Coalition Against Nuclear Energy » Climate Change

THIS IS URGENT IF YOU WANT A SAY IN SA’S ENERGY PLAN FOR THE NEXT 20 YEARS

admin — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:24:57 +0000

Dear Interested and Affected Parties YOUR INVOLVEMENT IS REQUIRED

The Department of Energy has finally issued the invitation for the much touted “broad consultation process” concerning its “IRP2” – basically the electricity / energy plan for this country for the next 20 years – a day BEFORE their deadline. This invitation arrived yesterday but that will not deter us from registering as stakeholders yet again to voice our opposition and reasons for opposition to the proposed inclusion of nuclear in the proposed energy mix for South Africa. But, WE NEED TO ACT QUICKLY.

For those who don’t know much about IRP2, there are web-links to articles on the IRP2 listed below to fill you in. But please ensure you register on the database of stakeholders ASAP for the pattern of recent times has shown that leaving it up to the next person or organisation, results in government turning its back on enlightened views to the detriment of this country’s future.

Over the past number of years we have relentlessly participated in all processes – EIAs, submissions to government or Parliament, presentations to energy regulators and policy makers, public hearings on energy policy etc only to find that pre-determined policies are riding rough-shod over democratic processes. Our petitions to the Speaker for Parliamentary debate over energy mix and nuclear policy have remained unheeded and indeed legislation enabling this lethal energy option has been Gazetted in spite of this. More recently the Energy Minister held a “nuclear stakeholders’” meeting in Cape Town to which she invited only ONE PERSON to represent the growing thousands of people in this country opposed to nuclear expansion while renewable alternative solutions remain the Cinderella option. Needless to say, his objections were dismissed and he was kicked out of the meeting.

You cannot allow the government to continue to be dismissive of whom it consults & recognise as stakeholders. Indeed the entire South African public is the biggest stakeholder!!

YOUR VOICE COUNTS. Please register! Help to drive the message that WE DO NOT WANT NUCLEAR ENERGY IN SOUTH AFRICA!

* * *

Herewith the invitation:

INVITATION TO REGISTER ON THE DATABASE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY: IRP2

The Department of Energy hereby calls on all interested parties to register on its database of stakeholders for inclusion in the consultation process for the development of the IRP2 for Electricity 2010.

All interested residents, businesses, groups and sectors are requested to:

1. Indicate their institution;

2. Core business;

3. Area of interest in the IRP;

4. Preliminary position in their areas of interest; and

5. Contact person/s and contact details

Interested parties are requested to submit the above-mentioned information to the office of the Director-General by the 20th April 2010. Such information may be faxed, emailed or posted.

Contact Person:

Ms Yolisa Mapekula

Department of Energy

Private Bag X 19

Arcadia

0007

Tel: 012- 444 4063

Fax: 012- 444 4505

Email: yolisa.mapekula@energy.gov.za

_____________________________________________________________________________

Some reading matter on the IRP2 and why your involvement is so important:

Cloud over power plan -Mar 19 2010

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-03-19-cloud-over-power-plan

Energy Department to publish IRP2 by June

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/maqubela-2010-02-24

Inter-Ministerial Committee gives nod to IRP2 consultation plan – 31 March 2010

http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2010/10040110051002.htm

Minister reassures business IRP2 will include broad consultation
April 7, 2010

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=552&fArticleId=5419352

Nuclear deal back on track-Mar 05 2010

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-03-05-nuclear-deal-back-on-track

SA outlines consultation process for 20-year energy plan

http://www.polity.org.za/print-version/sa-outlines-consultation-process-for-20-year-energy-plan-2010-04-01-1

300+ NGOS SAY NO TO MICKEY MOUSE CLIMATE “SOLUTIONS”

Pelindaba Working Group — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:31:30 +0000

by Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Thanks to everyone who signed the nukes/climate statement for release at the negotiations in Poznan, Poland. More than 300 organizations and more than 1200 of you signed as individuals. We appreciate your support! Below is the press release for the action in Poznan where the statement was released. Please feel free to send to your own local media. At the bottom of the release are links where you can obtain a formatted copy of the statement and a list of the organizational signers.

It can no longer be said that nuclear energy is acceptable anywhere in the world. Globally opposition to nuclear energy is mounting.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
**************************************************
Poznan, Poland. Three dozen environmental leaders from 16 countries braved icy cold weather on Wednesday morning in front of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Meeting in Poznan, Poland where they called nuclear power “a Mickey Mouse solution” to climate change. The activists were carrying banners and posters with lively slogans including “Don’t Nuke the Climate,” “No Nuclear Power in The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)” and “Nuclear Power, No Thanks!”

Most were wearing t-shirts with the familiar “Mickey Mouse ears” emblazoned with the radiation symbol. The activists, representing non-governmental organizations from nearby European countries and from as far away as Taiwan, South Korea, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and California, announced the release of a global call for the elimination of proposals to include nuclear power as an approved investment for greenhouse gas mitigation in the 2nd commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol of the UNFCCC.

In only one week, over 300 NGOs representing millions of individuals from 50 countries in every corner of the planet signed on to the public appeal to keep the nuclear power option out of the climate talks.

Spokespeople from the four organizers of today’s action made their case throughout the morning by talking one-on-one to hundreds of government delegates and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as they entered the conference site for morning sessions.

Speaking to the press, Sabine Bock, coordinator of energy and climate protection for Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF) said: “Nuclear energy has proven in the past that it is a threat not only to our health and the environment, but also to human rights.”

“In our work at WECF with local communities,” Bock continued, “we have encountered severe health problems and human rights abuses of populations due to the harmful effects of nuclear energy and radiation.” Bock added: “We can’t understand why governments still promote this dangerous technology rather than taking the opportunity to develop safe and sustainable new, renewable, and clean energy solutions.”

Jan Van de Putte, Nuclear Campaign Coordinator for Greenpeace described nuclear power as an obstacle to effective climate protection saying that money invested in nuclear power is not nearly as effective as money invested in wind power, for example.”

“Nuclear power is a dangerous and dirty energy source – it provides too little energy for mitigation at too slow a pace and at too great a cost.” Van de Putte continued, “the cost per Kwh of nuclear power is double that of wind energy. It just doesn’t make sense to pursue this outdated energy source.”

Vladimir Slivyak, Co-Chair of Ecodefense Russia, called upon his national government as well as other delegations to stop promoting nuclear power into the Kyoto Protocol via provisions for Joint Implementation and the Clean Development Mechanism. “78 % of Russians are opposed to nuclear power,” Slivyak said. “We demand that the Russian delegation stop any plans to develop new nuclear plants.” “We further call on all governments to stop new nuclear development.”

Claire Greensfelder, Deputy Director of the International Forum on Globalization of San Francisco, California, said: “Despite year after year of rejection by the state parties to the Convention, the nuclear industry (and a small group of states) continues to promote the economic and public health disaster of nuclear power.” Greensfelder continued: “We also have grave concerns about the health and environmental impacts of increased uranium mining, milling and nuclear waste storage, much of which is on indigenous peoples’ lands, many of whom are opposed to continued nuclear development. Indigenous peoples’ right to free prior and informed consent of development on their lands, as established by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, (passed in the UN General Assembly in September 2007), must be taken into consideration.”

Holding a colorful homemade banner proclaiming “No Fishy Nukes!,”, Gloria Hsu, Chair, of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union (TEPU) said: “Using nuclear power for CO2 reduction is the same as drinking some poison to quench your thirst.”

“We have managed thus far to keep nuclear power out of the Kyoto Protocol,” said Peer de Rijk, executive director of World Information Service on Energy (WISE), speaking from Amsterdam. “We will continue to do whatever we can to achieve the same for a much needed post-Kyoto agreement. Nuclear energy is a deadlock, blocking real solutions. Don’t nuke the climate!

A copy of the statement can be found on NIRS’ website at http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/pa_nuclearaction9dec17h1.pdf

A list of the organizational signers can be found on NIRS’ website at http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/nonuclearcdm_signons_10dec08press-pdf.pdf

—————————————————————-
Thanks for all you do!

Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
nirsnet@nirs.org

ESKOM’s NUCLEAR DECISION IS NO CAUSE FOR OPTIMISM

Pelindaba Working Group — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:27:03 +0000

- Government still supports nuke plans & its nuke industry is likely to turn to dangerous tactics like U-enrichment & radioactive waste to fund its ambitions

5 December 2008There is little reason for over optimism about Eskom’s decision today not to invest in foreign companies for the Nuclear-1 project plant while the government remains committed to its nuclear power programme.

