Beyond Nuclear International

Nuclear energy is spectacularly unfit to power a just transition

By Makoma Lekalakala

A just transition is the only way out of the multiple crises we face — the climate emergency, the collapse of life systems the world over, and growing political and social discontent. Over the past year, we have seen some argue that not only is nuclear the best way to “green” our economies, but we have also seen nuclear being framed as a technology that will be good for “workers”.

However, the publication by Dr Neil Overy and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Neither Climate Nor Jobs: Nuclear Myths About the Just Transition, offers a comprehensive account of why nuclear will be detrimental to our collective capacity to transform our energy systems in a way that leaves no one behind — #LeaveNoOneBehind.

Here are six reasons why nuclear energy is spectacularly unfit to power a just transition, in a way that leaves no one behind:

1 Just transitions require stable electricity supplies in the face of extreme weather. It is widely claimed that nuclear power is reliable but, over the past five years, French nuclear power plants have had to shut down for up to 7,000 hours due to climate events. In fact, nuclear energy’s reliance on water for cooling makes it particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The causes for these have ranged from floods to droughts and dramatic temperature increases. Earlier this year, we saw that in the Texas snowstorm, nuclear plants had to be shut down because water in pump stations froze.

It is also argued that a green energy system would require nuclear for “baseload”, but technology has moved far beyond this. It is outdated thinking such as this that keeps us from doing what must be done to keep temperatures below 1.5°C, even though it has been shown that smart grids can draw from a mix of renewable energy sources to provide a constant energy supply.

Billions already spent on ‘energy pipedream’

By David Blackburn

Nuclear fusion has been a long-held ambition of the nuclear industry and governments who support nuclear power for decades. Since the end of the Second World War, governments around the world, backed by elements of their scientific communities, have always lauded fusion power as the ‘next step’ above and beyond fission that is almost within reach, yet many billions has so far been spent over the past seven decades on what has often been called by its critics an ‘energy pipedream’.

Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) has rarely commented on nuclear fusion, given such energy projects have yet to be commercially realised. All have foundered around the complex challenges in developing such technology, many of which in the third decade of the 21st century remain unsolved.

In summary, to date, none of the experimental reactors in operation have produced more energy than was put into them.

However, given the current UK Government’s declared intent to invest further money in fusion reactor development with the aspiration to develop a commercially viable design within two decades, it would be remiss of NFLA not to comment on this consultation.

Operating a fusion reactor presents many challenges and risks.

In response to concerns expressed by member authorities, the NFLA itself commissioned a special briefing on this subject (Edition 62, published in September 2020) ‘NFLA New Nuclear Monitor Policy Briefing – NFLA Response to the UKAEA call for potential sites to host a nuclear fusion reactor in England’.

The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) has also recently published a preliminary position paper ‘Radioactive Wastes from Fusion Energy’ (6 December).

Many of the following comments are taken from the NFLA paper, particularly from pages 4-6, but reference is also made to specific sections of the CoRWM report.

Nuclear energy can­not meaningfully contribute to a climate-neutral energy system say German scientists

By Ben Wealer et al., Scientists for Future

In light of the accelerating climate crisis, nuclear energy and its place in the future energy mix is being debated once again. Currently its share of global electricity ge­n­eration is about 10 percent. Some countries, international organizations, private businesses and scientists accord nuclear energy some kind of role in the pursuit of climate neutrality and in ending the era of fossil fuels. The IPCC, too, includes nuclear energy in its scenarios.

On the other hand, the experience with commercial nuclear energy generation acquired over the past seven decades points to the significant technical, economic, and social risks involved. This paper reviews arguments in the areas of “technology and risks,” “economic viability,” ’timely availability,” and “com­patibility with social-ecological transformation processes.”

Technology and risks: Catastro­phes involving the release of radioactive material are always a real possibility, as il­lustrated by the major accidents in Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Also, since 1945, countless accidents have occurred wherever nuclear energy has been deployed. No significantly higher reliability is to be expected from the SMRs (“small modular reactors”) that are currently at the plan­ning stage. Even modern ma­thematical techniques, such as probabilistic security analyses (PSAs), do not adequa­tely reflect important factors, such as deficient secu­rity arrangements or rare natural disasters and thereby systematically underestimate the risks.

Moreover, there is the ever-present proliferation risk of weapon-grade, highly enriched uranium, and plutonium. Most spent fuel rods are stored in scarcely protected surface containers or other interim solutions, often outside proper con­tainment structures. The safe storage of highly radioactive material, owing to a half-life of individual isotopes of over a million years, must be guaranteed for eons. Even if the risks involved for future generations cannot be authoritatively determined to­day, heavy burdens are undoubtedly externalized to the future.