Beyond Nuclear International

Critics who cherry pick out-of-context soundbites are missing the overall trajectory

By Linda Pentz Gunter

This week, Beyond  Nuclear introduces the fifth in our series of Talking Points: Germany’s Energy Revolution (’Energiewende’) is working.

The purpose of the Talking Points series, is to provide some concise and accessible factoids that answer the many questions in circulation about the role, if any, of nuclear power in addressing climate change.

In the view of Beyond Nuclear, nuclear power not only has no role to play in addressing what is now a climate emergency, it is a proactive impediment to progress, wasting time and diverting money from the measures we should and now urgently must take to get off fossil fuels— those being renewable energy implementation, conservation and, above all, energy efficiency.

Germany’s green energy revolution — known in German as the Energiewende — is constantly misrepresented in the talking points dished out by the other side. It has become the convenient whipping boy of the pro-nuclear crowd, who simply cherry pick headlines out of context without looking at the actual facts.

The purpose of our Energiewende Talking Points, is, therefore, to set the record straight. This was validated in some measure by Javier Blas’s July 29 timely Bloomberg article — Paris Faces an Even Colder, Darker Winter Than Berlin. France is more vulnerable than Germany to blackouts once the weather turns colder. 

France is equally misrepresented by the pro-nuclear lobby, held up as the poster child of the nuclear success story. But the truth is rather different. As we point out in these Talking Points, the French nuclear monopoly, and the country’s reliance on electric heat, means it has to import power in winter, often from Germany. Its nuclear supply cannot meet demand but at the same time has stifled growth in renewable energy. 

The Talking Points are all freely available to download and print at home. An email request — to info@beyondnuclear.org — will get you as many printed copies as you need, usually for the price of an optional tax-deductible donation.

Ontario needs above-ground, attack-resistant vaults for radioactive waste

By Angela Bischoff, Clean Air Alliance

We need a safer interim storage solution for Ontario’s nuclear wastes.

The International Joint Commission’s Great Lakes Water Quality Board is calling for Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) nuclear waste storage facilities to be “hardened” and located away from shorelines to prevent them from becoming compromised by flooding and erosion.

According to a report prepared for OPG, the total capital cost of building above-ground, attack-resistant, reinforced concrete vaults at the Pickering, Darlington and Bruce Nuclear Stations would be approximately $1 billion. This safer interim storage solution can be fully paid for by OPG’s nuclear waste storage fund, which has a market value of $11.3 billion.

The total radioactivity of the nuclear wastes stored at the Pickering, Darlington and Bruce Nuclear Stations is 700 times greater than the total radiation released to the atmosphere by the Fukushima accident in 2011.

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is proposing to continue to store these wastes in dry storage containers in conventional commercial storage buildings at its nuclear stations until at least 2043. In the long term, OPG is hoping that the nuclear wastes can be transferred off-site to a permanent storage facility where they would be placed in caverns 500 to 1,000 metres below ground.

OPG wants to keep radioactive waste in conventional storage buildings on the edge of the Great Lakes for decades to come.

Small Modular Reactors epitomize culture that embraces exaggeration

By M.V. Ramana

In 2006, Elizabeth Holmes, founder of a Silicon Valley startup company called Theranos, was featured in Inc magazine’s annual list of 30 under 30 entrepreneurs. Her entrepreneurship involved blood, or more precisely, testing blood. Instead of the usual vials of blood, Holmes claimed to be able to obtain precise results about the health of patients using a very small sample of blood drawn from just a pinprick. 

The promise was enticing and Holmes had a great run for a decade. She was supported by a bevy of celebrities and powerful individuals, including former U.S. secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, James Mattis, who later served as U.S. secretary of defense, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Not that any of them would be expected to know much about medical science or blood testing. But all that public endorsement helped. As did savvy marketing by Holmes. Theranos raised over $700 million from investors, and receive a market valuation of nearly $9 billion by 2014. 

The downfall started the following year, when the Wall Street Journal exposed that Theranos was actually using standard blood tests behind the scenes because its technology did not really work. In January 2022, Holmes was found guilty of defrauding investors.