The Board of Eskom Holding Limited announced its decision on December 5 not to proceed with the proposed investment in Nuclear-1 project due to the magnitude of the investment. The proposed Nuclear 1 project would have resulted in the construction of the country’s second pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant. Koeberg Power Station is South Africa’s first and only nuclear power station.

There remains a deliberate silence over the ill-conceived experimental Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) which has already cost taxpayers over R16 bn (some estimates put this figure closer to R32 bn), and the nuclear industry’s stated intention to re-launch uranium enrichment plant at Pelindaba and “reprocess” radioactive waste to fund nuclear power projects.

The country stopped enriching uranium in 1997 following the dismantling of its apartheid-era nuclear weapons programme.

Nuclear officials have repeatedly said they intend planting up to 36 PBMRs throughout South Africa and elsewhere in Africa and, we fear, intend to trade and traffic in radioactive waste to fund this.

Already the mechanism exists for an untouchable and virtually privatised State-run business via a Radioactive Waste Management Agency, which was approved this year.

Officials in the nuclear industry and Minerals & Energy have declared government’s intention to re-launch extremely hazardous and highly energy intensive uranium enrichment & reprocessing plans, and sold the notion by using words like “recycling”, “sustainable” and “renewable”. The DME’s Nuclear Chief Tseliso Maqubela sold the idea to government last year by announcing that despite the hefty costs of building a uranium enrichment plant, its “profits are big”.

The approved radioactive waste Smelters at Pelindaba await licensing despite long-standing opposition for fear that these will be commercialised, leading to nuclear waste dumping by other nuclear countries on South Africa for profit.

In addition, former Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin announced some time back that old Russian nuclear warheads will be “brought in to fuel the PBMRs”.

Questions remain unanswered over the brazen “military-styled” attacks by two armed groups last November on the heavily guarded Pelindaba Complex which is stores hundreds of tons of weapons-grade radioactive spent uranium fuel (HEU) enough to build a dozen atomic bombs. International reports claim the attackers were after the HEU and had inside help. South Africa has been implicated in nuclear-trafficking rings in at least three trials in the recent past.

South Africans can only rest once the nails are hammered into the coffin of the Nuclear Energy Bill, the PBMR and calls for South Africa to hand over its HEU for international safekeeping are heeded.

(Below you’ll find some of the recent news reports on Eskom’s decision.)

ISSUED BY:

Dominique GilbertCoordinatorPELINDABA WORKING GROUP& member of the COALITION AGAINST NUCLEAR ENERGYhttp://www.cane.org.za

___________________________________

(A reflection of how inane the electricity debate here remains… not even a mention of who is really responsible for guzzling SA electricity, just a stupid prediction of ‘decades of darkness’…)

SA set for decades of darkness

December 06, 2008 Edition 1

by Thabiso Thakali, www.iol.co.za

South Africa faces up to two decades of electricity crises after Eskom decided to pull the plug on the construction of a second nuclear power station, experts have warned.

Eskom announced yesterday that it had decided not to proceed with the proposed building of its second nuclear power station because of the magnitude of the investment.

Environmentalists called it a “watershed moment” in South Africa’s history of energy supply, but energy experts said it meant the electricity crisis was going to remain in the country for at least the next 15 to 20 years.

Andrew Kenny, an independent energy expert, said the decision means South Africans will have to keep their candles handy for many more years.

“We are already struggling with a very low reserve margin and they(Eskom) are basically telling us that we will run out of capacity again in the near future.”

Kenny said although capital costs for building a nuclear power station were higher than those for a coal-fired power station, it would cost less to run and maintain such a plant considering it would last longer than a coal-fired plant.

However, Tristen Taylor, a policy officer with Earthlife Africa, said by cancelling its plans to build a new reactor Eskom has saved the country from “economic ruin”.

Eskom spokesman Tony Stott said the decision did not mean Eskom would no longer consider building nuclear power stations.

“We now have a downturn in the economy which means we have a leeway of about 12 to 18 months in terms of how quickly we need to build power stations as per the projections made,” he said.

“And in terms of government’s nuclear policy and commitments to the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative of SA (AsgiSA) government wanted more local companies to take part in the project.”

He said the decision would have no implications for the development of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR). But he warned that the electricity grid would remain tight going forward unless consumption levels were reduced by the required 10%.

Stott said the government and Eskom would now review a 4% projection growth on electricity demand given that a lot of manufacturing companies had now indicated they would cut down on their production.

Eskom had hoped to raise R300 billion for its expansion programme in the next five years but according to Stott, the utility’s balance sheet is not strong enough to handle this scale of spending.

This is largely because, Stott added, Eskom was unable to get the 60% electricity tariff hikes earlier this year. “Rating agencies downgraded us and therefore we couldn’t get the money we hoped to raise,” he said.

As part of its long-term plans to double its generation capacity by 2025, Eskom had hoped the first of the proposed nuclear power plants would add about 3 500 megawatts of capacity to its grid.

Koeberg power station is the only nuclear power station and two groups of companies led by French company Areva and US-based Westinghouse were bidding for the construction of the proposed plant.

Serge Lafont, Areva South Africa chairman, said the company was disappointed by Eskom’s decision even though he said they remained committed to being Eskom’s partner in the future.

“You must understand that when we put up the bid we did so with intent to win,” he said. “So this is like a loss to us but that is the nature of life. Government has said it is still willing to continue with nuclear as part of its energy mix therefore we remain hopeful that we will still be Eskom’s partner.”…………………………………………

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=561&fSetId=262&fArticleId=4747885

Nuclear powers on without Eskom
December 5, 2008

Johannesburg – South Africa remains committed to its nuclear power programme despite Eskom’s decision not to proceed with the construction of a second nuclear power plant, a government official said on Friday.

“The South African government remains committed to introducing nuclear because we have to deal with our carbon footprint and we have to diversify our energy mix,” Portia Molefe, director general at the Department of Public Enterprises told Reuters and other reporters present at the announcement.

Sapa reported that Eskom will not proceed with its proposed investment in the Nuclear-1 project due to the magnitude of the sum involved, the parastatal said on Friday.

The proposed Nuclear 1 project would have resulted in the construction of the country’s second pressurised water reactor nuclear power plant.
Koeberg Power Station is South Africa’s first and only nuclear power station.

Eskom said that, as a result, it has also terminated the tender process to select the preferred bidder for the construction of the Nuclear-1 project.

The two bidders, the EPR consortium led by Areva of France and the N-Powerment consortium led by Westinghouse of the USA, have been informed of Eskom’s decision.

“The board has expressed its appreciation to the two bidders for their interest in the Eskom build programme, and in particular their desire to participate in the nuclear industry in South Africa,” said Eskom chief executive Jacob Maroga.

“We were impressed by their professionalism throughout the bid process.” – Sapa and Reuters

ESKOM NOT IN A POSITION TO INVEST IN NUCLEAR

The Board of Eskom Holding Limited announced today its decision not to proceed with the proposed investment in Nuclear-1 project due to the magnitude of the investment. The proposed Nuclear 1 project would have resulted in the construction of the country’s second pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant. Koeberg Power Station is South Africa’s first and only nuclear power station.

The proposed Nuclear 1 project would have resulted in the construction of the country’s second pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant. Koeberg Power Station is South Africa’s first and only nuclear power station.

The Eskom Board has, as a result, terminated the commercial procurement process to select the preferred bidder for the construction of the Nuclear-1 project. The two bidders, the EPR consortium led by Areva of France and the N-Powerment consortium led by Westinghouse of the USA, have been informed of this decision of the Eskom Board.

“The Board has expressed its appreciation to the two bidders for their interest in the Eskom build programme, and in particular their desire to participate in the nuclear industry in South Africa. We were impressed by their professionalism throughout the bid process. We thank them for their patience and understanding during the past few months”, says Mr Jacob Maroga, Chief Executive of Eskom Holdings Limited.ENDS

Nuclear Power Has No Place in the Kyoto Protocol – NIRS petition

Pelindaba Working Group — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:02:00 +0000

Please sign this petition and alert your friends.

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Dear Friends,

Back in 2000, the nuclear power industry tried to obtain credits under the carbon trading schemes set up by the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI) provisions.

NIRS and our partners WISE (World Information Service on Energy), working with many environmental groups from across the world, along with a little help from Al Gore, who seemingly had just been elected President of the United States, beat back the industry at the Kyoto Protocol’s COP6 meeting in The Hague in November 2000.

