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Why we don't need nuclear power

To correct misleading information that is being spread about nuclear power and raise awareness of a major alternative, there is an online campaign described here: www.mng.org.uk/gh/cspnn.htm.

"Nuclear plants are mutual hostages: the world's least well-run plant can imperil the future of all the others." Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala in the Scientific American, September 2006, p 33.

"What exactly is nuclear power? It is a very expensive, sophisticated, and dangerous way to boil water." Helen Caldicott, Nuclear Power is not the Answer, p. 4.

With regard to CO₂ emissions and the need to reduce them, some people say that renewable forms of energy cannot meet our needs and that, despite its clear disadvantages, nuclear power is a necessary stop-gap. But the truth is quite different: there is more than enough renewable energy to meet our needs and there is no need to tolerate all the many headaches arising from nuclear power.

The 'TRANS-CSP' report commissioned by the German Government (July 2006) shows in great detail how Europe, including the UK, can meet all its needs for electricity, make deep cuts in CO₂ emissions from electricity generation, and phase out nuclear power at the same time (see the press release about the TRANS-CSP report and the report itself. See also www.trec-uk.org.uk and the page about energy supply and conservation). There are now several reports showing how deep cuts in CO₂ emissions may be made without using nuclear power .

"… analysts evaluated the solar resource in the Southwest [of the US] and … found that CSP [concentrating solar power] could provide nearly 7,000 GW of capacity, or about seven times the current total US electric capacity." (Tackling Climate Change in the US , American Solar Energy Society, January 2007, page 17, emphasis added).

The problems associated with nuclear power are numerous and many of them are serious:

Safety

Right from the beginning of the nuclear power industry, we have been assured that the technology is safe. But:

There was a disaster at Windscale in 1957 which turns out to have released much more radioactive material than was suggested at the time.
Also in 1957, there was an explosion at the Mayak nuclear plant in the Southern Urals which exposed 272,000 people to significant radiation. Half a century later, Mayak is one of the most radioactive places on earth.
There was a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979.
The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 released large amounts of radioactivity over a very wide area.
There has been extensive radioactive contamination from the Dounreay nuclear reactor.
In late July 2006 there was an accident at Sweden's Forsmark nuclear power station which was described as a near-meltdown by Lars-Olov Hoglund, a Swedish nuclear expert (see Spiegel Online, 2006-08-07, and report in the International Herald Tribune, 2006-08-04).
According to the Whitehaven News (2007-01-04): "British Nuclear Group Sellafield was fined half a million pounds last year after admitting a radioactive leak, the size of a lorryload of thallium, and 160 kgs of plutonium."
At Sellafield, on the 19th of April 2005, twenty metric tons of uranium and 160 kilograms of plutonium dissolved in 83,000 liters of nitric acid leaked undetected over several months from a cracked pipe into a stainless steel sump chamber at the Thorp nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.
In February 1986, 13 tonnes of radioactive carbon dioxide were released from Trawsfynydd nuclear power plant.
In October 1985, there was an accidental radioactive release into the sea from Hinkley Point nuclear power station.
In November 1983, Sellafield reprocessing plant discharges highly radioactive wastes directly into the sea.
Nuclear Electric was fined £250,000 plus costs for breaches of safety regulations at the Wylfa magnox reactor in July 1993 when a crane grab broke off and fell 40ft into the reactor.
And many more. See also Greenpeace Calendar of Nuclear Accidents (updated 21 March 1996) and "22 accidents since Chernobyl".

Assurances that such things will not happen in the future do not inspire confidence.

Release of radioactive materials

'Routine' or 'permitted' releases of radioactive materials into the environment cause damage to health. An illuminating account of these dangerous releases is in Helen Caldicott's book. See also Study finds more childhood cancer near nuclear power plants (DW-World.de, 2007-12-08), Infant and perinatal mortality and stillbirths near Hinkley Point nuclear power station in Somerset, 1993-2005 (Dr Chris Busby), Do nuclear plants boost leukaemia risk? (New Scientist, 2008-02-12), New evidence of child cancer rises near nuclear plants (Sunday Herald, 2008-05-04).

Terrorism

Nuclear reactors, nuclear reprocessing plants and the trains that carry nuclear materials around the country are easy targets for terrorists (see how a Daily Mirror reporter planted a 'bomb' on a train carrying nuclear waste, July 2006). In a similar way, nuclear materials being transported around the world can easily be attacked or hijacked by terrorists.

The wide distribution in the world of plutonium and enriched uranium increases the chances that terrorists will be able to get hold of enough to make either a 'dirty' conventional bomb or even an atom bomb.

Overt and hidden subsidies

When all the overt and hidden subsidies are taken into account, nuclear power is much more expensive than any other source of power. Some figures on costs from the New Economics Foundation are quoted in "Is it all over for nuclear power?".

