuel for up to 20 nuclear weapons every year, according to the Carnegie Endowment. Others put the figure at 25 bombs a year.

    The Iranians are building a large power reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf meant to be fueled with low-enriched uranium from Natanz. Here too, experts say, a good program can go bad.

    Normally, uranium fuel stays in a reactor for three or four years and, as an inadvertent byproduct of atomic fission, becomes slowly riddled with plutonium 239, the other good material for making atom bombs. But the spent fuel also accumulates plutonium 240, which is so radioactive that it can be very difficult to turn into weapons.

    But if the reactor’s fuel is changed frequently – every few months – that cuts the P-240 to preferable levels for building an arsenal. (And since less plutonium than uranium is needed for a blast of equal size, it is the preferred material for making compact warheads that are relatively easy to fit on missiles.)

    John R. Bolton, the State Department’s under secretary for arms control, recently told Congress that after several years of operation, Bushehr could make enough plutonium for more than 80 nuclear weapons.

    Iran strongly denies such ambitions.

    “That we are on the verge of a nuclear breakthrough is true,” Hashemi Rafsanjani , Iran ‘s former president, said recently, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. “But we are not seeking nuclear weapons.”

    If Iran wanted to recover plutonium from Bushehr, or a different reactor under construction at Arak , it would have to extract the metal from spent fuel, a hard job because of the waste’s high radioactivity. Such reprocessing plants have legitimate commercial uses for turning nuclear detritus into new fuel, as France , Britain , Japan and Russia do.

    Iran , too, has announced that it wants to master the complete nuclear fuel cycle, apparently including reprocessing. Last year, President Mohammad Khatami said the country wanted to recycle power-plant fuel. “We are determined,” he said in a televised speech, “to use nuclear technology for civilian purposes.”

    Around the globe, experts are struggling to find ways to guarantee such good intentions: not just in Iran , but everywhere.

    Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is calling for “multinational controls” on the production of any material that can be used for nuclear arms. If accepted, that would mean no single country could enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium on its own, but only in groups where members would verify each other’s honesty.

    Early this month, Iran signaled that it might be interested in teaming with Russia and Europe to enrich uranium, giving arms controllers some hope of a peaceful resolution to the current crisis.

    Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, has called for sweetening the deal by guaranteeing members of a consortium lifetime fuel supplies and spent-fuel removal if they forgo enrichment and reprocessing plants.

    “What you need is an incentive,” he said. One challenge, he added, would be convincing states that consortiums “won’t change their minds,” given that nuclear policy makers have often done so in the past.

    President Bush has taken a harder line, proposing in a February speech to limit drastically the number of nations allowed to produce nuclear fuel. Only states that already have enrichment and reprocessing plants, he said, should do such work, and they in turn would service countries that aspire to nuclear power.

    While many experts praise Mr. Bush’s attention to the nonproliferation issue, some have faulted his specifics. “It’s all sticks and no carrots,” said Mr. Bunn, adding that the Bush plan would only feed global resentment toward the nuclear club. “I think you can couch this to be more carrotlike.”

    Down the road, a different approach involves developing new classes of reactors that would better resist nuclear proliferation, especially by making the recovery of plutonium 239 much harder. Many studies, including one last year at M.I.T., have championed better fuel cycles and security.

    “There is potentially a pathway – diplomatic, technical – to see a significant global deployment” of safer technologies and strategies, said Ernest J. Moniz, a former Energy Department official who helped lead the M.I.T. study. “But it can’t happen without U.S. leadership and the U.S. partnering with other countries, and that will require a re-examination of our policies.”

    Mr. Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute said too many of the proposals were too timid. Most fundamentally, he said, nations have to turn away from the commercial use of plutonium, which grows more abundant every day.

    “Only denial and greed” can explain the world’s continuing to want plutonium for peaceful uses, he said, and added, “It may take the unthinkable happening before the political process can screw up the courage to put an end to this ridiculously dangerous industry.”

