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The Ethics of Nuclear Waste in Canada: Risks, Harms and Unfairness. by Ethan Wilding A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2010 c Ethan Wilding 2010 Author's Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii Abstract The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) | the crown corporation responsible for the long-term storage of nuclear fuel waste in Canada | seeks to bury our nuclear fuel waste deep in the Canadian Shield, with the provisions that the waste is monitored and remains retrievable for possible future use. To ensure that its solution is ethically acceptable, the NWMO established a set of requirements which, if satisfied, would successfully discharge its ethical obligations to both present and future generations. Those requirements include the obligation to justify its practice, minimize risk, clearly identify all of the relevant costs and risks of harm, abide by the precautionary principle, obtain fully informed consent from potentially affected individuals, and distribute the risk fairly across multiple generations. In this docu- ment I show that the ethical principles, as formulated by the NWMO, are either (a) seriously vague and unhelpful; or (b), where substantial and helpful, the nature of the practice show that many of the principles cannot be satisfied. As a final result, it is deeply questionable whether nuclear power in general, and especially the current solution to nuclear waste in particular, can ever be deemed ethical in Canada. iii Acknowledgements I had an excellent advisor, Dr. Brian Orend, and I would like to thank him for his detailed comments on every draft and enduring support throughout the time it took me to write this thesis. I would also like to thank Dr. Joseph Novak for always taking the time to discuss a wide range of interesting topics and current events. Many thanks to my thesis committee members for their insightful comments and suggestions: Professors Patricia Marino, Mathieu Doucet, Peter Woolstencroft, and Peter Timmerman. I would also like to thank Dr. Andrew Brook for his critical and thoughtful comments on an earlier draft. Several other individuals have influenced me during my time as a graduate student, and although I cannot enumerate each influence, I would like to extend my appreci- ation to the following people for their contribution to my intellectual development: Sharon Lee, Jeremy Seitz, Xavier Corsius, Angela Christelis, Andy Stumpf, Jim Jor- dan, Ronald Yoshida, Tom Lee, Peter Olsar, Chris Thom, James Wallace, Jason Otterbein, and Debbie Dietrich. This research received financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program (OGS). iv Contents Author's Declaration ii Abstract iii Acknowledgements iv List of Figures viii 1 Introduction 1 2 Framing the Ethical Issues 13 2.1 What is an Ethical Framework? . 14 2.1.1 Framework vs. Theory . 17 2.2 On Justification: A Preview . 20 2.3 On Fairness: A Preview . 22 2.4 Conclusion . 24 3 Radioactivity and Adaptive Phase Management 26 3.1 Nuclear Waste . 28 3.1.1 Classification of Nuclear Waste . 28 3.1.2 Nuclear Waste Production . 30 3.2 Adaptive Phased Management (APM) . 34 v 3.2.1 Details of APM . 36 3.2.2 Advantages and Disadvantages of APM . 38 3.3 Risk Assessment . 41 3.4 Future Waste . 45 3.5 Summary . 47 4 Justifying Nuclear Power 49 4.1 Justification of Practice . 51 4.1.1 Justification from Sufficient, or Maximum, Net Benefit . 54 4.2 Optimization of Protection (ALARA)................. 56 4.2.1 Defence-in-Depth . 60 4.2.2 Minimizing and Managing Risk . 63 4.3 Radiation Dose Limits in Canada . 65 4.3.1 Is there a minimum individual dosage threshold? . 69 4.4 The Unacceptability of a Cost-Benefit Analysis . 73 5 Ethical Analysis 76 5.1 Uncertainty . 78 5.1.1 Possibility of Failure . 84 5.1.2 Failure of Safeguards . 87 5.2 Informed Consent . 88 5.2.1 Second-Party Consent . 90 5.2.2 Radiation Standards . 94 5.2.3 Voluntariness . 96 5.2.4 Revising the Informed Consent Condition . 96 vi 5.3 Respecting Life and Nature . 97 5.3.1 Seven Generations . 100 5.4 Precautionary Principle . 102 5.4.1 Core structure of the Precautionary Principle . 105 5.5 Summary . 110 6 Intergenerational Fairness 111 6.1 The NWMO's Fairness Conditions . 113 6.2 Justice as Fairness . 117 6.3 Rawls and the Maximin Decision Rule . 120 6.3.1 Objections to Maximin . 122 6.4 Obligations to Future Persons . 123 7 Conclusion 132 References 137 vii List of Figures 3.1 Timeline for Adaptive Phased Management (Nash and Dowdeswell, 2005). 38 3.2 The original description of the risks and benefits of Adaptive Phased Management (Nash & Dowdeswell, 2005). 