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Nuclear Energy Must Be
Phased Out
 Any
country that looks to nuclear energy for its energy
needs is
going down an uneconomical and perilous road. In order to revive its
sagging
fortunes, a resurgent nuclear industry is promoting and justifying
nuclear power
as a panacea for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and global
warming,
and as a means of meeting growing energy needs. This claim does not
stand up to
careful scrutiny, either on technical, security or economic grounds.
Nuclear power, once touted to
be too cheap to meter, is now too costly to be considered as a viable
and safe
source of energy. The true costs of nuclear energy are never fully
disclosed.
For instance, in the United
States, the government subsidises the
cost
of uranium enrichment as well as 98 percent of the nuclear industry’s
insurance
liability of $726 billion. The cost of decommissioning all existing
nuclear
reactors is estimated to be $33 billion. In addition, the ultimate cost
of
storing long-life radioactive waste for thousands of years has yet to
be
calculated.
Chernobyl disaster, 1986
At present, there are 442 nuclear reactors in operation
worldwide,
each of which is a potential target for
a terrorist attack which would render the area uninhabitable for
hundreds of
years. If it were decided today to replace all fossil-fuel generated
electricity with nuclear power, it would require the construction of
2000 large
1000-watt reactors over decades and a fuel supply of uranium that would
run out
in three or four years.
Nuclear theologians unconscionably claim that nuclear
power is clean
and safe. It is not environmentally clean
or safe. All stages of the nuclear fuel cycle utilize large quantities
of
fossil fuel, which emit large quantities of carbon dioxide. Nuclear
reactors
are inherently dangerous and vulnerable to accidents, such an
earthquake. A
country may be safe from natural disasters, but not from human error or
miscalculation. Both the Three Mile Island and the disastrous Chernobyl
accidents were the result of human
error..
Nuclear energy poses a serious health and environmental
problem
because there is no method of safe disposal of radioactive reactor
waste. Increasingly
large quantities of spent nuclear fuel are accumulating in cooling
pools
scattered all over the world, which could be targeted by terrorists to
unleash
a radioactive inferno, worse than the Chernobyl
accident. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years. We are talking of
radioactive waste in terms of ‘forever’.
Nuclear energy carries serious security risks. The
potential for misuse
of uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing technology is
reflected in the
concerns about North Korea
and Iran.
Despite the safeguards imposed by the International Atomic Energy
Agency, any
state can produce nuclear weapons secretly. Nuclear weapons
proliferation is a
predictable outcome when the nuclear weapon states are allowed to get
away with
double standards.
In the long-term, nuclear energy must be phased out. The
whole
energy equation must be addressed in terms of energy efficiency, energy
conservation, and the use of renewable sources of energy. Greater
research in
these areas needs to be funded and expanded.
Ron McCoy
Co-President, IPPNW
20 September 2005
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