Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer
February 25th, 2007
“(Nuclear power) is a very important part of our energy policy today in the US.. America’s electricity is already being provided through the nuclear industry efficiently, safely, and with no discharge of greenhouse gases or emissions.”
~Vice President Cheney in a speech to the
Nuclear Energy Institute, May 22, 2001
It is now apparent that when Vice President Dick Cheney utters his words of direction and policy to the American people he is not always accurate and sometimes speaks with a forked tongue, as in “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. It seems clear that the present Bush administration believes that if it lies frequently and with conviction, the general public will be lulled into believing that their oft repeated dictums are true.
On June 22, 2005 President Bush gave a speech before a group of nuclear power plant workers at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear reactor saying “the 103 nuclear power plants in America produce 20% of the nation’s electricity without producing a single pound of air pollution or greenhouse gases”.
Let us now examine these claims made with such confidence by President Bush and Vice President Cheney. As [my book “Nuclear Power is Not the Answer” shows] no part of the “efficiently, safely and with no discharge of greenhouse gases or emissions” is true.
Large amounts of fossil fuel are used and will be used to mine, refine and to enrich uranium fuel for nuclear power reactors, to construct the massive concrete reactor buildings and to transport and store toxic radioactive waste for 250,000 years. Burning of this fossil fuel emits significant quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere which contribute to global warming. As well as the production of CO2, large amounts of the now‑banned chloroflurocarbon gas (CFC) are also emitted during the enrichment of uranium. CFC gas not only is 10,000 to 20,000 times more efficient as an atmospheric heat trapper than CO2 but it is also a potent destroyer of the ozone layer.
Currently the generation of nuclear electricity produces one third the amount of CO2 emitted from a similar sized gas‑fired electrical generator, but this is a transitory statistic because over several decades as the concentration of available uranium ore declines, nuclear reactors will produce no net energy because of the massive amounts of fossil fuel that will be necessary to mine and to enrich the remaining poor grades of
uranium.
Contrary to the nuclear industry claims, nuclear power is not emission free. Government regulations also allow atomic power plants to “routinely” emit hundreds of thousands of curies of radioactive gases and other radioactive elements into the environment every year. Thousands of tons of solid radioactive waste which is presently accumulating in the cooling pools beside the 103 operating nuclear plants in the US and hundreds of others throughout the world contain extremely toxic elements that will inevitably pollute the environment and human food chains for the rest of recorded time, a legacy which will lead to epidemics of cancer, leukemia and genetic disease in all future generations.
Nuclear power is exorbitantly expensive, and notoriously unreliable. As will be noted in chapter two, Wall Street and Standard and Poors are deeply reluctant to re‑involve themselves in any nuclear investment despite the fact that in the 2005 Energy Bill the US Congress allocated $13 billion in subsidies to revive a moribund nuclear power industry. To compound this problem the global supplies of usable uranium fuel are finite ‑ if the world’s electricity production was replaced today by nuclear electricity
there would be less than nine more years of accessible uranium. But even if certain corporate interests are convinced that nuclear power at the moment might be a beneficial investment, one major accident at a nuclear reactor which induced a meltdown would destroy all such investments and signal the end of nuclear power for ever.
In this day and age, nuclear power plants are obvious targets for terrorists, inviting assault by plane, truck bombs, armed attack or covert intrusion into the reactor’s control room. The subsequent meltdown could induce the death of hundreds of thousands of people in heavily populated areas, and they would expire slowly and painfully, some over days and others over years from acute radiation illness, cancer, leukemia, congenital deformities or genetic disease.
Such an attack at the Indian Point reactors, 35 miles from Manhattan would effectively incapacitate the world’s main financial center for the rest of time. An attack on one of the 13 reactors which surround Chicago would wreak similar catastrophic medical consequences. Amazingly security at US nuclear power plants has virtually not been upgraded since the 9/11 attacks.
Nuclear power plants are essentially atomic bomb factories because a 1000 megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 500 pounds of plutonium a year. Normally ten pounds of plutonium is fuel for an atomic bomb. A crude atomic bomb sufficient to devastate a city could certainly be crafted from reactor grade plutonium.
Therefore any non nuclear weapons country that acquires a nuclear power plant will be provided with the ability to make atomic bombs. However the global nuclear industry is actively pushing its nefarious wares upon developing countries to “prevent global warming”, a patent lie that will inevitably lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a situation that will further destabilize an already unstable world.
At the time of writing, eight countries possess nuclear arsenals including Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, the US and Russia. The US and Russia jointly own 95% of the 30,000 nuclear weapons in the global arsenal. North Korea may have some 2 to 8 nuclear weapons.