  • Nuclear Power

    It is my belief, based on a professional lifetime of study, that further development of nuclear power presents an unacceptable radioactive curse on all future generations. Aside from the risks of accidents worse than we have so far seen, there is no suitable place in our environment to dispose of either present or future nuclear waste. Now massive public-relations efforts are being launched to retrain the public to trust the “experts.” Damaged gene pools and cancers, and a ruined environment, will be our legacy to future generations if we continue to build nuclear reactors and nuclear armaments. How many of our grandchildren are we willing to sacrifice for the continuation of nuclear electric power and nuclear war?

    Nuclear Electric Utilites
    The “peacetime” nuclear business in the United States is in bad shape. The hard fact is that nuclear power is the most subsidized of all industries, kept alive by taxpayer, rate-payer, and bondholder financed welfare, and by world wide military support. Abandoned reactors include Rancho Seco in California, Trojan in Oregon, Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Shoreham on Long Island. All new reactors ordered since 1973 have been can-celed. Estimates of the cost of disposal rise fantastically above $500 million per reactor, and no one knows what to do with the radioactive stuff stored within and around them. The United States Department of Energy has expressed a desire for tritium to replenish the dwindling supply in its thermonuclear bomb stockpile. In order to survive, some electric utilities have expressed willingness to produce wartime tritium as a government-subsidized by-product of their nuclear electrical power.

    Nuclear Construction Companies
    Nuclear construction companies would like to build nuclear power plants, but it is unlikely that any unsubsidized nuclear power plant will be ordered by a US utility. The United States has proposed to provide reactors to North Korea to replace their “unsafe” nuclear plants. American, French, and Canadian nuclear companies are considering joint ventures to build power reactors in Indonesia and elsewhere, I presume with financial aid from US taxpayers. Now it is proposed that US nuclear corporations sell $60 billion of nuclear products to China, trusting that they will not use their ability to produce plutonium for bombs.

    Nuclear War with Depleted Uranium
    The US Atomic Energy Commission used its enormous diffusion plants to separate uranium-235 from natural uranium for the purpose of making nuclear bombs, like the one dropped on Hiroshima. The tons of depleted uranium (mostly uranium-238) left over from the diffusion process were to be a valuable material for conversion to plutonium fuel for breeder reactors. Because our breeder program has lost its support, depleted uranium is now a “waste” material in need of “recycling.” Its value for “peace” has been replaced by its value for waging nuclear war. In the Persian Gulf the US military recycled hundreds of tons of depleted uranium into armor piercing shells and protective armor for tanks. After piercing a tank wall the depleted uranium burned, forming a radioactive and chemically lethal aerosol, incinerating everyone inside the tank, then spreading unseen over Iraq. Sickness and death for all future time were spread indiscriminately among Iraqi soldiers and civilians (including children). American soldiers and their children became victims as part of the Gulf War Syndrome. Now US military suppliers plan to sell this “free” government bonanza on the profitable world military market.

