An Australian Comment on Nuclear Energy
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- Written by Ian E. Macindoe
An Australian Comment on Nuclear Energy
For the 21st century and beyond, a smaller world population --- living more simply and in sustainable harmony with the environment --- must use renewable energy. Dr Ian Macindoe comments on problems with nuclear power.
The Australian Federal Government of 2006 --- the John Howard Coalition Government --- is bound to pursue the global warming alternative of nuclear energy. It will do this in the interests of those who stand to gain from a strong economy. Government, of course, will argue that it is the Australian people who stand to gain, and will downplay those who always gain from a growth economy: developers, manufacturers, retailers and others for whom a growing population and a growing economy produces private wealth. Prime Minister Howard will continue to make statements that nuclear power is the answer to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Many aspects of nuclear power can be challenged.
The unspoken assumption seems to be that humans --- whether they live in Australia or elsewhere --- will continue to multiply and will also aspire to the over-consumption typical of the Australian middle class. In fact, neither the population nor the consumption patterns are sustainable. If by 2070 the projected world population of 10 billion were to live at the ‘rich world’ per capita consumption level of today, all fuels and a third of the planet’s minerals would be totally exhausted by about 2040.
So, contrary to common political and governmental assumptions, the urgent need --- both nationally and globally --- is to sharply reduce our use of energy (that is, live more simply and sustainably), to sharply increase renewable energy sources (wind, solar etc) and to forego the 20th century obsession with economic growth and unrestrained development. The common political and governmental mindset seems to be that an increase in world population would be desirable to increase economic growth. That way lies disaster.
The desire by the governments and peoples of countries such as India and China to ‘catch up’ to the West’s perceived affluence, while understandable, fails to address their unsustainable populations and gross maldistribution of wealth. India and China will be among the hardest hit countries when, in the not too distant future, oil depletion disrupts the global economy, followed by the environmental catastrophes of global climate change. Nuclear energy can do nothing to prevent this scenario.
Let us look more closely at some claims for nuclear power. While major nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl are not common, they are extremely serious when they do occur. In the case of Chernobyl, for example, John Gofman (Professor of Medical Physics at Berkeley and a recognised world expert on the biology of radiation) calculated that 950,000 people have got, or will get, cancer as a result of the Chernobyl fallout; and about half of them will die of their cancers. These fatalities and the associated morbidity hardly alleviate the public’s anxiety that some dismiss with the trite observation that ‘all human activity carries some measure of risk’.
The fact is that nuclear waste, most of it not reprocessed, is being stored in cooling ponds near nuclear plants while the thorny question of what to do with it for the next few thousand years remains unsolved. Uranium-238 and transuranic elements such as plutonium-239 make up most of this waste. Uranium-238 (natural and also spent uranium) is radioactive at very low level with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. (U235 is the much more radioactive isotope used for fuel, and it needs to be enriched from about 0.5 per cent as it occurs naturally to about 3 per cent for nuclear power and 9 per cent for nuclear weapons). In the meantime nuclear waste is vulnerable to the unpredictable actions of terrorists, global warfare by governments, geological and social upheavals, not to mention future security costs.
Nor is it really true to say that nuclear energy is ‘clean’ in the sense that it produces no carbon dioxide. For a full treatment of this and related issues see Why nuclear power cannot be a major energy source by David Fleming (April, 2006) at www.feasta.org/documents/energy/nuclear_power.htm. A great deal of fossil fuel is used in the mining, refining and transport of uranium and thorium. Much fossil fuel is used in the building of nuclear plants, in the reprocessing of fuel and in the decommissioning of plants. It has been estimated that to decommission a nuclear power plant (generally before it is 25 years old) about twice the energy is used as is needed to build it. It is noted, in passing, that many reactors are being refurbished and run long past their original design life, due to lack of alternative power generation to replace them.
Fleming points out that ‘nuclear reactors, averaged over their lifetimes, produce more carbon dioxide than gas-fired power stations (per unit of electricity generated), until they have been in full-power operation for about seven years’. Even this observation, says Fleming, leaves out the greenhouse gases used in the fuel cycle, particularly in enrichment of fuel. And the enrichment of uranium leaves considerable waste, mainly in the form of depleted uranium (now used by the USA for military purposes and leading to nearly all the half-million military personnel involved in the first Iraq war being on medical disability pensions. See Depleted uranium and the poisoning of humanity by A. O’Brien in Living Now, May 2006, NSW issue 84).
A desirable society is one providing a sustainable standard of living within the constraints of remaining energy sources. For non-renewable resources to be available to our grandchildren and their descendants we must reduce the planet’s human population, greatly increase our use of renewable energy sources, and work to distribute what is left in a fair and equitable way. The promise that nuclear power will provide humans with a healthy and safe environment --- and through reductions of greenhouse gases will slow global warming --- must be seriously questioned. The supply of uranium is limited, the problem of how to manage radioactive waste for thousands of years is probably unsolvable at a practical level, and the costs of nuclear energy in terms of both dollars and carbon emissions will make it an extremely unpopular choice.