Now the nuclear industry is trying again–at the upcoming climate negotiations in Poznan, Poland, the industry is again seeking to become eligible for lucrative carbon trading credits. And again, NIRS, WISE and the world’s environmental and clean energy movements are gearing up to stop them.

YOU CAN HELP! The statement below will be distributed to the delegates at the Poznan climate meeting. Please join us and sign your organization on by sending your name, organization, city, state and country if outside the U.S. to nirsnet@nirs.org by noon, Eastern time, on Sunday, November 30. (Note: we are only taking organization signatures for now).

Thanks for all you do!

Michael Mariotte

Executive Director

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Women in Europe for a Common Future

Greenpeace

International Forum on Globalization

World Information Service on Energy

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Friends of the Earth International

•

Nuclear Power Has No Place in the Kyoto Protocol

Financial Mechanisms:

It’s a Dangerous Obstacle to Climate Change Solutions

NGOs Call for Options to “Include Nuclear Activities”

in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)

and Joint Implementation (JI) to be removed.

(From Agenda Item 3a of the Accra Conclusions of the

Ad-Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for

Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol:

Item I-D, Option 2 in the CDM and Item II-B, Option 2 in the JI)

Nuclear Power contradicts Clean Development

The nuclear industry is using the issue of climate change and energy supply as a vehicle to win political and financial support for its dirty and dying sector. Even a massive, four-fold expansion of nuclear power by 2050 would provide only marginal reductions (4%) in greenhouse gas emissions, when we need global emissions to peak at 2015 and 50 – 80% cuts by 2050.

Nuclear energy’s ‘contribution’ to fighting climate change would come too late (long after 2020), with huge costs (US$ 10 trillion) and would create a myriad of other serious hazards related to accidents, waste and proliferation. These large costs and negative impacts make nuclear energy an obstacle to the necessary development of effective, clean and affordable energy sources – both in developing and industrialised countries.

Activities related to nuclear power must not be allowed to become eligible for the Kyoto Protocol’s flexible mechanisms in order to avoid:

Undermining climate protection by wasting time and taking resources away from more effective and clean solutions;

Dumping this expensive and unsafe technology on developing countries who would be landed with the associated economic and environmental impacts (accumulation of massive financial debts, increased dependency on foreign fuel and technologies, increased risk from reactor accidents and contamination); and

Decreasing global security as volumes of nuclear waste with no safe methods of disposal increase massively and both nuclear materials and technologies are spread.

Nuclear power is not only expensive and slow to develop,

it would provide only a marginal contribution to carbon mitigation

The OECD International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Energy Technology Perspectives 2008 Blue Map scenario¹assesses what energy mix could achieve a 50% reduction in carbon emission by 2050. The agency assumes a four-fold increase of nuclear power generation, from today’s 2,600 TWh/year to 9,900 TWh/year in 2050. But this would only reduce CO₂ emissions from the energy sector by 6% (around 4 % of overall greenhouse gases).

Even getting to this 6% would require unprecedented rates of growth, sustained over four decades. The nuclear industry would have to build an average of 32 large (1,000 MWe) nuclear reactors every year from now until 2050.

Compare this with the last decade’s average where the nuclear industry added 3000MW of new capacity a year. In the 1980′s, the decade of the industry’s fastest growth, it built an average of 17,000 MW a year² – still only half the rate needed to realise the IEA’s Blue Map scenario. But the IEA believes we can build 32,000MW capacity every year from now to 2050.

Then there’s the cost. Moody’s³ currently estimates the investment cost for new reactors at
USD 7,500 USD/kW. Assuming this, the required 1,400 large new reactors would cost around
USD 10,500 billion – and this is only the upfront investment.

While nuclear power presents itself as the largest carbon free energy source, its potential role in carbon mitigation is very limited and is simply not worth taking, given all its risks and costs.

Nuclear energy’s massive problems and risks remain unsolved

Even today, running at one-tenth of the hypothetically required construction speed, the nuclear industry is struggling with serious problems and has hit many bottlenecks:

Massive technical problems and ever-rising costs have affected attempts to build new reactor units, for example both of the French EPR units – in Finland and France – have experienced years of delays and billions in cost overruns already.⁴

Capacity to produce reactor components is limited to only several pieces a year and are only produced by half a dozen corporations in a handful of countries.⁵

Shortages in uranium supplies to fuel the existing fleet of reactors; the annual consumption reached 69,000 tonnes of uranium in 2007, compared to an annual production of just 41,300 tonnes in 2007.⁶ The world’s proven and reasonably assured uranium resources would only be able to cover current consumption for a few decades and, as they deplete, carbon emissions from the nuclear fuel chain would rise significantly.⁷

A crunch for raw materials, because of the high demand for large volumes of steel and concrete.

Negative health effects of ionising radiation. Recently published peer-reviewed research found statistically high incidence of childhood leukaemia in the close vicinity of nuclear power plants in Germany⁸ and the US⁹.

Dangerous impacts of uranium mining and milling threatens the lands, communities and health of Indigenous Peoples, many of whom (in Canada, the US, Africa, India and Australia, inter alia) continue to protest the extraction of uranium on or near their homelands and territories

Lack of qualified engineers, inspectors and personnel to safely manage and oversee operations at the current scale.

Long lead-times for projects. It takes 10 to 15 years, even in countries with developed related infrastructure, to plan, approve, site and build a new reactor, not to mention bringing it online. It would take even longer in countries that are just starting their nuclear programs.

No safe disposal method for radioactive wastes that reactors have already produced, despite decades of research and money spent. In the past five years, the estimated costs of radioactive waste disposal grew by USD 40 billion in United States¹⁰and by GBP 27 billion in the United Kingdom,¹¹ with no guarantees that safe storage, at the end of the day, is really possible.

Growing proliferation problems: As stockpiles of separated plutonium increase, nuclear technologies and materials spread to new countries. International safeguards are under-resourced and structurally weak. It is only a question of time before they become accessible to terrorist groups. One large reactor can produce 200 kgs of plutonium every year – enough for two dozen nuclear weapons.

All these factors raise additional scepticism about the actual potential of nuclear power

to really mitigate greenhouse gases on any useful scale and within a reasonable timeframe.

Nuclear power steals “time and money” that would be better invested in energy efficiency and renewable technologies

Expensive, dirty and hazardous nuclear power stands in the way of clean and sustainable solutions.

It could take USD10 trillion or more to build enough reactors to produce 9,900 TWh of “nuclear electricity” as projected under the International Energy Agency (IEA) 2008 “Blue Map” scenario. Building enough wind farms to produce the same amount of electricity, for example, would cost USD 6 trillion at current prices, for a savings of USD 4 trillion. And, these costs would decrease over time.

Wind power has no associated fuel costs and does not require expensive dismantling of its power plant at the end of its life and long term disposal of radioactive waste as is required in the decommissioning of a nuclear power plant. Other calculations show that, compared to nuclear, wind power at today’s costs replaces twice as much carbon per invested dollar and energy efficiency measures three to six times more.¹²

Even the IEA’s 2008 Blue Map scenario itself shows that, while massive nuclear expansion reduces carbon emissions from the energy sector by 6%, the potential of renewable energy sources is around four times greater, and the potential of energy efficiency six times greater. It is clear by these numbers which technology deserves the priority for investment.

Lastly is the issue of time. Energy efficiency measures can be implemented in months. A wind farm can be planned and built in one year. Nuclear reactors take one to two decades to plan and build.

Every dollar invested in nuclear power means a dollar less invested in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources – sources that can not only replace several times more carbon for the same cost, but also achieve the desired carbon reduction more rapidly.

Renewable energy sources can easily provide power to remote areas with underdeveloped infrastructure and can be implemented quickly while supporting local job development.

In contrast, large nuclear power plants are often not compatible with established grids and infrastructure in developing countries. Various institutions have recently warned developing countries against unrealistic expectations from nuclear energy plans.

“You should go for it [renewable energy]. It is cheaper than investing in nuclear development.” ¹³

- Ferran Tarradellas Espuny, spokesman for the EU Energy Commissioner, speaking about

renewable energy projects in South East Asia.

“Nuclear energy is not the panacea for tackling global warming. Even if you set aside the problem of long-term waste storage and the danger of operator accident and the vulnerability to terrorist attack, you still have two others that are more difficult. The first problem is one of economics…..The second is nuclear weapons proliferation. For eight years when I was in the White House, every problem of weapons proliferation was connected to a reactor program.”

