Arguments against Nuclear Energy by Alex Rosen from a speech delivered in the former German Parliament building in the opening of the scientific congress "Timebomb Nuclear Energy - 20 years of Chernobyl"

I.)         Nuclear energy is not a smart alternative to fossil fuels

Nuclear power is limited

Like fossil fuels, nuclear power depends on non-renewable and finite resources. The world’s resources of Uranium will not last more than a few decades, especially now that the US is building new plants, China is expanding rapidly and countries like India are also talking about increasing their nuclear energy production. The fast breeders have proven not to work efficiently and so the reprocessing of nuclear waste produced by the plants does not seem to be an alternative for the future. Why bind ourselves to a limited resource, which could spur similar conflicts over spare resources like oil is doing now when we can ensure the use of unlimited natural resources for generations to come? The motto should be: “Peace through sun and wind instead of wars through uranium and oil”… See also: Facts on Nuclear Energy

Nuclear power is not clean

People often times think that nuclear energy is the “clean alternative” to fossil fuels, but that’s not true… only because it doesn’t produce CO₂, doesn’t mean that it’s healthy. In fact, radiation is pretty much the most unhealthy thing you can imagine and it’s still not clear how safe nuclear plants really are or how nuclear waste is best stored away. Scientists have shown increased rates of leukaemia in the children of nuclear power plant workers. Every month, accidents happen in power plants. In fact, experts say that it’s only a matter of time before we have another accident like Chernobyl – or worse. In the end, there is no 100% safety anywhere and the risks attached to nuclear power with its long half life and its effects for generations to come are so much graver than with any other form of energy. See also: Facts on Nuclear Energy

            Nuclear power is expensive

Subsidies for nuclear research have by far exceeded the subsidies for any other type of energy in the last 50 years. The nuclear industry knows it: without the heavy state subsidies, nuclear power would not be a very good product to invest in. Nuclear power produces costs incomparable to any other type of energy – environmental costs, health detriment, tons of radioactive material that needs to be carried around the country and hidden in salt mines for thousands of years, millions of dollars worth in costs carried not by us but by future generations, not by the companies producing “cheap energy”, but by society, the state and our children.  See also: Facts on Nuclear Energy

Nuclear power is superfluous

Right now, nuclear power plants produce a little more than  2% of the world’s power. A dispensible power source, if you ask experts. It’s not the future – it’s the past. Why invest in a technology that supplies energy for only 40 years when there are numerous opportunities to harness the renewable energy sources like wind, solar power, water and terrestrial heat? The EU is already calculating the development of energy supply and demand  without nuclear energy for the next few decades - most companies have also realized that the nuclear age is over. Nuclear power plants can only be built in states, where there is the political will to pay the higher price in order to appease the nuclear industry (Finland) or develop nuclear weapons (Iran, North Korea) . See also: Facts on Nuclear Energy

II.)        Nuclear energy is a health hazard

The risk of another meltdown in Europe is 16%

Sellafield, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, these names ring in most people’s ears. Just three examples of nuclear accidents, which proved to the world that the mantra of safe nuclear power is nothing more than that – a mantra. The German Risk Study on Nuclear Power Plants showed that the risk of a worst-case meltdown in a modern German nuclear power plant running for 40 years is 0.1%. Taking into account that there are more than 150 power plants in operation around Europe, the risk of a meltdown occurring in one of these within the time span of 40 years is therefore 16%. See also: Risk of another nuclear meltdown.

Another spill in Sellafield 

The thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) in Sellafield recently reported an 83,000 litre leak of a highly active uranium-plutonium-mix over the course of 9 months starting in August of 2004. This amount of radioactive material would have been enough for twenty nuclear bombs. In 1983, an independent team of investigators found that the village of Seascale, where a lot of the workers families of the nearby Sellafield Nuclear Engineering Centre live, the rate of childhood leukaemia is 10 times that of the national average. The Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) had earlier found strong evidence for a correlation between the work in the nuclear plant and the rate of childhood leukaemia in workers' children. (www.comare.org.uk) Going even further, a clear dose-effect relation between the amount of irradiation of the father and the rate of leukaemia in the children was established. (Gardner, Martin et al. Results of case-control study of leukaemia and lymphoma among young people near Sellafield nuclear plant in West Cumbria. BMJ 1990; 300:423-9) 

