- Originally published August 17, 2004 in The Baltimore
Sun
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- While Vice President Dick Cheney is actively promoting
nuclear power as a significant plank in his energy plan, he claims that
nuclear power is "a safe, clean and very plentiful energy source."
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- The Nuclear Energy Institute, the policy organization
of the nuclear energy and technologies industries, is currently running
an energetic campaign for the revivification of nuclear power. Ubiquitous
TV and radio ads carry the admonition that "Kids today are part of
the most energy-intensive generation in history. They demand lots of clean
electricity. And they deserve clean air."
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- Also, a consortium of 10 U.S. utilities has requested
funding from the federal government for the construction of new reactors
based on a European design, and they hope to receive government approval
by 2010.
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- This is a major policy change since no new nuclear reactors
have been ordered in the United States since 1974. Nevertheless, the claims
of the Mr. Cheney and the nuclear industry are false. According to data
from the U.S. Energy Department (DOE), the production of nuclear power
significantly contributes both to global warming and ozone depletion.
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- The enrichment of uranium fuel for nuclear power uses
93 percent of the refrigerant chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gas made annually
in the United States. The global production of CFC is banned under the
Montreal Protocol because it is a potent destroyer of ozone in the stratosphere,
which protects us from the carcinogenic effects of solar ultraviolet light.
The ozone layer is now so thin that the population in Australia is currently
experiencing one of the highest incidences of skin cancer in the world.
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- CFC compounds are also potent global warming agents 10,000
to 20,000 times more efficient heat trappers than carbon dioxide, which
itself is responsible for 50 percent of the global warming phenomenon.
But nuclear power also contributes significantly to global carbon dioxide
production. Huge quantities of fossil fuel are expended for the "front
end" of the nuclear fuel cycle -- to mine, mill and enrich the uranium
fuel and to construct the massive nuclear reactor buildings and their cooling
towers.
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- Uranium enrichment is a particularly energy intensive
process which uses electricity generated from huge coal-fired plants. Estimates
of carbon dioxide production related to nuclear power are available from
DOE for the "front end" of the nuclear fuel cycle, but prospective
estimates for the "back end" of the cycle have yet to be calculated.
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- Tens of thousands of tons of intensely hot radioactive
fuel rods must continuously be cooled for decades in large pools of circulating
water and these rods must then be carefully transported by road and rail
and isolated from the environment in remote storage facilities in the United
States. The radioactive reactor building must also be decommissioned after
40 years of operation, taken apart by remote control and similarly transported
long distances and stored. Fully 95 percent of U.S. high level waste --
waste that is intensely radioactive -- has been generated by nuclear power
thus far.
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- This nuclear waste must then be guarded, protected and
isolated from the environment for tens of thousands of years -- a physical
and scientific impossibility. Biologically dangerous radioactive elements
such as strontium 90, cesium 137 and plutonium will seep and leak into
the water tables and become very concentrated in food chains for the rest
of time, inevitably increasing the incidence of childhood cancer, genetic
diseases and congenital malformations for this and future generations.
Conclusion: Nuclear power is neither clean, green nor safe. It is the most
biologically dangerous method to boil water to generate steam for the production
of electricity.
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- Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician, is president of the
Nuclear Policy Research Institute and author of The New Nuclear Danger,
George Bush's Military Industrial Complex (The New Press). She lives near
Sydney, Australia.
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