End of the nuclear illusion

 

Fraudulent promises

The promise of boundless, universal prosperity based on cheap, safe and abundant energy through “Atoms for Peace”, held out by US President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953, was deceptive and meant to temper the prevalent perception of atomic energy as a malign force following Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Eisenhower was a hawk committed to beefing up the US nuclear arsenal from less than 1,500 to 20,000 warheads. He sought to “compensate” for this by dressing up nuclear energy as a positive force and camouflage the huge US military build-up.

The nuclear promise was based on unrealistic assumptions about a safe form of energy “too cheap even to meter”. The US Navy transferred reactor designs developed for nuclear-propelled submarines to General Electric and Westinghouse for free. The US also limited the nuclear industry’s accident liability to a ludicrously low level.

The world has since lost over US$1,000 billion in subsidies, cash losses, abandoned projects and other damage from nuclear power. Decontaminating Fukushima alone is estimated to cost $623 billion, not counting treatment costs for thousands of likely cancers.

All of the world’s 400-odd reactors have the potential to undergo catastrophic accidents. They will remain a liability until decommissioned (entombed in concrete) at huge public expense – one-third to one-half of the cost of building them. They will also leave behind nuclear waste, which remains hazardous for thousands of years, and which science has no way of storing safely.

All this for a technology which contributes just 2 per cent of global final energy consumption! Even the Economist magazine, which long backed nuclear power, calls it “the dream that failed”.

Nuclear power declined on its home ground because it became too risky and “too costly to hook to a meter”. The US hasn’t ordered a new reactor since 1973. Western Europe hasn’t built a new reactor since the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986.

As a former member of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission says: “The abiding lesson [from Three Mile Island meltdown of 1979]… was that… reactor operators…could turn a $2-billion asset into a $1-billion clean-up job in about 90 minutes.”

Nuclear power is now on the run globally. The number of reactors operating worldwide has fallen from the historic peak of 444 (2002) to 429. Their share in global electricity supply has shrunk from 17 to 13 per cent. And it’s likely to fall further as some 180-plus 30-year-old or older reactors are retired. Just about 60 new ones are planned.

Post-Fukushima, nobody will build reactors without big subsidies or high state-guaranteed returns – or unless they are China or India. China’s rulers don’t have to bother about democracy, public opinion or safety standards.

Nor are India’s rulers moved by these. They are desperate to award the reactor contracts promised to the US, France and Russia for lobbying for the US-India nuclear deal in the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has even stooped to maligning Indian anti-nuclear protesters as foreign-funded, as if they had no minds of their own, and as if the government’s priority wasn’t to import reactors.

Nuclear power is bound up with secrecy, deception and opacity, which clash with democracy. It evokes fear and loathing and can only be promoted by force while violating civil liberties.

A recent BBC-GlobeScan poll shows that 69 per cent of people in 23 countries oppose building new reactors, including 90 per cent in Germany, 84 per cent in Japan, 80 per cent in Russia and 83 per cent in France. This proportion has sharply risen since 2005. Only 22 per cent of people in the 12 countries which operate nuclear plants favour building new ones.

Nuclear reactors are high-pressure high-temperature systems, in which a fission chain-reaction is barely checked from getting out of control. But controls can fail for many reasons, including short circuits, faulty valves, operator error, fire, earthquakes or tsunamis.

No technology is 100-per-cent safe. High-risk tech demands a meticulous, self-critical and highly alert safety culture, which most countries lack.

 

One meltdown every 8 years

The world has witnessed five core meltdowns in 15,000 reactor-years. At this rate, we can expect one core meltdown every eight years in the world’s 400-odd reactors. This is simply unacceptable.

Yet, the nuclear industry behaves as if this couldn’t happen. It has a collusive relationship with regulators, highlighted in numerous articles on Japan, including one by Yoichi Funabashi, chair of the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation: “We Japanese have long prided ourselves on being a society that provides safety and security…[But this] has been matched by our aversion to facing the potential threat of nuclear emergencies...”

He adds: “Any drills for a nuclear emergency were meticulously designed to avoid giving any impression that an accident could possibly progress to the severity of a meltdown…. But avoidance ultimately translated into un-preparedness.”

Nuclear power is bound up with radiation, which is harmful in all doses, at each step of the nuclear fuel cycle. Nuclear plants routinely expose surrounding populations to harmful radioactive and chemical emissions.

Nuclear power is costlier not just than coal- or gas-based electricity, but increasingly, renewable energy. The European Pressurised Reactor of the crisis-ridden French firm Areva, and earmarked for Jaitapur in India, is now quoting for $6,500-plus per kilowatt, compared to under $2,000 for wind turbines.

 

Climate crisis 

Nuclear power cannot be a solution to the climate crisis. Its potential contribution is too small, it’s too slow to deploy, and too expensive. By contrast, renewables have already emerged as a safe, flexible, quickly deployable solution, with a typically lower carbon footprint than nuclear power.

The world needs a new climate-friendly, safe, decentralised energy system with smart grids and high efficiency. Nuclear power can have no place in it.