marklynas.orgNuclear power - Greenpeace responds 14 November 08
Immediately after my article 'Greens must learn to love nuclear power' was published, I was contacted by friends working at Greenpeace who objected to my portrayal of the organisation's stance on nuclear as mainly motivated by ideology rather than rational consideration. I offered them the chance to respond in a line-by-line way to my article, and promised to put their response on this site. Here it is...
[Editorial note: I have merely formatted the following document for the web. Any mistakes are in the original.]
On the article, ‘Why Greens must learn to love nuclear power’, we welcome the opportunity to respond to many of the claims made both about Greenpeace, but also the author’s justification for supporting a new programme of untried and untested nuclear power stations. Our response will address both the relevant points set out in the article as well as the role of nuclear power within the context of both climate change and energy security. We hope that in offering a robust, credible and referenced response we will provide a more qualified understanding of why Greenpeace opposes the construction of new nuclear power stations – of all kinds.
Firstly, Greenpeace’s opposition to nuclear power is not held as article of faith, or even an ideology, but on the legitimate concerns over the persistent threat that major releases due to accidents or terrorist attacks and the long-term threats radioactive waste presents to our biosphere and the proliferation of fissile materials. It is however crucially held on a pragmatic, realistic and evidence based approach to employing the most effective tools to tackle climate change and reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. Not least because these issues are fundamental to our organisation’s commitment to protecting the planet and driving forward positive, innovative solutions.
We detail our responses below:
Article: “(Once again there is a powerful myth here – that high-level waste from reactors remains dangerous for enormous lengths of time. Greenpeace states that “waste will remain dangerous for up to a million years”. In fact, almost all waste will have decayed back to a level of radio activity less than the original uranium ore in less than a thousand years.)”
I would firstly like to address the point that Greenpeace states that wastes – such as spent fuel – will remain dangerous for up to a million years. This is not an assumption it is based on a plethora of credible academics and agencies. The radioactive waste management body NIREX (now absorbed in to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority) acknowledges that ‘the time scale over which such safety assessments should be undertaken [for geological disposal] is a period of one million years’ [1]. This is again emphasized in their report ‘The Scientific Foundations of Deep Geological Disposal’ that legacy radioactive waste from our existing civil nuclear power stations should be ‘maintained in the repository environment for at least a million years’ [2]. In investigating the health impacts of radioactive contamination escaping such a repository, Nirex also concluded that the peak radiation dose [from radioactive emissions escaping from a deep repository] within the next million years would be ten milliSieverts a year. That is ten times higher than the international recommended maximum dose for members of the public and between 500 and 1000 times above the target doses recommended by regulatory agencies in Britain, Sweden and Japan [3].
It was interesting to note that the article qualified to some extent the issues around radioactive waste in stating that “almost all the waste” would decay back to background levels less than the original uranium ore in less than a thousand years, although this is disingenuous. It would have been more accurate to explain fully that some wastes decay more quickly, others do indeed remain hazardous for much longer periods. For example, the US Environmental Protection Agency illustrates this when describing the implications of managing (including the disposal) of spent fuel and ‘that wherever spent nuclear fuel is stored, the short-lived iodine-131 it contains will decay away quickly and completely. However, the long-lived iodine-129 will remain for millions of years. Keeping it from leaking into the environment requires carefully designed, long-term safeguards’ [4]. Incidentally, the EPA also acknowledges that the proposed disposal facility at Yucca must be designed to ensure against excessive radiation exposure to nearby residents for up to a million years [5].
For a presentation – including graphs – on how spent fuel decays and the timescales concerned see nuclear engineer’s John Large’s paper [6].
It is also appropriate to note that there is currently no operating disposal facility for high level waste and spent fuel anywhere in the world. There simply is no guaranteed method of disposing of long lived radioactive wastes which will keep it contained and not result in releases to the environment.
The article also makes considerable reference to the impact of radiation on health, with specific focus to the impact of Chernobyl. We have selected relevant points in the narrative which we will address.
Article: “Even Chernobyl, surely the worst-imaginable case for a nuclear disaster, was far less deadly than most people think. But it is the long-term effects from Chernobyl that tend to scare people most. In a 2006 report, Greenpeace claimed that “60,000 people have additionally died in Russia because of the Chernobyl accident, and estimates of the total death toll for the Ukraine and Belarus could reach another 140,000”. But are they correct? The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation reports 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer in children and young people in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, but very few deaths (thyroid cancer is mostly treatable).”
Although the figure of 4,000 was the first time the IAEA has acknowledged such a figure, it is nevertheless inaccurate for a number of reasons. Most significantly, the figure is restricted to deaths in higher exposed populations and ignores an additional 5,000 expected deaths in lower exposed populations, as explained in the WHO health report. The IAEA should have quoted the real figure from the WHO report i.e. 9,000 [7].
The 4,000 estimate is inaccurate for other reasons also. Firstly, it is out of date: the source is an older study by Cardis et al (1996) prepared for the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. The question may be fairly asked as to why a more recent estimate was not made for the 20th anniversary. Secondly, the estimate of 4,000 is limited to the more exposed populations of the 3 countries of Belarus, Ukraine, and the Russian Federation. There is no estimate for expected deaths in lesser exposed areas of these 3 countries and in other European countries.
Article: “There is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident” and no evidence of any increase in cancer or leukemia among exposed populations. The World Health Organisation concludes that while a few thousand deaths may be caused over the next 70 years by Chernobyl’s radioactive release, this number “will be indiscernible from the background of overall deaths in the large population group”.”
Elizabeth Cardis, (cited above), is a radiation specialist from the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France. Subsequent to earlier studies, she has since said that 30,000 to 60,000 cancer deaths is “the right order of magnitude” [8]. Although the number of excess cancers attributable to Chernobyl amongst 570 million Europeans will be difficult to detect, as they will only form a tiny proportion of the millions of cancer deaths from all causes, this doesn’t mean that they should be ignored. Or does this detract from the fact that they would not have occurred as a result of the accident at Chernobyl?
But it is also important to note that although major studies have invariably centred on the rates of fatal and non-fatal cancers. Yet these are not the only recognised effects of radiation exposure. The International Commission of Radiological Protection, and national protection bodies, also recognise that radiation exposure can cause genetic (hereditary) and non-genetic damage – which can result in damage to the immune system for example. We refer you to the US EPA’s short brief, which details some of the non-cancer effects of radiation [9]. These more ‘subtle’ effects are very much harder to track across a population as they are not necessarily notifiable diseases.
For example, although ‘only’ 31 people died immediately following the accident, millions of people have and are still being exposed to the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl [10]. Over 800,000 workers, known as ‘liquidators’ were exposed to high radiation levels extinguishing the fire, taking measures to contain the radioactive core of the reactor and in doing initial clean up work. Due to the long latency period for many cancers, the world will not know for decades Chernobyl’s full impact on this one aspect of human health. As Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, “At least three million children in Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation require physical treatment (due to the Chernobyl accident). Not until 2016, at the earliest, will we know the full number of those likely to develop serious medical conditions.” [11]
Article: “A focus on statistics is also useful when assessing the financial costs of nuclear power. The high price for nuclear waste disposal and decommissioning – with a hefty chunk always payable from public funds – is surely one of the environmental lobby’s strongest arguments, particularly if any subsidy from taxpayers means taking money away from investment in renewables.”