The source of those figures is the NEF report "Mirage and oasis" (PDF, 1.2 MB). In brief, a kilowatt-hour of electricity from a nuclear generator will cost as much as 8.3 pence (16.3 US cents) once realistic construction and running costs are factored in, compared with about 3 pence (5.9 US cents) claimed by the nuclear industry—and that's without including the cost of managing pollution, insuring the power stations or protecting them from terrorists.

There is a very full account of costs in Helen Caldicott's book. To be competitive with other sources of power, nuclear power requires permanent support from tax payers or permanent support by means of market mechanisms or hidden subsidies. By contrast, most renewable forms of energy need temporary support until costs are reduced by economies of scales and refinement of technologies, and no further support after that.

One of the biggest of several hidden subsidies for nuclear power is that it is only required to pay a small fraction of the cost of insuring fully against claims from a Chernobyl-style disaster, or worse: "... in the United States, the Price-Anderson Act limits the nuclear industry's liability in the event of a catastrophic accident to $9.1 billion, which is less than 2% of the $600 billion guaranteed by the Congress. In any case, $600 billion is considered to be a gross underestimate ..." (Helen Caldicott, p. 32). There are similar limitations on liabilities in other countries around the world, including the UK.

"In France, if Electricité de France had to insure for the full cost of a meltdown, the price of nuclear electricity would increase by about 300%. Hence, as opposed to conventional wisdom, the price of French nuclear electricity is artificially low." (ibid., p. 32).

Full insurance against nuclear disasters would completely demolish any economic case for nuclear power.

Other hidden subsidies include:

The costs of providing protection against terrorist attack for nuclear plants, and for trains and ships carrying nuclear fuel and nuclear waste;
The costs to us all arising from the fact that any such protection can only ever be partial;
The cost of decommissioning nuclear plants. An estimate in 2006 by the UK Treasury for the cost of decommissioning the UK's old nuclear power stations was £90 billion;
The costs born by national governments in that ultimately they must underwrite all risks, as evidenced by the way the UK government had to bale out British Energy in 2005 at a cost of £5 billion;
The costs arising from nuclear waste that will be dangerous for thousands of years. These costs will be born by future generations but they will receive no compensating benefit.

The extraordinary Alice-in-Wonderland world of the nuclear industry and its costs is very well described in Voodoo economics and the doomed nuclear renaissance: a research paper (PDF, 1.4 MB), written by Paul Brown as a Press Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge during 2007-2008. The Fellowship was sponsored by British Petroleum and the report is published by Friends of the Earth.

Releases of CO₂

Significant amounts of CO₂ are released by the nuclear industry: in the construction of nuclear power stations and in mining uranium ore, transporting and processing uranium ore to make nuclear fuel, transporting the fuel, transporting nuclear waste, processing it, and disposing of it. It is a long way from being a zero-emissions source of electricity, as claimed by the industry. Helen Caldicott quotes research showing that "The use of nuclear power causes, at the end of the road and under the most favourable conditions, approximately one-third as much carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission as gas-fired electricity production." The use of poorer ores as a source of fuel for nuclear reactors "would produce more CO₂ emissions than burning fossil fuels directly." In other words, "nuclear reactors are best understood as complicated, expensive, and inefficient gas burners." (p. 6).

Energy consumption

Nuclear power may consume more energy than it produces. "Even utilizing the richest ores available, a nuclear power plant must operate at ten full-load operating years before it has paid off its energy debts. And ... there is only a finite supply of supply of uranium ore containing reasonable concentrations of uranium 235. When this concentration falls below 0.01%, the costs of energy production from nuclear power can no longer cover the costs of extraction of uranium from the earth, at which time the nuclear fuel cycle will produce no net energy; below a certain uranium content, nuclear power produces less energy than is needed to build, fuel, and operate the reactor and to repair the environmental damage." (Helen Caldicott, p. 16). By contrast, energy payback times for wind power and most other renewable sources is 3 to 5 months. PV currently has an energy payback time of 3 to 4 years but this is likely to fall to 1 year or less in the future.

Nuclear waste

No solution has yet been found to the problem of disposing of dangerous nuclear waste, much of which will remain dangerous for 10,000 years or more. No human institution has ever survived that long. People imagine that it is possible to store nuclear waste underground but that environment is at least as complex and unpredictable as weather systems and we have much less information about it. There is no satisfactory solution to problems of corrosion, ingress of water, vulnerability to terrorist attack, and the long-term instability of all geological formations.

Reliability

Contrary to what many people imagine and often suggest as an advantage of nuclear power, it is not available 24/7 throughout the year. Just like wind power, and all other sources of electricity, nuclear power is intermittent. Nuclear power stations stop producing electricity during routine maintenance and unscheduled breakdowns, and the 'load factor' (the amount of electricity that is actually produced compared with the theoretical maximum) is normally well short of 100%.