– Al Gore, Former Vice President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, 2007

Our Conclusion:

Too little, too late, too expensive, and just too dangerous:

Nuclear power is not a suitable answer to climate change and should be removed as an investment option for the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation strategies

To endorse our call, or for more information, contact by email or, where indicated, by mobile, in Poznan:

Sascha Gabizon, Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF), sascha.gabizon@wecf.eu,

+49-172-8637586 (mobile in Poznan)

Claire Greensfelder, International Forum on Globalization (IFG), cgreensfelder@ifg.org,

+1-510-917-5468 (mobile in Poznan)

Thomas Breuer, Greenpeace, Thomas.Breuer@de.greenpeace.org

Peer de Rijk, World Information Service on Energy (WISE) , peerder@gmail.com

Michael Mariotte, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, nirsnet@nirs.org

References:

1 International Energy Agency, Energy Technology Perspectives 2008 (Paris: IEA, 2008)

2 International Atomic Energy Agency’s PRIS database, http://www.iaea.org/programmes/a2/index.html

3 New Nuclear Generating Capacity – Potential Credit Implications for U.S. Investor Owned Utilities, Moody’s Corporate Finance, May 2008

4 Nucleonics Week, Platts, 4 September 2008; Detailed briefings and references at http://www.greenpeace.org

5 Platts Nucleonics Week publications; Nuclear Engineering International; http://www.areva.com .

6 See World Nuclear Association, online: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf23.html .

7 Benjamin Sovacool, “Valuing the greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power” (2008) 36 Energy Policy 2940.

8 Spix C et al, Case-control study on childhood cancer in the vicinity of nuclear power plants in Germany 1980- 2003, European Journal of Cancer (December 2007)

9 Joseph Mangano, Janette D. Sherman: Childhood Leukaemia Near Nuclear Installations, European Journal of Cancer Care No 4 Vol 17, July 2008

10 Platts, Nuclear Fuel, 11 August 2008.

11 Guardian, online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/18/nuclearpower.energy .

12 Amory Lovins, The Nuclear Illusion, May 2008.

13 http://www.bangkokpost.com/121008_News/12Oct2008_news08.php

Urgent call to Parliament to debate nuclear policy before Nuke Bill is gazetted

Pelindaba Working Group — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:25:12 +0000

- New President Kgalema Motlanthe has yet to be briefed

11 November 2008

Opponents of the Nuclear Energy Policy are hereby notified to back calls for an urgent Parliamentary debate because the Bill has completely by-passed the National Assembly.

Five days to complete plenaries remain and the Bill is expected to be gazetted sometime this November.

In a letter to the Speaker of Parliament urging for this debate, CANE chairman Mike Kantey wrote: ”The future of this country, Madame Speaker, depends on your and your party’s accurate assessment of the popular mood and we believe that, if you refuse to accept such a debate on nuclear power at this precise time, it will send a clear signal to the masses of people who were promised a “better life for all” in the 1990s. “We do not believe that spending over R1-trillion on a nuclear strategy will be compatible with combating rampant crime and HIV/AIDS, delivering basic services to the poorest of the poor (including refugees!), and developing a sound and affordable education, health and public transport system. “We therefore appeal once again to heed the Honourable Member’s call for an open debate on nuclear policy.”

In his letter to the Speaker on 5 November reiterating his call for nuclear debate in Parliament, the DA’s Gareth Morgan said that the Policy had recently been completed by the Minerals and Energy Department despite having received no input from the country’s MPs.

“It betrays many of the principles of the 1998 Energy White Paper, which clearly states the ‘government will ensure that decisions to construct new nuclear power stations are taken within the context of an integrated energy policy planning process, with due consideration given to all relevant legislation, and the process subject to structured participation and consultation with all stakeholders’, Morgan wrote.

The Pelindaba Working Group said the Bill is NOT a democratically produced policy. Mbeki’s Cabinet had made a unilateral decision to approve the Policy. A draft was submitted for public comment – none of which were ever made public and many not even acknowledged by the DME or it Nuclear Chief Tseliso Maqubela who maintained most submissions were “pro”.

Maqubela had failed to respond to several challenges over his contentious statements and simply ignored numerous lengthy submissions and calls for an all-inclusive summit on the issue.

During the public hearings on the National Energy Bill in August, DME officials maintained the National Energy Policy was not on the Parliamentary schedule for this year and was in abeyance until next year. So when was this Policy approved? Has it been written into law? What, if any, announcements were ever made?

A nuclear industry website announced the Bill will be gazetted this November.

Even new South African President Kgalema Motlanthe has yet to be briefed on the new nuclear build programme. This was admitted to journalists in Pretoria by Minerals Minister Buyelwa Sonjica yesterday. She blamed this on the recent political upheaval and added that the nuclear project was still enjoying top priority.

Asked if the current economic turmoil would delay the project, Sonjica said that the impact of the financial meltdown’s effect on the local economy would be investigated, and a solution, if needed, “would be found”.

If ever there an issue that warrants focus in the coming election campaigns, this is it!!

Members are urged to contact their MPs to lobby for this debate and against the adoption of the Nuclear Energy Policy.

Call to put nuke policy to Parliament

By John Yeld
7 November 2008

The new national nuclear policy which the government will reportedly gazette before the end of this month has completely bypassed Parliament and ordinary MPs have not had any input into its formulation, says the opposition DA.

It is now asking the Speaker to place the policy on Parliament’s agenda.

The move coincides with concern by some “interested and affected parties” that they are still not being given enough time to respond to the environmental impact assessment report for the controversial Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) “mini” nuclear demonstration project that Eskom wants to build at Koeberg. The already-extended deadline for comment is Friday. DA environment spokesperson Gareth Morgan said the government’s announcement of its preferred bidder to construct a new conventional nuclear power station – “Nuclear 1″, the first of what is expected to be a series of new conventional nuclear facilities in addition to the PBMR project – was “imminent”.

Also, the “National Nuclear Policy for the Republic of South Africa” recently completed by the Minerals & Energy department, was apparently about to be published in the Government Gazette, despite having received no input from the country’s MPs, said Morgan.

“Therefore a debate on the matter is crucial.”

The process of formulating the new policy had been entirely driven by the Cabinet, he added.

“It’s true there’s an energy crisis in South Africa and increased generation from nuclear may very well have a role to play in South Africa’s energy future.” But Morgan said there were serious issues that needed to be addressed. These included the true costs of nuclear power generation and its effects on tariffs.

· This article was originally published on page 5 of Cape Argus on November 07, 2008 Source: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=6&art_id=vn20081107114953731C601440

Necsa invites tenders for coal supply

admin — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 09:11:34 +0000

Ironically, Necsa invites tenders for coal supply

By: Matthew Hill
Published: 7 Sep 07 – 10:06
South Africa’s nuclear research and development body, the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa), has invited tenders for companies to supply it with coal.

Strange as it may sound at surface value, given that this is a nuclear corporation, Necsa’s need for coal is explained by the steam-producing boilers that it uses to supply its factories, in Pelindaba, near Hartebeestport dam.

Procurement head Johan Deetleefs said that Necsa consumed, on average, 230 t of coal a month.

The closing date for tenders was September 17.

South Africa is embarking on a nuclear drive, which could see five new nuclear power stations built in the next twenty years.

The country’s only existing nuclear power station is at Koeburg, near Cape Town, which has two reactors.

Source: http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article.php?a_id=116425

What have you got against nuclear power, anyway?

admin — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 02:58:45 +0000

What have you got against nuclear power, anyway?

Sooner or later, at least one member of the audience that has turned out to see me present Al Gore’s climate change slide show wants to know why I haven’t included nuclear power in the list of technologies that can help cut our carbon emissions. The question is usually put by the likes of a retired engineer who actually understands the physics and technical aspects of nuclear power. I have to admit that I don’t welcome the question, because it tends to lead to a drawn-out debate at what is already a longer evening that most attendees bargained for. But I do have an answer: time.

http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2007/08/what_have_you_got_against_nucl.php?utm_source=email-a-friend&utm_medium=email

by James Hrynyshyn

I’ve written before about some of the problems with nuclear power, without really scratching the surface. There are so many dimensions to the problem – waste storage, proliferation, construction capacity, the glacial pace of the regulatory context, and of course, economics – that it’s easy to overlook the simplest drawback of all.