Apart from these alarming facts and statistics, every dollar spent on the fallacious attempt to revivify the enormously expensive nuclear industry is a theft from the production of cheap renewable electricity ‑ wind power, solar power, cogeneration, geothermal energy, biomass, tidal and wave power, let alone conservation which itself could save the US 20% of the electricity it currently consumes.
Terrifying predictions now abound about the destructive ramifications of global warming yet the answers to this global dilemma are simple, amenable and relatively cheap. Chapters nine and ten will outline many of these readily obtainable goals ‑ a prescription for survival for this precious planet of ours.
When nuclear proponents say that nuclear power can be used to reduce the US’s insatiable reliance on foreign oil they are wrong. Oil and its by‑product gasoline are used to fuel the internal combustion engine in automobiles and trucks. Oil is also used to heat buildings. Oil does generate an infinitesimal amount of electricity ‑ 2% in the US. But have no fear, the nuclear industry is currently inventing a way to generate hydrogen as a by‑product of nuclear power to fuel automobiles.
The solution to the oil shortage? Nuclear propelled cars!
On the other hand, electricity is used to power electric lighting, to drive computers, VCRs, fans, hair dryers, stoves, refrigerators, air conditioners, for industrial needs and the like.
How then is electricity generated? Hydropower converts the momentum of falling water into electricity while coal, natural gas and nuclear power produce immense amounts of heat to boil water converting it to steam which then turns a turbine generating electricity. So in essence all a nuclear reactor is designed to do is to boil water, a very sophisticated and dangerous way to boil water ‑ analogous to cutting a pound of butter with a chain saw.
An electrical current consists of electrons which pulse down a conducting wire. When an electric bulb is plugged into a socket, the electrons from the wire are converted to heat and to light. But the production and use of electricity is extremely inefficient. The average efficiency of electric lighting systems is approximately 1%, meaning that only 1% of the energy in the fuel used to generate electricity produces visible light energy. All the rest is wasted as heat at the power plant or in the light bulb. Even high‑efficiency light bulbs are only 3% efficient.
Tragically more and more people are believing the myths propagated by the nuclear industry about nuclear power ‑ that it is emission free and produces no greenhouse gases and it therefore is the answer to global warming. In England, nuclear power has risen to the top of the political agenda as government ministers and public officials rush to address an impending energy crisis driven recently by the January 2006 scare when Russia cut off its natural gas supplies to the Ukraine and hence to much of Europe.
This scare helped to convince an already compliant Prime Minister Blair and senior people at the UK Department of Trade and Industry that new nuclear power stations are needed. Dr James Lovelock, the man who developed the Gaia theory wrongly advocates the use of nuclear power as one solution to the global warming crisis, while Sir David King, chief government science advisor says that nuclear power plants are the only realistic way to satisfy growing energy demands while meeting global warming targets.
In the United States, other leading environmentalists who seem to have been swayed by the Bush.Cheney/nuclear industry rhetoric include Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalogue; and Gus Speth, the dean of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
It is critical that the record be set straight right now as the international battles for oil threaten to morph into world wars and leading NASA scientists are taken to task by the Bush administration for daring to tell the truth about global warming.
It is interesting to speculate why President Bush and Vice President Cheney are so beholden and enamored by the nuclear power industry. As neither can boast a scientific education, they would be hard pressed to understand the scientific and medical problems associated with this arcane industry, particularly as the President has publicly stated that he does not read newspaper but relies upon his staff to give him the information that he needs.
Obviously Cheney readily accepts the propaganda that the nuclear executives whisper in his ear. Both are oil men who have made a great deal of money directly or indirectly through that industry, they are deeply indebted to big business for political contributions, and they overtly seem not to be interested in the health and well being of the American people, let alone the dire situation which faces the planet in the form of global warming, and threat of nuclear meltdowns and nuclear pollution.
Fewer than ten days after taking office, Cheney promised to “restore decency and integrity to the oval office,” while he simultaneously took charge of the administration’s energy task force, which is called the National Energy Policy Development Group.
On April 17 2001, Cheney met with Kenneth Lay, the CEO of Enron to discuss “energy policy matters” and the “energy crisis in California.” Following that meeting, Lay gave Cheney a three‑page wish list of corporate recommendations. A subsequent comparison of that memo against the final report of the National Energy Policy Development Group
showed that the task force had adopted all or significant portions of the Lay memo in seven of eight policy areas. In total, seventeen policies sought by Enron were adopted.
