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NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT THE ANSWER
by Helen Caldicott
[Editor’s note: The following is the Introduction to Dr. Helen Caldicott’s
new book Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer.]
“[Nuclear power] is a very important part of
our energy policy today in the U.S. . . .
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
“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.”
—President Bush in a speech to a group of
nuclear power plant workers at the Calvert
Cliffs nuclear reactor, June 22, 2005
The current administration clearly believes that if it lies frequently and with
conviction, the general public will be lulled into believing their oft-repeated dictums.
As this book will show, no part of “efficiently, safely, and with no discharge of
greenhouse gases or emissions” is true. Nuclear energy creates significant
greenhouse gases and pollution today, and is on a trajectory to produce as much as
conventional sources of energy within the next one or two decades. It requires
massive infusions of government (read taxpayer) subsidies, relying on universities
and the weapons industry for its research and development, and being considered
far too risky for private investors. It is also doubtful that the 8,358 individuals
diagnosed between 1986 and 2001 with thyroid cancer in Belarus, downwind of
Chernobyl, would choose the adjective “safe” to describe nuclear power.
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 the massive concrete reactor
buildings, and to transport and store the toxic radioactive waste created by the
nuclear process. Burning of this fossil fuel emits significant quantities of carbon
dioxide (CO2)—the primary “greenhouse gas”—into the atmosphere. In addition,
large amounts of the now-banned chlorofluorocarbon gas (CFC) are emitted during
the enrichment of uranium. CFC gas is not only 10,000 to 20,000 times more
efficient as an atmospheric heat trapper (“greenhouse gas”) than CO2, but it is a
classic “pollutant” and a potent destroyer of the ozone layer.
While currently the creation of nuclear electricity produces only one-third the
amount of CO2 emitted from a similar-sized, conventional gas generator, this is a
transitory statistic. Over several decades, as the concentration of available uranium
ore declines, more fossil fuels will be required to extract the ore from less
concentrated ore veins. Within ten to twenty years, 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. (The nuclear power
industry contends that large quantities of uranium can be obtained by reprocessing
radioactive spent fuel. However, this process is extremely expensive, medically
dangerous for nuclear workers, and releases large amounts of radioactive material
into the air and water; it is therefore not a pragmatic consideration.) By extension,
the operation of nuclear power plants will then produce exactly the same amounts
of greenhouse gases and air pollution as standard power plants.
Contrary to the nuclear industry claims, smoothly running nuclear power plants are
also not emission free. Government regulations allow nuclear plants “routinely” to
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 are presently accumulating in the cooling pools beside the 103 operating
nuclear plants in the United States and hundreds of others throughout the world.
This waste contains extremely toxic elements that will inevitably pollute the
environment and human food chains, a legacy that will lead to epidemics of cancer,
leukemia, and genetic disease in populations living near nuclear power plants or
radioactive waste facilities for many generations to come.
Nuclear power is exorbitantly expensive, and notoriously unreliable. Wall Street is
deeply reluctant to re-involve itself in any nuclear investment, despite the fact that
in the 2005 Energy Bill the U.S. 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 entire world’s electricity production were
replaced today by nuclear energy, 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 that induces a meltdown would destroy all such investments
and signal the end of nuclear power forever.
In this day and age, nuclear power plants are also 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, thirty-five miles from Manhattan, for instance, would
effectively incapacitate the world’s main financial center for the rest of time. An
attack on one of the thirteen reactors surrounding Chicago would wreak similar
catastrophic medical consequences. Amazingly, security at U.S. nuclear power
plants remains at virtually the same lax levels as prior to the 9/11 attacks.
Adding to the danger, nuclear power plants are essentially atomic bomb factories. A
1,000 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 (precisely the
issue the world confronts with Iran today). As the global nuclear industry pushes its
nefarious wares upon developing countries with the patent lie about “preventing
global warming,” collateral consequences will include the proliferation of nuclear
weapons, a situation that will further destabilize an already unstable world.
Meanwhile, every billion dollars spent on the supremely misguided attempt to
revivify the nuclear industry is a theft from the production of cheap renewable
electricity. Think what these billions could do if invested in the development of wind
power, solar power, cogeneration, geothermal energy, biomass, and tidal and wave
power, let alone basic energy conservation, which itself could save the United
States 20% of the electricity it currently consumes.
A Greenpeace report issued in October 2005 predicted that solar power could
supply clean electricity to 100 million people living in sunny parts of the world by
the year 2025. Such an enterprise could create 54,000 jobs and be worth $19.9
billion. In just two decades, the amount of solar electricity could be equivalent to
the power generated by seventy-two coal-fired stations—for example, enough to
supply the needs of 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, with the correct amount of investment, marine energy—tidal and
wave power—could provide up to 20% of the United Kingdom’s current electricity
needs. 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 worldwide 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 by 2010, they
will add 177 times more capacity than nuclear power provides.
When nuclear proponents say that nuclear power can be used to reduce the United
States’ insatiable reliance on foreign oil, they are simply wrong. Oil and its byproduct
gasoline are used to fuel the internal combustion engines in automobiles
and trucks. Oil is also used to heat buildings. But oil does not power the electric
grid. The grid, which is used to power electric lights, computers, VCRs, fans, hair
dryers, stoves, refrigerators, air conditioners, and for industrial needs, is powered
primarily through the burning of coal, other fossil fuels, and, currently, through
nuclear power. (Oil does generate an infinitesimal amount of electricity—2% in the
United States.)
