To advance their cause, the nuclear lobby has been spreading lies and
distortions with remarkable success. Amazing numbers
of people believe
the following.
"Hardly
anyone ever died from nuclear
accident"
Not true! Many
nuclear accidents caused
many fatalities. Chernobyl could have indirectly
caused 100,000
premature deaths from cancer (more).
Several independent studies have
confirmed that elevated background radiation, of the kind produced
by a nuclear accident, increases the incidence of cancer (moremore),
leading indirectly to many thousands of premature deaths. If, in
general, 15% of all people die of cancer (more)
and for a given generation a nuclear accident increases this figure to
16% (which is an absolute increase of 1% and a relative increase of 7%;
more),
and this applies to 10 million people (say, 1/4 of Ukraine), the
accident will have killed 100,000 people -- and that is only part of
the story. Of course,
other forms of power generation can also kill, but that does not make
nuclear any better. Coal may be worse, but coal has
no future anyway. Whether hydroelectricity is sustainable is an
interesting question given the emissions from construction and
concrete, biodiversity loss, and methane from stagnant water; in
addition, dams can collapse, killing large numbers of people. Whatever
-- "true" sustainables such as solar, wind, and geothermal are much
safer.
"Nuclear
reactors produce large
amounts of power cheaply"
Large amounts of power, yes. Cheaply, no. Today, solar is
the
cheapest. Per unit of energy,
nuclear is very
expensive and
certainly more
expensive than sustainables,
especially when you include the cost
of closing
down old reactors and dealing with the waste. If you’re not
seeing the total cost of nuclear power in your electricity bill,
it’s because government subsidies are filling the gap. Whereas a
private heat pump might cost $30,000, a nuclear
reactor might
cost $7 billion. Of course, the nuclear reactor will serve a large
number of homes and industries. But in the end, when you include all
costs
over the
lifetime of the power source including waste
management, geothermal is cheaper per
unit of energy. Governments should, therefore, subsidize geothermal
rather than
nuclear. The
enormous amounts of money being spent on new nuclear
reactors should instead be spent on sustainables.
"Nuclear
is sustainable"
Not true! There are 250,000
tonnes of high-level nuclear waste
in temporary storage worldwide.
Every new reactor increases our toxic legacy to future generations.
"Nuclear waste is less dangerous than
other forms of waste"
Believe it or not, one lobbyist tried to explain this to me. There are
certainly many forms of hazardous waste,
and it is crucial that we stop and reverse the growth in its
production. But comparing nuclear waste with other forms of waste does
not make nuclear waste any less dangerous. That's a logical
fallacy. The
long-term insidious dangers of nuclear waste are well-known. If we
humans don't watch out, we will contaminate large regions and perhaps
even the entire surface of the planet. How future generations would
live with that is anyone's guess.
"Nuclear
is more reliable than
sustainables" Geothermal
energy runs 24 hours a day, 365
days a year, and is virtually
inexhaustible.
"To
tackle global warming, we need new
small modern nuclear power plants"
Not a good plan, I'm afraid. Apart from all the other problems, new
nuclear power plants typically take
ten years to build. Global
warming is too urgent for that. We need
to make radical changes in the next few years. Sustainables can be
deployed more
quickly.
"Nuclear
power is inevitable for
long-term, large-scale sustainability"
Really? I'm no expert, but surely experts have prepared
detailed long-term plans for sustainable energy
without new
nuclear power plants in most countries and regions of the world. It's a
matter of implementing such recommendations. Take for example the European
Green Deal.
These are not the only myths.
I have tried to focus on the simplest and most obvious ones.
If those points are so
obvious, why
have the nuclear lobby’s lies been so influential?
There are good reasons for that:
1. The nuclear lobby has plenty of money and good government
connections. You need big money to build reactors, and the link to
defense (nuclear weapons) creates an additional strong financial and
political foundation.
2. Like the fossil fuel industry, the
nuclear lobby thinks
neoliberalism is normal. Those people tend to regard short-term profit
as more important than the health and
survival of future generations. Distortion of the truth is normal and
ok if necessary to increase one's capital on the quasi-free market.
It's part of freedom.
3. Einstein’s famous equation E
= mc2
gives the impression
that since c2
is
such a very large number (the square of the speed of light!) you can
get a very large amount of energy E
from with a very small amount m
of nuclear fuel. Therefore, the amount of waste will be very small.
Therefore, the cost per unit energy will be low. Or will it?
Point 3 is a good example of misleading argumentation. First, the mass
converted to energy in fission is only about 0.1% of the actual mass of
fuel (fusion, 0.7%; more).
More important, Einstein’s equation says nothing about
economic
factors (cost of building, security, decommissioning, waste
management and storage; the role of government
subsidies),
human
factors (disease, error, democracy, war), or
It is true that nuclear power can produce large amounts of electricity.
Current global nuclear capacity is at about 394 GW from 442 reactor
units, and it
could be increased to over 600 GW (more).
Global geothermal power generation potential is currently only 13 GW
and estimates of the potential range from 80 GW (more)
to 256 GW (more).
But these numbers depend on how deeply one is prepared to drill. When
nuclear-sized budgets are applied to geothermal projects, more
energy will become available. In the long term, geothermal energy is
practically inexhaustible. The temperature in the earth's core is about
6000°C. The deeper you drill, the more energy you get .
We also need to mix larger and smaller sustainable
sources of
electricity in decentralized, resilient networks (more;
more;
more),
and reduce wastage and improve efficiency. All such goals
can be achieved most efficiently using only sustainables.
What about existing nuclear
reactors?
The dangers of nuclear power should be kept in perspective and not
exaggerated. While no new nuclear power stations should be built, that
does not necessarily imply the old ones should be shut down early. In
that case, we can argue that stopping climate change is even more
important (more).
What
about nuclear fusion?
This text is about fission reactors. In future, fusion
power
could become a viable option. There are some scary question marks, but
given the urgency of stopping global warming, it's a good idea
right now to throw a lot of money at research and development of fusion
reactors. More The opinions expressed on
this page are the
author's personal
opinions. Readers who know and care about this topic are asked to
contact the author with suggestions for
improving or extending the content:
parncutt at gmx dot at. Back
to Richard
Parncutt's homepage