Nuclear proliferation

The technology for nuclear power has much in common with the technology needed for the production of nuclear weapons. The "Janus-like character of nuclear energy" (Kofi Annan) adds to the problem of reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world or preventing their proliferation. If we are trying to persuade countries like Iran to give up nuclear power, we are in a very weak negotiating position if we have nuclear power (and nuclear weapons) ourselves.

Security of supply

Some uranium comes from politically-unstable countries like Kazakhstan and those supplies cannot be guaranteed. Incidentally, nuclear power is not a 'home grown' source of energy as suggested recently by Malcolm Wicks, Minister of State for Energy in the UK Government: all the uranium needed for nuclear power is imported.

Heat waves

In recent heat waves, nuclear power plants have been shut down owing to shortages of cooling water and unacceptable damage that would be caused by the discharge of hot water into the environment (see Climate change puts nuclear energy into hot water and Our nuclear summer). This kind of problem is likely to become worse as global temperatures rise.

Risk of flooding

All of the UK's existing nuclear power stations are on the coast and it appears that the nuclear industry favours building new nuclear power stations on the same sites. Thus any significant rise in sea level could have disastrous consequences both for existing power stations (even after they have ceased producing electricity but are still 'hot') and any new ones that may be built nearby. Significant rises in sea level may seem unlikely but, in a recent article ("Huge sea level rises are coming – unless we act now", New Scientist, issue 2614, 25 July 2007), James Hansen, Head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, argues there could be a "runaway collapse" of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets leading to rises in sea level that are much bigger than current IPCC predictions. Since climate scientists have already been surprised by the speed with which floating ice shelves in the Antarctic have broken up, it would be unwise to assume that there could not be similar surprises in the speed with which land-based bodies of ice disintegrate.

"Nuclear power stations on the British coast will experience storm surges up to 1.7 metres (5½ft) higher by 2080 because of global warming, a study suggests. The research, commissioned by British Energy, the nuclear plant operator, suggests that new coastal defence strategies may be needed to protect sites from a combination of more extreme weather and higher sea levels. All of Britain's 15 nuclear plants are near the coast, and the prospect of rising sea levels has raised questions about whether the sites will be suitable if a new generation of reactors is built." (Mark Henderson, The Times, 2007-01-24).

An inflexible source of power

Nuclear power is an inflexible source of electricity that is only suitable for 'base load'. It cannot respond quickly to peaks in demand for electricity.

McCain's French kiss is an article containing an interesting analysis of the problems caused by the fact the French nuclear power stations can only provide base-load power. This inflexibility rules them out as a major source of power in the USA and many other parts of the world.

Restricted scope

Nuclear power only provides electricity. It does not address the problem of reducing CO₂ emissions from space heating and road transport (except under the unlikely scenario that nuclear electricity would be used for a significant amount of space heating and charging of electric vehicles).

Shortages of skilled labour

Few science and engineering students are coming through to replace reactor workers who are now retiring. As a result there will soon not be enough people to build and operate new reactors. Without people who have the necessary knowledge and experience, it would be very unwise to try to build new nuclear power plants.

Exhaustion of uranium reserves

It has been calculated that, if enough nuclear fission reactors were built to meet most of the world's demand for electricity, exploitable sources of uranium would be exhausted in about fifteen to twenty years (see Energy Beyond Oil by Paul Mobbs, Matador, 2005, ISBN 1-905237-00-6). If the more risky fast breeder reactors could be made to work reliably (not an easy job), this might yield fifty or sixty years of electricity. In a similar way, thorium could in principle be converted into nuclear fuel but this has not yet been shown to be practical and supplies of thorium are in any case limited.

As exploitable sources of uranium become exhausted, prices will rise. And as higher-grade ores are exhausted, more energy will be consumed and more CO₂ will be released in processing the lower-grade ores that remain.

Times and costs

The nuclear industry is notorious for long lead times and over-runs in times and costs. Building a new nuclear plant is likely to be a long and costly process. The result may be a white elephant that is not able to compete with cheaper and nimbler renewable technologies.

Opportunity cost

As Friends of the Earth and others have been pointing out, money spent in propping up the nuclear industry is money that would be much more profitably spent on expanding renewable sources of energy. Nuclear power is dirty and dangerous, it can only supply power for a relatively short period of time, and it is expensive. By contrast, renewable forms of energy are clean and safe, they will last for thousands of years, and they are cheaper than nuclear power (see Energy supply and conservation).

STOP PRESS: Helen Caldicott's book called Nuclear power is not the answer explains very well why nuclear power is such a bad option. It's an excellent read!