Tag: renewable energy
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US Energy Policy Creating a New Generation of Dr. Strangeloves
This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.
President Eisenhower is well-remembered for warning the public in his final address to the nation to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex.” But it is little known that Eisenhower, in that same speech further cautioned that “we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
In May, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steve Chu announced that 42 university-led nuclear research and development projects would receive $38 million through the Department of Energy’s “Nuclear Energy University Program” designed to help advance nuclear education and develop the next generations of nuclear technologies. “We are taking action to restart the nuclear industry as part of a broad approach to cut carbon pollution and create new clean energy jobs,” said Secretary Chu. “These projects will help us develop the nuclear technologies of the future and move our domestic nuclear industry forward.”
At a time when the United States should be creating a new Manhattan Project for safe, clean, green energy from the sun, wind, and tides, the Obama administration is trying to recreate the old Manhattan project, training our best and brightest to continue to wreak havoc on the planet with nuclear know-how. Instead of letting the old nuclear complex rust in peace, the government is proactively taking the initiative to create a whole new generation of Dr. Strangeloves, enticing young people to study these dark arts by putting up millions of precious dollars for nuclear programs and scholarships.
What a disappointment that Dr. Chu, a Nobel laureate scientist, appointed by Obama for “change we can believe in”, represents the old paradigm of top-down, hierarchical, secret nuclear science. It’s just so 20th century! Chu has apparently ignored the myriad studies that show that dollar-for-dollar, nuclear power is one of the most expensive ways to meet energy needs, when lifecycle costs are compared to solar, wind, geothermal, appropriate hydropower and biomass, as well as efficiency measures. This is also true for reducing carbon emissions, as expensive nuclear power would actually exacerbate catastrophic climate change since less carbon emission is prevented per dollar spent on costly nuclear technology compared to applying those funds to clean energy sources and efficiency.
Further, countless studies, including recent reports from three communities in Germany with nuclear reactors, indicate that there are higher incidences of cancer, leukemia and birth defects in communities with toxic nuclear power plants that pollute the air, water, and soil in the course of routine operations. And a recent report from the New York Academy of Sciences, by distinguished Russian scientists, finds that deaths from the disastrous accident at Chernobyl now number over 900,000. Dr. Chu, a nuclear physicist, is well aware that the radioactive byproducts of nuclear power will remain toxic for 250,000 years and that there is no known solution to safely store this lethal brew for the eons it will threaten human health and the environment.
Americans should oppose any further funding for this failed, dangerous technology as well as the inordinate subsidies presently planned for the nuclear industry. It’s time to invest in a clean energy future that will create millions of jobs and enable the US to earn an honest dollar by developing desirable new technology to offer to the world. Instead we will be providing a growing number of countries the wherewithal and technical know-how with which to make a nuclear bomb, while subjecting their communities to the consequences of toxic radiation.
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Shifting the Paradigm: Time to Replace Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty
Shifting the Paradigm: Time to Replace Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty with Universal Membership in the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)
These are the remarks prepared by Alice Slater for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s panel discussion at the United Nations on May 3, 2010.
While the world applauds the growing recognition that the abolition of nuclear weapons seems to be an idea whose time has finally come—from the calls by rusty cold warriors and former statesmen and generals to eliminate nuclear weapons—to the recent modest START negotiated by President Obama and Medvedev to cut nuclear arsenals under new verifications procedures, there are appalling countervailing forces, born from the old 20th century paradigm of war and terror, that undercut the growing positive pressures to end the nuclear scourge. In addition to the pushback from the military and the Republican party in the US Congress to hold the START agreement hostage to billions of new dollars for the weapons labs to build new plutonium cores for the atom bombs, continue sub-critical explosions of plutonium and chemicals at the Nevada test site, and erect new buildings in the weapons complex, as well as continued expansion of destabilizing missile “defenses” and space warfare programs, there is a growing global proliferation of so-called “peaceful” nuclear reactors, metastasizing around the planet and spreading their lethal technology as incipient bomb factories.
Ironically as new calls come from the nuclear sophisticated “haves” to control the nuclear fuel cycle, there has been an explosion of interest from nations that never sought “peaceful” nuclear power before to achieve the technical know-how that will allow them to play in the nuclear club with the big boys. Thus we see countries like El Salvador, Ghana, Burma and Indonesia declaring their intention to build nuclear power plants as well as hearing expressions of interest from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman Qatar, Saudi Arabia Sudan Syria Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Yemen!