The second part of the Theranos story is an exception. In a culture which praises a strategy of routine exaggeration, encapsulated by the slogan “fake it till you make it”, it is rare for a tech CEO being found guilty of making false promises. But the first part of Theranos story—hype, advertisement, and belief in impossible promises—is very much the norm, and not just in the case of companies involved in the health care industry. 

Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

Nuclear power offers a great example. In 2003, an important study produced by nuclear advocates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology identified costs, safety, proliferation and waste as the four “unresolved problems” with nuclear power. Not surprisingly, then, companies trying to sell new reactor designs claim that their product will be cheaper, will produce less—or  no—radioactive waste, be immune to accidents, and not contribute to nuclear proliferation. These tantalizing promises are the equivalent of testing blood with a pin prick. 

And, as was the case with Theranos, many such companies have been backed up by wealthy investors and influential spokespeople, who have typically had as much to do with nuclear power as Kissinger had to with testing blood. Examples include Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor; Stephen Harper, the former Prime Minister of Canada; and  Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin group. But just as the Theranos product did not do what Elizabeth Holmes and her backers were claiming, new nuclear reactor designs will not solve the multiple challenges faced by nuclear power.

Greenpeace radiation readings show IAEA downplayed dangers

Adapted from Ukraine Crisis Media Center and Greenpeace International press release. See the full report.

The Russian military occupation at Chornobyl resulted in crimes against the environment and global scientific understanding of radiation risks, said Greenpeace experts during a press conference at the Ukraine Crisis Media Center on July 20. 

With the approval and cooperation of the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management (SAUEZM) and the Ukraine Foreign Ministry, the Greenpeace team was able conduct a limited radiation survey inside the highly contaminated 30km exclusion zone of Chornobyl. It was limited by the fact that most of the 2600km2 zone has not been checked and cleared of Russian landmines. 

The Greenpeace investigation team found radiation in areas where Russian military operations occurred at levels at least three times higher than the estimation by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and which classifies it as nuclear waste. In April 2022, the IAEA provided very limited data with assurances that radiation levels were ‘normal” and not a major environmental or public safety issue. 

The Greenpeace team also documented with Ukrainian scientists at Chornobyl that due to the Russian military actions against essential laboratories, databases and radiation monitoring systems, severe damage has been done to the unique scientific infrastructure developed in cooperation with the global science community, including lab equipment needed to study the impact of radiation on people and the environment, thereby threatening the safety of this and future generations. 

Greenpeace released the results of its investigation at a press conference in Kyiv, also attended by Yevhen Kramarenko, Head of SAUEZM and Serhiy Kireev, General Director of the State Specialized Enterprise “EcoCenter” in Chornobyl. 

Conference Declaration reiterates humanitarian basis of the ban treaty and its moral, ethical and security imperatives.

From the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

The historic first Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons concluded in Vienna on June 23 with the adoption of a political declaration and practical action plan that set the course for the implementation of the Treaty and progress towards its goal of the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

States parties met amid heightened tension and growing risks of the use of nuclear weapons, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its threats to use nuclear weapons. Addressing the opening session of the meeting, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “The once unthinkable prospect of nuclear conflict is now back within the realm of possibility. More than 13,000 nuclear weapons are being held in arsenals across the globe. In a world rife with geopolitical tensions and mistrust, this is a recipe for annihilation.”

During the meeting, many states parties condemned Russia’s actions, expressing their determination to move ahead with implementing the TPNW and eliminating nuclear weapons, based on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of their use and the growing risks that such use could occur. These discussions were supported by harrowing testimony from survivors of use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Hibakusha) and representatives of communities harmed by testing of nuclear weapons in the Pacific, Kazakhstan and elsewhere, which illustrated the grim reality of nuclear weapons and highlighted the importance and urgency of the meeting’s work.

Nagasaki survivor Masao Tomonaga said “This political declaration is a very strong document, despite many difficulties we face. With this powerful document we can go forward, and all Hibakusha support this, it is a great document to make my city, Nagasaki, the last city ever to suffer from an atomic bombing”. 

Representatives of youth groups emphasized the need to engage young people in universalizing and implementing the treaty, and the role that they could play in helping to achieve the treaty’s aims. A delegation of parliamentarians from 16 countries (including nine NATO members) highlighted the work of parliamentarians in building support for the TPNW domestically, persuading governments to join, and speeding the processes of ratification.