[E-rundbrief] Info 2106 - Climate activists against nuclear

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief Info 2106 - Simon Butler (GB): Ten reasons climate 
activists should not support nuclear.

Bad Ischl, 28.6.2021

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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Korrektur zum letzten E-Rundbrief-Info (Info 2116, vom 27.6.2021):
Statt Info 2116 müsste Info 2106 stehen.

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Ten reasons climate activists should not support nuclear.

Simon Butler

Edinburgh

June 24, 2021

Source : Green Left

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/ten-reasons-climate-activists-should-not-support-nuclear

In a recent Guardian article, Jacobin magazine’s founding editor 
Bhaskar Sunkara declared that “If we want to fight the climate crisis, 
we must embrace nuclear power.” He praised nuclear as clean and 
reliable and suggested that opponents of nuclear power are either 
gripped by “paranoia … rooted in Cold War associations” or are relying 
on “outdated information”.

I disagree entirely. Here are ten reasons why nuclear power is still 
no solution for climate change.

1. Nuclear is dangerous. Building many new nuclear power plants around 
the globe means a higher risk of unpredictable Fukushima-type 
accidents. We know more extreme weather events are locked in due to 
climate change, adding to the danger as time passes.

What if a nuclear power plant had been in the path of Australia’s huge 
bushfires in 2020? What nuclear power plant could withstand super 
typhoons like the one that flattened Tacloban City in the Philippines 
in 2013? What if a nuclear plant was submerged by unexpectedly massive 
floods, like those in Mozambique for the past three years in a row?

Planning for a hotter future means switching to safer, resilient 
technologies. Building more nuclear power plants in this context is 
reckless.

2. Nuclear wastes water. Nuclear power is an incredibly water-guzzling 
energy source compared with renewables like solar and wind. We know 
climate change-induced droughts and floods will make existing 
freshwater shortages a lot worse. So it’s a bad idea to waste so much 
water on more nuclear.

Uranium mining can also make nearby groundwater unusable forever. Half 
of the world’s uranium mines use a process called in-situ leaching. 
This involves fracking ore deposits then pumping down a cocktail of 
acids mixed with groundwater to dissolve the uranium for easier 
extraction. This contaminates aquifers with radioactive elements. 
There are no examples of successful groundwater restoration.

3. Nuclear is slow. Nuclear power plants take a very long time to 
build. Since 1981, the median construction time for nuclear reactors 
has been 7 to 10 years. In 2017, two-thirds of new nuclear power 
plants being built had long delays.

Science says we need to replace fossil fuels rapidly and completely 
but nuclear power does not allow for a fast transition. Solar and wind 
can be deployed much more quickly.

4. Nuclear is not green. The claim that nuclear is emissions-free 
relies on not telling the whole story. If you measure greenhouse gas 
emissions over the whole process — mining, refining, construction, 
decommissioning and waste storage — then nuclear is far worse for the 
climate than renewables.

A 2017 report by WISE International estimated nuclear lifecycle 
emissions at 88–146 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour. By 
contrast, estimates of lifecycle emissions for wind power sit at about 
5–12 grams. Carbon emissions from uranium mining will also rise over 
time as the most easily recoverable ores are mined out.

5. Nuclear is not renewable. There’s not enough high grade uranium 
available for nuclear power to make a big dent in carbon emissions. If 
we trebled the number of nuclear plants worldwide recoverable uranium 
reserves would run out in a few decades.

If we replaced 70% of global energy use with nuclear power we’d run 
out of uranium in about 6 years. Nuclear reflects very short-term 
thinking. We need long-term sustainability.

6. Nuclear is expensive. Producing energy with nuclear power is a lot 
more expensive than renewables. Nuclear power’s already high 
construction costs routinely blow out, going billions over budget. 
Britain’s Hinkley Point C reactor cost estimates have risen from £18 
billion in 2016 to £22–£23 billion today. It won’t open until June 
2026 at the earliest.

Cost does matter, even if part of an emergency climate action plan 
like a Green New Deal. The higher cost of nuclear power reflects the 
higher amount of human labour time and natural resources it consumes.