The nuclear energy industry countered these scientific findings by arguing that the increased rate of leukaemia in the village of Seascape, where many of the workers of the nuclear plant live, was caused by migration of urban population to the countryside and not local factors like irradiation and genome instability, an argument not held up by scientific evidence, but prominently featured by local media as the explanation for the increased leukaemia rates. However, other scientific research also adds to the suspicion that radiation of the workers could be the cause for increased mortality in the region. A study by Parker and Pearce confirmed the increase in stillbirths amongst families working for the plant (Parker, L., Pearce MS. Stillbirths among offspring of male radiation workers at Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant. Lancet 1999; 354:1407-14) To read more about the Sellafield case, take a look at the following scientific journals: New Scientist 29 May 1999, New Scientist, 15 November 1997 and CORE Briefing 10.99, 10 June 1999. See also: Living in the Shadow of Sellafield

The meltdown of Chernobyl

The first catastrophe of Chernobyl was the Meltdown itself. On Saturday, April 26th, 1986 at 1:23 am, Block 4 of the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl explodes. 180,000 kilograms of highly radioactive material is inside the reactor at the time - an amount equal to 1,000 Hiroshima bombs. At least 200 different radioactive isotopes are catapulted into the atmosphere and contaminate 23% of the state of Belarus, some parts of Russia and Ukraine, as well as regions of Poland, the Czech Republic, Scandinavia and southern Germany. Most of Europe receives additional radiation and even as far as North America, a significant rise in the daily intake of radiation can be noted. 800.000 people were used by Soviet authorities to clean up the rubble of Block 4 – exposing them to radiation doses comparable to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Up to this day, children in the region eat contaminated food, live in contaminated houses, play in contaminated woods and breathe contaminated dust. 

The effects: a significant rise in all types of cancer, thousands of deaths, a sharp increased in the number of spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and childhood mortality, a growing number of birth defects and genetic abnormalities, disturbance and retardation of mental development, a growing number of neuropsychiatric diseases, blindness, endocrine diseases, diseases of the respiratory, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, urogenital systems as well as higher depression and suicide rates.

The second catastrophe of Chernobyl is the subsequent cover-up. The effects of the accident are still being suppressed, covered up, played down, minimized. Even today, the IAEA claims there were only 56 deaths. Hundreds of thousands were and still are being affected: in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Poland and other western and northern European countries. Many victims have been neglected and remain without any help at all. Even worse: the IAEA has just recently called for a stop of aid to the victims in order to prevent what it calls victim-mentality. In reality, the organization’s sole aim is to promote nuclear energy and the pictures of tens of thousands of irradiated children with leukaemia don’t really fit into the picture of clean energy.

Chernobyl should have been the beginning of the end of nuclear energy. The Chernobyl catastrophe should be synonymous with the understanding that nuclear energy is neither technically under our control, nor can it prevail politically. The civilian use of nuclear energy is inextricably linked with severe health, security, ecological, political, economic and social risks. See also: Chernobyl Research and Power Point Presentation

Nuclear Power powers the bomb

With most technologies used in nuclear energy being dual-use technologies, the sharp line between civilian and military nuclear research doesn’t exist. Examples like North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Israel or India should have shown the world that countries possessing nuclear energy programs have absolutely no problem of developing military nuclear projects without a lot of trouble and develop nuclear weapons under covert civilian nuclear programs. See also: Two sides of the same coin

Like stated above, the chances of a resource-driven aggression over uranium could well be ahead of us if we rely on this finite source of power. Also,  with so much nuclear waste around, the easy disposal in form of depleted uranium shells and ammunition is a (not a very pacifist) means of getting rid of radioactive material. Because nuclear weapons require highly enriched uranium, a civil nuclear program is a good way for a country to acquire nuclear weapons. Countries like Israel, India, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea have shown how it works – and how the right to civil nuclear programs has greatly contributed to restarting the Nuclear Arms Race. As long as there is nuclear power and as long as countries persist on their right to acquire civilian nuclear energy programs, which the NPT gives them, the number of nuclear weapons states will increase. Already, the number has risen from just five to seven (with India and Pakistan) and now to eight (with North Korea) and possibly to nine (with Iran) in the next few years – always keeping in mind that Israel also has nuclear weapons but doesn’t admit it and that countless other countries have the “nuclear option” of turning their civilian into a military program, dropping out of the NPT like North Korea has done and begin testing. Instead of addressing its starving populations and investing in development and education, countries like China, India, Pakistan or North Korea are spending billions on nuclear programs aimed at gaining more political clout. Also, in the days of international terrorism, nuclear power plants have become attractive targets for people seeking to cause harm to innocent people just to make a statement. 

Nuclear power plants in the world:

See also: Facts on Nuclear Energy