Helen Caldicott’s book ‘Nuclear Power is Not the Answer’ discusses the finances of nuclear under a chapter sub-headed ‘Socialised Electricity’, quoting figures for nuclear’s subsidy in the US over recent decades of $70bn. To make a direct cost comparison, the International Energy Agency in a 2005 study looked at life-cycle costs for all power sources “including construction costs, operations, fuel and decommissioning” and concluded that nuclear was the cheapest option, followed by coal, wind and gas.
The author appears to confuse the issue of subsidies with life cycle costs. Even if it was accepted that life cycle costs are as given by the IEA (which we don’t) this does not detract from the massive subsidies the nuclear industry has been given and continues to receive. Indeed, the Government appears to intend to continue subsidising the nuclear industry. Prof Gordon MacKerron, former chair of CoRWM and nuclear economist wrote in response to a recent consultation on the ‘fixed unit price’ for waste disposal that this represented a subsidy [12].
Former nuclear industry manager and industry consultant Ian Jackson has also explained how waste disposal costs might be manipulated in a way that could allow costs fall to the taxpayer [13].
The issue of subsidy for radioactive waste management is an important, practical argument against the creation of more toxic waste, especially when you consider the greater benefits achieved by investing in alternative technologies. Managing the existing and anticipated stockpile of legacy radioactive waste in the UK, which will amount to just under half a million tones, is currently estimated at £73billion [14], although every time this figure is reviewed, the costs spiral. Whilst this includes the anticipated cost of building a deep geological repository its only covers the lowest estimate of £10bn, whereas work for the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management put the cost between – £10-30 billion [15], the cost of managing waste from British Energy ageing reactor fleet – £5 billion – or any cost incurred in managing the stockpiles of Uranium or Plutonium which may yet to be designated as a waste instead of (as in the latter case) a ‘zero value asset.’ But it’s not just the back end costs of nuclear that’s financially crippling, it the fast escalating cost of building Generation III reactors.
In January 2008, the UK Government estimated that the cost of building new reactors would be in the order of £2.8 billion per reactor (1.6 GW) [16]. In May 2008, the Chief Executive of German utility Eon estimated that it would be closer to £4.8 billion [17]. Estimates from the US in early 2008 indicated that the total cost of a new nuclear plant be $5,000 – 7,000/kW, or in the order of magnitude of $13 to $14 billion for a two unit plant (£7.9 billion as on 03.10.08) [18]. Yet just 5 months later Florida Power & Light filed formal cost estimates up to twice as high – $12-24 billion (up to £13.5 billion 03.10.08) for between 2.2-3.04 GW unit capacity [19].
Article: “But how about nuclear power’s potential contribution to mitigating global warming?”
If nuclear power is to play a major role in meeting global energy needs, then there will need to be an unprecedented scaling up of the current programmes. Nuclear power currently supplies around 2.6% of commercial primary energy consumption and 16% of electricity consumed. The Intergovernmental Program on Climate Change (IPCC) put forward a scenario in which nuclear power plays a more central role in reducing CO2 emissions and increases to 3000 GW of installed capacity in 2075 (providing 50% of the world’s electricity) and then to 6500 GW in 2100 (75% of electricity). Under this scenario it would reduce by one fourth the CO2 emission predicted by 2100. Even assuming an operating life of around 50 years (beyond the current design life-time of most operating reactors), it would require the construction of around 7000 reactors in the next century, or 70 reactors per year [20]. That’s just shy of 6 reactors a month. Given that, at the peak of the global nuclear industry in the 1980s, the highest number of reactors connected to the grid in a year was 33 (some of them had long construction times), this scenario is undeliverable and ignores the fact that there simply aren’t the raw materials, industrial plant or the skilled workforce to deliver it.
With specific reference to the UK, it is worth noting that if we set out on an ambitious programme of building a replacement fleet of new nuclear reactors in the UK – let’s say 10 – the government’s own figures reveal that a new fleet of nuclear power stations would cut UK emission by around 4% some time after the year 2025 [21].
The nuclear power industry, risk-insured by the federal government won’t take care of your waste disposal problem; you don’t have to pay for it at market rates. Or you don’t have to buy a financial debt at market rates. Nuclear power would be far more expensive than solar power if it had to pay market rates of borrowing and didn’t have federal insurance [22].
Article: “But why not ditch nuclear and focus only on renewables, as the greens suggest? MacKay calculates that even if we covered the windiest 10 per cent of the UK with wind turbines, put solar panels on all south-facing roofs, implemented strong energy efficiency measures across the economy, built offshore wind turbines across an area of sea two-thirds the size of Wales, and fully exploited every other conceivable source of renewables (including wave and tidal power), energy production would still not match current consumption.”
Contrary to popular misconception, exacerbated by the misleading nature of MacKays claims, the UK’s potential for developing renewables is huge. Last year both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown made high-level commitments which led to a proposed target for the UK to generate about 15% of our total energy (heat, transport and electricity) from renewable sources by 2020. To meet the target it is widely accepted that at least 35% of Britain’s electricity will need to come from renewables by 2020.
A report by Europe’s leading energy experts, Poyry Energy Consulting [23], finds that, if the UK Government is able to achieve its commitments to meet EU renewable energy targets and acts successfully to improve energy efficiency in line with its National Energy Efficiency Action Plan, then major new power stations (burning either coal or gas) would not be needed to ensure that Britain can meet its electricity requirements up to at least 2020. Moreover, the report finds that this strategy would reduce the UK’s CO2 emissions by up to 37% by 2020.
The report considered six scenarios for meeting Britain’s commitments to deliver on the binding EU renewable energy commitments for 2020, and for future electricity demand (drawing on both EU and UK targets for energy efficiency), and assessed whether any additional capacity from conventional sources such as coal and gas would be needed to secure the UK’s electricity needs. It concluded that there would be no role for such plants, even taking into account the very few days when there is little or no wind. These scenarios represent a radical shift away from the “business as usual” pathway (under which new power stations may indeed be needed). But such a radical shift is precisely what is required by the Government’s stated ambitions on renewables and energy efficiency.
In another report, analysts from Pöyry Energy Consulting, ‘Securing Power: Potential for CCGT CHP Generation at Industrial Sites in the UK’ have calculated that there could be up to 16GW of power generation from industrial scale combined heat and power plants (CHP) sited at locations across the UK, with 13GW from just nine major industrial sites. 13GW is the same capacity as eight nuclear power stations, but could be delivered much more quickly and more cheaply than nuclear, with the potential to provide enough electricity to power two-thirds of UK households in a move that could also halve gas imports and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 10 million tonnes.
Article: “Indeed, it is vital to stress the neither I nor MacKay nor any credible expert suggests a choice between renewables and nuclear: the sensible conclusion is that we need both, soon, and on a large scale if we are to phase out coal and other fossil fuels as rapidly as the climate needs. As MacKay told me: “We need to get building.”“
Many within Government or the nuclear industry maintain that we need a balanced energy portfolio, comprising of both nuclear and renewables and that it’s not an either or scenario. And this sounds reasonable, especially when the threat of climate change would demand the employment of all low carbon sources of energy. However, a practical evaluation of the energy system in the UK would suggest that there is a great deal more conflict between the two than you would be led to believe. This is crystallised in the words of the CEO of EDF, Vincent De Rivaz, the new owners of British Energy in the UK, in a speech delivered at the Adam Smith Institute in March 2008.