Cheney and his aids met at least six times with Lay and other Enron officials while preparing the task force report, which is now the basis of the administration’s energy proposals. Cheney’s staff also met with an Enron sponsored lobbying organization, the “Clean Power Group.” Cheney, his aids and cabinet departments have repeatedly refused requests for the records of these meetings, despite the fact that the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 says that task forces like Cheney’s must conduct public meetings and must keep publicly available records.
Enron had significantly contributed to the Bush/Cheney campaign, the Florida recount fight fund, and to the inauguration, a situation that calls into question whether legal and ethical guidelines were crossed. This obviously is one of the reasons that Cheney is blocking congressional requests and refuses to disclose details of his now disgraced Enron contacts to the Congress.
It is unclear what Lay said in his memo to Cheney about the nation’s energy policy but one must assume that there was some advice about nuclear power and its contribution to the future. As stated above, Dick Cheney is not a scientist, a physician, a geneticist, nor a meteorologist and he is therefore not in a solid position to trumpet the wonders of nuclear power.
Where did he obtain the data and information to declare that nuclear power is efficient and safe and that it produces no greenhouse gases deftly summed up in the Energy Bill of 2005 which concludes that “nuclear power is a clean, reliable and affordable source of energy and is therefore a key to the economic and environmental underpinnings of the US?
Ironically while the Bush administration is reluctant to admit that global warming is really happening and that it could be caused by deleterious human activities, it is using the issue of global warming to justify the increased production of nuclear power, which it claims, is the answer to global warming. Global warming has been a great gift to the nuclear industry.
Claiming, as Cheney does that atomic electricity produces no carbon dioxide, the culprit responsible for 50% of atmospheric heating, the US nuclear propaganda apparatus has been shifted into high gear to convince politicians and public alike that there can be and will be no other reasonable solution apart from nuclear power to answer this catastrophic global problem that now threatens many life forms with extinction.
The American Nuclear Society recently held a meeting in San Diego that drew scientists and industry professional from all around the world. The prevailing mantra was simple ‑ surprise the opponent, plan ahead, coordinate, be pro‑active not reactive and engage and communicate with antinuclear groups.
This extensive propaganda campaign is global. A formally chartered organization composed of the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Canada, The European Union, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, called the Generation 1V International Forum (GIF), is collaborating with the US Nuclear Energy research Advisory Committee to elucidate the benefits, technical and institutional barriers, and research needs for the most promising nuclear energy system concepts.
Other countries engaged in the possible construction of nuclear power plants include China, which already has 9 nuclear reactors and plans to build another 30 nuclear power plants. However, even if it builds its 30 plants, nuclear power will still only provide 5% of its energy mix, while the percentage of China’s electrical generation capacity by natural gas is expected to increase from 1% today to over 6% according to the International Energy Agency.
New nuclear power capacity is under consideration or construction in India, Japan, Taiwan, Turkey, Belarus, Vietnam, Poland and South Korea. Russia as well as Finland have several plants under construction.
Before the British election in May 2005, the nuclear industry slowly and surely fashioned a classy public relations campaign targeting politicians, media, and the British public. That campaign, coordinated by the Nuclear Industry Association, cleverly did not address the dubious benefits of nuclear power but focused instead upon the current shortcomings of wind generated electricity and alternative power sources.
The British Department of Trade and Industry (DIT), also viewed the 2005 election as an opportunity to promote nuclear power. Adrian Gault, director of DIT’s strategy group, made a wild and uniformed prediction that nuclear power would be supplying half of Britain’s electricity by 2050 while cutting greenhouse emissions.
Meanwhile, in 2001, DIT’s Nuclear Industries Directorate had already agreed to participate in an international consortium to build the next generation of nuclear reactors (Constructed by a British or American company). So their real agenda had been established four years earlier. And the propaganda campaign in May 2005 was merely an attempt to bring the British public around to seeing the wisdom of preordained policy.
In fact the British nuclear industry’s real agenda is to persuade members of parliament about the benefits of nuclear power and to ultimately ensure that a new system of government subsidies would be made available to nuclear power, so that this economically failed energy industry would never again be exposed to the chill winds of the free market. This government subsidy program for the nuclear industry is called the “Security of Supply Obligation”, amounting in essence, to the socialization of nuclear power ensconced within a “free market” economy.
The American nuclear industry, likewise, has always been and still is a socialized industry, and is continually at work to ensure that government subsidies come their way.
This fetish with nuclear power and the immense amount of money currently being allocated to the revivification of the nuclear industry is stealing desperately needed funds from the development of renewable energy sources which could and should solve the current global dilemma of greenhouse warming. The possibilities are endless.