    Radioactive Pollution on a Worldwide Scale
    The public has been conditioned by both corporate and government proponents of nuclear power to believe in the necessity for their inherently “safe” nuclear reactors to avert a coming energy crisis. The nuclear establishment advertises itself as the producer of “green” energy, completely ignoring the non-green effects of the manufacture and eventual disposal of reactors, their fuels, and their radioactive products. They claim that they are now ready to produce “safe” reactors. Extension of the analyses by which the experts support their claim of safety shows, I believe, that there is no possibility of a guaranteed safe reactor. There is certainly no way safely to dispose of nuclear waste into the environment. Reactors are bound occasionally to fail. They are complicated mechanical devices designed, built, and operated by fallible human beings, some of whom may be vindictive. Our reactors may be “weapons in the hands of our enemies,” susceptible to sabotage. Despite attempts at secrecy, the list of reactor accidents fills whole books. In 1986 the Chernobyl reactor exploded, blowing off its two-thousand-ton lid, polluting the northern hemisphere with radioactivity, casting radiation sickness and death into the far future, leaving a million acres of land ruined “forever” by radioactive contamination. Radioactive reindeer meat was discarded in Lapland, and milk in Italy. It is reported that half of the 10 million people in Belorussia live in contaminated areas. Some estimates of adults and children doomed to be killed and maimed by cancer and mutations run in the millions. If nuclear power continues, there will be other “Chernobyls” scattered around the world, perhaps more devastating. The Chernobyl accident demonstrates the devastation which could happen with a nuclear accident near a large city. The nuclear business, here and abroad, has a record of willful and careless radiation exposure and killing of unaware people since the beginning: its miners from radon gas, its Hanford “down-winders”, victims of Chernobyl in the Ukraine, the SL-1 reactor in Idaho. Even “successful” reactors are intolerable. Reactors produce radioactive pollution. They use uranium and make plutonium. Both are radioactive, chemically poisonous heavy metals. Plutonium, a nuclear bomb material, is also the world’s most radioactively lethal material. A power reactor at the end of its life has manufactured lethal radioactive products equivalent to those from several thousand nuclear bombs. We as a society cannot afford, even if we knew how, the cleanup of these radioactive messes. Nuclear power, with its lethal radioactive poisons, pollutes “forever”, in new, more insidious, more intransigent ways than any other form of energy.

     

  • Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons

    Introduction

    The two nuclear fission bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki each released nearly 4,000 times as much explosive energy as chemical high explosive bombs of the same weight. Together they killed more than 200,000 people. The energy released by the splitting of the atomic nuclei in the cores of these bombs was more than 10 million times the energy released by rearrangements of the outer electrons of atoms, which are responsible for chemical changes. For an instant after detonation of the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, an amount of explosive energy equivalent to a pile of dynamite as big as the White House was contained in a sphere of plutonium no bigger than a baseball.

    This is why, a short time later, Albert Einstein said: “The splitting of the atom has changed everything, save our mode of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Suddenly the destructive capacity accessible to humans went clear off the human scale of things.

    About 10 years later this destructive capacity jumped dramatically again when the United States and the Soviet Union developed hydrogen bombs. By the 1970s, there were five announced members of the nuclear club, and the total number of nuclear warheads in the world had increased to some 60,000.

    Since 1964, when China tested its first nuclear explosive, further horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons has been secret or ambiguous or both. India tested a nuclear explosive in 1974, but claimed that is was strictly for peaceful purposes, and has consistently denied that it has any nuclear weapons. Although its government has never admitted that it has nuclear weapons, there is little doubt that Israel has been accumulating a growing stockpile since the 1960s. South Africa announced that it had made a half-dozen or so nuclear weapons, starting in the 1970s, but that it now has eliminated them. Other countries strongly suspected of having at least one nuclear weapon, and the capacity to make more, include Pakistan, North Korea, and Iraq. Commitments have been made by Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine to turn over to Russia all nuclear weapons on their territories for dismantling. Ukraine completed this transfer on June 1, 1996.

    The immense potential destructive capacity of uranium and plutonium can also be released slowly as energy that can serve the peaceful needs of humans. It took about 10 years after the first nuclear bombs were exploded for nuclear energy for peaceful purposes to begin to be practical. Nuclear power has expanded considerably in the last 30 years or so. The two technologies-for destructive uses and for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy-are closely connected. I’ll discuss these connections in some detail in this paper.

    Facing the realities of the Nuclear Age as they have become evident these past 50 years has been a difficult and painful process for me, involving many changes of heart in my feelings about nuclear weapons and nuclear power since I first heard of nuclear fission on August 6, 1945. I started with a sense of revulsion towards nuclear weapons and skepticism about nuclear power for nearly five years. Then I worked on and strongly promoted nuclear weapons for some 15 years. In 1966, in the midst of a job in the Pentagon, I did an about-face in my perception of nuclear weaponry, and have pressed for nuclear disarmament ever since. My rejection of nuclear power, because of its connection with nuclear weapons, took longer, and was not complete until about 1980.

