Nuclear Power is Not the Answer. To Global Warming or Anything Else
By Helen Caldicott
Melbourne University Press, 2006
248 pages, $24.95
REVIEW BY TIM STEWART
Helen Caldicott, veteran campaigner and ferocious critic of everything nuclear, has published a thoroughgoing attack on the dirtiest, most expensive industry in the world. The new book is a welcome addition to the very one-sided "nuclear debate" that the Howard government launched earlier this year. It answers most of the arguments that the spin doctors and industry associations have been parading as a "nuclear renaissance" and applies some scientific logic to counter the green-washing and the mystification of nuclear energy.
The book has chapters dedicated to answering many contemporary questions: the energy cost of the nuclear fuel cycle (the "cradle to grave" carbon footprint), the full economic costs of nuclear power, the threat of radiation and disease, accidental or terrorist-induced nuclear meltdowns, the insurmountable problems of nuclear waste, and the undeniable link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons proliferation - whether or not nations are signatories to the global nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Caldicott also spends time discussing renewable energy and energy conservation programs, presenting them as a clear path out of the mess that capitalism has created.
While the book can be a bit technical in places (necessary to answer some of the scientific arguments about the possibility of building new-generation radioactive-waste-eating reactors, for instance), it is dotted with some very simple logic for newcomers to understand and arm themselves against any pro-uranium maniac.
Caldicott explains early in her book that "nuclear power is just a very sophisticated way to boil water". And insanely dangerous too.
Like using a chainsaw to cut butter, simply trying to control and contain the stratospheric explosion of energy produced during a nuclear reaction has, for decades, led to a dark history of accidents and incidents in nuclear power plants - a sober reminder that we're best served by shelving this technology.
The feedstock for atomic bombs - around 50 kilograms of plutonium fuel - is produced at the rate of 228kg a year by a single 1000 megawatt nuclear reactor. Caldicott reminds us that the "collateral consequences [of nuclear power] will include the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a situation that will further destabilise an already unstable world".
Aside from revisiting debates that were won by opponents of the nuclear industry through the mass campaigns of the '70s and '80s, the most useful argument presented by Caldicott is a clear refutation of the lie that nuclear energy is "emission free" and a significant step in taking urgent action to reduce greenhouse gases.
"Nuclear power is not 'clean and green', as the industry claims, because large amounts of traditional fossil fuels are required to mine and refine the uranium needed to run nuclear power reactors, to construct massive concrete reactor buildings, and to transport and store the toxic radioactive waste created by the nuclear process," she writes.
The total carbon footprint of the nuclear fuel cycle is massive. It begins at the mining process using heavy industrial equipment. It continues with the stabilising of the mill tailings, the conversion of material into uranium hexaflouride; uranium enrichment; fuel element fabrication and the construction of the reactor itself - with kilometres of carbon and stainless steel vessels entombed in concrete towers.
At the end of a reactor's life, there is decommissioning and dismantling; cleanup of the industry termed Chalk River Unidentified Deposits (CRUD) - a collection of radioactive elements that come from the reactor itself; stabilising used cooling water containing Tritium and Carbon 14; the transportation and disposal of high-level and intermediate waste; and the long-term storage for 240,000 years.
Each of these steps is entirely fossil fuel dependent and energy hungry in itself. At any of these steps, the nuclear maths does not add up - for instance, the construction and dismantling of a gas-fired plant together uses about 24 petajoules of energy compared to the dismantling of its nuclear equivalent, which consumes up to 240 petajoules. A petajoule is a million billion joules of energy.
Peak uranium (the point at which the growth in demand outstrips the potential for the growth in supply) is also inevitable and as the concentration of available uranium ore declines, more fossil fuels will be required to extract the ore from less-concentrated ore veins.
Using industry figures, Caldicott points out that if nuclear power is to have a substantial impact on reducing greenhouse emissions, 2000-3000 reactors of 1000 megawatt size would have to be built over the next 50 years!
The nuclear industry in the United States is given US$13 billion in subsidies and tax breaks annually. "This is an industry that has never actually been exposed to the chill winds of the market economy," she says.
A 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology study on the future of nuclear power demonstrated that each 10 cents spent to buy a single kilowatt hour of nuclear electricity could instead be spent generating 1.2 to 1.7 kWh of gas-fired electricity.
The energy and climate change debate that has been opportunistically seized on by the corporate backers of nuclear power has opened renewed awareness of solar, wind, tidal, micro-hydro and biomass technologies as flexible and less environmentally costly options for the planet.
While Caldicott's book dwells on two of these solutions in detail - wind and solar - it tends to leave the problem of resolving the crisis of clean energy in the hands of the free market and the politicians, firmly attached to the corporate end of town. She also places a lot of emphasis on measures we can all take to reduce individual energy use - such as not using dishwashers and wearing jumpers instead of using heaters in winter.
The strength of Nuclear Power is Not the Answer is that its environmental and economic logic that can be used to counter the Howard and Beazley brigade, who are currently pushing the export and/or enrichment of uranium.
Caldicott calls for Australians to face up to their "true moral responsibility, as they did in the 1970s ... when a massive grass roots movement arose to prevent the mining and export of uranium. Such intense activism is once again necessary today."
To combat the "nuclear renaissance" we need an anti-nuclear revival and Caldicott's book should be seen as a resource. If nuclear power is like cutting butter with a chainsaw, then clearly we need to stop the chainsaw-wielding maniacs who threaten the existence of many millions of species on this earth - including ourselves.