Tom's Turn: Notes from our Senior Editor

Going Nuclear?

March 22, 2007

Last month I mentioned the resurgence of interest in nuclear power as a solution to global warming. Several readers wrote in to endorse that proposition. I'm going to start with excerpts from one of those letters, then give an extended reply.

I have been an ardent foe of nuclear power generation for over three decades. I drove to, and marched in, the huge protest against nuclear power in Washington DC in 1977, among many other antinuclear events that I attended. However, in the past two years I have reversed my position, and now support the building of a new generation of nuclear plants in the USA.

The reason is that global warming is such a huge and imminent issue, that I think we must now accept the lesser evil of nuclear power generation so that we can stop building fossil fuel power generation plants, and hopefully even start closing them. Clearly, conservation and alternative fuels (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.) have to also be a major thrust, but I am convinced that these alone are unlikely to be able to accomplish the job unless they are aided by a large dose of nuclear power.

Nuclear waste, nuclear-weapons proliferation, and inefficient operation all remain concerns of mine, and it is our responsibility to keep these items high on the national agenda so that these risks are minimized as much as is practical. But if we don't make a major push to replace fossil fuels with nuclear energy soon, global warming will have a much more dramatic adverse impact on the earth's flora, fauna, and human inhabitants, than is tolerable.

Marc Gordon, Sunnyvale, CA

It is sobering to hear and read of former critics of the nuclear enterprise now suggesting that we reconsider the option, or revisit the issue, even look to a nuclear renaissance to help us evade the exploding scourge of global warming.

Nuclear power plant

Photo: DOE

You've heard the arguments: Reactors emit no greenhouse gases, safety has improved, technology has likewise improved. There's plenty of uranium available.

All those assertions are true, but incomplete.

My old friend Jim Harding has worked in the energy racket for 35 years or so, originally at Friends of the Earth, then the California Energy Commission, then Seattle City Light, then I lose track. He has been viewing the nuclear resurgence with alarm and keeping carefully abreast of developments. He has also kept up with nuclear economics, which all but killed the enterprise in the United States a generation ago. He outlined seven myths in a talk and PowerPoint slides about uranium-fired electricity plants, which he delivered to the fiftieth anniversary of Euratom in Brussels in March 2007.

Nuclear power is cheap. Once you've got a plant up and running it's cheap to keep it running, but building new plants cheaply relies on a lot of shaky assumptions, including rapid construction with no delays, easy financing, no cost escalation during construction, cheap uranium, and a few others. If those assumptions don't pan out, a new reactor will be very expensive indeed and almost certain to be heavily subsidized with federal tax dollars. There are a lot better things to do with federal energy subsidies, such as increase development of renewables and efficiency.
Reactors can be standardized and construction practices will improve. This is a leap of faith that ignores shortages of skilled labor and some materials, as well as possible public resistance to both power plants and waste repositories.
The industry can scale up rapidly. As above, skilled labor would be a problem, also fuel supply: there may be plenty of uranium in the ground, but there's a severe shortage of mines, mills, and enrichment facilities.
Waste is no big deal. Eighty-five percent of the radioactivity in mined uranium survives as waste in the tailings. No reliable disposal method has been found and water supplies have been contaminated in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.
Reprocessing solves the supply problem. But reprocessing is about three times as expensive as starting with raw ore.
Reprocessing solves the waste problem. Again, very expensive, assumes leaving large amounts of dangerous strontium-90 and caesium-137 above ground for hundreds of years, and accelerates proliferation risks.
Alternatives cannot compete. This is a vast topic in itself, but wind power is growing rapidly (the U.S. led the world in new wind turbines in 2006), photovoltaic technology is progressing rapidly, and there's still enormous progress to be made in conservation. All those technologies are safer than nuclear technology.

Jim alluded to proliferation in Myth 6. I would emphasize it more. Just look at how the enrichment facilities in Iran and North Korea have got the world in a tailspin. And there's the matter of safety. Europe is still recovering from the Chernobyl disaster and that was 21 years ago. And the possibility of terrorists' flying a plane into a reactor is real.

There's no harm in taking another look at the nuclear option, but the look must be thorough, honest, and, as everyone says these days, transparent. Speaking only for myself, I'm confident that an honest exploration of the subject will once again reject nuclear power as too dangerous and too expensive.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has just produced a position paper that bolsters these contentions and adds the fact that "nuclear power could not make a substantial contribution to emission reductions in the U.S. for at least two decades."

Comments? Please keep 'em short.

PS: Our friend Bill McKibben is helping organize a series of events on April 14 aimed at getting people revved up to reverse global warming. Several of our Earthjustice staff will be participating. If you haven't already done so, check out StepItUp. It should be quite a day. And if you do go, take some pics and send them our way.

Tom Turner, Senior Editor
yourturn@earthjustice.org