Dossier No to Nuclear

by MichaelY - iawm - per cap Fri May 12, 2006 14:03

Since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 there have been at least 22 major accidents at nuclear power stations of which 15 involved the release of radioactive substances. Just a few examples for all those who are telling us that Chernobyl was a once-off, Three Mile Island was a thing of the past and that new technologies have transformed nuke plants to safe operations.

4 May 1986 - Hamm-Uentrop, West-Germany
An experimental 300-megawatt THTR-300 PBMR in West-Germany released radiation after one of its spherical fuel pebbles became lodged in the pipe used to deliver fuel elements to the reactor.

6 April 1993 - Tomsk, Russia
At the Tomsk-7 Siberian Chemical Enterprise plutonium reprocessing facility, a pressure build-up led to an explosive mechanical failure in a 34 cubic meter stainless steel reaction vessel buried in a concrete bunker under building 201 of the radiochemical works.

30 September 1999 - Tokai-mura, Japan
Japan's worst nuclear accident to date took place at a uranium reprocessing facility in Tokai-mura, Ibaraki prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, Japan. The direct cause of the criticality accident was workers putting uranyl nitrate solution containing about 16.6 kg of uranium, which exceeded the critical mass, into a precipitation tank.

15 February 2000 - Buchanan, New York, USA
The Indian Point nuclear power plant's reactor 2 in the state of New York, vented a small amount of radioactive steam when a steam generator tube failed. Con Edison was censured by the NRC for not following the procedures for timely notification of government agencies.

9 February 2002 - Onagawa, Japan
Two workers were exposed to a small amount of radiation and suffered minor burns when a fire broke out at the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station Miyagi Prefecture. The fire occurred in the basement of reactor #3 during a routine inspection when a spray can was punctured accidentally, igniting a sheet of plastic.

19 April 2005 - Sellafield, United Kingdom
Twenty metric tons of uranium and 160 kilograms of plutonium dissolved in 83,000 liters of nitric acid leaked undetected over several months from a cracked pipe into a stainless steel sump chamber at the Thorp nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. The partially processed spent fuel was drained into holding tanks outside the plant.

September/Octtober 2005 - Dounreay, United Kingdom
In September, the site's cementation plant was closed when 266 litres of radioactive reprocessing residues were spilled inside containment. In October, another of the site's reprocessing laboratories was closed down after nose-blow tests of eight workers tested positive for trace radioactivity.

3 November 2005 - Haddam, Connecticut, USA
The Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company reports that water containing quantities (below safe drinking water limits) of Cs-137, Co-60, Sr-90, and tritium leaked from a spent fuel pond.

For more info please go to:
http://www.million-against-nuclear.net/background/accid...s.htm

by JimHopf Fri May 12, 2006 22:26 jameshopf at comcast dot net

And the number of people who died as a result of all of these incidents (other than Chernobyl)? Zero!!

Meanwhile, fossil plants go on causing hundreds of thousands of premature deaths every single year, along with global warming. These annual effects dwarf the (one time) effect of Chernobyl, and the worst-case consequences of a modern/Western plant accident (or terrorist attack) are far smaller than that.

All credible scientific studies agree that the public health and environmental risks/costs of nuclear power are negligible compared to those of fossil fuels.

by JimHopf Fri May 12, 2006 22:31 jameshopf at comcast dot net

No public deaths, to be precise. The Japan incident killed two workers (maybe 3).

Happens all the time in industrial facilities. You just don't hear about it if nothing nuclear is involved. Overall, the nuclear industry has one of the lowest worker death/injury rates.

Weapons related stuff (especially old Soviet follies) have nothing to do with modern, commercial nuclear power.

by MichaelY - iawm Sat May 13, 2006 13:23

Amazed to see that a little message produced an immediate jump by a pro-nuke 'expert'. Back to back messages - Does he deny the accidents happened? No.....However, the argument shifts....how many people killed? Zero....3....perhaps more.....So. it is safe!
This is, of course, rhetorical nonsense....The long term effects of irradiation are well known....scientists talk of a 15-25 year gestation period of radiated cells becoming cancerous cells...I will leave that argument alone at the moment....
However, as the iawm and the wider anti-war movement are about to engage in a serious discussion about the prospect/threat of a nuclear plant being rammed down our throats here in Ireland by the Empire and its apologists, I thought a summary argument against may help. In the 1976 - 82 period a very large movement pushed the plans to set up a nuke plant at Carnsore. We beat Fianna fail and its nuke architects then....among them their Industry Minister O'Malley who subsequently absconded and set up that other right-wing configuration....We wiil do it again if they try

Let the debate begin:

1. Nuclear power is dangerous, safety is a myth
Nuclear power remains the most dangerous form of energy. A disaster like the Chernobyl accident, now 20 years ago, can happen anytime anyplace. See my erlier post. Although nuclear power is a hazardous business, the nuclear industry hardly has any financial liability. In the case of a nuclear disaster, most of the damages will be paid by society and not the companies' insurances. None of the various international conventions on nuclear damage currently in force are designed to make operators, or owners, of nuclear facilities liable for damage they cause.