“If you provide incentives for renewables, you accelerate the growth of renewable capacity,” he said.
“But that will displace some of the incentives built into the carbon market. In effect, carbon gets cheaper. And if carbon gets cheaper, you depress the returns for all the other low-carbon technologies.” “Some of those low-carbon projects will be cancelled, or will fail [24]”.
Now what Mr De Rivaz appears to be concerned about is that if the UK meets its target of obtaining 15% of its energy from renewables – electricity, heat and transport – by 2020. Since heating and transport are harder to convert, that means the UK would need to provide around 40% of electricity from renewables. This would result in a massive expansion, for example, in wind farms which would dent the economic viability of the new generation of nuclear power plants.
In the 2003 Energy White paper, then Secretary of State for Business Patricia Hewitt said in Commons debate on 2003 Energy White Paper: “It would have been foolish to announce …. that we would embark on a new generation of nuclear power stations because that would have guaranteed that we would not make the necessary investment and effort in both energy efficiency and in renewables.” Since then nothing has changed and the reason is simple. You can’t spend the same pound on two different things at the same time (it’s called opportunity cost – making any investment foregoes others). New nuclear power costs far more than distributed competitors, so it buys less coal displacement than the competing investment it suffocates.
As you will be aware current climate science indicates the need for peak and decline in global emissions in the next decade and so action over the next few years are critical. Climate change will not be solved by future technologies but ones that are scalable and can be brought on stream relatively quickly (i.e. renewables and energy efficiency measures) [25].
Article: “But what if a new generation of nuclear plants could be designed that, instead of producing more waste to leave as a toxic legacy for our grandchildren, actually generated energy by burning up existing waste stockpiles? This is the solution proposed by Tom Blees, a US-based writer, in his upcoming book Prescription for the Planet. Blees focuses particularly on so-called fourth-generation nuclear technology – better known as fast-breeder reactors.”
In responding to this, Greenpeace would like to respond to the following points:
While conventional thermal reactors use less than 1 per cent of the potential energy in their uranium fuel, fast-breeders are 60 times more efficient, and can burn virtually all of the energy available in the uranium ore.
As Blees puts it: “Thus we have a prodigious supply of free fuel that is actually even better than free, for it is material that we are quite desperate to get rid of.”
Moreover, fast-breeder reactors can also run on the uranium left behind by conventional reactors, and help reduce the proliferation threat by burning up plutonium stockpiles left over from decommissioned nuclear weapons
Although these reactors produce plutonium – which might be used for nuclear weapons, and could therefore pose a proliferation threat – weapons-grade material is never isolated in the fuel-cycle process, making fast-breeders less dangerous to international stability than conventional reactors, and relatively simple to inspect.
But what about the waste these reactors themselves produce? Since the by-products of fast-breeder reactors are highly radioactive, they have much shorter half-lives – rendering them inert in a couple of centuries, instead of the longer time over which conventional nuclear waste remains dangerous.
Fourth-generation nuclear technology is also inherently safer than earlier designs.
Now, there’s a lot of emphasis in the article, much of it unsubstantiated, on the virtues of fast breeders (in this case IFRs) one of the fourth generation reactors, almost as if this is a readily available, easily applicable step from the yet to be tried and tested Generation III reactors to an revolutionary breed of new nuclear reactors. This is largely a hypothetical reasoning and distracts from the essence of the article – employing the best available technology to tackle the imminent threat of climate change. As (vigorously pro-nuclear) investment guru Vinod Khosla outlines, nuclear is not suitable for rapid advances in technology so that we need to develop these so that their full potential is expressed [26].
The simple fact is that such Generation IV (fast breeder) reactor designs are currently, just that, in the main paper designs. In order for even prototype versions to be built, technological breakthroughs in material development will have to be made.
The fuel for fast breeders is most certainly not free – this kind of statement would have most industry executives falling off their chairs. To get to the point where you have enough plutonium to kick start a massive fast-breeder programme (of the kind suggested by the author) a prodigious amount of uranium would have to be mined, converted, enriched and fabricated into fuel, this is then burnt in a reactor, the plutonium produced in the ‘conventional’ reactor then requires a massive reprocessing operation to extract (creating much larger volumes of wastes and discharges all the while) and this then has to be fabricated into fuel for FBR. Alternately existing fuel stocks could be used – but it is questionable whether there are the stocks of already-mined and processed uranium available to power a very large IFR programme, or indeed the necessary stocks of plutonium to avoid having to go through the whole fuel chain and have conventional reactors.
Interestingly the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is currently looking at a market for the use of its plutonium stockpile in ‘ordinary’ MOX reactors as the idea of fast breeders is so far off the radar that they won’t even consider them. Part of the reason for this is the problem with plutonium itself – although Plutonium-239 is a long lived radioactive material, a different isotope of plutonium in the stock decays into the gamma emitting Americium-241, and thus none of the UK vendors for reactors are proposing using it. Indeed a Westinghouse official recently informed Greenpeace that due to both the French EPR and Westinghouse AP1000 being untested reactors, both would have to run for 10 years before it would be considered possible to use MOX in then. This could mean both designs go beyond the easily-manageable shelf-life of the plutonium stock. Given the long time frames for FBRs, the same would probably apply to them too.
The Policy & Innovation Unit of the Cabinet Office noted in 2002 that there is an international collaboration research and development project on so-called ‘Generation IV’ reactors which may turn out to be more cost effective than the current generation of reactors. One of the reactor types this programme is attempting to revive is the fast reactor, but this is not expected to come to commercial fruition for at least 15 to 20 years. In fact, the former Energy Minister Brian Wilson has said he doesn’t expect Generation IV reactors to be deployed until 2030 [27]. The solutions to climate change need to be employed now.
Article: “Moreover, fast-breeder reactors can also run on the ‘depleted’ uranium left behind by conventional reactors, and help reduce the proliferation threat by burning up plutonium stockpiles left over from decommissioned nuclear weapons.”
Again, this is too much of a generalisation. Although much has been made of the use of former Soviet military nuclear material in civil programmes in most countries (including the UK) military stockpiles remain just that – they are not available for civil use. The article gives the impression that all the plutonium not in weapons can be used in civil programmes.
Article: “Blees estimates that supplies of nuclear waste and depleted uranium are sufficient to “provide all the power needs of the entire planet for hundreds of years before we need to mine any more uranium.” Although these reactors produce plutonium “which might be used for nuclear weapons, and could therefore pose a proliferation threat “weapons-grade material is never isolated in the fuel-cycle process, making fast-breeders less dangerous to international stability than conventional reactors, and relatively simple to inspect.
Fast Breeder reactors don’t (and cannot) burn waste, they utilise plutonium. However, in order to get the plutonium you first need an ‘ordinary’ reactor. (It’s not known how many reactors you would have to operate to fuel a breeder programme of the size Tom Blees advocates – but it would be substantially more than current production and probably require most spent fuel to be reprocessed, at present approx 80% of the world’s spent fuel is not reprocessed due to financial, environmental and proliferation concerns ). The spent fuel from this has to be reprocessed. This increases the overall amount of waste to be dealt with by 160 fold (over the volume of the spent fuel)[28] and leads to significant environmental discharges. And reprocessing does not destroy any of the radioactivity in the spent fuel – it simply spreads it around. Reprocessing, the chemical separation of the unburnt Uranium and Plutonium in the spent fuel from the fission product waste leaves High Level Waste. By volume the Uranium takes up 96% of the spent fuel, the Plutonium about 1% and the HLW waste 3% [29]. The HLW however contains 97% of the radioactivity in the spent fuel.
