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Variant28.Indd Copy VARIANT 28 | SPRING 2007 | 31 The Friendly Atom NuclearSpin On February 15, Tony Blair’s plan to introduce a uranium resources amounted to about 3.6 million new generation of nuclear power stations suffered tonnes. These resources show a wide variation in ore a serious setback when the High Court ruled that grade and accessibility. ... Uranium ore is not an energy the consultation carried out by the government resource unless the ore grade is high enough. Below earlier was “misleading” and “seriously flawed”. grade 0.02% (U3O8 Uranium Oxide) more energy is Justice Sullivan’s ruling enjoins the government required to produce and exploit the uranium fuel than to canvass public opinion again, causing a likely can be generated from it. Falling ore grade leads to delay in the publication of the energy white rapidly rising CO2 emissions from the nuclear energy paper scheduled for March. The judgement cycle. Assuming world nuclear generating capacity is a significant victory for Greenpeace which, remains at 2005 levels, after about 2016 the mean describing it as a sham, had applied for a judicial grade of uranium ore will fall significantly from today’s review of the consultation process. levels, and even more so after 2034. After about 60 The landmark ruling closed a chapter that years the world nuclear power system will fall off the ‘The Future’s started on January 23, 2006 when the government ‘Energy Cliff’ – meaning that the nuclear system will Mirror’, Corneila officially launched the 12-week consultation consume as much energy as can be generated from the Hesse-Honegger, exercise on the UK’s energy needs, entitled: ‘Our uranium fuel. Whether large and rich new uranium ore Studies of malformed plants Energy Challenge: Securing Clean, Affordable deposits will be found or not is unknown.” and insects Energy for the Long Term’. The review officially Even according to the House of Commons found in the ended in April, and on July 11, Alistair Darling, Environmental Audit Committee’s sixth report, neighbourhood the Trade and Industry Secretary, gave the green “the history of nuclear industry gives little of power plants. light to a new generation of nuclear power confidence about the timescales and costs of new Published by Locus+ plants extolling that: “nuclear power would make a build’; that “nuclear can do nothing to fill the need ‘significant contribution’ to cutting carbon emissions for...new generating capacity... by 2016, as it simply Stripy bug and to securing Britain’s energy future.” could not be built in time”; that “uranium mines (Graphosoma It is obvious why the Energy Review should can only supply just over half the current demand lineatum). for uranium, and the situation is likely to become The left side have been seen as a cynical PR exercise that gave of the thorax is the appearance of a public debate, since Blair had more acute”; whilst “nuclear power can justifiably shorter. reportedly made up his mind in November 2005, be regarded as a low-carbon source of electricity.... Found in Rohr. when he was said to be “convinced” of the pro- the level of emissions associated with nuclear nuclear argument; and the pro-nuclear bias of his might increase significantly as lower grades of “in-depth research into the past performance of Cabinet was equally well known. ore are used”; and that “no country in the world nuclear industry is not required to carry out the Nuclear revival in the rest of the world is being has yet solved the problems of long-term disposal review.” Supreme disdain for learning anything led by the G8 countries, that intend to resurrect of high-level waste. The current work being from the past is evident throughout the report. fast breed reactors – which were earlier scrapped conducted by CoRWM [Committee on Radioactive Only days prior to the High Court decision, in the UK, France and Germany due to their Waste Management] will not be sufficient of British Energy – a company with a disastrous astronomical costs. To be sure, there is scepticism address the issue”. record and 65% owned by the government – was within the ranks of the G8; Italy and Germany If media saturation has been dominated by a calling for partners to help build a new generation would rather dispense with the option. In the rest crisis of reaching the peak point in oil production of nuclear plants by 2016. The company had been of Europe, Sweden wants to phase out its nuclear – that less oil is left to find than we have already rescued from bankruptcy earlier by a government power plants; Austria and Spain are equally keen used – the proponents of nuclear power are bailout, even as it raked in £622 million profit in to diversify. silent about the nuclear industry’s equally fragile the first nine months of the financial year and Failing to take into account any lessons