It’s beginning to look like the industry really is on the brink on a revival, though, so we’d better come to grips with these issues soon. There’s a campaign in New Zealand, where CO2 emissions have grown 50 percent since 1990, to make nuclear power a major plank in the country’s future energy portfolio. The Philippines is making similar noises. The director general of South Africa’s department of minerals and energy wants to put his country’s large uranium deposits to work in domestic reactors in a big way. Last year, Toshiba bought 77 percent of Westinghouse Electric, which makes nuclear power plants, in anticipation of an industry resurgence. And the government of Kazakhstan wants 10 percent of that piece of the pie. (Now, that can’t be a good idea…)

A look at the South African plan exposes the flaw in all these schemes. According to South Africa Press Agency report:

The draft document sets out a phased approach to creating a nuclear industry. This includes proposals up to 2010 of maintenance and enhancement of current nuclear infrastructure, research into advanced nuclear energy systems and promotion of uranium exploration and mining.

In the following years up to 2015, new nuclear power plants would be constructed. These would come into operation by 2025 and advance nuclear energy systems would be commercialised.

So, no new nukes until 2025. Back in the United States, it takes at least a decade and sometimes closer to 15 years to choose a site for a new 1 GW nuclear power plant, conduct the environmental assessment, hold the regulatory hearings, commission the project, build the plant, test it and bring it up to full power.

The U.S. government recently produced $10 billion in subsidies to help get 6 nukes built over the next decade. That’s a lot of taxpayer clams for just half a dozen plants. The American nuclear industry only has the capacity to build two a year in any case. But these are side issues.

The real problem is that serious climate change, the kind that could send the planet into a rapid and intolerable regime shift, could be upon us in as little as 40 years. In order to mitigate some of that warming, we’ll have to start bringing down our carbon emissions long before that. The reason I don’t mention nuclear power in the list of alternative energy sources that can make a significant contribution to that goal is, even in the best-case scenario, we can’t build enough nukes fast enough.

Again, realistically, we can’t expect to see any new nukes online before 2017 or even 2022. By then, solar power (photovoltaics) could well be economically competitive not only with unsubsidized nuclear power, but oil, gas and even coal. Wind power is already cost-competitive, and there is enormous potential for improving energy efficiency between now and then. All those approaches, with a (very) little bit of biodiesel and ethanol and what have you thrown into the mix, and we might just be able to give ourselves a few years of breathing room to make the enormous changes in lifestyle, and technological breakthroughs, that a low-carbon economy will demand.

We could, of course, do all those things the environmentalist like, and still build more nukes, so they can help when they do finally come on line. But before we do that, we’d have to figure out how to:

1. Reduce the massive carbon emissions associated with mining and refining natural uranium, which is 99.3 percent U-238 and can’t be used in your standard American light-water reactor until the U-235 content is upped from less than .0.7 % to something like 3 %. This is not an minor problem. In fact, some uranium refining might need a couple of coal-fired plants to supply the energy to refine the uranium. You could instead use straight U-238 in a CANDU reactor, but they use heavy water as a moderator and coolant, and again, producing heavy water is energy-intensive.
2. Safely bury the radioactive waste. The official plan is to stick it all in the Yucca Mountains in Nevada, but the transportation and sequestration details have yet to be worked out.
3. Secure a reliable supply or uranium. A recent report from the International Atomic Energy Association concludes: “The message is clear: long lead times will be the rule rather than the exception, and exploration will have to accelerate to ensure a stable supply of relatively low cost uranium.” In other words, we don’t have a reliable supply at the moment, not one to meet even modest industry growth rates of 1 to 3% a year. There is a virtually inexhaustible supply of uranium in seawater, but again, extracting it is energy-intensive, and we’re back to square one.
4. Free the industry from massive government assistance. Nuclear utilities are the only ones who don’t have to cover their own liability costs. How long with this be tolerated by investors in “clean tech” who are eager to see some return on their fuel-cell, cellulosic ethanol bacteria reactor, nanotech solar panel and tidal generator schemes? Not long, I suspect. This week’s Nature, writing about new U.S. legislation that woul further assist the industry, notes that

Under the legislation, the federal government could be liable to pay back loans covering up to 80% of construction costs if the utility defaults. Not everyone thinks that this is the best course of action. “This is a huge risk for taxpayers,” says Michele Boyd, legislative director at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group in Washington DC.

All things considered, we can’t afford to embark on a path that leaves people with the misleading impression that we’ve solved the climate change problem. And nuclear fission, whatever its merits, simply can’t replace enough oil, gas and coal-fired plants to make a significant difference, not in time to forestall catastrophic climate change.

Source: http://a4nr.org/library/globalwarmingclimatechange/08.15.2007-islandofdoubt

Why Nuclear Energy Is not the Great Green Hope

admin — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 02:55:34 +0000

Why Nuclear Energy Isn’t the Great Green Hope

As the planet warms, leaders from Washington to Beijing are pushing nuclear power as a clean alternative to coal. But this new strategy for fighting climate change has a fatal flaw: It can’t possibly work.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3896

When U.S. President George W. Bush speaks of using technology to fix climate problems, he often focuses on nuclear energy. Last month he said that if we’re “truly interested in cleaning up the environment, or interested in renewable sources of energy, the best way to do so is through safe nuclear power.” While Bush is talking up nuclear energy, China and India are racing ahead to build dozens of new plants. Even many environmentalists, concerned about emissions from coal-fired power plants, have begun holding their noses and are coming out in reluctant support of a technology they once reviled. But their original instincts were right: Nuclear energy is not the silver-bullet solution to save us or the environment.

Today, nuclear energy produces 16 percent of the world’s electricity, compared with coal, which produces 39 percent and hydropower, which produces 19 percent. In the United States, the good news is that the nuclear industry has maintained its 20 percent share of the electricity market by increasing the power rating of many of its 104 nuclear power reactors while decreasing the time required for shutdown for refueling and maintenance.

But during the past 30 years, reactor construction stagnated in the United States because of large uncertainties in capital costs as well as red tape and legal challenges in obtaining a license to operate a reactor. Although legislative changes in 1992 and more recently in 2005 have tried to streamline the licensing process and create incentives to entice investors, the industry has not had an order for a new nuclear power plant since 1978, and that order was subsequently canceled. The last completed U.S. reactor was Watts Bar 1, which was ordered in 1970 and began operations in 1996. Although many U.S. reactors have received operating-license renewals for an additional 20 years of life, by 2030 the reactor fleet will be in serious disrepair if no further reactors are built. The United States hopes to build upward of 30 reactors in the next couple of decades. However, because the incentives in the 2005 legislation are limited, only a handful of new reactors will probably be built, but not many more than that.

China and India produce an even more modest share of their electricity from nuclear energy, only about 2 and 3 percent, respectively. Though they can realistically aim to boost this share up to 4 to 5 percent by 2030, both countries will continue to rely primarily on fossil fuels for electricity generation.

The truth is, it’s doubtful that nuclear energy, which produces its own unpleasant waste, can really be a major solution to climate change—or even the coming energy crunch, for that matter. Because worldwide electricity demand is predicted to grow by 85 percent by 2030, nuclear power would have to almost double its capacity just to maintain its current share of the energy mix. Even the most optimistic projections of nuclear power expansion do not foresee a much larger share for nuclear energy globally.

Nor will nuclear energy be a quick fix. If, as the scientists tell us, the deadline for turning around the level of greenhouse gases is truly a decade from now, then a nuclear renaissance will take too long to have a significant effect. Typically, U.S. nuclear plants have required around 10 to 12 years from start to finish. The industry predicts that future plants can be built in as little as four years, but the proof is in the actual construction.

Assuming the best estimates, a quick ramp-up of nuclear capacity will run into industrial bottlenecks; only a few companies in the world can now make reactor-quality steel, concrete, and other vital components. A rush to build could also create shortages in the skilled workers and qualified engineers needed to run plants safely. Not to mention that building nuclear plants at the rapid pace required would likely drive up capital costs, which are already higher than other electricity options, even given significant government subsidies.

There’s a better solution: energy efficiency. From an ideological standpoint, Bush seems convinced that increasing efficiency and reducing consumption are incompatible with economic growth. Yet, there is ample evidence that power generation in some countries—notably China and India, which most observers believe will account for huge increases in greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades—is woefully inefficient now. According to Harold Feiveson, a senior research policy scientist at Princeton University, China’s coal plants have an average efficiency of 23 percent. Improving the efficiency of China’s coal plants could go a long way toward ameliorating environmental damage; Feiveson estimates that bringing China’s coal plants up to 42 percent efficiency by 2030 could prevent the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as about 200 to 250 large nuclear reactors. Indian coal plants are slightly more efficient, but could similarly benefit from improvements.