There is no reactor of any design which can burn this HLW. Thus the problems of the most highly radioactive waste remains (This first-generation waste can’t be burnt in IFRs).In addition, in order keep the whole fast breeder programme going you have to reprocess the spent fuel from the breeder reactor – which creates more waste etc – in order to process the fuel into new fuel.
Also the costs of such fuel cycle concepts – the use of reprocessing – would be very high. According to “The Future of Nuclear” by the U.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology , a convincing case has not yet been made that the long term waste management benefits of advanced closed fuel cycles involving reprocessing of spent fuel are not indeed outweighed by the short term risks and costs, including proliferation risks. Also, the MIT study found that the fuel cost with a closed cycle, including waste storage and disposal charges, to be about 4.5 times the cost of a once- through cycle. Therefore it is not realistic to expect that there will ever be huge, internationally acceptable and implemented new reactor and fuel cycle technologies that simultaneously overcome the problems of cost, safe waste creation and proliferation all at the same time – and in enough time to tackle climate change.
Article: “It is worth remembering the contribution that nuclear power has already made to offsetting global warming: the world’s 442 operating nuclear reactors, which produce 16 per cent of global electricity, save 2.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year compared to coal, according to the IPCC. Blees agrees that “the most pressing issue is to shut down all coal-fired power plants” and urges a “Manhattan Project-like” effort to convert the world’s non-renewable power to IFRs by the thousand. This sounds daunting but it is not unprecedented: France converted its power supply to 80 per cent nuclear in the space of just 25 years by building about six reactors a year.”
It is worth noting at this point that the contribution of nuclear power to meet global energy needs only amounts to 2.6% of the world’s total energy consumption [31].
Undeniably, coal is by far the most carbon intensive source of electricity, so displacing it is the yard stick of carbon displacement effectiveness. A kilowatt hour of nuclear does displace nearly all the 0.9+ – kilograms of CO2 emitted by producing a kilowatt hour from coal. But so does a kilowatt hour from wind: a kilowatt hour recovered from recovered heat industrial cogeneration, or a kilowatt hour saved by end use efficiency. And all of these carbon-free sources cost a least one third less that nuclear per kilowatt hour, so they save more carbon per pound spent [32]. Whether existing nuclear plants have displaced and are displacing any carbon emissions, as is claimed above, depends on what assets would have been bought instead to generate the same electricity. Buying coal would have meant the release of more carbon: investing in renewables, energy efficiency or cogeneration would have meant less because more of those cheaper sources of energy could have been employed for the money [33].
Although France is often cited as an example of how nuclear power can help power a nation on cheap, secure energy, the reality is somewhat different. The perennial trumpeting of “France’s energy independence” does not stand up to analysis, given that France’s per capita oil consumption in 2007 was higher than that of its large neighbours, and that the contribution of nuclear power to overall consumption was a mere 14% . The history of France’s nuclear programme is not a realistic comparison to the situation the world faces with global warming and the timescales needed to make that change. Even a modest increase in conventional reactor building would put a significant strain on the nuclear industry’s ability to deliver. We reference a presentation on the problems with the current ‘renaissance’ for your information – this is based on the 2008 World Nuclear Industry Status Report (and covers future trends) [35]. It is a timely reminder of the problems faced by the industry today.
In summary to the above response, the notion that nuclear power is necessary to address climate change does not reflect a close examination of the realities of the marketplace or rapid new developments in solar energy, wind energy and energy efficiency technologies. It is following a thorough examination of the arguments submitted in the article, and our subsequent response that Greenpeace maintain that nuclear power is not an economically viable or practical solution to tackling the issue of climate change or energy security.
[1] Potential Areas of Future Geosphere Research, NIREX February 2006. No 494794 http://www.nda.gov.uk/documents/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&pageid=10607
[2] http://www.nirex.co.uk/documents/upload/The-scientific-foundations-of-deep-geological-disposal-Nirex-Report-N-016-2001.pdf
[3] http://www.robedwards.com/2006/06/high_radiation_.html#more See email David Brazier (EA), personal comments on Society for Radiological Protection talk board 14 June 2006
[4] http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/radionuclides/iodine.html#affecthealth
[5] AP 30th Sept 2008 http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h6o39cVVI8avqek_MoKaQ3i-0Y4wD93H6UMO0
[6] http://www.largeassociates.com/3145%20Irradiated%20Fuel%20Characteristics/3145-a1%20FINAL.pdf
[7] http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025464.400-how-many-more-lives-will-chernobyl-claim.html
[8] New Scientist 6th April 2006 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025464.400-how-many-more-lives-will-chernobyl-claim.html
[9] http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/understand/health_effects.html
[10] Yuri M Shchebak, ‘Ten Years of the Chernobyl Era’ Scientific American, April 1996, pg 45
[11] http://www.chernobyl.info/index.php?userhash=11910915&navID=191&lID=2&statementID=23
[12] Subsidy’ for nuclear power attacked Financial Times, June 11 2008 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4c7e0c5c-370c-11dd-bc1c-0000779fd2ac.html See MacKerron’s submission to BERR http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file48079.pdf
[13] http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode=2049209
[14] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/24/nuclearpower.energy
[15] CORWM Specialist Workshop – Scoring, December 2005, published January 2006, Catalyze, CORWM document number 1502
[16] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/10/eanuclear110.xml
[17] http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article3872870.ece
[18] www.progress-energy.com/about us/news/article.asp?id=18222
[19] Nucleonics week, p. 3, 21 Feb 2008
[20] Nuclear Power, Nuclear Proliferation and Global Warming, H.A. Feiverson, Forum on Physics and Society of the America Physical Society, January 2003
[21] http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications/downloads/SDC-NuclearPosition-2006.pdf
[22] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vinod-khosla/scheer-nonsense-the-_b_45590.html
[23] http://www.ilexenergy.com/?t=6Latest#ReportforWWFGreenpeace
[24] Platts POWER UK / ISSUE 169 / MARCH 2008, p.15
[25] http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/uploads/sbfxot55p5k3kd454n14zvyy01082008141045.pdf
[26] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/01/climatechange.carbonemissions
[27] The Observer, December 8, 2002, ‘Britain enters new nuclear age’ by Oliver Morgan http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,855747,00.html
[28] http://www.zetnet.co.uk/oigs/n-base/repro.htm
[29] http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf69.html
[30] An Interdisciplinary MIT Study: John Deutch (Co-Chair), Ernest J. Moniz (Co-Chair), Stephen Ansolabehere, Michael Driscoll, Paul E. Gray, John P. Holdren, Paul L. Joskow, Richard K. Lester, and Neil E. Todreas; The Future Of Nuclear Power, January 2003
[31] Source: IEA 2006
[32] Lovins A. B & Sheikh. I; The Nuclear Illusion, May 2008 p17
[33] Lovins A. B & Sheikh. I; The Nuclear Illusion, May 2008 p19
[34] B. Laponche, July 2008. Nuclear in France: Energy Security, Climate Change, Environment and Economy
[35] http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/reports/index.php
Comments
vakibs
November 15th, 2008 at 03:00 PM
Hi Marc
Greenpeace, the peddler of whack medicine, has degenerated to a new rock bottom .. to the equal of the level of a creationist, or a flat-earthist.