How exactly is electricity generated? In the case of hydropower (which accounts for
7% of the electricity generated in the United States) the momentum of falling water
is converted into electricity. For most of the remaining 93%, coal (50%), natural
gas (18%), nuclear power (20%), and oil (2%) are used to produce immense
amounts of heat. The heat boils water, converting it to steam, which then turns a
turbine, generating electricity. So, in essence, a nuclear reactor is just a very
sophisticated and dangerous way to boil water—analogous to cutting a pound of
butter with a chain saw. At the moment, hydro provides 7% and unfortunately wind
is only 2% of the total U.S. mix, while solar is less than 1%. Globally, coal supplies
about 64% of the world’s electricity, hydro and nuclear each provide 17% and
renewable sources again make up 2%.
Tragically, more and more people are believing the myths propagated by the
nuclear industry about nuclear power—that it is emission free, produces no
greenhouse gases, and is therefore the answer to global warming. 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 other 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 uninformed 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—to be 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.)
The British nuclear industry is working hard to persuade members of parliament
and other influential public figures of the benefits of nuclear power. Dr. James
Lovelock, the UK-based scientist who developed the Gaia theory, now wrongly
advocates the use of nuclear power as one solution to the global warming crisis. Sir
David King, chief UK government science advisor, says that nuclear power plants
are the only realistic way to satisfy growing energy demands while meeting global
warming targets. And former UK Greenpeace leader Peter Melchett, who now works
for the giant public relations company Burson-Marsteller, has also publicly endorsed
this concept. The British nuclear industry has sacrificed full disclosure and
jettisoned truth in order to ensure a new round of government subsidies for nuclear
power. The government subsidy program for the nuclear industry—which might be
dubbed the “Security of Supply Obligation”—amounts in essence to the socialization
of nuclear power, ensconced within a “free market” economy.
In England in 2006, 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 by Russia’s January 2006 decision to 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.
In the United States and Canada, leading environmentalists similarly seem to have
been swayed by the Bush/Cheney/nuclear industry rhetoric. Stewart Brand, founder
of the Whole Earth Catalogue; Gus Speth, the dean of Yale’s School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies; and former Greenpeace Canada leader Patrick Moore, who
now consults for the mining, fishing, and timber industries—all seem to have
accepted the nuclear industry’s propaganda as fact. Meanwhile, it is increasingly
critical to set the record on nuclear power straight, as 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 to and enamored of the nuclear power industry, an industry that has
never actually been exposed to the chill winds of the market economy they
unfailingly espouse elsewhere. As neither the president nor the vice-president can
boast a scientific education, they would be hard pressed to understand the scientific
and medical problems associated with this arcane industry. Both are oilmen 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 facing the planet in the form of global warming, and the
threat of nuclear meltdowns and nuclear pollution.
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 (the non-existent problem of) global
warming. Claiming, as Cheney does, that atomic electricity produces no carbon
dioxide, the culprit responsible for 50% of atmospheric heating, the U.S. 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 now threatening many life
forms with extinction. Global warming has been a great gift to the nuclear industry.
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, called the National Energy Policy Development
Group. On April 17,2001, Cheney met with Kenneth Lay, the CEO of the now
disgraced Enron Corporation, 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 aides 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 aides, 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.
While we do not know, as a result, what Enron may have advocated in that meeting
with respect to nuclear energy, we do know that Enron made significant
contributions to the Bush/Cheney campaign, the Florida recount fight fund, and to
the Bush/Cheney inauguration—a situation that calls into question whether legal
and ethical guidelines were crossed.
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 IV International Forum (GIF), is
collaborating with the U.S. 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 nine nuclear reactors and plans to build another
thirty nuclear power plants. (Even if it builds its thirty plants, however, nuclear
power will still provide only 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% by 2030 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.
Nuclear power is often referred to behind closed doors in the U.S. Department of
Energy as “hard” energy whereas wind power, solar power, hydropower, and
geothermal energy are referred to as “soft” energy pathways. Clearly the same
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
power gang needs to be dissected 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 to urgently enact
serious laws mandating energy conservation, and to shift the subsidies currently
provided to the nuclear power industry to alternative and renewable electricity
generation. Corporations as well should be incentivized to invest 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 we all take courageous
measures.
Helen Caldicott is the world's leading spokesperson for the antinuclear movement
and Nobel Peace Prize nominee. A bestselling author, she divides her time between
Australia and Washington D.C., where she is the president of the Nuclear Policy
Research Institute.
© 2006 by Helen Caldicott. This piece originally appears in Dr. Helen Caldicott’s
Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer (The New Press, September 20, 2006). Published
with the permission of The New Press and available at good book stores
everywhere.
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http://youtu.be/Fpa6wT-rriE
アップロード日: 2011/05/06
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS ARE BAD!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFGX6Tnj-xM
"Soon after the Fukushima accident last month, I stated publicly that a nuclear event of this size and catastrophic potential could present a medical problem of very large dimensions. Events have proven this observation to be true despite the nuclear industry's campaign about the "minimal" health effects of so-called low-level radiation." --Dr. Helen Caldicott
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に意味は同じ。ただしそちらは後者の意になる。 ・已：やむ。 ・而：韻文としてのリズムをとり、実質上の押韻の補助をしている。前出の「兮」に同じ。
といえる。
