Beyond Nuclear International

Tras 50 años y cuatro fracasos, los EEUU abandonan la idea de un reactor de torio

Helen Caldicott

Traducción de Raúl Sánchez Saura para El Salto

Los reactores de torio se han convertido en una de las últimas apuestas desesperadas del lobby nuclear. Se dice que cuenta con grandes ventajas con respecto a los convencionales, con uranio como combustible, y se olvida mencionar sus mayores desventajas: es aún más cara y peligrosa. En este artículo lo desgranamos.

Mientras Australia considera introducir energía nuclear en el país, resulta imperativo que la población entienda al detalle esta tecnología para poder tomar una decisión informada al respecto. Los reactores de torio también están siendo considerados a día de hoy.

Durante medio siglo, los EEUU ha intentado crear reactores de torio, sin éxito. Cuatro reactores de torio comerciales han sido construidos. Los cuatro han fracasado. Y dada la complejidad de los problemas que menciono más abajo, los reactores de torio son mucho más caros que los de uranio.

El longevo esfuerzo de producir estos reactores ha costado a los contribuyentes estadounidenses miles de millones de dólares, y otros tantos miles de millones se siguen destinando a la gestión de los residuos producidos con estos fracasos.

La verdad es que el torio no es un material naturalmente fisionable. Se hace necesario mezclar torio con uranio-235 enriquecido (hasta un 20% de enriquecimiento) o plutonio. Ambos son intrínsecamente fisionables, lo cual inicia todo el proceso.

Mientras que el enriquecimiento de uranio ya es bastante caro, el reprocesamiento de combustible nuclear gastado procedente de reactores de uranio es increíblemente costoso y muy peligroso para los trabajadores, que se exponen a isótopos radioactivos tóxicos durante el proceso. El reprocesamiento de combustible gastado requiere trocear barras de combustible radioactivas por control remoto, después se disuelven en ácido nítrico concentrado. De aquí se precipita el plutonio a través de complejos medios químicos.

A estas alturas se han generado grandes cantidades de residuos líquidos altamente radioactivos y acídicos de las que se tienen que librar. Solo 6 kilogramos de plutonio-239 pueden alimentar un arma nuclear, mienras que un reactor produce 250 kilos de plutonio anuales. La millonésima parte de un gramo de plutonio, de inhalarse, es cancerígena.

Zaporizhzhia is the poster child for abandoning the use of nuclear power

By Linda Pentz Gunter

The deadly peril posed by nuclear power plants embroiled in a war zone — something we have been warning about since before the Russian invasion of Ukraine — just came into even sharper focus.

The continued military activity around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, home to six of Ukraine’s 15 reactors, has raised worldwide concern about the terrible consequences should a missile strike a reactor, or worse, the unprotected irradiated fuel pools or radioactive waste storage casks.

Let’s remember that the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster — the result of the explosion of a single, relatively new unit — has rendered a 1,000 square mile region (the Exlusion Zone) uninhabitable still today and for the foreseeable future. Any one of the Zaporizhzhia reactors contains a far larger radioactive inventory and a more densely packed fuel pool than was the case at Chornobyl. A major breach of any one of the six would release long-lasting radioactive contamination into the environment, forcing permanent evacuations and sickening countless people.

Several obvious conclusions emerge from all this.

1. Nuclear reactors cannot be in a war zone.
2. The consequences of an attack on a nuclear plant could be catastrophic, long-lasting and far-reaching.
3. It is impossible to predict where a war might happen (Lindsey Graham’s recent reckless statements remind us that yes, there could even be (civil) war again here in the US).
4. The odds of a catastrophic failure at a nuclear plant must be zero given the unacceptable consequences; an impossibility.
5. Nuclear power plants are not only ill-suited to the climate of war, but also to both the present and impending extremes of climate change (major sea-level rise; floods; fires; violent weather events etc).

Therefore, it is senseless and irresponsible to continue using nuclear power as an energy source.

The danger of antiquated fossil-nuclear mindsets on energy policy

By Hans-Josef Fell

EU President von der Leyen, German Chancellor Scholz, French President Macron, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing Wen, as well as most other global leaders – they are all characterized by the fact that in their important high-ranking functions they have almost always viewed energy security solely from a fossil-nuclear perspective. To the present day they have prioritised the business interests of the big energy companies, whose focus is fossil-nuclear.  