Almost the whole of this article is riddled with errors. But probably the biggest errors are present in the critique to 4th generation technology. Whoever wrote this article, did not even do the basic job of trying to find out what the 4th generation reactors are.
Michael Karnerfors
November 17th, 2008 at 10:34 AM
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions”.
Greenpeace has plenty of good intentions…
Anti-nuclear people, and pretty much any person that is anti-something-or-other, will sooner or later claim that the proponents of whatever the protesters are against, have a vested economic interrest in continuing in their trade.
Well… Greenpeace has a vested economic interrest in seeing problems with pretty much anything that someone other than themselves suggest. They have a self-interrest in nuclear power being portrayed as problematic. Personally I dont’ think there is very much ideology in Greenpeace’s anti-nuclear stance, but rather survival instinct… survival as an organization.
Mark, you noticed an onslaught of antipathy after you reversed your position on nuclear power. It doesn’t take much extrapolation to figure out what will happen Greenpeace, an organization that lives on the goodwill of their supporters, if they were to suddenly say: “We have changed our minds… we don’t think nuclear power is bad any more”. If they were to say that nuclear power is a possible solution to many problems, they would also be forced to admit: “We were wrong the past 30 years”. They could never survive that. They would tank, no doubt… and they will have shown that they cannot be counted on as a credible voice in the debate on our future.
They are not more than human… and when triage kicks in and you have to give something up, people will see to themselves first and everyone else later. They will rather let the planet cook in a cloud of sooth than say ther words “We were wrong”.
So it’s not about ideology. It’s all about the money… the attention… about survival. That is why they will not switch position, no matter what facts are thrown at them.
Carl Johnson
November 17th, 2008 at 05:03 PM
There is no hope. If we have no clear guidance from government, conflicting scientific advice and open debate which has no clear consensus at it’s end there is then, I think, little hope. It would seem to me that the best way forward is hedge our bets, increase as quickly as possible our investment in nuclear energy AND renewables whilst doing our very best to ensure we dont have any more Chernobyl’s! Hello..Is there anybody out there? Is it me? As far as Britain is concerned, we now import 50% of our gas supplies as the North Sea fields begin to run out. This is not rocket science. Doing nothing is not an option. And I have just heard that there are some people who think Gordon Brown is handling the economic crisis well! Laugh? I nearly cried!
G.R.L. Cowan
November 17th, 2008 at 09:58 PM
Greenpeace and its various government sources find such a large number of difficulties with nuclear energy that one can hardly imagine its increasing its global power output by 356.9 TWh/y, over 40 year-round-average gigawatts, between 1997 and 2007.
But that increase did in fact happen. It amounts to more than $20 billion per year that natural gas vendors didn’t get, and a concomitant loss of government natural gas income. Hard to see how anything could offend in so many ways and still prevent all that money from becoming gas money, unless perhaps that very prevention is what really annoys.
Fission reactors will not be limited to electricity production. I look forward to criticism of the vapour-fountain reactors I propose in the ‘How fire can be tamed’ paper I link from my website.
Michael Karnerfors
November 19th, 2008 at 09:44 AM
@Carl Johnson: “whilst doing our very best to ensure we dont have any more Chernobyl’s!”
Well that’s not very difficult. All you need to do is to not put uneducated personel in charge of RBMK reactors while under a totalitarian government.
Chernobyl was a textbook example on how to not build, run and govern a nuclear reactor.
1) The RBMK design was fundamentally flawed, with a high positive void coefficient. This meant that the reactor was prone to power excursions. 2) The personel was poorly educated on the specific reactor type. They did not know of critical characteristics of the reactor. 3) The personel did not put safety and security at the top of the list. They were more concerned with not making fools of themselves once the reactor started to act up on them. No less than six different safety barriers were deliberately bypassed that night, including disconnecting automatic safety features that would have stopped the reactor before the accident took place.
Chernobyl will not happen again, because of the physical impossibility to make a light-water moderated reactor experience that kind of power excursions.
Carl Johnson
November 19th, 2008 at 02:16 PM
Well that’s excellent news Michael! All we have to do now is convince the politicians, the electorate and the rest of the world that nuclear is the way forward.
Cliff McQueen
November 19th, 2008 at 08:25 PM
The game may soon be up for Greenpeace. I was heavily involved in the Brent Spar fiasco. Greenpeace was forced into a humiliating climb down in that case. It had to apologise publicly to the hated Shell Oil Company for a farago of untruths and unsupported allegations. There was no hiding place that time.
Having seen Greenpeace that close up I fully support the contention that the movement is entirely motivated by ideology and is determined to press it’s case whatever the evidence. This is a religious war for Greenpeace. Nuclear contamination is inevitable and Anthropogenic Global Warming must happen because it proves them right. The lack of actual evidence is inconvenient but is easily replaced by scary predictions in a compliant press eager for sensation.
Nuclear energy does have serious disadvantages – as does most human activity – but they can and have been managed. The worrying thing is that the Green movement is aided by self-serving politicians who are even more reluctant to admit a mistake. When the lights start going out as a result of the Green’s implacable resistance to nuclear energy – it won’t be the Green’s fault. The fiction that the lack of investment in renewables will be blamed. The mathematics of energy production are ignored. Reputations are all important. Ideology is everything.
The real tragedy is that the crucial importance of our environment has been deliberately and irrevocably linked to the AGW religious war. When it becomes blindingly obvious that AGW is a false alarm – a situation well under way – and the lights and heating have gone out – the rest of the ecology argument will be tainted and may suffer the consequences.
anne
November 20th, 2008 at 04:07 PM
I have no expertise in nuclear or alternative energy sources, I read the Greenpease response with interest because I am trying to learn about all sides of the issue.
I found the Greenpeace response very long-winded, I gave up reading it after a while, and also a bit too ad hominem for my liking. I wish, when people are debating issues, that they could assume good will on the part of the opposing debater, it would make the rest of us non-experts feel a lot more favourable toward the argument being presented.
As a retired technical writer, I advise the writer of that piece to practice some more at writing for the public to gain favourable attention.
G.R.L. Cowan
November 21st, 2008 at 05:52 PM
Carl Johnson insinuates, first, that we, outside the former Soviet Union, did not learn the lessons of Chernobyl in 1950. We did: Dr. Edward Teller and his Reactor Safeguard Committee clued us in.
When corrected, he then insinuates that the electorate and the rest of the world does not know this. Polls suggest the electorate do know it. Greenpeace contractors appear to know it: when they want to get about the Arctic, and have a choice of nuclear or diesel icebreakers, they choose nuclear.
(In fact, they chose a Russian nuclear icebreaker. But Russian naval propulsion reactor designers learned from the West in a way that the RBMK designers, intent on getting a power station that could also make weapon-grade plutonium, could not.)