40 4.1 Nuclear Safety and Control Act effective dose limits. (Radiation Pro- tection Regulations: SOR/2000-203) . 67 4.2 NWMO external radiation time limits for annual dose. 68 5.1 Three-part core structure of the precautionary principle (Manson 2002).107 6.1 NWMO Fairness Influence Diagram, from the Final Study 2005. 114 7.1 A search for ethics yielded no results. <www.nwmo.ca > ....... 137 viii Chapter 1 Introduction Just imagine: none of us will be here, not even our great-great-grandchildren. All our cities will have gone. ::: Even the pyramids of Egypt will be just a handful of dust, yet the sarcophagus around this reactor of yours will still be standing. The pyramids of the pharaohs have been there for a mere five thousand years. But to contain the radiation your nuclear pyramid must remain for at least a hundred thousand years. (Bitterly) That's some monument to leave our descendants, isn't it? (Gubaryev, 1987, 87).1 Canada is poised for a renaissance of nuclear power development, due largely to com- mercial interests and renewed public concern for reducing our `carbon-footprint' by using clean-energy sources that minimize our contribution to climate change (Bick- erstaff et al., 2008). In this regard nuclear energy is touted as our saving grace | according to the Canadian Nuclear Association, nuclear power is \Clean, Reliable, and Affordable.”2 By `clean' they mean that it is \North America's largest source of emission-free energy, which means it emits no pollutants into the environment. This keeps the air clean, prevents acid rain, and preserves the earth's climate and avoids 1This passage is uttered by the doomed character Bessmertny (the Russian word for `immortal') in Vladimir Gubaryev's play \Sarcophagus." The story takes place in the immediate aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. 2See <www.cna.ca>. 1 ground-level ozone formation." And, they continue, nuclear waste is managed in a \safe, environmentally responsible way."3 In addition, our nuclear industry provides employment for 21,000 people. For these reasons Ontario Power Generation is plan- ning to build at least two new reactors in Ontario, and Bruce Nuclear Power is seeking to build up to four new reactors in oil-rich Alberta in order to meet projected en- ergy demands; these new reactors are in addition to twenty-two nuclear commercial reactors that are either in operation or undergoing refurbishment. But this source of energy and the benefits it brings comes with a great cost | nuclear power generates tonnes of radioactive fuel waste that is irreversible, carcinogenic, and potentially lethal; moreover, once the waste has been created there is absolutely nothing that we can do to reduce its inherent toxicity except to isolate the waste and wait for the radioactive isotopes to decay into stable elements. Though 90% of the harmful radioactive isotopes will significantly decay within the first ten years after removal, the longer-lived isotopes must be secured from human and environmental contact for literally eons. One such dangerous radioactive isotope is plutonium, which will take about two hundred and forty thousand years before it fully transmutes into non-radioactive lead.4 If a human or animal ingests this substance it will primarily concentrate in their soft tissues, liver, and bone marrow, the results of which are increased risk of specific cancers and even death; the lethal dose of plutonium for humans is about 27 micrograms of plutonium (27=1000 grams).5 From the inception of the Canadian nuclear industry in the 1940s, and the com- mencement of full-scale commercial nuclear operations in the 1960s, Canada now has approximately 119; 000 kilograms of plutonium (and this is only one of the 200 newly created isotopes in each reactor) contained in approximately 1:7 million fuel bundles 3See <www.cna.ca/english/pdf/NuclearFacts/02-NuclearFacts-environment.pdf> 4Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24; 000 years. It will completely transmute into non-radioactive lead after approximately 240; 000 years. 5This amount is contested, as there have been very few studies done on the health effects of pluto- nium. However, the U.S. Department of Energy's standard for the occupational air concentration of plutonium is 32 trillionths of a gram per cubic meter, and a total radiation exposure of 5 rem/year or less; \rem" stands for Roentgen Equivalent Man, and it is a unit of radiation dose, of which more will be said in the following chapters. See <http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/phs143.htm> and <http://www.clarku.edu/departments/marsh/projects/community/plutonium.pdf>.