    Since that time I have been persistent in calling for the prompt global abolition of all nuclear weapons and the key nuclear materials needed for their production. Since all of the more than 400 nuclear power plants now operating in 32 countries produce large quantities of plutonium that, when chemically separated from spent fuel, can be used to make reliable, efficient nuclear weapons of all types, I have also found it necessary to call for phasing out all nuclear power worldwide. To accomplish this while being responsive to the environmental disruption caused by continued large-scale use of fossil fuels, I also find it necessary to call for intense, global response to opportunities for saving energy and producing what is needed from renewable sources directly or indirectly derived from solar radiation. I shall try in the rest of this paper to explain briefly the convictions that have led me to join others in making these calls with great urgency.

    Latent Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

    There are many possible degrees of drift or concerted national actions that are short of the actual possession of nuclear weapons, but that can account for much of what has to be done technically to acquire them. Harold Feiveson has called such activity “latent proliferation” of nuclear weapons.1 A national government that sponsors acquisition of nuclear power plants may have no intention to acquire nuclear weapons; but that government may be replaced by one that does, or may change its collective mind. A country that is actively pursuing nuclear power for peaceful purposes may also secretly develop nuclear explosives to the point where the last stages of assembly and military deployment could be carried out very quickly. The time and resources needed to make the transition from latent to active proliferation can range from very large to very small. Inadequately controlled plutonium or highly enriched uranium, combined with secret design and testing of non-nuclear components of nuclear warheads, can allow a nation or terrorist group to have deliverable nuclear weapons within days, or even hours, after acquiring a few kilograms or more of the key nuclear weapon materials.

    Contrary to widespread belief among nuclear engineers who have never worked on nuclear weapons, plutonium made in nuclear power plant fuel can be used to make all types of nuclear weapons. This “reactor grade” plutonium has relatively high concentrations of the isotope Pu-240, which spontaneously releases many more neutrons than Pu-239, the principal plutonium isotope in “weapon-grade” plutonium. In early nuclear weapons, such as the plutonium bomb tested in New Mexico in 1945, and then used in the bombing of Nagasaki, use of reactor grade plutonium would have tended to cause the chain reaction to start prematurely. This would lower the most likely explosive yield, but not below about 1 kiloton, compared with the 20 kiloton yield from these two bombs. Since that time, however, there have been major developments of nuclear weapons technology that make it possible to design all types of nuclear weapons to use reactor grade plutonium without major degradation of the weapons’ performance and reliability, compared with those that use weapon grade plutonium.2 These techniques have been well understood by nuclear weapon designers in the United States since the early 1950s, and probably also for decades in the other four declared nuclear weapon states.

    Reactor grade plutonium can also be used for making relatively crude nuclear explosives, such as might be made by terrorists. Although the explosive yields of such bombs would tend to be unpredictable, varying from case to case for the same bomb design, their minimum explosive yields could credibly be the equivalent of several hundred tons or more of high explosive.3 Such bombs, transportable by automobile, would certainly qualify as weapons of mass destruction, killing many tens of thousands or more people in some locations.

    All nuclear weapons require plutonium or highly enriched uranium. Some use both. The required amounts vary considerably, depending on the desired characteristics and on the technical resources and knowhow available to those who design and build the weapons. Estimates of the maximum total number of U. S. nuclear warheads and of the total amount of plutonium produced for those warheads correspond to an average of about 3 kilograms of plutonium per warhead.4 The minimum amount of plutonium in a nuclear explosive that contains no highly enriched uranium can be significantly smaller than 3 kilograms.

