Nuclear Power: Totally Unqualified to Combat Climate Change
Rinaldo S. Brutoco September 14, 2014
An Open Letter from the World Business Academy to leading climatologist Dr. James Hansen regarding his advocacy of nuclear power as a solution to global warming.
My colleagues and I at the World Business Academy have followed climate activism for many years and its on-going campaign to restrain the coal and oil industries. Research, congressional testimony, and activism by numerous climatologists to address climate change has brought this very real global threat into the public consciousness and set the stage to develop a strategy for preserving human civilization as we know it. A December 2013 study, “Assessing ‘Dangerous Climate Change’: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature,” has further articulated a higher, more urgent imperative for immediate climate remediation.(1)...snip
...It is our contention that those who tout nuclear power as a carbon-free solution to global warming are missing the forest and the trees. First, the forest: nuclear power plants continuously emit low levels of cancer-causing strontium-90 radiation during “normal” operations, and higher levels when there are serious problems such as the continuing leakage of radioactive water from the tsunami-damaged reactors at Fukushima, or the radiation leak that lead to the instantaneous closure of the San Onofre nuclear reactor in Southern California in January 2012(8). Today, even as radiation levels surge in Japan, media pundits discuss the dangers of radiation as if radiation sickness were limited to instances in which people experience nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, or death. This is false. A host of studies show that radioactive emissions of deadly strontium-90 during nuclear plants’ routine operations increase cancer rates among those who live near the plants, especially in women and children.(9) (See Appendix A, Average Strontium-90 in U.S. Baby Teeth, 1954-2013.)
Working with leading researchers in the field, the Academy commissioned its own health study examining the impact on the local population from Strontium-90 emissions occurring at the Diablo Canyon nuclear facility.(10) By examining publicly available health data broken out by zip code, a stark trend emerged: the local population in the hot zone has been getting sicker every year the plant has been operating. Our study demonstrates the urgent need for sincere investigation into the effects of the radioactivity released by the 100 active nuclear power plants in the US and the many hundreds more around the globe. But while we think nationally and globally, we intend to continue to act locally to rid our state of this nuclear nemesis.
Next, the trees: Nuclear power plants are not “carbon free.” They do not emit carbon or other greenhouse gases as they split atoms during the fission process, but their carbon footprint must be assessed on the basis of their complete nuclear fuel life cycle. Significant amounts of fossil fuel are used indirectly in mining, milling, uranium fuel enrichment, plant and waste storage construction, decommissioning, and ultimately transportation and millennia-long storage of waste. There is plenty of carbon in that footprint that is rarely acknowledged, computed, or mediated. In addition, the nuclear industry’s false refrain that nuclear power plants have no carbon footprint is an attempt to obscure the fact that nuclear power plants’ radiation footprint is far more lethal than the carbon footprint of any other industry. Additionally, the industry’s rhetoric masks the astronomical costs for thousands of years of storage that could be better invested in rapidly developing renewable fuels with a zero carbon footprint like solar, wind, geothermal, and Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, which don’t carry harmful, let alone lethal, side effects....snip
Read More: https://worldbusiness.org/nuclear-power-totally-unqualified-to-combat-climate-change/
Related: Renewable energy versus nuclear: dispelling the myths
By Mark Diesendorf on 22 April 2016
Don’t believe the spurious claims of nuclear shills constantly putting down renewables, writes Mark Diesendorf. Clean, safe renewable energy technologies have the potential to supply 100% of the world’s electricity demand – but the first hurdle is to refute the deliberately misleading myths designed to promote the politically powerful but ultimately doomed nuclear industry
Nuclear energy and renewable energy (RE) are the principal competitors for low-carbon electricity in many countries. As RE technologies have grown in volume and investment, and become much cheaper, nuclear proponents and deniers of climate science have become deniers of RE.
The strategies and tactics of RE deniers are very similar to those of climate science deniers. To create uncertainty about the ability of RE to power an industrial society, they bombard decision-makers and the media with negative myths about RE and positive myths about nuclear energy, attempting to turn these myths into conventional wisdom. In responding to the climate crisis, few countries have the economic resources to expand investment substantially in both nuclear and RE. This is demonstrated in 2016 by the UK government, which is offering huge long-term subsidies to nuclear while severely cutting existing short-term subsidies to RE...snip
Myth 8: Nuclear energy emits no or negligible greenhouse gas emissions.
Neither nuclear energy nor most renewable technologies emit CO2 during operation. However, meaningful comparisons must compare whole life-cycles from mining the raw materials to managing the wastes. Nuclear physicist and nuclear supporter Manfred Lenzen found average life-cycle emissions for nuclear energy, based on mining high-grade uranium ore, of 60 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour (g/kWh), for wind of 10–20 g/kWh and for natural gas 500–600 g/kWh...snip
Conclusion
...The pro-nuclear and anti-RE myths disseminated by nuclear proponents and supporters of other vested interests do not stand up to examination. Given the political will, RE could be scaled up long before Generation 3 and 4 nuclear power stations could make a significant contribution to electricity supply.
Read More: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/renewable-energy-versus-nuclear-dispelling-the-myths-48635
Nuclear Power: A Mistake in Search of a Mission
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..."Dangerous Nuclear" every time and anytime Dangerous Nuclear is mentioned?
