ZPEnergy.com - Energy Strategies in Global Warming: Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

From Andrew Michrowski (PACENET): ISIS Press Release 08/07/05

Nuclear energy makes economic nonsense and ecological disaster and provides great opportunities for terrorists. Peter Bunyard

Peter Bunyard will be speaking at Sustainable World Conference, 14-15 July 2005, Details on ISIS website http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SWCFA.php

Human-induced global warming is already upon us. The trends in fossil fuel use and the release of greenhouse gases from all human activities, including agriculture, indicate that worldwide we will be hard pushed to achieve the 60 to 80 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases necessary to stabilise greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere at 550 parts per million (ppm) before the century is out. That’s the upper limit before climate change events become extreme and devastating, according to climatologists [1].

The carbon dioxide level is currently close to 380 ppm in the atmosphere, more than 30 per cent up on the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm. Even at 400 parts per million, which will be reached within 10 years at the current rate of increase of 2 ppm per year, average global temperatures will rise by 2 deg.C [2].

In its scientific review, Climate Change 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that business-as-usual (BAU) activities across the planet could lead to an average temperature rise of as much as 5.8 deg. C within the century. But such predictions, disturbing as they are, do not take into account the impact of global warming on terrestrial vegetation, including the world’s tropical rainforests. Peter Cox and his colleagues at the Hadley Centre of UK Met Office have elaborated climate models that incorporate a dynamic carbon cycle. They predict that, within half a century, the BAU scenario will cause soils and vegetation to switch abruptly from a sink for atmospheric carbon to a source. That would mean not only the loss of the current capacity to withhold and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but in addition, the release of carbon from soils and vegetation that has accumulated over the past 150 years.

The net result could be a doubling of current concentrations of greenhouse gases within a matter of years. Adding in the fossil fuel emissions could take the levels of carbon dioxide to four times pre-industrial levels, i.e 1 000 ppm. The positive feedback from the loss of terrestrial carbon further heats up the earth’s surface, and the average surface terrestrial temperature could rise by as much as 9 deg. C instead of the predicted 5.8 deg. C; temperatures as high have not been experienced for more than 40 million years [3].

The soil/vegetation feedback on global warming is not the only one; we face other powerful positive feedbacks, including the change in albedo (the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space) as ice vanishes from the Arctic Circle and from parts of Antarctica where grass is establishing itself for the first time in millions of years [4]. In addition, the potential release of methane from the oceans overlying the vast sediments of the Amazon Fan, or in the permafrost regions of the Northern Hemisphere, could lead to the large changes in climate that were responsible for the mass extinctions of the Permian more than two hundred million years ago.

It has emerged that the Greenland ice sheet is less stable than previously thought. Its rapid melting would raise sea levels by several metres. Moreover, the Gulf Stream is diminishing in strength because of the influx of fresh water into the Arctic Circle [5].

In short, the climate system as we know it is poised on the edge of a profound transition. Once past a point of no return, terrestrial organisms including human beings will have little or no time to adjust and their future on this planet could well be jeopardized.
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Do you send it to loss-making British Nuclear Fuels (BNF) for reprocessing, with all that entails in terms of discharges of radioactive waste into the Irish Sea and the atmosphere? That being the case, do you continue sanctioning the production of Mixed Oxide Fuel (MOX), which makes economic nonsense, as well as a dubious saving on uranium and is a security nightmare (see below)? Or do you reduce costs by storing the spent fuel intact?

As to the use of MOX, many critics within and outside the industry have repeatedly pointed out that the gains are far outweighed by economic and environmental problems. In France, reprocessing spent fuel to extract plutonium for MOX fuel manufacture will save no more than 5 to 8 per cent on the need for fresh uranium. Meanwhile, as experience in both France and Britain has shown, reprocessing spent reactor fuel leads to a hundredfold or more increase in the volume of radioactive wastes. In the end, all the materials used, including tools, equipment and even the buildings become radioactive and have to be treated as a radioactive hazard.

It is also highly questionable whether the use of MOX fuel will actually reduce the amount of plutonium that has been generated after half a century of operating reactors, both military and civil. Worldwide, more than 1 500 tonnes of plutonium have been generated, of which some 250 tonnes have been extracted for making bombs and another 250 tonnes extracted as a result of reprocessing the spent fuel from ‘civilian’ reactors. Apart from its military-grade plutonium - plutonium relatively pure in the 239 isotope - Britain now has some 50 tonnes of lower quality reactor-grade plutonium contaminated with other, less readily-fissionable isotopes such as 241 [16].

Because of the continued reprocessing of spent reactor fuel in commercial reprocessing plants in Britain, France, Russia and Japan, the world will have some 550 tonnes of separated civil plutonium by the year 2010, enough to produce 110 000 nuclear weapons. ...
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Mixed oxide fuel, containing up to 5 per cent plutonium, is ideal material for terrorists, being no more than mildly radioactive compared with spent reactor fuel, and in a form from which the plutonium can be easily extracted. Just one MOX fuel assembly contains some 25 kilograms of plutonium, enough for two weapons. A reactor, modified to take the plutonium-enriched fuel for up to 30 per cent of the reactor core, has some 48 MOX fuel assemblies...
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On Sunday 12 June, 2005, the BBC reported that a leak of highly radioactive waste containing enough uranium and plutonium to make several atomic weapons had gone unnoticed for more than 8 months [18]. It appears that a pipe in British Nuclear Fuels’ thermal oxide reprocessing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria had fractured as long ago as last August, spewing nitric acid with its deadly load of radionuclides onto the floor. The leak, containing as much as 20 tonnes of uranium and 160kg of plutonium, was discovered only in April of this year.

British Nuclear Fuels has justified the use of the reprocessing plant as being essential for the production of mixed oxide fuel from the spent fuel taken from the UK’s Advanced Gas Reactors. As a result of the leak, the nuclear inspectorate has ordered British Nuclear Fuels to shut down THORP, the thermal oxide reprocessing plant. Just how the spilt waste can be removed remains to be seen, but once again the accident reinforces concerns that the nuclear industry, quite aside from its poor economic showing, can never be made safe enough.

In addition, the Environment Agency inspectors told BNF that it had to improve the way it discharged low level radioactive waste into the Irish Sea, now probably one of the most contaminated waters in the world. Some commentators estimate it will take considerably more than a century to clean up the radioactive waste that the industry has already discharged into the environment, at a cost of well over £50 000 million. ...

Read the whole article here: Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?