Investments in more efficient power plants can pay off in growing the economy and shrinking the rate of greenhouse gas emissions. China and India, two major countries currently exempt from mandatory greenhouse gas reductions, could benefit from Western assistance in improving the efficiencies of their coal plants. These plants will provide a majority of China and India’s electrical generation in the coming decades despite the ambitious plans for a nuclear expansion. Much more cooperative work is urgently needed between the developed and the developing worlds to ensure that humanity has a better than “substantial” chance to counter climate change.

Charles D. Ferguson is a fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations and is the author of the Council Special Report “Nuclear Energy: Balancing Benefits and Risks.”

Sharon Squassoni is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Nuclear Power ‘Can’t Stop Climate Change’

admin — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 02:52:51 +0000

Nuclear Power ‘Can’t Stop Climate Change’

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which exists to spread the peaceful use of the atom, reveals in a new report that it could not grow fast enough over the next decades to slow climate change – even under the most favorable circumstances.

Nuclear power cannot solve global warming, the international body set up to promote atomic energy admits today.

The report – published to celebrate yesterday’s 50th anniversary of nuclear power – contradicts a recent surge of support for the atom as the answer to global warming.

That surge was provoked by an article in The Independent last month by Professor James Lovelock – the creator of the Gaia theory – who said that only a massive expansion of nuclear power as the world’s main energy source could prevent climate change overwhelming the globe.

Professor Lovelock, a long-time nuclear supporter, wrote: “Civilization is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear – the one safe, available, energy source – now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.”

His comments were backed by Sir Bernard Ingham, Lady Thatcher’s former PR chief, and other commentators, but have now been rebutted by the most authoritative organization on the matter.

Unlike fossil fuels, nuclear power emits no carbon dioxide, the main cause of climate change. However, it has long been in decline in the face of rising public opposition and increasing reluctance of governments and utilities to finance its enormous construction costs.

No new atomic power station has been ordered in the US for a quarter of a century, and only one is being built in Western Europe – in Finland. Meanwhile, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden have all pledged to phase out existing plants.

The IAEA report considers two scenarios. In the first, nuclear energy continues to decline, with no new stations built beyond those already planned. Its share of world electricity – and thus its relative contribution to fighting global warming – drops from its current 16 per cent to 12 per cent by 2030.

Surprisingly, it made an even smaller relative contribution to combating climate change under the IAEA’s most favorable scenario, seeing nuclear power grow by 70 per cent over the next 25 years. This is because the world would have to be so prosperous to afford the expansions that traditional ways of generating electricity from fossil fuels would have grown even faster. Climate change would doom the planet before nuclear power could save it.

Alan McDonald, an IAEA nuclear energy analyst, told The Independent on Sunday last night: “Saying that nuclear power can solve global warming by itself is way over the top.” But he added that closing existing nuclear power stations would make tackling climate change harder.

by Geoffrey Lean

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0626-05.htm

Nuclear greenwashing

admin — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 02:51:06 +0000

Nuclear greenwashing

Global warming has suddenly put nukes back on the agenda — but there’s a lot the industry isn’t telling you

By Amanda Witherell amanda@sfbg.com

Patrick Moore’s presentation isn’t as slick as Al Gore’s. The slides he shows lack a certain visual panache and don’t compare to the ones in An Inconvenient Truth. Moore himself seems a little frumpy, particularly as he peers out across the audience recently gathered in the Warnors Theatre in Fresno.

But attendees paid $20 to hear the former Greenpeace leader extol the benefits of nuclear energy as a clean, safe, reliable, economic, and — perhaps most important to the current political and media focus on global warming — emissions-free source of power.

It’s hard to imagine Moore at the helm of an inflatable boat steering into the line of a whaling ship’s fire, but that iconic Greenpeace image is exactly what he wants you to associate with him. The Vancouver, British Columbia, native is quick to tell you he’s a former leader of one of the most effective international activist organizations ever. But he said he’s older now and wants to be for things instead of against them.

What’s Moore for? Warding off the warming of the world. What does he think will do it? More nuclear power plants.

If there’s any great and unifying issue thrumming through the national psyche, defying political party lines and flooding the media filters these days, it’s global warming. While leaders argue left and right about nearly every issue that comes before them, there is at least consensus that something must be done about climate change.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped on that bandwagon last September when he signed into law Assembly Bill 32, mandating a 25 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020.

Thirty-one states recently agreed to join a voluntary greenhouse gas emissions registry similar to California’s, 10 northeastern states are creating a cap-and-trade market, and already half the country has laws requiring that a certain percentage of local power portfolios come from renewable energy.

The alternative-energy troops who’ve long been waiting in the trenches have stepped up to fight, armed with the tools they’ve been honing for years: solar panels, wind turbines, tidal power, and biofuels. They say new options and innovations abound for weaning the country off its fossil fuel habit.

But there are already critics who say those approaches aren’t going to be enough — and that we need to go nuclear against this planetary threat. And now they have some unlikely new allies.

Maybe you’ve seen the headlines touting the new nuclear push, running in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and all the daily syndicates. They all claim the same questionable facts: Nuclear power is clean and emissions free. It’s safe, reliable, and cost-effective. It isn’t contributing to global warming — and these days even the environmentalists like it.

James Lovelock, the renowned Gaia theorist, thinks nuclear energy will be essential to power the developing world. On a Sept. 13, 2006, airing of KQED’s Forum, he told host Michael Krasny, “I would welcome high-level nuclear waste in my backyard.”

During the hour-long program he said the dangers of radiation were exaggerated; there wasn’t that much waste generated; and in order to mitigate the increasing effects of climate change, we should “look at nuclear as a kind of medicine we have to take.”

Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, thinks nothing is more doomsday than global warming and told the Guardian he advised Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to start touting nuclear power as a solution.

“The nuclear industry needs a new green generation,” he told us. “My fellow environmentalists ought to be grateful to the nuclear industry for supplying 20 percent of our electricity.”

And then there’s Moore, the 15-year Greenpeace veteran who once put his body in the way of a seal hunter’s club and wrote in an April 16, 2006, Washington Post op-ed, “My views have changed and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

“Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.”

The bio for the Post piece identifies Moore as cochair of “a new industry-funded initiative, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which supports the use of nuclear energy.”

It’s one of the few articles that make such a disclosure, although more probably should. A survey by Diane Farsetta, a senior researcher at the Center for Media and Democracy, came across 302 recent articles mentioning Moore and nuclear power as a possible option for mitigating the effects of global warming.

Only 37 — a mere 12 percent — said he’s being paid to support nuclear power by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), a national organization of pro-nuke industries that’s hired Moore to front its nuclear renaissance.

Only the Columbia Journalism Review has drawn the further connection that Hill and Knowlton has been paid $8 million to help the NEI spread the word that the nukies have the silver bullet for solving global warming.

Hill and Knowlton knows a little something about pushing dangerous products. The company created the tobacco industry’s decades-long disinformation campaign about the effects of smoking. Veterans of that campaign then helped ExxonMobil try to bury the truth about global warming.

Before laughing these folks out of the reactor room, consider this: Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein, who’ve been against nukes in the past, are now suggesting nuclear energy needs to be considered in light of global warming.

Al Gore and Hillary Clinton have also made similar recent murmurings. Of all the major 2008 presidential candidates, only Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards have offered up energy plans that don’t include more nukes.

Eight states are working on pro-nuclear legislation, and although a bill to lift the moratorium on new plants in California was shot down in the Assembly’s Committee on Natural Resources, its sponsor, Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine), told us he intends to introduce it again and again until it passes.

In the meantime a private group of Fresno investors has signed a letter of intent with a nuclear power company to put a 1,600-megawatt nuclear plant in the San Joaquin Valley. So far the only thing stopping the group is the state’s 30-year-old moratorium, which says no new nuclear power plants may be built in California until a permanent solution to the waste is established. The investors are already working on a November 2008 ballot measure to end the ban and allow new nuclear plants.

A new nuclear plant hasn’t been built in the United States since 1978, when concerns about safety, cost, and the long-term waste management challenge (nuclear rods will still be deadly hundreds of thousands of years from now) overwhelmed the industry.

But if there were ever an opportunity for a nuclear renaissance, the threat of climate change has created one. And the poster child is Moore, a relatively innocuous Greenpeace exile who’s traveling around the country with a B-movie version of Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, speaking to communities and drumming up what he calls a grassroots coalition of mayors, business leaders, and community activists. He’s steadily convincing them we need more nuclear power by trading the classic doomsday scenario of a massive radioactive explosion for the creeping killer global warming.

“I’m aghast,” Dr. Helen Caldicott, an Australian who helped found Physicians for Social Responsibility and is one of the most prominent international critics of the dangers of nuclear energy, told us.

Caldicott, who’s authored several books on the subject, most recently Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer (2006), said, “I’ve never seen a propaganda exercise which is so fallacious. Both the politicians and the media are buying it.”

She and other nuclear watchdogs who’ve been patrolling the industry for more than 30 years say it’s anything but a safe, reliable, economic, and emissions-free silver bullet.

Let’s look at the facts.

SAFETY

When it comes to safety, Moore told us, “US nuclear power plant employees enjoy the so-called healthy worker effect: people employed at the plants have lower mortality rates from cancer, heart disease, or other causes and are likely to live longer than the general population.”

To support this claim, he cited a 2004 Radiation Research Society study of 53,000 workers. After reviewing it, Caldicott said, “I’m very suspect. There’s nothing here about people who are living with cancer.”

Caldicott admits there’s a void of data about the health of nuclear workers and people who live near plants. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn’t mandate baseline studies of cancer rates in areas surrounding the sites of nuclear facilities.

But people living near Three Mile Island, the Pennsylvania plant that came within minutes of a catastrophic meltdown in 1979, demanded studies, which found evidence of increases in thyroid cancer in the region. And Caldicott, in her recent book, pointed out that there are a number of things the government doesn’t want to admit. “To this day there is no available information about which specific isotopes escaped nor the actual quantity of radiation that was released,” she wrote, going on to detail how, for lack of sufficient data about the distance the radiation may have spread, scientists studied the rates in the livestock of nearby fields and found supporting evidence that the plume of poison spread as far as 150 miles away.

And of course, there’s Chernobyl, where a 1986 nuclear-plant disaster caused lasting health problems and contaminated a huge swath of what was then the Soviet Union.

The unavoidable fact is that the industry thus far has had two terrible, nightmarish accidents, one of which was catastrophic and the other very nearly so.

And every part of the nuclear-power cycle involves serious health risks.

“You want to get really sad?” asked Molly Johnson, a lifelong environmental justice activist and San Luis Obispo County resident. “Go to New Mexico, go to Arizona, see the families that are dying because of the uranium mining. Their water is irradiated from the uranium tailings that are still there…. Why would we continue that?”

These days intentional attacks are even more of a concern. But Moore isn’t sweating. He said he thinks a plane colliding with a power plant is unlikely, even though the 9/11 Commission Report found that al-Qaeda operatives at one point considered aiming for the Indian Point reactor in New York.

Even if a jet hit a plant, Moore insists, the plant would be strong enough to withstand a collision. “If you drove an airplane into that, it would just be one messed-up airplane you’d have to deal with,” he said.

Not exactly, say the critics.

“He is just dead wrong about reactor security. Breathtakingly misinformed,” said Dan Hirsch of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a public interest group that’s been studying nuclear power and proliferation issues for nearly four decades. “Virtually no reactor containment in the US was designed to withstand a hit by a jumbo jet. Significant parts of the plant essential to preventing a meltdown are outside containment anyway.”

Hirsch is speaking of power lines, which transmit electricity from the plant and also carry electricity to it — power that’s used to keep dangerous components cool and safe. If that power were cut off for any length of time, a meltdown could occur in the pools where explosive spent fuel is kept.

These spent-fuel storage areas — essentially big swimming pools where radioactive waste is kept underwater until a long-term storage facility is built — rely on a steady pumping of water to cool the superheated waste. All you’d have to do is stop that water pump, and there’d be a meltdown. And the storage areas don’t necessarily have the same fortified structures as the reactors.

Hirsch said, “A successful attack on a nuclear plant or, even worse, a spent-fuel pool would be the worst terrorist event to ever occur on earth by far, capable of killing over 100,000 people immediately and hundreds of thousands of latent cancers thereafter, contaminating an area the size of Pennsylvania for generations.”

There’s no immediate solution in sight for long-term storage, so these pools of deadly waste will likely remain on reactor sites for many years.

San Luis Obispo County’s Mothers for Peace recently sued the NRC over the newly established laws regarding protection against terrorist attacks, which only require plants to be able to ward off five potential external terrorists on the ground. It took 19 people to pull off the Sept. 11 attacks. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that power plant operators must also consider the possibility of an air attack when designing spent-fuel storage tanks.

Mothers for Peace is fond of noting that existing security measures aren’t what you’d call foolproof. During a recent earthquake, 56 of 131 sirens in the San Luis Obispo area — designed to alert residents of a possible accident at the plant — didn’t go off because the power was out and they aren’t backed up by generators or batteries.

When Mothers for Peace and the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility brought the failure to the attention of the NRC, the agency said that nothing is perfect and that the sirens over the course of 1,000 hours worked 99 percent of the time.

“Except the five hours you’d actually want them to work,” David Weisman of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility said.

Nuclear power is either a creeping killer or a sitting bomb. Wind farms and solar-panel arrays are not leaching poisons into the environment. They’re not direct targets for terrorist attacks, and if they were, the result wouldn’t be all that horrible. Imagine cleaning up a bombed wind farm versus a nuclear power plant.

“Wind farms are on nobody’s list of targets,” Weisman added. “If a windmill falls and there’s no one there to hear it, do you need an emergency evacuation plan?”

RELIABILITY

A centerpiece of the pro-nuke argument is that nuclear power is a baseload source, meaning it can generate energy all day, every day. Solar and wind, of course, rely on the cruel (and unpredictable) forces of nature to generate power.

But one could argue the same about nuclear power plants. They’re run by people — and the record of those operators isn’t encouraging.

Moore expressed great confidence in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: “They have very, very stringent requirements and regulations. It’s all there for anybody to see. All of these reactors are inspected regularly. There is no reason in my estimation to suspect the NRC of anything other than being a responsible watchdog agency. If you want to take the time to dig into it, you can find out what’s going on.”

David Lochbaum does take that time — and he’s found out a lot. After working for 17 years as a consultant to the NRC, he joined the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) as a nuclear-safety engineer. He spends his days combing NRC reports and documents and compiling studies on the safety of the industry. His experience and research have caused him to conclude that the commission can’t stay on top of the 103 plants in the country.

“We get a lot of calls from workers in the plants, and NRC employees that have safety issues they’re afraid to raise,” he said. “We had three calls last week. That’s a little more than usual, but we usually get 50 to 60 whistleblower calls a year.” He said sometimes the workers have already raised the issue internally but need an ally to force a remedy at the plant. Other times they’re afraid to speak about what they’ve seen without fear of retaliation.

Lochbaum authored a September 2006 study for the UCS titled “Walking the Nuclear Tightrope” on the issues of safety and reliability. It’s a chilling read; it carefully outlines how regulators have been complicit in allowing plants to operate far longer than they should and how these overstressed plants eventually have to be shut down for years to restore safety standards. He found that in the last 40 years plants have ground to a halt for a year or more on 51 occasions. In most cases it wasn’t a spontaneous incident but an overall decaying of conditions that compromised safety.

“Some observers have argued that the fact no US nuclear power reactor has experienced a meltdown since 1979 (during which time 45 year-plus outages have occurred) demonstrates the status quo is working successfully,” Lochbaum wrote. “That’s as fallacious as arguing that the levees protecting New Orleans were fully adequate prior to Hurricane Katrina by pointing to the absence of similar disasters between 1980 and 2004.”

One of the most recent and chilling examples is the 2002 outage of the Davis-Besse plant near Toledo, Ohio, where a hole the size of a football was discovered in the vessel reactor head. Only a half inch of steel remained to prevent a massive nuclear meltdown. The plant was overdue for a shutdown and an inspection and had been granted the extension by the NRC.

When asked what he thought about that close call, Moore said, “I didn’t think it was a close call. I thought it was a mechanical failure that should have been caught sooner. It was caught long before it became an accident or anything like that.”

“When you say close call, that means that nothing actually happened,” he concluded.

But when there’s a facility where an accident could lead to mass deaths, even close calls are grounds for concern. That’s why we have to hold nuclear plants to such high standards. And the fact that plants have to close so often to avoid disastrous accidents doesn’t say much for the reliability argument.

EMISSIONS

This may be the issue on which the pro-nukers make the most headway. Moore cites a number of international studies, posted on the NEI’s Web site, that show nuclear plants competing only with hydropower when it comes to emitting the lowest level of carbon dioxide. Even solar panels and wind turbines, when one factors in the entire energy process, emit more greenhouse gases, according to these studies, though all these power sources release significantly less than burning coal or natural gas.

