Antinuclear

Business leaders outline why Nuclear Power cannot combat Climate Chnage

 The arguments that nuclear power offers the solution to climate change are dead wrong for several reasons:  [outlined further down in this article]

Even if we decided to replace all fossil-fuel plants with nuclear reactors – leaving cost issues aside – it would not be technically possible to build them quickly enough to meet even the modest targets of the Kyoto Protocol. In the U.S., up to 1,000 new reactors (nearly 10 times the current base) would be required at a cost of about $1.5 trillion to $2.0 trillion, based on industry estimates of $1,500-$2,000/KW for new nuclear plant construction.  In fact, Alvin M. Weinberg, former director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory argues that, in order to make a serious dent in carbon emissions, it would take perhaps four times as many reactors as suggested by the MIT study, or up to 4,000 reactors .

Nuclear Power: Totally Unqualified to Combat Climate Change BY RINALDO S. BRUTOCO , WORDL BUSINESS ACADEMY  SEPTEMBER 14, 2014 

An Open Letter from the World Business Academy to leading climatologist Dr. James Hansen regarding his advocacy of nuclear power as a solution to global warming.

My colleagues and I at the World Business Academy have followed climate activism for many years and its on-going campaign to restrain the coal and oil industries. Research, congressional testimony, and activism by numerous climatologists to address climate change has brought this very real global threat into the public consciousness and set the stage to develop a strategy for preserving human civilization as we know it. …….

With regard to nuclear energy, the IPCC made the following finding: “Nuclear energy is a mature low-GHG emission source of baseload power, but its share of global electricity generation has been declining (since 1993). Nuclear energy could make an increasing contribution to low carbon energy supply, but a variety of barriers and risks exist (robust evidence, high agreement). Those include: operational risks, and the associated concerns, uranium mining risks, financial and regulatory risks, unresolved waste management issues, nuclear weapon proliferation concerns, and adverse public opinion (robust evidence, high agreement).”[4]……..

The World Business Academy agrees with the substantive findings from these reports and is firmly committed to implementing the most expeditious path towards (i) eliminating or mitigating all sources of carbon and methane emissions and (ii) remediating ambient CO2 levels back to pre-industrial levels……….

Given the urgency of climate-related issues, we were nonetheless deeply vexed with the proposal by Dr. James E. Hansen and other climatologists to embrace nuclear power as a viable component in mitigatiing climate change. As delineated in a joint letter published on November 3rd by Dr. Hansen, Kenneth Caldeira, Kerry Emanuel, and Tom Wigley,[6] it appears that these climate experts may not be as fully informed about nuclear fission as they are about climate change.

A letter dated January 6, 2014 has already been sent to this group by The Civil Society Institute and Nuclear Information and Resource Service which was co-signed by over 300 organizations world-wide, rebutting the assumptions set forth in the November 3rd letter and presenting arguments against the use of nuclear power to mitigate climate change.[7] The World Business Academy was a contributing signatory to the CSI/NIRS letter and proposes in this communication to expand on those arguments and provide additional reference materials in support of our assertions………

the Academy has maintained a permanent research effort on virtually every aspect of nuclear power, has published very frequently on the subject, and has continuously sought solutions for society to mitigate the most harmful side effects of nuclear fission.  We are hopeful that further elaboration of the challenges associated with nuclear power will persuade misguided climate activists to embrace more economic, more readily available, and more certain renewable energy technologies which will surpass the nuclear industry’s alleged ability to assist in mitigating climate change without any harmful side effects.  All that we ask is a fair and impartial review.

It is our contention that those who tout nuclear power as a carbon-free solution to global warming are missing the forest and the trees. First, the forest: nuclear power plants continuously emit low levels of cancer-causing strontium-90 radiation during “normal” operations, and higher levels when there are serious problems such as the continuing leakage of radioactive water from the tsunami-damaged reactors at Fukushima, or the radiation leak that lead to the instantaneous closure of the San Onofre nuclear reactor in Southern California in January 2012[8]. Today, even as radiation levels surge in Japan, media pundits discuss the dangers of radiation as if radiation sickness were limited to instances in which people experience nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, or death. This is false. A host of studies show that radioactive emissions of deadly strontium-90 during nuclear plants’ routine operations increase cancer rates among those who live near the plants, especially in women and children.[9]   (See Appendix A, Average Strontium-90 in U.S. Baby Teeth, 1954-2013.)………

nuclear power plants are not “carbon free.” They do not emit carbon or other greenhouse gases as they split atoms during the fission process, but their carbon footprint must be assessed on the basis of their complete nuclear fuel life cycle. Significant amounts of fossil fuel are used indirectly in mining, milling, uranium fuel enrichment, plant and waste storage construction, decommissioning, and ultimately transportation and millennia-long storage of waste. There is plenty of carbon in that footprint that is rarely acknowledged, computed, or mediated.  In addition, the nuclear industry’s false refrain that nuclear power plants have no carbon footprint is an attempt to obscure the fact that nuclear power plants’ radiation footprint is far more lethal than the carbon footprint of any other industry. Additionally, the industry’s rhetoric masks the astronomical costs for thousands of years of storage that could be better invested in rapidly developing renewable fuels with a zero carbon footprint like solar, wind, geothermal, and Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, which don’t carry harmful, let alone lethal, side effects.

Based on the foregoing observations, I and my World Business Academy colleagues offered to engage Dr. Hansen and his panel in a constructive dialogue to examine, from a rational, neutral perspective, the prospects of various forms of energy in relation to the climate change imperative with respect to the following points as expressed in their joint letter.

• [refuting this Claim] “The development and deployment of safer nuclear power systems is a practical means of addressing the climate change problem.” The arguments that nuclear power offers the solution to climate change are dead wrong for several reasons:
• (a) no matter how fast you try to build new nuclear plants, there aren’t enough engineers and technicians with the required expertise to build the number of nuclear power plants needed during the next 30 years  just to replace the existing nuclear power plants set to go off line, let alone build 1,000 new power reactors in the U.S. alone;
•  (b) Even if you could build hundreds of new nuclear plants, private sector investors will not fund existing plants or even the proposed new generation of multi-billion-dollar nuclear plants, even with massive government guarantees and subsidies, because no one has figured out how to build one that doesn’t routinely emit toxic levels of radioactivity while still producing power economically. This “next generation” promise has been heard for many decades now – even as the cost to build old style plants has accelerated by high multiples of their original projected costs just a couple of years ago—no one has yet come up with a viable “next generation” design[11];
• (c) nuclear power is grotesquely uneconomical when factoring costs of construction, operation, decommissioning, and waste disposal/storage for millennia;
• (d) radioactive emissions from nuclear reactors cause cancer and there is no known solution for radioactive waste disposal; and
• (e) nuclear power technology creates a path for rogue nations to build nuclear weapons, or as we say in the Academy: “Nuclear power is the gateway drug to nuclear weapons.”…….

Even if we decided to replace all fossil-fuel plants with nuclear reactors – leaving cost issues aside – it would not be technically possible to build them quickly enough to meet even the modest targets of the Kyoto Protocol. In the U.S., up to 1,000 new reactors (nearly 10 times the current base) would be required at a cost of about $1.5 trillion to $2.0 trillion, based on industry estimates of $1,500-$2,000/KW for new nuclear plant construction.  In fact, Alvin M. Weinberg, former director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory argues that, in order to make a serious dent in carbon emissions, it would take perhaps four times as many reactors as suggested by the MIT study, or up to 4,000 reactors .[32]…….https://worldbusiness.org/nuclear-power-totally-unqualified-to-combat-climate-change/

May 2, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized