By Jim Green, the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth, Australia , Climate Spectator, 18 Dec 2014
A group of conservation scientists has published an open letter urging environmentalists to reconsider their opposition to nuclear power. The letter is an initiative of Australian academics, Barry Brook and Corey Bradshaw. The co-signatories "support the broad conclusions drawn in the article 'Key role for nuclear energy in global biodiversity conservation', published in “Conservation Biology". The open letter states: "Brook and Bradshaw argue that the full gamut of electricity-generation sources - including nuclear power - must be deployed to replace the burning of fossil fuels, if we are to have any chance of mitigating severe climate change."
So, here's my open letter in response to the open letter initiated by Brook and Bradshaw:
Dear conservation scientists, Space constraints prohibit the usual niceties
that accompany open
letters so I'll get straight to the point. If you want environmentalists to
support nuclear power, get off your backsides and do something about the
all-too-obvious problems associated with the technology. Start with the
proliferation problem since the multifaceted and repeatedly-demonstrated links between
the 'peaceful atom' and nuclear weapons proliferation pose profound risks and
greatly trouble environmentalists and many others besides.
The Brook-Bradshaw journal article (rightly) emphasises the importance of
biodiversity - but even a relatively modest exchange of some dozens of nuclear
weapons could profoundly affect biodiversity, and large-scale
nuclear warfare undoubtedly would.
The Brook-Bradshaw article ranks power sources according to seven criteria:
greenhouse gas emissions, cost, dispatchability, land use, safety (fatalities),
solid waste, and radiotoxic waste.
Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is excluded. By all means
ignore lesser concerns to avoid a book-length analysis, but to ignore the link
between nuclear power and weapons is disingenuous and the comparative analysis
of power sources is a case of rubbish in, rubbish out.
Integral fast reactors
While Brook and Bradshaw exclude WMD proliferation from their comparative
assessment of power sources, their journal article does address the topic. They
promote the 'integral fast reactor' (IFR) that was the
subject of research and development (R&D) in the US until was abandoned in
the 1990s. If they existed, IFRs would be metal-fuelled, sodium-cooled, fast
neutron reactors.
Brook and Bradshaw write: "The IFR technology in particular also counters
one of the principal concerns regarding nuclear expansion - the proliferation
of nuclear weapons - because its electrorefining-based fuel-recycling system
cannot separate weapons-grade fissile material."
Brook's claim that IFRs
"cannot be used to generate weapons-grade material" is false. IFR
advocate Tom Blees notes that: "IFRs
are certainly not the panacea that removes all threat of proliferation, and
extracting plutonium from it would require the same sort of techniques as
extracting it from spent fuel from light water reactors." George Stanford,
who worked on an IFR research program in the US, states: "If not properly safeguarded,
[countries] could do [with IFRs] what they could do with any other reactor --
operate it on a special cycle to produce good quality weapons material."
The presentation of IFRs by Brook and Bradshaw contrasts sharply with the sober
assessments of the UK and US governments. An April 2014 US government report notes that pursuit
of IFR technology would be associated with "significant technical
risk" and that it would take 18 years to construct an IFR and associated
facilities. A recent UK government report notes that IFR
facilities have not been industrially demonstrated, waste disposal issues
remain unresolved, and little can be ascertained about cost.
Brook and Bradshaw argue that "the large-scale deployment of fast reactor
technology would result in all of the nuclear-waste and depleted-uranium
stockpiles generated over the last 50 years being
consumed as fuel." Seriously? An infinitely more likely outcome would be
some fast reactors consuming waste and weapons-useable material while other
fast reactors and conventional uranium reactors continue to produce such
materials.
The Brook-Bradshaw article ignores the sad reality of fast reactor technology: over
$US50 billion invested, unreliable reactors, numerous fires and other
accidents, and one after another country abandoning the technology.
Moreover, fast reactors have worsened, not lessened, proliferation problems.
John Carlson, former director-general of the Australian Safeguards and
Non-proliferation Office, discusses a topical example:
"India has a plan to produce such [weapon grade] plutonium in fast breeder
reactors for use as driver fuel in thorium reactors. This is problematic on
non-proliferation and nuclear security grounds. Pakistan believes the real
purpose of the fast breeder program is to produce plutonium for weapons (so this
plan raises tensions between the two countries); and transport and use of
weapons-grade plutonium in civil reactors presents a serious terrorism risk
(weapons-grade material would be a priority target for seizure by
terrorists)."
The fast reactor techno-utopia presented by Brook and Bradshaw is attractive.
Back in the real world, there's much more about fast reactors to oppose than to
support. And the large-scale deployment of
Generation IV reactor technology is further away than they care to admit. The
Generation IV International Forum website states: "It will
take at least two or three decades before the deployment of commercial Gen IV
systems. In the meantime, a number of prototypes will need to be built and
operated. The Gen IV concepts currently under investigation are not all on the
same timeline and some might not even reach the stage of commercial exploitation."
