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Why No Country Should Use Nuclear Energy By
Commander Robert Green, Royal Navy (Ret) rob@disarmsecure.org
- Nuclear energy is the most unforgiving and vulnerable method of generating electricity ever devised.
- Uniquely stringent security and safety precautions are needed because the consequences of a worst-case accident are so catastrophic, widespread and long-lasting.
- It involves building not only a reactor but spent fuel storage, which is even more vulnerable to earthquakes or terrorist attack because it is built outside the reactor containment.
- It encourages the spread of technology and materials for making nuclear weapons.
- After 50 years there is still no agreement on where to store existing high and intermediate level nuclear waste, which is dangerously radioactive for hundreds of years.
- A nuclear power plant demands exceptionally high engineering standards and specialised materials because of the unacceptable consequences of a serious accident.
- An intrinsically safe nuclear power plant has not yet been designed.
- Light water reactors need huge amounts of cooling water, and are more vulnerable than conventional plants to sabotage, earthquakes, heatwaves and droughts, because the core could melt or explode if cooling water is lost.
- Nuclear energy is the most expensive way to generate electricity, because of huge capital costs and long building time (see Insurmountable Risks: Can Nuclear Power Solve the Global Warming Problem?, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, http://www.ieer.org/reports/insurmountablerisks/arjunstmt.html).
- Nuclear power plants do not emit CO2, but the processes involved in creating nuclear energy do. Uranium mining, milling, enrichment, fuel production and transport, power plant construction, storage and reprocessing of spent fuel, long-term management of radioactive waste including transport, and closing down old reactors all require the burning of fossil fuels.
- No country has yet completely dismantled a nuclear power plant, because of the hazards from radioactive components.
The solution lies in a far more cost-effective and benign combination of energy efficiency measures and renewable energy (wave, tidal current, wind, solar, geothermal and biofuels). See Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for US Energy Policy, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, www.ieer.org/carbonfree/. |
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