-G.R.L. Cowan (‘How fire can be tamed’) http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowanPeaksurfer
November 22nd, 2008 at 07:14 PM
I see a lot of sniping at Greenpeace here without actually addressing, in a systematic way, what are viewed as the flaws in their response. The submission, which never ceased to be respectful, addressed each of Mark’s points, and raised legitimate concerns based on a set of seemingly-contradictory “facts” (not to say assumptions). From where I sit, I would say the pro-nuclear argument now appears to be the faith-based approach, complete with the faulty syllogisms that flow from having arrived at a conclusion before having sifted through all the available evidence. Surely their response, which was at least thoughtful, deserves more than feeble mischaracterization.
King Coal
November 23rd, 2008 at 08:57 PM
Had the opposition to nuclear power not stopped that industry 30 years ago today the world would not be suffering from the very real crisis of mercury contamination, derived from coal burning, of the ocean fish which harms far more people in reality than hypothetical harm from nuclear issues ever predicted. Further the actual amount of radionuclides released to the environment due to the high levels of natural radioactive minerals in coal which are poured out of coal stacks and via waste heaps far exceeds the hypothetical nuclide fears sold by Greenpeace. Greenpeace thrives by selling fear and hate and uses anti-science rhetoric to prey on the minds of common people.
StraightUp
November 24th, 2008 at 12:24 AM
I’ve often questioned Greenpeace’s reliance on CHP as the solution to everything. I’ve just read the report they commissioned from Poyry Energy (mentioned above) and this report is far from clear that CHP can achieve the claims made above (“halve gas imports”!). The main thrust of the arguments that Greenpeace have against nuclear seem to focus on the difficulty of getting it going on a big enough scale. For one, if we stopped wasting time building pointless wind turbines we might get nuclear up and running quicker. I believe the nuclear industry should quit trying to bring out ever more sophisticated designs (ie fourth generation) and instead focus their efforts on standardising their best PWR design and build a production line system to churn them out. The 9 reactors a month that Greenpeace mention would then be possible. The focus on renewable energy gave no consideration to the intermittancy issue. And the arguments above about the dangers of nuclear waste are ridiculous. Not only is it such an immensely small risk as not to be a material risk at all (unlike breathing diesel fumes, or the possible danger of infrasound from wind turbines), I think they’ll be a cure for cancer at some point in the next thousand years, don’t you?
Pete Best
November 24th, 2008 at 10:49 AM
What about the new mini reactors developed by Hyperion and being designed by Toshiba which are very small and have no moving parts of weapons grade waste, can be buried under ground in a concrete shell and can feed power for upto 20,000 homes per unit.
G.R.L. Cowan
November 24th, 2008 at 06:30 PM
”... without actually addressing, in a systematic way, what are viewed as the flaws in their response …”
Greenpeace has plenty of money, but this does not give them the power to set the agenda. In that respect, they are like their colleagues on the other side of the street, the global warming deniers. There, too, it is a tactical error to jump through each hoop they hold up, the moment they hold it up.
BP figures show that nuclear power was not exactly stopped 30 years ago. It has increased by some factor I can’t remember right now, about threefold I think. Environmentalists wanted it to increase more, and in the next 30 years it will, but a tripling is respectable.
“I think they’ll be a cure for cancer at some point in the next thousand years, don’t you”—that has nothing to do with nuclear waste.
-G.R.L. Cowan (‘How fire can be tamed’) http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowanStraightUp
November 25th, 2008 at 12:53 PM
“I think they’ll be a cure for cancer at some point in the next thousand years, don’t you”—that has nothing to do with nuclear waste.
Well it does in the sense that the only real danger from nuclear waste is a minor risk from radiation related illnesses.
Michael Karnerfors
November 25th, 2008 at 09:25 PM
@G.R.L. Cowan: ” “I think they’ll be a cure for cancer at some point in the next thousand years, don’t you”—that has nothing to do with nuclear waste. “
In a way it does. Assuming – as some people do – we will get an evergrowing mountain of nuclear waste that will not go away in the forseeable future, rests on the cautious but unrealistic assumption that we as a race will not have any technological and technical progress.
Any technological progress that allows us to transmute nuclear fuel int something more harmless shoots a hole in that assumption. Also any progress that rids us of the need of having to use nuclear fission as a source of energy, as will probably fusion power, will also halt the growth of said mountain of waste.
We cannot rely 100% on progress to save us… but concidering how coal and other fossil and combustible fuels are killing us with sooth and particles (and that includes bio-fuels), I’ll be perfectly happy with a 95% gamble.
G.R.L. Cowan
November 26th, 2008 at 03:09 AM
“... an evergrowing mountain of nuclear waste that will not go away in the forseeable future …
A peculiar thing about nuclear waste is that the unique way it can do harm is by going away. For example, strontium-90 atoms in power plants’ caches of it can
- although they never have -harm people by turning into yttrium-90, and then into zirconium-90, each atom in these two changes emitting two bursts of radiation that might hit someone. But the resulting zirconium-90 atoms will do no harm. Their zapping days are over.So a power station’s waste cache might be an ever-growing mountain, but the only thing about that mountain that can grow is the number of inert stable nonradioactive atoms. Radioactivity, which is the only thing that makes the waste special, can only build up towards a limit. That limit, which is never quite reached, would be a rate of radioactive atoms’ spending themselves equal to the rate at which they were being created.
With this in mind, look at http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/gamma/dist/index_e.php , including its “Natural air absorbed dose rate” map at http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/gamma/dist/images/adrn_.gif . Notice that about seven times more radiation naturally comes up from the ground in Colorado than in Florida.
Shallow burial in Florida of all the man-made nuclear waste in the world, on a continuing basis from now on, would eventually replace its now low level of natural radioactivity with a slightly greater summed level of natural and artificial radioactivities, both of them unchanging. But this total would never get anywhere near the natural radioactivity level of Colorado.
Michael Karnerfors, ‘StraightUp’—do you believe cancer rates vary between Florida and Colorado in a way that has anything at all to do with the difference in radiation levels?
Hint: opponents of nuclear energy don’t like to talk about these
- from their claimed point of view -very large differences in radiation exposure.-G.R.L. Cowan (‘How fire can be tamed’) http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowanCarl Erik Magnusson
December 11th, 2008 at 09:02 AM
As to small reactors proposed by Pete Best: There have been such small reactors with passive security proposed ready to be produced tens of years ago, for example Pius and Secure. Such reactors can well be used for district heating combined with generating electric power even to quite small cities. Once begun to be produced, it would not take much effort or time to plug them in, replacing fossil fires.
Why are such reactors not already there? Probably public fear of nuclear emanating back to the seventies. That fear can be seen in many ways. Just one example: The wonderful method of MRI, magnetic resonance imaging relates to nuclear magnetic resonance, NMR, but the N is skipped, obviously in order not to worry people. Sadly enough, the remaining MR is often wrongly interpreted.
G.R.L. Cowan
December 13th, 2008 at 06:39 PM
Keep in mind that fossil fuel users subsidize government.
When you hear someone say the public fears radiation that is connected to loss of governmental fossil fuel revenue, you should look for that someone’s fossil money connection—private or public. Usually public. (PDF)
- G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be tamed) http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan
Shane Hughes
January 4th, 2009 at 10:53 PM
This is sad and uncomfortable reading for a site that usually offers a high level of educated discussion and well researched ideas.