For instance, a Greenpeace report issued in October 2005 predicted that solar power could be available to 100 million people by the year 2025, supplying clean electricity to people living in the sunniest parts of the world. Such an enterprise could create 54,000 jobs and be worth 16.4 billion Euros.
In just two decades, the amount of solar electricity could be equivalent to the power generated by 72 coal fired stations supplying enough electricity to Israel, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia combined. Egypt is currently one of the few countries in the world that hosts a government department solely devoted to the development of renewable energy sources.
The Carbon Trust, an independent company established by the British Government estimates that marine energy ‑ tidal and wave power, could provide up to 20% of the UK’s current electrical needs with the correct amount of investment. This is a very exciting notion and as Marcus Rand, chief executive of the British Wind Energy Association said “The report provides impetus behind the vision that Britain can rule the waves and the tides making a significant dent in our carbon emissions alongside creating new world‑class industries for the UK”.
According to Amory Lovins, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, in 2004 the amount of electricity supplied by renewable energy sources ‑ wind, co‑generation, biomass, geothermal, solar, hydro (excluding electricity generated from large hydro dams), added 509 times the total capacity world‑wide that nuclear power contributed, and raised the global electricity production 2.9 times more than nuclear power contributed. These “minor” electricity sources already dwarf the annual growth of nuclear power generation and experts predict that they will add 177 times more capacity in 2010 as will nuclear power.
At the present time 20% of America’s electricity is generated from nuclear power plants, 50% comes from burning coal, natural gas produces 20%, hydropower 7% and oil 2%. At the moment unfortunately wind and hydro together provide only 2% of the total mix while solar is less than 1%. Globally, coal supplies about 64% of the world’s electricity, hydro and nuclear together provide 17% and renewable sources again make up 2%.
Nuclear power is often referred to behind closed doors in the US Department of Energy as “hard” energy whereas wind power, solar power, hydropower and geothermal energy are referred to as “soft” energy pathways. Clearly the psychosexual language used by the Pentagon generals to describe various aspects of nuclear weapons and nuclear war has been translocated into the nuclear power vocabulary of some very powerful and influential men in the electricity generating field.
As a physician I contend that unless the root cause of a problem can be ascertained there can be no cure. So too the pathology intrinsic in the nuclear powered mafia needs to be dissected out and revealed to the cold light of day.
The potential for growth in the renewable non‑CO2 producing sectors is enormous.
All that is required is a commitment by government leaders and by corporations to end the greenhouse saga, to urgently enact laws mandating energy conservation on a massive scale, to provide subsidies for alternative and renewable electricity generation on a massive scale and for corporations to take a leap of faith and courage to invest massively in exciting and diverse non polluting energy technologies.
In truth, the earth is in the intensive care unit, and the prognosis is poor indeed unless courageous measures are taken by committed and ultimately responsible people who decide to take the Hippocratic Oath for the earth.
by Helen Caldicott
Pediatrician and
President of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute,
Dedicated to global preventive medicine.
Website
Dear ex-Doctor Caldicott.
Congratulations on a long profitable career overexaggerating these issues. May you have success with each new book, and its associated flogging tour. It is your right to maintain yourself in upper middle class fashion, tossing non-facts around, that is true—BUT— since the earth’s core itself is heated by U235 decay, the simple realization of ways to use this natural Gaian gift-power cannot be evil, and certainly not in an anti-Gaian sense. Perhaps if you were to ponder how many farmers have been gored, keeping cattle, how many goldsmiths have been burned, smelting ore, perhaps you will begin to see that we never approach Gaia without danger. (The Hindu goddess Kali, is also the goddess of destruction & blood). The price mankind pays to live in a manner superior to a grazing animal (or a plant) is fraught with danger. Houses are invented, they do not grow. Trees must be cut, to fashion them. In just such a way, the use of terran core-power, the natural gifted planet-heat, U235 decay, can be dangerous.
Thanks for reminding the cooks not to stick their hands into the fire while using that power.
As far as NOT using it?
What alternative universe do YOU propose we live in, Narnia perhaps?
A word, dear ex-doctor. Narnia is a fiction, as are all your desperate evasions, in all your books.
Have a nice rest-of-your-life
Pepe la Gai
Regarding Helen Caldicott’s excellent book “Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer” and posting with the same title on this website (2007-02-25), there is absolutely no need for nuclear power in the US (and many other parts of the world) because there is a simple mature technology that can deliver huge amounts of clean energy without any of the headaches of nuclear power.