Fueled by commercial interests, the western patriarchal network of industrialized nations is now vigorously promoting a “nuclear renaissance” of civilian power. There has been an explosion of interests in licensing new uranium mines around the world, in Africa, Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, India, the United States—even at the very the rim of the sacred land surrounding the awesome Grand Canyon, despite the known tragic consequences of mining on the health of indigenous peoples who bear the brunt of the toxic activity with higher birth defects, cancer, leukemia and mutations in every community where uranium is mined.
The nuclear crisis we face today is a direct result of the export of peaceful nuclear technology to countries such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Indeed, every nuclear reactor enables a country to develop its own nuclear weapons, as we have seen in the case of India, Pakistan, and Israel, who never joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty and now North Korea, which exploited the fruits of “peaceful” technology and then quit to develop its own deterrent against US bullying. Under the guise of “peace”, other countries, such as South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, and Libya were also well on their way to developing nuclear bombs, which they later abandoned. Former IAEA Director, Mohammed ElBaradei stated “We just cannot continue business as usual that every country can build its own factories for separating plutonium or enriching uranium. Then we are really talking about 30, 40 countries sitting on the fence with a nuclear weapons capability that could be converted into a nuclear weapon in a matter of months.”
The signers of the CTB were well aware that by having a nuclear reactor, a nation had been given the keys to a bomb factory and would need to be included in any effort to ban nuclear tests, regardless of whether they proclaimed any intention to develop weapons. And former US CIA Director, George Tenet, said, “The difference between producing low-enriched uranium and weapons-capable high-enriched uranium is only a matter of time and intent, not technology.”
There are nearly 200 million kilograms of reactor wastes in the world—with only 5 kilograms needed to make one nuclear bomb. The US is planning to build 50 more reactors by 2020; China plans 30; with 31 more now under construction–to churn out more toxic poisons; on tap for bomb-making, with no known solution to safely containing the tons of nuclear waste that will be generated over the unimaginable 250,000 years it will continue to threaten life on earth. Countless studies report higher incidences of birth defects, cancer, and genetic mutations in every situation where nuclear technology is employed—whether for war or for “peace.” A National Research Council 2005 study reported that exposure to X-rays and gamma rays, even at low-dose levels, can cause cancer. The committee defined “low-dose” as a range from near zero up to about… 10 times that from a CT scan. “There appears to be no threshold below which exposure can be viewed as harmless,” said one NRC panelist. Tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste accumulate at civilian reactors with no solution for its storage, releasing toxic doses of radioactive waste into our air, water and soil and contaminating our planet and its inhabitants for hundreds of thousands of years.
A recent study released by the New York Academy of Sciences, authored by noted Russian scientists concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people died of cancer caused between 1986 by the Chernobyl accident through 2004. The industry-dominated IAEA, has been instrumental in covering up the disastrous health effects of the Chernobyl tragedy, understating the number of deaths by attributing only 50 deaths directly to the accident. This cover-up was no doubt due to the collusive agreement between the IAEA and the World Health Organization, which under its terms provides that if either of the organizations initiates any program or activity in which the other has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult with the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement. Thus our scientists and researchers at the WHO are required to have their work vetted by the industry’s champion for “peaceful” nuclear technology, the IAEA.
The industrialized nations have the hubris to think they can manage a whole new regime of nuclear apartheid, despite their recent and most welcome acknowledgement by their leadership of the breakdown of the nuclear weapons arms control regime. They’re planning a top-down, hierarchical, central control of the nuclear fuel cycle, in a mad plan to reprocess the irradiated fuel rods in the “nuclear have” countries, such as the US, Russia, China, UK, France, Japan and India, who are to be members of a new Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. The Partnership will ship toxic bomb-ready materials to the four corners of the world and back, in a nightmare scenario of plutonium in constant transit, subject to terrorist theft and negligent accidents on land and on sea, while creating a whole new class of nuclear “have nots” who can’t be trusted not to turn their “peaceful” nuclear reactors into bomb factories. It’s just so 20th century! Time for a paradigm shift to safe, sustainable energy.
Every 30 minutes, enough of the sun’s energy reaches the earth’s surface to meet global energy demand for an entire year. Wind can satisfy the world’s electricity needs 40 times over, and meet all global energy demands five times over. The geothermal energy stored in the top six miles of the earth’s crust contains 50,000 times the energy of the world’s known oil and gas resources. Tidal, wave and small hydropower, can also provide vast stores of energy everywhere on earth, abundant and free for every person on our planet, rich and poor alike. We can store hydrogen fuel in cells, made from safe, clean energy sources, to be used when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. When hydrogen fuel is burned, it produces water vapor, pure enough to drink, with no contamination added to the planet. Iceland plans to be completely sustainable by 2050, using hydrogen in its vehicles, trains, busses and ships, made from geothermal and marine energy.