    Nuclear power plants typically produce a net of about 200 kilograms of plutonium per year for each 1,000 megawatts of electric power generating capacity. Some 430 nuclear power plants, with combined electrical generating capacity of nearly 340,000 megawatts, are now operating in 32 countries. The plants account for about 7% of total primary energy consumption worldwide, or about 17% of the world’s electrical energy. Total net annual production of plutonium by these plants is nearly 70,000 kilograms, enough for making more than 10,000 nuclear warheads per year. 5

    So far about four times as much plutonium has been produced in power reactors than has been used for making nuclear weapons-about 1 million kilograms, most of which is in spent nuclear fuel in storage, compared with about 250,000 kilograms for weapons.6

    Nearly 200,000 kilograms of plutonium have been chemically separated from spent power reactor fuel in chemical reprocessing facilities in at least 8 countries (Belgium, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States).7 This is typically stored as plutonium oxide that can relatively easily be converted to plutonium metal for use in nuclear explosives.

    Research and test reactors can also produce significant amounts of plutonium that, after chemical separation, can be used for making nuclear weapons. This has apparently been the route to nuclear weapons followed by Israel and started by North Korea.

    Although use of highly enriched uranium in nuclear power plants has been sporadic and rare, substantial quantities have been used for R&D purposes-as fuel for research and test reactors, and in connection with development of breeder reactors. Principal suppliers have been and now are the five declared nuclear weapon states. It has been estimated that the world inventory of highly enriched uranium for civil purposes is about 20,000 kilograms.8

    Although this is dramatically smaller than the more than 1 million kilograms of highly enriched uranium associated with nuclear weapons, it may be extremely important to some countries that are secretly developing the technology for making nuclear weapons.

    Facilities for enriching uranium in its concentration of the isotope U-235 to the levels of a few percent needed for light water power reactor fuel can be used for further enrichment to high concentrations used for making nuclear explosives. The technology for doing this is proliferating, both in terms of the numbers of countries that have such facilities, and in the variety of different ways to carry out the enrichment.

    The continuing international spread of knowledge of nuclear technology related to nuclear power development is an important contributor to latent nuclear weapon proliferation. Some of the people who have become experts in nuclear technology, whether for military or civil purposes, could be of great help in setting up and carrying out clandestine nuclear weapon design and construction operations that make use of nuclear materials stolen from military supplies or diverted from civil supplies, perhaps having entered a black market.

    An example of highly advanced latent nuclear weapon proliferation is the nuclear weapons development program that started in Sweden in the late 1940s. It remained secret until the mid-1980s, when much detail about the project started becoming publicly available. It included hydronuclear tests of implosion systems containing enough fissile material to go critical but not enough to make a damaging nuclear explosion. The objective of the Swedish nuclear bomb program was to determine, in great detail, what Sweden would need to do if the government ever decided to produce and stockpile nuclear weapons.9 I have no reason to believe that Sweden has ever made that decision. I would not be surprised, however, if many other countries with nuclear reactors or uranium enrichment facilities that could be used to supply needed key nuclear materials have secretly carried out similar programs of lesser or perhaps even greater technical sophistication than Sweden’s.

    Bombardment of Nuclear Facilities

    Another type of latent proliferation that I find especially worrisome is the possible bombardment of nuclear facilities that thereby would be converted, in effect, into nuclear weapons. Military bombardment or sabotage of nuclear facilities, ranging from operating nuclear power plants and their spent fuel storage pools to large accumulations of high level radioactive wastes in temporary or long term storage, could release large quantities of radioactive materials that could seriously endanger huge land areas downwind. Electric power plants and stored petroleum have often been prime targets for tactical and strategic bombing, and sometimes for sabotage. In the case of operating nuclear power plants, core meltdowns and physical rupture of containment structures could be caused by aerial or artillery bombardment, truck bombings, internal sabotage with explosives, or by control manipulations following capture of the facility by terrorists. For orientation to the scale of potential radioactive contamination, consider strontium-90 and cesium-137, two especially troublesome fission products with half-lives of about 30 years. The inventories of these radionuclides in the core of a typical nuclear power plant (1,000 electrical megawatts) are greater than the amounts released by a 20 megaton H-bomb explosion, assuming half the explosion energy is accounted for by fission.