Mining uranium, refining and transporting it, building nuclear power plants, and reprocessing nuclear fuel all use large quantities of fossil fuels that produce large quantities of greenhouse gases. In this sense, nuclear power is not ‘clean’. A useful introduction to such problems can be viewed at http//home.austarnet.com.au/davekimble/peakoil/nuclear.co2.htm.
For example, lower carbon emissions from nuclear power only holds for the use of high-grade uranium ore. At the present rate of high-grade uranium consumption only 2 ½ per cent of the world’s energy demand could be met for 45 years. To improve on this, nuclear reactors need to turn to leaner ores, with an accompanying increase in fossil-fuel energy for the milling process. The result is that the total quantity of fossil fuels needed to produce nuclear fission exceeds the fossil fuels needed to generate electricity directly. That is, under these circumstances nuclear power tips into a negative energy balance: more energy goes in than comes out, and more CO2 is produced by the generation of nuclear power than by the fossil-fuel alternatives.
We are trapped by rich uranium ore depletion at least as imminent as that for oil.
For nuclear plants to supply hydrogen-powered transport systems (assuming all needed nuclear power tations could be built at the same time and without delay) high-grade uranium ore might supply the energy needs of the world’s hydrogen-fuelled transport system for about three years before the rich ores are used up and the energy balance turns negative.
And what about the cost, in both dollars and energy, of cleaning up the nuclear wastes? About a quarter million tonnes of spent fuel is being stored in ponds. How much energy will be needed to clean up this waste? It has been estimated that ‘the energy equivalent to about one third of the total quantity of nuclear power produced --- in the past and future --- will be required to clear up past and future wastes’ (Fleming). This would leave about a third of the present stock of uranium that could be used to generate electricity for distribution to national grids --- enough for about three years.
The dollar costs of such a massive clean-up operation would have to be borne by governments and would need to continue for hundreds of years. Governments would not be able to afford the costs, so societies would be burdened with huge stores of unstable wastes that no one could afford to clear up.
So far we have been considering nuclear fission, which is currently supplying about 14 per cent of the world’s electricity. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is still ‘a dream-in-waiting’ (see Science, 10 March 2006, www.sciencemag.org). The engineering difficulties associated with nuclear fusion power plants are so great that even in the case of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), initiated in 1987 and now to be built in France after prolonged negotiation, ‘no dirt has been dug, and US membership is temporarily in moratorium’. William Parkins, author of the Science article, states that nuclear fusion will make a contribution to physics, but not to power generation. He concludes: ‘Even if a practical means of generating a sustained, net power-producing fusion reaction were found, prospects of excessive plant cost per unit of electricity output, requirement for reactor vessel replacement, and need for remote maintenance for ensuring vessel vacuum integrity lie ahead. What executive would invest in a fusion power plant if faced with any one of these obstacles?’
So, what about fast breeder reactors and thorium? The problems with these are outlined by David Fleming (April 2006, http://www.feasta.org/documents/energy/nuclear_power.htm ). Breeder reactors using plutonium can produce electricity and also more plutonium for the future. However, the three operations involved --- breeding, reprocessing and fuel fabrication --- are very complex and dangerous. None of the three trial reactors has worked as intended. A report for the Japanese nuclear industry concluded: ‘A successful commercial breeder reactor must have three attributes: it must breed, it must be economical, and it must be safe. Although any one or two of these attributes can be achieved in isolation by proper design, the laws of physics apparently make it impossible to achieve all three simultaneously, no matter how clever the design.’
Similar problems exist with thorium. Some thorium fission reactors, such as Kakrapar-1 and -2 in India, may point to long-term viability for nuclear fission. But a thorium breeding cycle is many years away (an estimated 30 years to set up a commercial scale cycle) followed by 40 years of breeding. In 2075 just two thorium breeder reactors could be up and running. As Dr John Coulter (personal communication) has pointed out: by the time such reactors are capable of providing useable energy ‘peak oil and climate change will have rolled across humanity, and civilisation as we know it will have ceased’.
In summing up the place of nuclear energy in the overall energy scheme, David Fleming’s conclusion is: ‘The priority for the nuclear industry now should be to use the electricity generated by nuclear power to clean up its own pollution and to phase itself out before events force it to close down abruptly. Nuclear power is a solution neither to the energy famine brought on by the decline of oil and gas, nor to the need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. It cannot provide energy solutions, however much we may want it to do so.’
Time is running out for humankind. People will live more simply in coming decades, some voluntarily, others due to necessity. Eventually there will be fewer humans living less affluently than in the West in small, self-sufficient communities, using participatory and cooperative activities to sustain no-growth economies. This movement has already started. Dr Ted Trainer, one of the movement’s gurus, has written: ‘Consumer society has shown itself to be incapable of responding to warnings that the growth and greed path is leading to catastrophic breakdown. Our hope is that by the time the problems become really acute within the richest countries people will be able to see around them impressive examples of communities following The Simpler Way.’
Australians, no less than Indians and Chinese, need to continue to critically evaluate their options for survival. No assumption can be made that the future will just be a better extension of today’s world.