This site’s Comment policy: Debate is encouraged, but offensive or ad hominem postings will be removed
An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: “argument to the man”, “argument against the man”) consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the source making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim….... It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument, yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem)
Mark, please invest in a moderator as the above set of dialogue has undermined the quality of your site.
Comments that should be removed based on your site policy;
vakibs – November 15th, 2008 at 03:00 PM – negative personal comments/finds fault with no evidence Michael Karnerfors November 17th, 2008 at 10:34 AM negative personal comments/ attempts to discredit without finding fault with an argument G.R.L. Cowan November 17th, 2008 at 09:58 PM - negative personal comments/attempts to discredit without finding fault with an argument Cliff McQueen November 19th, 2008 at 08:25 PM negative personal comments/attempts to discredit without finding fault with an argument
I share Peaksurfer’s frustrations. After reading “Why greens must learn to love nuclear power” i finally started to see past my dogmatic believes and see the real potential of nuclear power. I even came out of the closet putting up a post supporting nuclear on the CRAGers blog trying to spark up the debate ( see http://www.carbonrationing.org.uk/fora/threads/the-new-internationalist-and-the-nuclear-debate – CRAG’s are a pretty dedicated carbon reduction community where nuclear discussions have previously been silenced)
That said, with my new found knowledge, i came to this thread with some reservations and was very interested in deepening my understanding. In my opinion some of Greenpeace’s arguments are unconvincing and some are valid. Most of the debate that has followed has tangible relevance but what is completely unconvincing is the inability of any of the respondents to put forward arguments of direct relevance to Greenpeace’s arguments, Mark Lynas included.
I suppose there’s the possibility that i’m a Greenpeace stooge wanting to support my team. I’m not sure that there’s anyway that i can fully prove to you the contrary, although i’m happy to send anyone who’s interested a personal message with CV and personal profile.
My motivation;
1.Trying to get to understand if nuclear is a good thing – i’m thinking of presenting a nuclear argument to the community group that a volunteer with http://www.zerocarboncastle.org/ but wanted to better formulate my opinion. 2. i’m signed up to about 50 green RSS feeds, which i don’t get to read many of them but i thought that i’d found a good one here and think it should stay that way.
Shane Hughes
G.R.L. Cowan
January 5th, 2009 at 10:23 PM
Here
- intrathread link -is where I am accused of “negative personal comments/attempts to discredit without finding fault with an argument”.I’d be interested in Shane Hughes’ CV. He can find my email address at the top of the paper linked from my web page.
My point about the difficulty of finding enough nuclear waste in the world — even after centuries of accumulation — to make Florida as radioactive as Colorado directly addresses GP’s claim of “legitimate concerns over … the long-term threats radioactive waste presents to our biosphere”.
-G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)Michael Karnerfors
January 12th, 2009 at 03:54 PM
@G.R.L. Cowan: “Michael Karnerfors, ‘StraightUp’—do you believe cancer rates vary between Florida and Colorado in a way that has anything at all to do with the difference in radiation levels?”
Until just a couple of days ago, I did not have an answer to this question. Now I do:
No, absolutely not. Any difference in cancer rate is attributable to something else.
Why?
Because of recent research from India where a study on over 350 000 people living in places with an elevated background radiation of between 4 to 70 times normal rate have not shown any difference in cancer rates from comparable control groups.
http://www.hindu.com/seta/2009/01/01/stories/2009010150131600.htm
This corroberates earlier studies from China.
So the Linear No Threshold model takes another terminal blow. It just isn’t scientificably plausable.
Muhammad
January 22nd, 2009 at 01:01 PM
we can talk about all these disasters for no matter how long, but it won’t help to save our humankind from the last day unforunately… we will die before the God will want us to die
Josue
February 17th, 2009 at 01:45 PM
Do not be so pessimistic Muhammad, but, to say the truth, persnally me, I beliee that the humankind will be cleaned off the Earth’s face as the result of some nuclear explosion wich will lead to enormous level of radiation and only primitive creatures and cockroaches will remain…
punkscience
February 23rd, 2009 at 02:51 PM
I wonder how many people commenting here have interests in the nuclear industry? And how many can follow a rational argument? Quite a few and not many, I think.
As a great man once wrote: If the answer is nuclear power it must have been a pretty stupid question. Just ask the Finns.
Tim
February 24th, 2009 at 03:38 AM
Anne, while I don’t support Greenpeace’s stance on nuclear, particularly, I feel it’s a bit unfair to criticise the writer for being long-winded. This is flagged as a detailed rebuttal to Mark Lynas, with citations. It’s bound to get technical.
However, I agree in so far as there’s a lot of detail with no simple, rational argument against nuclear underpinning it. But that’s Greenpeace for you.
I don’t agree that it’s politically ideological as an organisation, it’s just set in its ways. Marketing came to dominate its thinking after Brent Spa, and Greenpeace has never recovered.
Perception is reality, right? If you are absolutely determined to see nuclear as evil you will select the facts that prove it is.
I am sure there is a sensible, reasoned argument against the contrarian swing back to nuclear that Mark seems to be advancing. This isn’t it though.
The fundamental shift that seems, to me, to be required is away from one major source of energy to a more complex mix of technologies. This could include nuclear but it’s also very clear to me that Indonesia, Iran and South Africa are not going to get a civilian nuclear capability any time soon, but their economies will continue to grow as will their carbon emissions.
It is depressing to see so many environmentalists – usually columnists who have to advance eye-catching opinions – advocating a jump from hydrocarbons to nuclear. This replicates the energy monoculture that has created the asymmetry of power in the world.
There’s not much uranium in the UK. We’d still have to import it, and deal with the proliferation issues. Do we – definitively – know that renewables can’t provide enough energy against a realistic time frame to prevent catastrophic climate change? Will nuclear allow developing countries to grow, or will we continue to palm them off with adaptation grants that never materialise?
I feel very let down by professional activists and environmentalists. They remind me of ‘60s radicals prattling on about 1968 whenever an anniversary comes along, without admitting that they failed – at a very basic level – to stage a revolution.
Most environmentalists seem to me to be adopting stances based on what drives them as individuals, almost out of habit, rather than a more prosaic assessment.
It’s time that they stepped back and let qualified scientists conduct the debate about solutions, since there is now no serious challenge to the evidence that climate change is happening.
CougarW
February 25th, 2009 at 08:57 PM
It discussions of this kind it is common for one group to trot out the “we can wait for a technical solution” canard. Unfortunately, there are few technical solutions that do not bring with them additional technical problems to be solved by… more technical solutions. Engineers are usually at the front of the line when proposing technical solutions to problems, in a version of the old saw that when the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Several centuries ago we lived on the power of the sun. Period. All energy circulating in the biosphere came from the sun, directly or indirectly (energy from radioactive decay deep in the earth itself seldom made its way into the biosphere that we live it, though the discovery of vent habitat on the ocean floor is a fascinating exception). We are without question headed into a future time when solar power will again be the basis of all energy we have ready access to. This cannot be denied, you may consider it a problem or not, to be solved or not, but we will return to that basis without fail whatever anyone else may think, give it 20 years or perhaps a century, but not much longer than that. To imagine any other outcome is charming but does not constitute adult behavior.