    Inventories of dangerous radioactive materials can be considerably greater in a waste or spent fuel storage facility that has served the needs of many nuclear power plants for many years. In some cases it may not be credible that chemical explosives could release large fractions of such materials and cause them to be airborne long enough to contaminate very large areas. In such situations, however, the explosion of a relatively small nuclear explosive in the midst of the storage area could spread the radioactive materials over huge areas.

    Perhaps the greatest extent of latent proliferation of nuclear weapons is represented by nuclear power fuel cycle facilities that can become enormously destructive nuclear weapons by being bombed by military forces or terrorists.

    Can the Nuclear Power-Nuclear Weapon Connections Be Broken?

    Given the rapidly increasing rate of worldwide latent proliferation of nuclear weapons, what can be done to assure that it does not lead to considerable surges in active proliferation of nuclear weapons?

    Shifts from latent to active nuclear weapon proliferation may be detected or discouraged by application of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) nuclear diversion safeguards. IAEA safeguards are applied to parties of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that are not nuclear weapons states. But the IAEA has authority only to inspect designated (or in some cases suspected) nuclear facilities, not to interfere physically to prevent a government from breaking its agreements under the treaty if it so chooses. Furthermore, a major function of the IAEA is also to provide assistance to countries that wish to develop nuclear power and use it. Thus the IAEA simultaneously plays two possibly conflicting roles-one of encouraging latent proliferation and the other of discouraging active proliferation.

    As we have seen, a nation’s possession of plutonium, whether in spent fuel or chemically separated, or its possession of highly enriched uranium or of facilities capable of producing it, need not depend on a government’s decision to acquire nuclear weapons. Such a decision might be made secretly or openly at any time government leaders conclude that threats to their security or ambitions of conquest warrant breaking safeguard agreements; at that point they can quickly extract the key nuclear materials needed for a few or for large numbers of nuclear weapons.

    Various proposals have been made for developing nuclear power in forms that are less prone to diversion of nuclear materials for weapons than present nuclear power systems. None of these proposals avoid the production of substantial quantities of neutrons that could be used for making key nuclear materials for nuclear weapons, however. And none avoid the production of high level radioactive wastes, the permanent disposal of which is still awaiting both technical and political resolution. Furthermore, such concepts, once fully developed, would require decades for substitution for the present types of nuclear power systems.

    Increasing alarm about global climatic instabilities caused by continued release of “greenhouse gases,” particularly carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, has stimulated many advocates of nuclear energy to propose widescale displacement of fossil fuels by nuclear power. Such proposals would require building thousands of new nuclear power plants to achieve substantial global reduction in combustion of fossil fuels. This would greatly compound the dangers of destructive abuse of nuclear energy.

    In short, the connections between nuclear technology for constructive use and for destructive use are so closely tied together that the benefits of the one are not accessible without greatly increasing the hazards of the other.

    This leaves us with a key question: If nuclear power technology is too dangerous – by being so closely related to nuclear weapon technology – and fossil fuel combustion must be reduced sharply to avoid global climatic instabilities, what can humans do to meet their demands for energy worldwide?

    Efficient Use of Renewable Energy

    The economically attractive opportunities for using energy much more efficiently for all end uses in any of the wide variety of human settings are now so widely set forth that they need no further elaboration here. Although such opportunities generally exist for use of all kinds of energy sources, their detailed nature can depend on the specific type of energy provided for end use.10

    Among the many possibilities for economical renewable energy is hydrogen produced by electrolysis of water, using solar electric cells to provide the needed low voltage, direct current electrical energy. Recent advances in lowering the production costs and increasing the efficiency of photovoltaic cells make it likely that vigorous international pursuit of this option could allow production and distribution of hydrogen for use as a general purpose fuel, at costs competitive with the cost of natural gas.11

    Solar electric cells can also supply local or regional electric power for general use, using generators or fuel cells fueled with stored hydrogen, or pumped hydrolelectic storage, or windpower to meet electrical demands at night, on cloudy days, or in winter. Using such energy storage or windpower makes it possible to provide and use hydrogen to meet all local demands for energy in any climate.