Creative accounting
Brook and Bradshaw also counter proliferation concerns with the following
argument: "Nuclear power is deployed commercially in countries whose joint
energy intensity is such that they collectively constitute 80% of global
greenhouse-gas emissions. If one adds to this tally those nations that are
actively planning nuclear deployment or already have scientific or medical
research reactors, this figure rises to over 90%. As a consequence,
displacement of fossil fuels by an expanding
nuclear-energy sector would not lead to a large increase in the number of countries
with access to nuclear resources and expertise."
The premise is correct - countries operating reactors account for a large
majority of greenhouse emissions. But even by the most expansive estimate - Brook's
- less than one-third of all countries
have some sort of weapons capability, either through the operation of reactors
or an alliance with
a nuclear weapons state. So the conclusion - that nuclear power expansion
"would not lead to a large increase in the number of countries with access
to nuclear resources and expertise" - is nonsense and one wonders how such
jiggery-pokery could find its way into a peer-reviewed journal.
The power-weapons conundrum is neatly summarised by former US
vice-president Al Gore: "For eight years in the White House, every
weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor
program. And if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear
reactors to
back out a lot of coal ... then we'd have to put them in so many places we'd
run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale."
Safeguards
The Brook-Bradshaw article adds one further comment about proliferation: "Nuclear
weapons proliferation is a complex political issue, with or without commercial
nuclear power plants, and is under strong international oversight."
They cite a book by IFR
advocate Tom Blees in support of that statement. But Blees argues for the
establishment of an international strike force on full standby to attend promptly
to any detected attempts to misuse or to divert nuclear materials. That is a
far cry from the International Atomic Energy
Agency's safeguards system. In articles and speeches during his tenure as the
director general of the IAEA from 1997-2009, Dr Mohamed ElBaradei said that the
agency's basic rights of inspection are "fairly limited", that the
safeguards system suffers from "vulnerabilities" and "clearly needs
reinforcement", that efforts to improve the system have been "half-hearted",
and that the safeguards system operates on a "shoestring budget ...
comparable to that of a local police department".
Moreover, Blees argues that: "Privatised nuclear power should be outlawed
worldwide, with complete international control of not only the entire fuel
cycle but also the engineering, construction, and operation of all nuclear
power plants. Only in this way will safety and proliferation issues be
satisfactorily dealt with. Anything short of that opens up a Pandora's box of
inevitable problems."
Blees doesn't argue that the nuclear industry is subject to strong international oversight - he argues
that "fissile material should
all be subject to rigorous international oversight".
Of course, the flaws in the
nuclear safeguards system are not
set in stone. And this gets me back to my original point: if nuclear lobbyists
want environmentalists to support nuclear power, they need to
get off their backsides and do something about the all-too-obvious problems
such as the inadequate safeguards system. Environmentalists have a long record
of working on these problems and the lack of support from nuclear lobbyists has
not gone unnoticed.
To give an example of a topical point of intervention, Canada has agreed to
supply uranium and nuclear technology to India with greatly reduced safeguards
and non-proliferation standards, Australia seems likely to follow suit, and
those precedents will likely lead to a broader weakening of international
safeguards (and make it that much more difficult for nuclear lobbyists to win
support from environmentalists and others). The seriousness of the problem has
been acknowledged by, among others, a former
chair of the IAEA board of governors and a former
director-general of the Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office.
It is a live debate in numerous nuclear exporting countries and there isn't a
moment to lose.
Nuclear lobbyists should join environmentalists in campaigning for a strengthening
of the safeguards system and against efforts to weaken the system. But Brook
and Bradshaw have never made even the slightest contribution to efforts to
strengthen safeguards, and it's a safe bet that the same could be said of the
other signatories to their open letter.
To mention just one more point of intervention, the separation and stockpiling
of plutonium from power reactor spent fuel increases proliferation risks. There
is virtually no demand for the uranium or
plutonium separated at reprocessing plants, and no repositories for the high-level
waste stream. Yet reprocessing continues, the global stockpile of separated
plutonium increases year after year and now
stands at around 260
tonnes.
It's a problem that
needs to be solved; it's a problem that can
be solved.
Endorsing the wishful thinking and misinformation presented in the Brook-Bradshaw
journal article is no substitute for an honest acknowledgement of the
proliferation problems associated with nuclear
power, coupled with serious, sustained efforts to solve those problems.
Renewables are winning out just about everywhere
As flagship nuclear projects run into long delays and huge cost overruns, solar and wind power are falling in price. Renewables already supply twice as much power as nuclear. Renewables are winning out just about everywhere. They now supply over 19% of global primary energy and 22% of global electricity. Nuclear is at 11% and falling. The simple message is that renewables are getting cheaper and more competitive, while nuclear remains expensive, and its cost may well rise - requiring further subsidies. See the complete article at http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2681228/all_over_the_world_renewables_are_beating_nuclear.html or https://linksunten.indymedia.org/en/node/130051
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