These global leaders subordinated the resulting geopolitical tensions and climate protection in their policy of procuring crude oil, natural gas, coal and uranium, although the consequences have been foreseeable for decades. They have not effectively promoted domestic renewable energies as the only real solution for energy security. For that reason, they are largely responsible for the fact that the EU and other regions are now highly dependent on energy supplies from autocratic countries and they bear a large share of the blame for the current, ever worsening energy problems, geopolitical tensions and global warming.  

In the midst of the current multidimensional crises one might think that these global leaders would have gained new insights and would have realised that by now all efforts must be put into accelerating the expansion of renewable energies at maximum speed. However, that’s not the case. Instead, the famous saying of Hermann Scheer, German politician and co-author of the Renewable Energy Sources Act, applies: “Those who have created a problem cannot solve it.”  

This becomes obvious in the current actions and high-profile activities of global leaders to contain the energy crisis. Right now, they spend a lot of time visiting hotspots of the fossil fuel industry, which means looking for solutions where they cannot be found. Instead of seriously engaging with people who are preventing the expansion of renewable energies and urging them to finally solve the blockades, they still serve the interests of the fossil and nuclear economy.  

Η περίπτωση του Zaporizhzhia

της Linda Pentz Gunter

Ο θανάσιμος κίνδυνος από πυρηνικούς σταθμούς που εμπλέκονται σε εμπόλεμη ζώνη – κάτι για το οποίο προειδοποιούσαμε από πριν από τη ρωσική εισβολή στην Ουκρανία – ήρθε στο επίκεντρο ακόμη πιο έντονα.

 Η συνεχιζόμενη στρατιωτική δραστηριότητα γύρω από τον πυρηνικό σταθμό Zaporizhzhia, όπου βρίσκονται 6 από τους 15 αντιδραστήρες της Ουκρανίας, έχει εγείρει παγκόσμια ανησυχία για τις τρομερές συνέπειες εάν ένας πύραυλος χτυπήσει έναν αντιδραστήρα, ή χειρότερα, τις απροστάτευτες δεξαμενές ακτινοβολημένων καυσίμων ή τα βαρέλια αποθήκευσης ραδιενεργών αποβλήτων.

Ας θυμηθούμε ότι η πυρηνική καταστροφή του Τσορνόμπιλ του 1986 – αποτέλεσμα της έκρηξης μιας ενιαίας, σχετικά νέας μονάδας – έχει καταστήσει μια περιοχή 1.000 τετραγωνικών μιλίων (η Ζώνη Αποκλεισμού) ακατοίκητη ακόμα και σήμερα και για το άμεσο μέλλον. Οποιοσδήποτε από τους αντιδραστήρες Zaporizhzhia περιέχει ένα πολύ μεγαλύτερο απόθεμα ραδιενεργών και μια πιο πυκνή δεξαμενή καυσίμων από ό,τι συνέβαινε στο Chornobyl. Μια σημαντική παραβίαση σε οποιονδήποτε από τους 6 αντιδραστήρες θα απελευθέρωνε μακροχρόνια ραδιενεργή μόλυνση στο περιβάλλον, αναγκάζοντας μόνιμες εκκενώσεις και αρρωσταίνοντας αμέτρητους ανθρώπους.

Are Russia and NATO trying to destroy the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?

By Ira Helfand

Since it was adopted more than 50 years ago, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) has been described as the cornerstone of international efforts to limit the danger of nuclear war, its preservation a key, shared policy objective of the P5, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. In the lead-up to this year’s NPT Review Conference, which opened on August 1 in New York, Russia and NATO are putting the treaty at risk.

The NPT was conceived as a grand bargain between nations who did not have nuclear weapons and promised not to develop them and the P5, who did have them in 1968 and promised, in Article VI of the treaty, to undertake good faith negotiations to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.

In the five decades since, these five nuclear-armed states have continued to insist that other signatories to the treaty honor their commitment not to build nuclear weapons, but they have never seriously considered meeting their obligations to disarm.

Tension over this blatant failure to uphold their end of the bargain has been growing for years and helped fuel the 2017 adoption by 121 non-nuclear-armed states of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, a new treaty consistent with Article VI and intended to pressure the countries that have nuclear weapons to meet their obligations to get rid of them.

The gap between the promises of the P5 and their behavior has grown into a chasm since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia has made repeated threats to use nuclear weapons and NATO — representing France, the United Kingdom and the United States — has replied with nuclear threats of its own.

Responding to this escalating danger of nuclear war, 18 Nobel Peace Laureates issued a statement in April urging Russia and NATO to pledge publicly that they will not use nuclear weapons under any circumstances in the current war. The statement was endorsed by more than 1 million people after it was posted to the Avaaz website. The response from Russia and NATO was a thunderous silence.