If renewables were built instead of nuclear, the labour and resources 
saved could be better deployed in the other areas we need to bring 
about a future based on climate justice, such as housing, healthcare, 
sustainable farming or climate reparations.

7. Nuclear power means nuclear weapons. A big rollout of nuclear power 
would mean a big expansion of fissile materials that could be used for 
nuclear weapons. It would multiply the facilities such as enrichment 
and reprocessing plants that these weapons need. The spread of civil 
nuclear programs to more countries would make more states capable of 
quickly producing nuclear weapons.

In countries such as the United States and Britain, keeping civil 
nuclear power is a strategic military choice, not a savvy green 
policy. Consumers pay a higher energy price to maintain nuclear power 
infrastructure, which subsidises nuclear weapons programs.

8. Nuclear waste is forever. The most hazardous nuclear waste decays 
so slowly that it won’t be safe for millions of years.

Ramping up nuclear power will produce a lot more waste and there is no 
safe way to store it. It’s irresponsible to make this waste a problem 
for our descendants.

In some places nuclear waste is a very present problem. In the 1970s, 
the US army built a concrete cap to seal away 3.1 million cubic feet 
of radioactive waste on Runit Island, which is part of the Marshall 
Islands. Today, rising sea levels threaten to bring down the entire 
structure, releasing the radioactive waste into the lagoon. The US 
government has refused to help, saying it’s the Marshall Islanders’ 
problem now.

9. Uranium mining is unsafe. There is no safe way to mine uranium or 
other radioactive elements. Building more nuclear power will result in 
more leakage of radioactive materials into the environment and more 
workers exposed to unsafe conditions and preventable deaths.

10. Nuclear means dispossession. About 70% of the uranium used for 
nuclear power plants worldwide is mined from the lands of Indigenous 
minorities. For too long, Indigenous peoples’ lands and culture have 
been treated as nuclear industry sacrifice zones. We should not 
support any expansion.

Mirarr Traditional Owners, whose country lies in the north of 
Australia’s Northern Territory and encompasses the Ranger and Jabiluka 
uranium deposits, released a statement in March that “expressed their 
continued sadness” at the ongoing disaster at Fukushima. The uranium 
for the Fukushima reactor came from the Ranger mine on Mirarr lands, 
which they had always opposed.

In a 2011 open letter to the United Nations, Mirarr senior Traditional 
Owner Yvonne Margarula said that the Mirarr believe uranium mining 
globally “constitutes an unfair impact on Indigenous people now and 
into the future. We suffer the dangers and long term impacts of the 
front end of the nuclear fuel cycle so that others overseas may 
continue to enjoy lives without the awareness of the impacts this has 
on the lives of others.”

What’s the allure of nuclear?

It’s obvious why people connected with the failing nuclear industry 
will keep desperately pushing the “nuclear is a climate solution” 
argument. But there are also other people genuinely worried about 
climate change who might still stubbornly back nuclear power despite 
the arguments put above. There are several reasons for this.

For some, the mistake is to short-sightedly treat lowering greenhouse 
gas emissions in isolation from other concerns. This leads them to 
dismiss objections, which point out nuclear power’s close ties with 
environmental racism, militarism and the poisoning of Indigenous 
lands. Their mistake is to think of nuclear power, which is bound up 
in social systems of production, in a non-social way.

For others, nuclear power appeals because it aligns with fixed notions 
of progress and modernity, in which technological know-how is meant to 
lead to human mastery over nature. This ecomodernist outlook tends to 
treat nature as an enemy to conquer rather than a complex living 
system to defend and nurture. Their mistake is to think of nuclear 
power, which is an expression of capitalism’s alienation from natural 
needs, in a non-ecological way.

For others still, support for nuclear power may best be explained as a 
studied lack of solidarity. When corporate executives, professors or 
journalists say we should build more nuclear power plants, they never 
volunteer to work in uranium mines, live near nuclear power plants, or 
host radioactive waste in their neighborhoods. Those burdens will 
always be borne by others.

[Reprinted from Climate and Capitalism. Simon Butler is co-author, 
with Ian Angus, of Too Many People? Population, Immigration, and the 
Environmental Crisis and a former editor of Green Left. He lives in 
Scotland.]

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     Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
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