    A common criticism of direct use of solar energy for meeting most human demands for energy results from a belief that the areas required are so large as to be impractical. This criticism is generally not valid. An overall efficiency of 15%, in terms of the chemical energy stored in hydrogen divided by the total solar radiation incident on the ground area used by solar cell arrays, is likely to be routinely achievable with flat, horizontal arrays. At a world annual average insolation rate of 200 watts per square meter, the total area required to meet the entire present world demand for primary energy of all types (equivalent to an annual average of about 10 trillion watts) would be about 0.4 million square kilometers. This is less than 0.4% of the world’s land area-much less than the annual fluctuations in the area devoted to agriculture, and comparable to the area used for roads. Even in Belgium, with perhaps the world’s highest national energy consumption rates per unit land area and lowest solar radiation availability, present demands could be met by solar hydrogen systems covering less than 5% of the country’s land area. Vigorous response to cost-effective opportunities for saving energy could lower considerably the land area requirements for solar energy anywhere.

    A Global Shift From Fossil and Nuclear Fuels to Renewable Energy

    Consider the benefits of a rapid worldwide shift from dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power to vigorous pursuit of opportunities for using energy much more efficiently and providing that energy from renewable sources.

    If nuclear power is phased out completely, it will become possible to outlaw internationally the possession of any key nuclear weapon materials, such as plutonium or highly enriched uranium that can sustain a fast neutron chain reaction, along with any facilities that could be used for producing them. This would not require a global ban on basic research in nuclear physics nor the use of selected, internationally controlled accelerators for production of radionuclides for medical and industrial applications.

    A global ban on materials capable of sustaining nuclear explosive chain reactions would make it unnecessary to distinguish between alleged peaceful uses of these materials and uses that could be threatening. It would greatly increase the likelihood that violations of a ban on all nuclear weapons would be detected technically and by people who can report violations of the ban, without having to determine the intended uses of the materials and production facilities.

    A complete phaseout of nuclear power would help focus the world’s attention on safeguarding nuclear materials and safe, permanent disposal of all the nuclear wastes and spent nuclear fuel, separated plutonium, or other stockpiles of nuclear weapon materials that had been produced before nuclear power is completely phased out. All such materials could be internationally secured in a relatively small number of facilities while awaiting ultimate safe disposal. Although the quantities of these materials are already very large, applying the needed safeguards to them would be much easier than in a world in which nuclear power continues to flourish worldwide. The job would be finite, rather than open-ended. The costs of safe, environmentally acceptable, permanent disposal of nuclear weapon materials and nuclear wastes-costs that are now unknown, but are very large-would be bounded.

    Concerns about safety and vulnerability of nuclear power plants and their supporting facilities to military action or acts of terrorism would disappear.

    In anticipation of a phaseout of nuclear power and sharp curtailment of combustion of fossil fuels, research, development, and commercialization of renewable energy sources could be greatly accelerated by a shift of national and international resources toward them and away from dependence on nuclear power and fossil fuel systems that are inherent threats to human security and our global habitat.

    Global Nuclear Abolition

    It troubles me more deeply than I can express that my country continues to be prepared, under certain conditions, to launch nuclear weapons that would kill millions of innocent bystanders. To me, this is preparation for mass murder that cannot be justified under any conditions. It must therefore be considered as human action that is out-and-out evil. The threat of nuclear retaliation also is a completely ineffectual deterrent to nuclear attack by terrorists or leaders of governments that need not identify themselves or that are physically located in the midst of populations that have no part in the initial attack or threat of attack. In short, we humans must find alternatives to retaliation in kind to acts of massive and indiscriminate violence.