2. Nuclear power is a deadly legacy for our children
A solution for the long-term storage & treatment of radioactive waste has yet to be found. Highly radioactive spent fuels need to be isolated from the biosphere for hundreds and thousands years. As there is no safe way to store these wastes for the necessary periods of time, this alone should be enough reason to abandon nuclear power as a viable energy source.

3. Nuclear power is financially insane
If the European energy market was a level playing field, where energy pricing would reflect the true costs of producing energy from different sources, nuclear power would be economically insane. All countries using its technology have seriously underestimated the full costs of nuclear power. Not a single nuclear power plant was ever built without direct or indirect subsidies, paid by taxpayers and increasing the profits of the nuclear industry. Also, nuclear power will not be able to compete with renewable energies without huge amounts of state aid. That nuclear power today produces on third of Europe's electricity is due to political shananigans that created favourable market conditions: Over the last 30 years, the EU' governments spent more than €45 billion for nuclear research. Compare that to research on health....Most of the costs of a (however likely) serious nuclear accident will be borne by society and not by the plant operator's insurance. There is a huge gap between the expected costs of decommissioning and waste storage of the currently operating plants in the EU and the money set aside for that purpose by the operators. The hidden costs of waste disposal, decommissioning of plants at the end of their lifespan (the decommissioning costs alone could be as high as €500 billion for the nuke stations currently operating within the EU) and provisioning for accidents have never been adequately accounted for, and will result in a massive burden on future economies and generations.

4. Nuclear power is no solution to climate change
In order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming, the world will have to cut back its emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by around 50% by 2050. Since by far the most of emissions happen in the energy sector, the nuclear industry hopes to use the climate crisis to stage a nuclear revival, arguing that nuclear power is cheap, emission-free and thus has a role to play in securing low-emissions supply of energy.
But nuclear power is not at all emissions free, if emissions in relation to uranium mining, transportation, plant construction and decommissioning and waste storage are included in the calculation. It has been calculated that for example in the UK with its 23 nuclear reactors, doubling capacity would cut emissions by no more than 8% . Globally, tripling nuclear capacity by 2050 might contribute 12.5%-20% to the necessary emission reductions. But such scenarios -- one plant every two weeks -- have no link to political reality, and the costs would be astronomic.
Compare this to the 20% reduction of energy consumption (and emissions) the European Union can achieve by 2020 (30 years earlier) at zero net costs, as the European Commission has pointed out in a "Green Paper" on energy efficiency. Also, nuclear power comes with high opportunity costs (since every Euro can be spent only once): Every Euro invested in new nuclear power could save ten times more emissions if it was invested in energy conservation measures instead -- thus also securing energy supply ten times cheaper.

5. Nuclear weapons are the flip side of nuclear power
Radioactive material from nuclear power generation can be used to build nuclear weapons. The global expansion of nuclear power could well contribute to an increase in the number of nuclear weapons states. So far India, Israel, South Africa, Pakistan, North Korea, and of course the five official nuclear weapons states (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France and China), have developed arsenals of nuclear weapons using their "peaceful' nuclear facilities.
Nuclear power reactors have produced enough plutonium to build 160,000 nuclear weapons or an even wider range of radioactive materials for use in 'dirty bombs'. The spread of nuclear technology significantly increases the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. Smuggling of nuclear material, including from civil nuclear programs, also presents a significant challenge. The International Atomic Energy Association has recorded over 650 confirmed incidents of trafficking in nuclear or other radioactive materials since 1993. In 2004 alone almost a hundred such incidents occurred.

6. Nuclear power dependent on limited & dirty resources

Nuclear power plants run on uranium fuel. And uranium - like oil, gas and coal - is a finite resource that will only last a few more decades, at most 50 years (with the current level of use). A significant increase in the use of nuclear power will quickly result in a shortage of nuclear fuel. The reprocessing of spent fuels has already been proven to be no solution. Reprocessing is a complicated and hazardous chemical process that creates an enormous amount of radioactive waste. Besides that, reprocessing is a very uneconomical technology, as past examples have clearly demonstrated. Nevertheless there are two reprocessing units in Europe: Sellafield (UK) and La Hague (France). Both are known to be the biggest sources of radioactive pollution in the European environment through the release of huge quantities of radioactive liquid effluents into the sea and gaseous discharges into the air. And last but not least, the production of weapons from plutonium separated in reprocessing facilities is relatively simple, dramatically increasing the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. Do I hear ‘Iran’ as an echo?