Deep Green: Atomic renaissance interrupted | Greenpeace UK

Deep Green: Atomic Renaissance interrupted Greenpeace UK Rex Weyler 3 December 2008.

The nuclear industry has hitched a ride on the climate change bandwagon, proclaiming that nuclear power will solve the world’s global warming and energy problems in one sweeping “nuclear renaissance.”

As you might expect, there’s a catch. Nuclear energy faces escalating capital costs, a radioactive waste backlog, security and insurance gaps, nuclear weapons proliferation, and expensive reactor decommissioning that will magnify the waste problem. The contention that nuclear energy is “carbon free” and therefore a global warming solution, fails to account for the nuclear fuel cycle – mining, milling, enriching, and transporting uranium; forging steel for pressurised vessels; building massive, complex plants; and handling, shipping, reprocessing, and storing waste – requiring substantial fossil fuel supplies. Nuclear fuel processing also employs halogenated compounds that both erode the ozone and simultaneously produce more global warming impact per volume than carbon dioxide………………..

A dollar invested in nuclear power increases global warming because it consumes scarce resources required by real solutions.

Nuclear economics.………… A full accounting of nuclear power remains obscured by billions in public subsidy and still-uncertain costs of processing waste and decommissioning plants. Nevertheless, Amory Lovins and Imran Sheikh calculate a kilowatt-hour of electricity from a new nuclear power plant averages about 14 cents compared to a wind farm at 7 cents. Even this calculation does not account for capital financing, security, waste disposal, insurance, or public health impacts. No nuclear plant is insured, even with public guarantees, to the full cost of a Chernobyl scale accident, which becomes an unbudgeted liability on the public’s balance sheet.

Nuclear power plants have a dismal safety record, featuring thousands of private, public, and military accidents up to the present day……..
………… Of 36 current nuclear construction projects, 14 remain stalled and most of the surviving projects are state-owned in Russia, China, and India. There is no business case for nuclear power except to socialise costs, privatise profits, and leave the garbage for future generations. In the US alone, 104 “private” nuclear power projects have received over $130 billion in taxpayer subsidies, over $1 billion per reactor. Billions more will be needed to solve the nuclear waste backlog……………………………….

Waiting for waste solutions

Nuclear waste remains the untamed demon of nuclear power. After 40 years of research, not a single kilogram of high-level spent-fuel waste has been stored in a permanent repository. Deadly, radioactive plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years. Some fuel has been reprocessed, itself a polluting industry, but three-quarters of the waste ever produced remains in temporary storage in 50 countries……………

Chainsaws and butter

The assertion that nuclear power will solve, or even help, the global warming challenge is a hoax. Nuclear power is a carbon hog compared to wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower. Purely on economics, nuclear power fails. The waste backlog, risk of accident or sabotage, and weapons proliferation are added burdens on society.

Human society must now face the inevitable decline in energy use. The oil era was a one-off energy bonanza and there exists no credible alternative that will replace the sheer volume of oil energy. The most important source of clean power in the world is conservation, at zero cost and zero carbon emissions.

The next most effective new power sources include efficiencies such as cogeneration, recovering waste heat that is now sent up smokestacks. Finally, we can build capacity with renewables – wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal – built to appropriate local scale, while creating more jobs and better return on investment than nuclear power plants.

The secret yet to be realised by industrial civilisation is that we can improve real quality of life with less energy and less commodity throughput. We can achieve a richer life without mining the planet to death and strapping future generations with our toxic garbage.