The anti-nuke crowd says a true study has never been completed that quantifies the CO2 emissions from mining uranium and turning it into usable nuclear fuel. Both are heavily energy intensive. Additionally, they argue that transporting waste will incur even more CO2 emissions, whether it’s shipped across the sea for reprocessing in Europe or trucked across the country for burial in Yucca Mountain.

But the waste itself is also a huge issue. Although nuclear power plants don’t have bad breath, they do emit toxins — and it’s an unresolved issue as to where to put them. The current forecast for opening the Yucca Mountain repository is 2021. Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada opposes building the facility, and he’s pushing a bill that would require plants to keep the crud in their backyards.

“They’ve had 50 years to work on the waste issue,” Weisman said. “And the best solution they’ve come up with is, who do we not like enough to send it to?”

Either way, Moore thinks waste is not a problem. If anything, it should be reprocessed — he likes to call it “recycling.” Under that process, spent fuel is bathed in acid to separate out the usable plutonium. That can be followed by vitrification — a complex, energy-intensive process of suspending the highly radioactive and corrosive acid in glass, which is then sealed in expensive trash cans of steel and concrete and buried underground for at least 300 years, after which point he predicts it should no longer be a problem.

“It makes more fuel,” he said.

Actually, Hirsch said, “it makes more weapons-grade plutonium.” He argues that the last thing the nation should do is allow nuclear-plant operators to separate the plutonium and put it on the market, where it can be leaked for bomb making.

Additionally, there are a number of waste sites around the country that are slowly emitting what they’ve been designed — or not designed in some cases — to contain.

The worst is probably in Hanford, Wash., where decades’ worth of reprocessed spent radioactive fuel pushed the area beyond Superfund status into a “national nuclear waste sacrifice zone.

“Hanford is the most contaminated site in North America and one of the most significant long-term threats facing the Columbia River,” Greg deBruler, of Columbia Riverkeeper, wrote in the Fall 2006 issue of Waterkeeper, the group’s quarterly journal. “It’s difficult to comprehend the reality of Hanford’s 150 square miles of highly contaminated groundwater or its 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste sitting in 45-year-old rotting steel tanks.”

Much of that waste includes leftover reprocessed spent uranium fuel, which ate through its casks and poisoned the community’s drinking water.

Moore said, “It’s not as if everyone is dead. The nuclear waste has been contained.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

ECONOMICS

“The economics of nuclear power are well proven around the world. It is one of the most cost-effective forms of energy,” Moore said.

Just check the record. Of the 103 reactors that were built in the United States, 75 ran a total of $100 billion over budget. India more recently went 300 percent over budget on its 10 reactors. Finland is already 18 months behind and $1 billion over on a reactor.

Given this track record, the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration “Annual Energy Outlook 2005″ reported that “new plants are not expected to be economical.” They’re so risky, in fact, that not a single plant could have been built without the 1957 Price-Anderson act, which moves the liability for a nuke plant off its owners and onto US taxpayers. “If they were really economical, they’d be able to get insurance,” Weisman said. The bill was recently renewed.

The nuclear industry forges on unperturbed, claiming that new plants have been streamlined for easier construction. Additionally, the siting and licensing laws for plants have been changed to speed up the process by precluding public input. (Given the industry’s safety record so far, that’s not comforting.) Experts predict it will now take 10 years to build a new nuclear plant. Thirty-four licenses are currently pending at the NRC as utility companies race to secure the $8 billion the federal government set aside for subsidies.

“Imagine how many wind turbines that could buy,” said Harvey Wasserman, a longtime anti-nuke activist who recently authored the book Solartopia, which outlines a plan for completely renewable energy by 2030. In fact, renewables are far cheaper. Building the facilities to create one gigawatt of wind power costs about $1.5 billion; about two gigawatts could replace the Diablo Canyon Power Plant.

THE BOTTOM LINE

In the end, it comes down to money, and that’s where nuclear power may be the most vulnerable.

Sam Blakeslee, a Republican Assembly member from San Luis Obispo, introduced a bill last year that calls on the California Energy Commission (CEC) to conduct an in-depth study of the true costs of nuclear power to assess its viability as part of California’s future energy plans. The bill passed unanimously, and Schwarzenegger signed it.

“This will be cradle to grave,” said Weisman, of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, which has focused its scrutiny on the industry’s costs.

The group has long been suspicious of PG&E’s financial woes, which came to a head this past March when the California Public Utilities Commission allowed the company to use $16.8 million from ratepayers to fund its in-house study of relicensing its two nuclear plants. “The licenses won’t be up until 2023 and 2025, so why are they looking at relicensing now — and why does it cost $16.8 million when the state’s study is projected to cost $800,000?” Weisman asked.

Assemblymember Mark Leno (D–San Francisco) is introducing a bill this year that will undercut PG&E’s study before the CEC’s analysis is completed, which is expected to occur around November 2008.

“Our very simple idea here is that before any relicensing of our aging nuclear power plants can proceed, the CEC study be completed,” Leno said. “Clearly, PG&E is very eager to move forward its relicensing process. They have many years to accomplish that task.”

Leno said the stakes are too high and the inherent risks of the toxins already accumulated in seismic zones along the coast need to be carefully weighed against the prospects of generating even more waste. “We should proceed with absolute caution, forethought, and consideration.”

NOWHERE TO RUN

Those risks, that caution, are something that never leaves the minds of the people who live in the plants’ fallout zones, areas as vast as a steady breeze or trickling flow of water can make them. That’s really the problem with nuclear power plants. After 50 years there are still too many unknowns. In Moore’s lectures and during interviews and debates, the former Greenpeace activist likes to say more people are killed by car accidents and machetes than by nuclear power plants, but that mocks the magnitude of a meltdown.

A car accident kills at most a few people. A machete attack might kill one person. A nuclear accident has the potential to inflict casualties in the tens of thousands, maybe even millions, and to render entire cities uninhabitable. And while most of the time, most of the plants may be perfectly problem free, it only takes one accident to wreak environmental havoc.

These days opposition to nuclear energy isn’t about mass protests in the streets. “When KQED calls and asks for the sounds of a protest, I say that’s not how it happens,” Weisman said while showing a DVD of a Jan. 31 San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission meeting that droned on for more than 12 hours. The meeting ultimately resulted in what he’d hoped for: a continuing delay of PG&E’s permit to site new dry-cask storage tanks for thousands of tons of nuclear waste accumulating at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant. He and Rochelle Becker, the group’s director, sat through the whole thing. “That’s what protesting is now,” he said.

Becker, a pert, soft-spoken woman with the aging visage of the youngest grandmother in the room, said correctness is crucial. “Never, ever exaggerate. When they want to talk about safety issues and isotopes, we refer them to someone else because we don’t have that expertise. All we have is our credibility, and if we lose our credibility, we don’t have anything.”

THE PLUTONIUM PAYCHECK

Which makes what Moore is doing look like such a travesty.

“Maybe we should hire Hill and Knowlton,” joked James Riccio, Greenpeace’s nuclear-policy analyst in Washington, DC, on thinking about gearing up for a new wave of anti-nuke activism.

To Riccio, Wasserman, Weisman, Hirsch, Caldicott, and many others who spoke with the Guardian, Moore is nothing but a dangerous distraction who’s getting the wrong kind of attention. Wasserman disputed Moore’s credentials as a Greenpeace founder in the Burlington Free Press article “The Sham of Patrick Moore.”

When questioned by the Guardian, Moore called Wasserman a jerk. Moore said he’s still an activist — and in addition to parroting for the nuclear industry, he runs a sustainability consulting company, Greenspirit Strategies, which advises industries on controversial subjects like genetically modifying organisms, clear-cutting, and fish farming. His clients include hazardous waste, timber, biotech, aquaculture, and chemical companies, in addition to conventional utilities that process nuclear power and natural gas.

Moore insists he’s not hiding anything. “In every interview I do the reporter already knows that I’m cochair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition and that I work for the nuclear industry,” he told us.

But Moore did not identify himself as such during a lengthy interview with us until we asked. The disclosure was also missing during the long biographical presentation given to the folks in Fresno on Feb. 22, which did include pictures of his Rainbow Warrior days. Again, on May 24, Moore didn’t mention his plutonium paycheck during a radio debate on KZYX. Neither did the moderator, and it was only when Hirsch, his debating partner, got a moment to speak that it was revealed. “Let’s be clear here, Patrick,” Hirsch said. “You’re being paid by the industry.” *

Joseph Plaster, Andrew Oliver, and Sam Draisin helped research this story.

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