    These alternatives must focus on ways to deter use of weapons of mass destruction by determining who is responsible for such attacks or threats of attack, and bringing them to justice.

    One hangup that many people have with global nuclear weapon abolition anytime soon is that nuclear technology is already too widely dispersed to allow accurate and complete technical verification of compliance, using currently available verification methods. Another widespread hangup is that malevolent national leaders might threaten to use secretly withheld or produced nuclear weapons to force intolerable demands on other countries if they did not face certain devastating nuclear retaliation to carrying out such threats.

    I agree that no conceivable global verification system or international security force for identifying and arresting violators of an internationally negotiated and codified legal framework for globally banning nuclear weapons and nuclear power can be guaranteed to deter violation of the the ban. But this is a property of any law governing human beings. The question is not about achieving perfect global security against nuclear violence. The question is: Which would be preferred by most human beings-a world in which possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons is allowed for some but forbidden for others, or one in which they are completely outlawed, with no exceptions?

    I believe the time has come to establish a global popular taboo against nuclear weapons and devices or processes that might be used to make them. The taboo should be directed specifically at any action – by governments, non-government enterprises, or individuals – that is in violation of international laws specifically related to nuclear technology.

    I also propose that as the taboo is formulated and articulated vigorously worldwide, both informal and formal negotiations of an international nuclear abolition treaty start immediately in the relevant United Nations organizations. Why not adopt a formal goal of completing the negotiations and the codification of the associated laws and regulations before the start of the next millennium? I would also join others now pressing for actions that would complete the process of actual global nuclear abolition no later than 2010.

    As is the case for many examples of bringing violators of popularly supported laws to justice, there should be frequent official and popular encouragement, including various kinds of major rewards, of “whistleblowers” who become aware of violations and report them to a well-known international authority. Such whistleblowers should also be well protected against reprisals by the violators, including even authorities of their own country’s government. Such actions may be even more important in filling verification gaps than technical verification procedures implemented by an international authority.

    In conclusion, I now have new and strong feelings of hope about the future of humankind. We are collectively facing new choices. We can continue to apply those cosmic forces -which we discovered how to manipulate 50 years ago-to feed the destructive competitive power struggles among humans. Or we can join together to reject those immensely powerful forces-that are much easier to use to destroy than to build-and reach out together to embrace the energy from our sun, which has for a very long time sustained all life on Earth.

    REFERENCES

    1. Harold A. Feiveson and Theodore B. Taylor, “Alternative Strategies for International Control of Nuclear Power,” in Nuclear Proliferation-Motivations, Capabilities, and Strategies for Control, Ted Greenwood, H. A. Feiveson, and T. B. Taylor, New York: McGraw Hill, 1977, pp. 125-190. 
    2. J. Carson Mark, “Explosive Properties of Reactor Grade Plutonium,” Science and Global Security, 1993, Volume 4, pp.111-128. 
    3. J. Carson Mark, Theodore B. Taylor, Eugene Eyster, William Merriman, and Jacob Wechsler, “By What Means Could Terrorists Go Nuclear?” in Preventing Nuclear Terrorism, Paul Leventhal and Yonah Alexander, eds. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington
    Books, 1987, pp. 55-65. 
    4. See, for example, David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker, World Inventory of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1992, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 25-35. 
    5. Ibid, pp. 71-83. 
    6. Ibid, pp. 196-209. 
    7. Ibid, p. 90. 
    8. Ibid, p. 148. 
    9. Lars Wallin, chapter in Security With Nuclear Weapons? Regina Cowen Karp, Ed., Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, London: Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 360-381.
    10. See, for example, Thomas Johansson, Henry Kelly, Amulya K. N. Reddy, and Robert Williams, eds. Renewable Energy, Washington: Island Press, 1993.
    11. See, for example, J. M. Ogden and R. H. Williams, Solar Hydrogen: Moving Beyond Fossil Fuels, Washington: World Resources Institute, 1989.