Aside from the “let’s just accept our future” pragmatism I am opposed to the deployment of nuclear power on moral grounds because technical solutions are doomed in the end as we have not an infinite capacity to endlessly invent magic, and the technical problems our current solutions create on their way out will eventually require that we simply live on with them, and I am not sufficiently enchanted with our track record on this matter that I can imagine our grandchildren will bless us for leaving them with a vast number of unresolved technical problems having no further solution. I am not interested in future reactor technology developments at all as it is technically impossible to ensure that the last generation of reactors to be decommissioned won’t simply be abandoned to rot in place as the last generation of industrialist take their energy profits and head for the Bahamas (or some more likely retreat not yet under rising water). You cannot come up with a design, even in your most outlandish adventures of fancy, that will safely decommission itself once greed has abandoned it.
Since I see no way out I desire that all energy processing return to a solar basis, entirely, as soon as possible, so that we can start the painful process of coping while we still have both some technology and a somewhat operational democracy, and a fragile kind of world peace. I do understand that this effort will probably result in the reduction of the planet carrying capacity for the human organism to something on the order of 1.5 billion, possibly less. So be it. We technical few are in no way special that we get to tear up the planet looking for nuclear fuel just to prop up our artificially inflated numbers and lavish post-solar lifestyles, and in the end litter the earth’s crust with toxic concrete piles and waste ponds, while the rest of the biosphere and the bulk of non-technical humanity must get along with the annual output of the sun. There is no appeal to greatness, heavenly justice, manifest destiny or force majeure that can justify what harm we have already done, and certainly no excuse at all to continue doing so knowing what we know now.
This is really blindingly simple to me. And I happen to be an engineer. Though I like to think of myself as an engineer from first principles.
Kieran
March 2nd, 2009 at 03:13 PM
Global warming and finite resources mean our way of life is more threatened than ever, and it’s time for the environmental movement to face up to some hard truths.Although the views on how nuclear power can reduce carbon emissions worldwide are held by a number of constituences, I have never seen the figures on which these conclusions are based.
Kieran
March 2nd, 2009 at 03:45 PM
I completely agree with the previous comment. There are few technical solutions that do not bring with them additional technical problems to be solved by… more technical solutions. We are not so strong as we think.
ondrejch
March 3rd, 2009 at 07:46 AM
Kieran – “additional technical problems to be solved by… more technical solutions” It may seem unsatisfactory as it implies more problems to be solved ahead, however this is the so called progress, a story of humankind since we discovered fire.
Concernig finite resources: With closed nuclear cycle as is the case with IFR, the primary heavy uranium metal is used up by 100%, instead of 0.3-0.5% as in the contemporary once-through “cycle”. Then (after ~500 years we run out of spent fuel, depleted uranium, and other IFR-usable fuels we had already mined and stocked up) uranium can be mined from oceans, as it is only about single order of magnitude more expensive than contemporary mining. Then we have enough energy for billions years. http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html
With enough energy, all waste can be recycled using plasma torches – http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/01/25/prescription-for-the-planet-part-iii-renewable-atoms-and-plasma-charged-waste/
Mike Small
March 12th, 2009 at 10:15 PM
Anne writes (some time ago) “I found the Greenpeace response very long-winded, I gave up reading it after a while, and also a bit too ad hominem for my liking. I wish, when people are debating issues, that they could assume good will on the part of the opposing debater, it would make the rest of us non-experts feel a lot more favourable toward the argument being presented.” This is the sort of disastrously flawed apolitical naivete that predominates in much of the green movement. Its the ‘I wish the world were a better place’ school of politics. Sorry Anne whoever you are!!! The reality is the nuclear industry and the state have lied and propagandised and covered up for so long this is impossible. The pro-nuclear case rests not just on an ‘article of faith’ about the technology, but also about trust in the state and in the markets, each of which looks decidedly suspect. To throw a hitherto undiscussed aspect into the equation, here in Scotland there is a constitutional element to this debate.
While I respect your work Mark I think your position on this is deeply flawed and hugely regrettable Mark.
Santoso
March 16th, 2009 at 09:28 AM
All of the discussion above only mention about developed nation. What about energy requirement from the developing nation ?. I am from Indonesia, and currently we are in the frenzy to built dozen of coal fired power plant. Almost all of them are Chinese made, and very likely they are going to burnt lignite coal, which is quite abundant in Kalimantan. Aside from palm oil plantation, coal mining also make a significant roles in deforestation in Kalimantan. Thus by going coal we will add CO2 in a big way, both from lignite burning and deforestation. Right now, we have a couple of it running, and many more will come in the near future. On the other hand, we have a decades old of debates on whether we are going to build a nuclear power plant or not, and even in the most optimist assumption, those single power plant won’t go online by 2016 (an unlikely timeline, consider the strength of the protest against it). So, what do you think we should do ?, support the nuclear reactor, or support the lignite powered coal powerplant ?.
G.R.L. Cowan
April 3rd, 2009 at 12:26 AM
You should support the nuclear plant. The time to advocate right action is now, even if results will be slow.
If you can somehow require the government-funded people who will say they want wind turbines, conservation, etc. to live close to the gas pipelines whose revenues are what they really want, you should find nuclear power development — even, perhaps, developing your own domestic design — doesn’t have to take a long time.
Recall, or look up, how long it took from the Nautilus’ first sea voyage to the entry into service of the Shippingport plant on land, using a pressurized water reactor that was an evolution of the naval power plant.
The use of ordinary water requires uranium enrichment, but Indonesia could develop enrichment-free nuclear power, like the Magnox reactors the UK once had, or a design where the uranium in the fuel is unenriched and it is the moderator — the substance that must surround the fuel to enable the reaction to go — that has an altered isotopic composition. Heavy water — the oxide of the purified heavy stable isotope of hydrogen — is the usual example of this, and indeed is in the reactors powering this computer as I write, but there are a few other elements whose heaviest naturally occurring isotopes are exceptionally neutron-inert. And linked below is my favorite paper reactor, which relies on the total inertness to neutrons of helium.
(How fire can be domesticated)
john
June 11th, 2009 at 02:39 AM
It would seem to me that the best way forward is hedge our bets, increase as quickly as possible our investment in nuclear energy AND renewables whilst doing our very best to ensure we dont have any more Chernobyl’s! Hello..Is there anybody out there? Is it me? As far as Britain is concerned, we now import 50% of our gas supplies as the North Sea fields begin to run out.
joe
July 5th, 2009 at 04:29 AM
Further the actual amount of radionuclides released to the environment due to the high levels of natural radioactive minerals in coal which are poured out of coal stacks and via waste heaps far exceeds the hypothetical nuclide fears sold by Greenpeace.
بلوتوث
September 1st, 2009 at 12:46 AM
It would seem to me that the best way forward is hedge our bets, increase as quickly as possible our investment in nuclear energy AND renewables whilst doing our very best to ensure we dont have any more Chernobyl’s! Hello..Is there anybody out there? Is it me? As far as Britain is concerned, we now import 50% of our gas supplies as the North Sea fields begin to run out.
بلوتوث
September 2nd, 2009 at 05:28 AM
Further the actual amount of radionuclides released to the environment due to the high levels of natural radioactive minerals in coal which are poured out of coal stacks and via waste heaps far exceeds the hypothetical nuclide fears sold by Greenpeace.