Recently the UK government decided to allow for nuclear new build, claiming that Britain should not be dependent on imported gas for its energy supply, and that nuclear power would help us reduce our impact on climate change. But in reality, even the most optimistic estimates suggest that a new generation of nuclear power stations will only reduce our emissions by 4% by 2024, which is too little and too late.

Britain gets 20 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power, being 4% of total energy used. France obtains 75% of its energy from nuclear power, but still its CO2 emissions are rising, mainly due to transport.

Uranium has to be imported. The shortages of uranium will seriously increase between 2010–2019 and will become more severe thereafter. The mining and extraction of uranium is a dirty, cancerous business, creating large amounts of toxic slag. In the future, in order to mine adequate amounts of useable uranium, the process will become even dirtier and demand more energy. Uranium enrichment uses large volumes or uranium hexafluoride, and other halogenated compounds (HCs). HCs are greenhouse gases with global warming potentials ranging up to 10,000 times that of carbon dioxide. There is no published data on releases of HCs from nuclear energy. (1).

There are varying estimates of greenhouse gas emissions taking account of the whole life cycle of nuclear power. The UK Government’s 2007 Nuclear Power Consultation estimates between 7 and 22 CO2 g/kWh. The estimate by Storm van Leewen and Smith includes all greenhouse gas emissions from the nuclear cycle and ranges from between 88 and 134 CO2 g/kWh. (1).

In addition, a nuclear power station uses water as a coolant, thus wasting heat and further contributing to global warming. Furthermore, most nuclear power stations are situated by water and the sea levels may be rising, resulting in more construction work to try to keep them safe from flooding.

There is no country in the world that has solved the problem relating to long term nuclear waste storage. Britain has the equivalent of about 25 double-decker busses (one bus measured to be 80 cubic meters) full of High Level Waste (2,000m3), 4,300 double-decker busses with Intermediate Level Waste (349,000m3) and 25,000 double-decker busses with Low Level Waste (1.9million m3). There is also a huge volume of contaminated soil, rubble and other waste from the cleaning up process of nuclear sites.

Nuclear waste needs to be stored for more than 100,000 years, in storage that can withstand earth tremors and ice ages. However, the more immediate concern is the continuous and permitted radioactive discharges into the air and water from the nuclear industry. There are reports of cancer clusters around nuclear plants in Britain. Such a study was called off in 2004 (to investigate a possible cancer cluster at Bradwell, Essex). A recent German study found more childhood cancer near nuclear power plants (British Medical Journal, 5 Jan 08). Another study has found that workers at nuclear plants who were exposed to higher levels of radiation were more likely to die from heart attacks and strokes. The researchers concluded that the chances of the trend being a coincidence were small (The International Journal of Epidemiology, 2008.) Researchers, having investigated families in the path of the 1986 Chernobyl radioactive plume, found mutation inherited by children born years later. Genetic mutations occur twice as often in children of parents exposed to the fallout (Nature 380:683-1996).

There are also financial costs to the taxpayer. Malcolm Wicks states that “Under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965, nuclear operators have strict and exclusive liability for nuclear incidents causing personal injury or damage to property. This liability is capped and in the UK is currently £140 million”. (Hansard, 21 Jan 2008, col. 1634W). Again, Malcom Wicks reports that “In the past the Government have found themselves called upon to cover the costs of decommissioning and waste management and disposal where nuclear power station operators have been unable to do so. The mechanism set out by the Government in the Energy Bill aims to mitigate in so far as possible against this risk for any new power stations that are built.....However, in paragraph 3.58 it is recognised that in extreme circumstances the Government may be called upon to meet the costs of ensuring the protection of the public and the environment.” (Hansard, 4 Feb 2008, col. 900-901W).

The estimated cost for nuclear waste storage for the existing nuclear plants is £75 billion. The cost for the proposed new nuclear reactors is estimated to be £10 billion per reactor.

A nuclear power station is a large scale and long term investment. If the private sector is to invest in nuclear power, it will want long term guarantees for the return on money invested. The huge sums going into nuclear power starves investment in research and construction of alternative energy installations.

The first nuclear reactor under construction in Europe since Chernobyl is the Finnish Olkiluoto-3. Areva (French) and Siemen (German) offered a fixed price of 3.2 billion Euros and a fixed delivery time. Commercial banks arranged a syndicate loan to the Finnish utility, Teleosllisuuden Voima Oy, for 2.6 per cent interest. Olkilouto-3 was to have been finished by 2009, but the present estimate is 2011. Analysts estimate an overrun cost of 1.5 billion Euros. COFACE (Compagnie Francaise d’Assurance pour le Commerce Exterieur) has stepped in with 610 million Euros in export credit guarantees.

The subsidies received by renewable energy sources so far are dwarfed by those given to the nuclear and fossil fuel sectors. Instead of supporting mega projects it would be better to decentralise energy systems such as wave, solar, wind, hydro and geothermal. There is a wide range of renewable energy technologies in use: the most common in the UK are solar, wind and wave. Furthermore, we must not only look at what we do in Britain, climate change is global. The technological solutions are here, but not the Government’s will to leave energy control to be managed more locally.

Going nuclear is not the solution. Neither to solve global warming nor to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

References:

(1) The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy, A Life-Cycle in Trouble by David Fleming, 2007.

WISE, Nuclear Monitor www.antenna.nl/WISE

Low Level Radiation Campaign (LLRC): www.llrc.org

Web addresses for you to visit

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/nuclear

Ulla Grant, West Midlands Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and member of Birmingham Friends of the Earth