Last year the governments of Germany, Spain and Denmark launched the International Renewal Energy Agency, IRENA, which would empower developing countries with the ability to access the free energy of the sun, wind, marine, and geothermal sources, would train, educate, and disseminate information about implementing sustainable energy programs, organize and enable the transfer of science and know-how of renewable energy technologies, and generally be responsible for helping the world make the critical transition to a sustainable energy future. IRENE is the Greek word for peace, so this new initiative is especially well named.
While the NPT purports to guarantee to States who agree to abide by its terms an inalienable right to so-called peaceful nuclear technology, it is highly questionable whether such a right can ever be appropriately conferred on a State. Inalienable rights are generally distinguished from legal rights established by a State because they are moral or natural rights, inherent in the very essence of an individual. The notion of inalienable rights appeared in Islamic law and jurisprudence which denied a ruler “the right to take away from his subjects certain rights which inhere in his or her person as a human being” and “become Rights by reason of the fact that they are given to a subject by a law and from a source which no ruler can question or alter”. John Locke, the great Enlightenment thinker was thought to be influenced in his concept of inalienable rights by his attendance at lectures on Arabic studies.
During the Age of Enlightenment natural law theory challenged the divine right of kings. The US Declaration of Independence spoke of “self-evident truth” that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights …life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Where does “peaceful nuclear technology” fit in this picture? Just as the Comprehensive Test Ban cancelled the right to peaceful nuclear explosions in Article V of the NPT, a protocol to the NPT mandating participation in IRENA would supercede the Article IV right to “peaceful” nuclear technology. There are now 143 nations participating in IRENA. www.irena.org We urge you to insure that your nation joins as well.
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A Global Push for Clean Energy: The International Renewable Energy Agency
This article was originally published by YES! Magazine.
Since 1995, when more than 170 nations voted to extend the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, civil society has been calling for the establishment of an international agency to promote renewable energy sources to take the place of fossil fuels without resorting to nuclear power.
Recognizing the “inextricable link” between nuclear weapons and nuclear power, Abolition 2000, a global network for the elimination of nuclear weapons, drafted a model statute for the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and lobbied nations around the world to institute it. [1] Joining with other grassroots networks working to avoid catastrophic climate change through a transition to sustainable energy, activists spoke up at numerous international meetings and conferences and conferred with national environmental departments, seeking support for an energy agency focused solely on clean, safe, renewable energy.
In January 2009, one year ago, Germany, Denmark, and Spain launched the founding meeting for IRENA in Bonn, Germany. [2] A year later, 142 of the 192 member states of the United Nations, as well as the European Union, have signed the IRENA statute. The agency has opened headquarters in Abu Dhabi and branch offices in Bonn and Vienna, and its interim-director general, Helene Pelosse, a former French environmental minister who held positions in trade and finance as well, is determined to hire a staff comprised of at least 50 percent women.
IRENA is committed to becoming a principal driving force in promoting a rapid transition toward the sustainable use of a renewable energy on a global scale. It has a mandate to promote all forms of renewable energy produced in a sustainable manner, including solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, ocean, and appropriate bio energy. It will provide practical advice and support for both industrialized and developing countries, helping them to build capacity and improve their regulatory frameworks.
This year, “IRENA will focus on building a network of international renewable energy experts, starting to map the global potential of renewables, and build up a comprehensive database of policies to promote renewable energy,” said Pelosse. It “will become a one-stop-shop for up-to-date and relevant information on renewable energy.” [3] As a pilot project, IRENA will help develop renewable energy for a number of islands within the Kingdom of Tonga that lack basic electricity. [4]
Every 30 minutes, enough of the sun’s energy reaches the Earth’s surface to meet global energy demand for an entire year. Wind can satisfy the world’s electricity needs 40 times over, and meet all global energy demands five times over. The geothermal energy stored in the top six miles of the earth’s crust contains 50,000 times the energy of the world’s known oil and gas resources. Tidal, wave, and small hydropower can also provide vast stores of energy everywhere on earth, abundant and free for every person on our planet, rich and poor alike. [5]
While the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been committed to promoting nuclear power and the International Energy Agency (IEA) was established in the 1970s to handle the crisis in fossil fuel distribution, only IRENA will be solely dedicated to promoting clean, safe, renewable energy from the abundant energy resources of our planet.
As a derivative of the Greek word eirene, meaning “peace,” IRENA is particularly well-named. The rapid development of renewable energy will enable us to forego our reliance on fossil and nuclear fuels, the continued misuse of which will lead inevitably to climate catastrophe, nuclear proliferation, and perpetual resource wars. Universal reliance on sustainable energy will instead create a promising path toward creating peace on earth.
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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).
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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.