learned dependency on uranium and the associated reactors at four of its sites remain out of action from past mistakes, The Energy Review seemed to insecurities. due to a lack of maintenance. While most of the have “abolished history” according to an editorial As Jan Willem and Storm van Leeuwen state: proposed sites for new nuclear plants are owned in the Sunday Herald. The same editorial quotes by British Energy, the private financing approach “It is inevitable that replacements for uranium fuel Colin Mitchell, a manager of nuclear policy at ensures that in the end, while most of the profits will be sought within the lifetime of any new nuclear the Department of Trade and Industry, saying, remain private, the costs will for the most part build in the UK. It is also inevitable that as high grade Soft bug, wings be public. The real price of nuclear energy has uranium supplies decrease, the cost of nuclear power (Deraeocoris never been properly disclosed, partly because the will increase along with nuclear CO2 emissions.” And ruber). public has been saddled with the massive costs that: “Once high-grade uranium ores are no-longer The right wing of decommissioning. In the UK alone these costs available, the nuclear industry will rely on uranium and is too short. The short feeler has stand at £50 billion, and since the opening of the plutonium from military and civil stockpiles. These will no deformation first civil nuclear power station at Calder Hall in last only a few years, and questions remain about the (it broke off). October 1956, the nuclear industry has received net energy gain from reprocessing these materials. Found near the global subsidies of around $1 trillion. In the future, it is likely that the nuclear industry Gösgen power and governments will look to MOXfuel – a mixture of plant. But government is now pushing nuclear power on the grounds that it would be impossible for it to uranium and plutonium dioxides. In time, the nuclear meet its carbon emissions targets otherwise, and, industry hopes to develop fast breeder reactors fuelled invoking the spectre of terror, on the grounds of by weapons useable plutonium. The widespread use ‘energy security’. and production of either fuel has serious implications for nuclear weapons proliferation and the risk of nuclear terrorism.” Peak Uranium The claims for carbon-free nuclear energy are undermined by the fact that the industry’s Toxic Freedom advocates want us to overlook the carbon While it strives to sell itself as the environment emissions that are an inevitable part of the friendly energy option, the nuclear industry seems uranium extraction process. This is only going to curiously keen on escaping government regulation. get worse as the higher demand for uranium (both It already caused concern when it started lobbying nationally and internationally) makes it necessary to lift regulatory constrains through the creation of for it to be extracted in less refined forms, adding a new energy agency, independent of government to the emissions. In reporting on energy security influence, to oversee its operation if a new and uranium reserves, Jan Willem and Storm generation of nuclear plants is to be built. The van Leeuwen, independent nuclear analysts at creation of such a body would free the industry Ceedata Consulting, state: from any kind of enforceable responsibility and enable artificial price hikes. The industry is also “A new generation of nuclear reactors will increase shaken by the example of the plant in Olkiluoto, demand for uranium ore to produce reactor fuel. In Finland – the first reactor to be built in Western 2005 the world nuclear fleet consumed about 68,000 Europe in the past two decades – causing financial tonnes of natural uranium, mostly from mined sources. losses to its builder Areva by running wildly At the end of 2005 the world known recoverable 32 | VARIANT 28 | SPRING 2007 Two damsel bugs (Nabis rugosus). Left: the right wing is too short. Right: damaged wing as well as completely displaced and misshapen neck plate. Found in the grounds of the Paul Scherrer Institute (by J.Jenny). in 1994. This was the second scare in less than Predictable Fallout a year to hit the plant. According to the Daily Two already well known consequences come hand- Mail, a Dounreay spokesman “confirmed that in-hand with the return of nuclear energy; the eight workers were being tested for suspected potential for nuclear proliferation and catastrophic plutonium intake”. The lab was already shut accidents. According to MIT, if the global nuclear down the previous year “following a similar alarm capacity triples, it would take the theft of just involving 15 workers... In August, UKAEA started 0.00025% of the MOX manufactured every year refresher courses following a number of radiation to provide the plutonium for a nuclear bomb.
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