I refer to ‘concentrating solar power’ (CSP), the technique of concentrating sunlight using mirrors to create heat, and then using the heat to raise steam and drive turbines and generators, just like a conventional power station. It is possible to store solar heat in melted salts so that electricity generation may continue through the night or on cloudy days. This technology has been generating electricity successfully in California since 1985 and half a million Californians currently get their electricity from this source. CSP plants are now being planned or built in many parts of the world.
CSP works best in hot deserts and, of course, these are not always nearby! But it is feasible and economic to transmit solar electricity over very long distances using highly-efficient ‘HVDC’ transmission lines. With transmission losses at about 3% per 1000 km, solar electricity may be transmitted to anywhere in the US and Canada too. A recent report from the American Solar Energy Society says that CSP plants in the south western states of the US “could provide nearly 7,000 GW of capacity, or ***about seven times the current total US electric capacity***” (emphasis added).
In the ‘TRANS-CSP’ report commissioned by the German government, it is estimated that CSP electricity, imported from North Africa and the Middle East, could become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe, including the cost of transmission. A large-scale HVDC transmission grid has also been proposed by Airtricity as a means of optimising the use of wind power throughout Europe.
Further information about CSP may be found at www.trec-uk.org.uk and www.trecers.net . Copies of the TRANS-CSP report may be downloaded from www.trec-uk.org.uk/reports.htm . The many problems associated with nuclear power are summarised at www.mng.org.uk/green_house/no_nukes.htm .
CSP is no substitute for nuclear energy!
Concentrating Solar Power (or CSP) is inefficient, expensive, and has notable environmental impacts.
Inefficient
According to the California Energy Commission ( http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/gross_system_power.html ), all of the utility-generated solar power in the state amounts to two-tenths of one percent of the state’s electricity production. Because of the limited availability of sunlight, these systems have notoriously low capacity factors and are therefore cannot be relied upon for baseload power.
Expensive
According to the California Energy Commission ( http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/comparative_costs.html ), at 13 to 42 cents per kWhr, solar power is *the* most expensive way to generate electricity, hands down. In a time when energy prices are skyrocketing, few people can afford a large-scale conversion to solar power. What’s more, due to its low capacity factors, solar capacity must be backed up with additional stand-by power generation, which adds to the overall cost of solar.
Environmental impact
Solar collectors also require a huge area of land, which must be dedicated to solar generation. Even in the desert, this would disrupt the ecology. Additionally, in order for the salts to remain molten at night, CSP requires fossil fuels to be burned for heat. According to a US Department of Energy study ( http://www.nrel.gov/docs/gen/fy98/24496.pdf ), these systems are “hybridized” with up to 25% natural gas. Ironically, this renewable technology is a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions!
Nevertheless, concentrating solar technology, along with many other renewable power sources such as wind, tidal, and geothermal, should continue to be supported in hopes that a breakthrough will someday allow them to be a significant source of energy generation. Today however, CSP is no replacement for baseload energy generation sources. In the medium term, we cannot abandon the proven, effective, and efficient source of low-emission energy that nuclear power has to offer. To learn more about the benefits of nuclear energy, check out http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=1&catid=11 and http://www.casenergy.org/WhyNuclear/TheBasics/tabid/66/Default.aspx
Michael Stuart
http://www.na-ygn.org/
biodiesel…
I find that there is more and more information out there but we need to do as much possible to get the word out about how each person can do their part to help the energy situation in the world today….
You people are so miss informed! It is even funny how dumb people are that don’t know anything about nuclear power. For one did you know that rubidium which is found in nearly any dirt on the earth is a beta emitter. It actually gives off more radiation than a nuclear power plant. Nearly anything that decays emitts some sort of partical. I trust nuclear power everyday. How many Nuclear Incidents has there been with the US Navy? Zero(0) absolutly zero. The Navy has used nuclear power to propel ships and submarines to defend this GREAT country for over 50 years. I noticed how you compared a nuclear reactor to a nuclear bomb, This shows just how unknowledgeable you really are on nuclear reactors. I have a question for you. Do you know how a nuclear reactor works at all? Also do you know what primary and secondary systems are or better yet heat transfer? I have another question, DO YOU SMOKE CIGS? Did you know that cigarettes emit alpha particals into your lungs which is one of the major reasons it causes cancer. But an alpha partical is normally stopped by the dead layer of skin on the outside of the human body. Nuclear Power is one of cleanest powering systems in the world, granted it should be well supervised and restricted(as it is currently)to prevent any problems with it. Fosil fuels are dirtier fuels than any and I bet you own a car don’t you? Poeple really need to recieve knowledge before making decisions that nuclear power is bad.
Thanks for the Time,
Michael Burton
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce