About 2050 words

For several decades, there has been a cultural deadlock between the position of environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the promoters of nuclear energy. Until recently, the media have presented ecological groups as unanimously anti-nuclear. But things are changing as time passes and this deadlock may now be breaking up.

Recently, James LOVELOCK, age 84, and considered as one of the historical founders of environmental awareness since the 1960's, has been in the headlines of the news around the world after his article entitled "Nuclear energy is the only ecological solution" appeared on the front page of "The Independent" in the UK, and was reprinted elsewhere both in English and in translation.

Today, electricity can be produced cleanly and competitively with almost no CO2 emissions. France, for example, has the cleanest and cheapest electricity in Europe: 80 per cent is nuclear and 15 per cent is water power.. Tomorrow, nuclear energy will also be the key to desalination of sea water and hydrogen production.

As a personal friend of James Lovelock, and as President of EFN (Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy), I fully support James' position and consider it a paradox that today many environmental groups such as Greenpeace, World Watch, WWF, and the like are opposed to nuclear energy. Their announced concerns are for health, safety, and the protection of nature. In these respects nuclear energy is superior to the alternatives - burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), the use of solar photovoltaic cells and wind turbines for the production of electricity, and biomass (burning crop residues and growing crops to be burned). It is a fundamental fact that growth of the world's population and world-wide expectations of an improved standard of living are precipitating an energy crisis which is not being met, and which cannot be met in the long term, say in the lifetime of our children and grandchildren, without an important recourse to nuclear fission.

Well-designed, well-constructed, well-operated and well-maintained nuclear energy is clean, safe, reliable, durable and competitive. Let me discuss these points.

Pollution and the greenhouse effect

Nuclear power produces little carbon dioxide and no sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxides. On the other hand, these gases are produced in vast quantities when fossil fuels are burned. The products of combustion are simply sent up the stack: millions of tons of sulphur dioxide, which produces acid rain; and of nitrogen oxides, which cause respiratory difficulties; together with about 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) each year.

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Unlike solar cells, wind turbine farms and growing biomass, all of which cover large areas, a nuclear power station is very compact; it occupies typically the area of a football stadium and its surrounding parking lots.

There are those who have fallen in love with the simplicity of solar cells and especially the pristine elegance of wind turbines but who refuse to accept the observation that they are quantitatively incapable of supplying the energy required by an industrial civilization. I do not mean to say that these renewable energies should be excluded; they are useful and have important niche roles to play in remote locations and under special circumstances, but they can make only a marginal contribution to the energy demands of an industrial civilization.

Safety

Nuclear power is safe as proven by the record of half a century of commercial operation, with the accumulated experience of more than 10 000 reactor-years. There have been two serious accidents in the commercial exploitation of nuclear power: Three Mile Island 2 (TMI-2, in 1979 in Pennsylvania US) and Chernobyl 4 (in 1986 in the Soviet Union, now in Ukraine). TMI-2 was the worst accident one can imagine in a western power reactor: the core of the reactor melted and much of it fell to the bottom of the reactor vessel; but the radioactivity which was released was almost entirely confined in the containment structure, the air-tight silo-like building which houses the reactor itself; it was designed for that purpose. The small amount which escaped was quite innocuous. No one was seriously irradiated and no one died **

Chernobyl was different. The reactors at Chernobyl had no containment structure. Reactor 4 exploded and its graphite moderator caught fire and burned for several days. The smoke carried radioactive fission products high into the atmosphere where they were swept hither and yon by the winds. Forty-two workers died, hundreds were irradiated and survived. The inhabitants of the exclusion zone were also victims for they were hurriedly uprooted, evacuated and resettled elsewhere. They lost their jobs and they suffered psychological and social trauma in the dissolving Soviet Union. Their lives were disrupted and shortened. Since 1986, some 1800 cases of thyroid cancer have been discovered and successfully treated in persons who were young on that fateful day and exposed to radioactive fallout. It is not altogether clear whether all their cancers were caused by irradiation or whether they were spontaneously occurring thyroid cancers detected by the enhanced screening and detection methods put into practice after Chernobyl.

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In sum, less than 50 fatalities have occurred in civilian nuclear power industry in half a century, considerably fewer than occur in any year in the fossil fuel electrical power industry. Coal mine accidents are common occurrences and often cause tens or hundreds of fatalities, reported one day and forgotten the next. The same may be said for oil field accidents. Oil tankers go aground or break up, accidents occur in refineries, and oil and gas platforms have been lost with all hands, etc. Accidents in high pressure gas pipelines are not infrequent: at last count, the gas pipeline accident at Ghislenghien (Belgium) on 30 July 2004 killed at least 21 and injured 120.

Conservation

There are those who urge us to conserve energy and I agree, of course, that conservation is highly commendable, even essential, especially for those advanced countries which now depend on massive imports of fossil fuels. But in the face of the growth of the world's population and their enhanced expectations, notably China and India which account for about 35% of the world's population, and in the face of finite fossil fuel resources, conservation can only delay the crisis by a few years or a few decades. (And there are those who seek a "simpler" life, but that question is beyond the concern of this paper.)

Nuclear waste

A gram of uranium yields about as much energy as a tonne of coal or oil - it is the famous "factor of a million" effect. Nuclear wastes are accordingly about a million times smaller than fossil fuel wastes. Most fossil fuel waste goes up the smokestack and we don't see it, but it is not without effect, causing global warming, acid rain, smog and other atmospheric pollution.

The volume of nuclear waste produced is very small, it is totally contained and it can be stored safely. Its radioactive components decay spontaneously. In the USA spent fuel is simply stored away. Elsewhere, it is reprocessed to separate the radioactive fission products and heavy elements (about 3%) which are vitrified for safe and permanent storage, and to recover the plutonium and uranium-238 which are made into new fuel elements and thus recycled to produce more energy. The La Hague reprocessing plant near Cherbourg (France) is the largest installation of this kind and reprocesses spent fuel for Japan, Germany and other countries,as well as France.

Fear of radiation and radioactivity

Fear of the unknown is the merchandise of the anti-nuclear greens. They preach fear of radiation in general, fear of radioactive waste in particular, fear of another major accident such as Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, and fear of nuclear weapons proliferation. Their campaign depends upon the fact that radiation is quite mysterious to most people, very few are aware of the fact that radiation is present everywhere in the environment, and many of those who know a little about it have been frightened by the anti-radon industry. The anti-nuclears also take advantage of the widespread but mistaken interpretation of the studies of the health of the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing:that every ionizing event is deleterious to health (the LNT hypothesis), and the related concept of collective dose. The fact is that a moderate amount of radiation is beneficial, if not essential to life.

Most people are totally unaware of the fact that the human body is itself naturally radioactive. It contains about 8000 becquerels, about half of which is potassium-40 (potassium is a chemical element essential to the health - many people eat a banana a day to assure an adequate supply) as well as carbon-14 and tritium (hydrogen-3).

Proliferation

The only serious argument against nuclear power is the fear of nuclear weapons proliferation, that is, that some enriched uranium or separated plutonium falls into mischievious hands and is fashioned into a bomb. No state now possessing nuclear weapons reached that condition via nuclear power; but we are now dealing with at least one inimical non-state entity whose only access to nuclear weapons material would be theft. Eternal vigilence is indeed imposed upon us.

In 1996, shortly after the 10^th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, the non-profit Association of Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy was created to inform the public in a complete and straighforward way about sources of energy and their environmental impact. EFN is independent of government and industry; it is basically a group of private citizens. Its position is based on solid scientific facts, not ideological considerations. Eight years later, EFN has grown to become an international network of 6000 members and supporters in 48 countries.

One of its members is Professor James Lovelock himself. Other members are ordinary citizens concerned about the future of our planet. Among them one finds also distinguished scientists and environmentalists, and some survivors of the Hiroshima atomic explosion.

EFN bases its position on the fact that nuclear fission is a clean, safe, reliable and competitive energy source. It is the only source of energy that can replace a significant part of the fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) which pollute the atmosphere and contribute to the greenhouse effect and the global-warming trend. Nuclear power should be introduced whenever possible in the coming years. At the same time, more efficient use of energy and self-sustainable life styles should be promoted.

An intelligent combination of energy conservation, together with nuclear energy for base-load electricity production and renewable energies for local low-intensity applications, is the way for the future.

The opposition of the environmental movement to civilian applications of nuclear energy will in time be revealed as among the greatest mistakes of our our times.

EFN's membership is growing rapidly, as an increasing number of people realise the environmental benefits of an intelligent use of nuclear energy.

Local groups and associations of EFN are active and becoming increasingly popular in many countries. I invite our British readers to organise some local activities. And even to organize local chapter of EFN in the UK.

Those who share our views may join EFN, visit the Internet site http://www.ecolo.org , where they may sign the petition in favour of clean nuclear energy, and contact EFN to become local correspondents.

* While some CO2 is emitted in constructing a nuclear facility, none is emitted in operation (in France, where enrichment is powered by nuclear energy - elsewhere enrichment plants may run on fossil fuel emitting a bit more CO2). In either case, nuclear power makes a minimum contribution to the greenhouse effect.

** except perhaps in traffic accidents during the panicky evacuation which followed.

***(The recent accident at the Mihama site in Japan, where 4 men died immediately and 11 were hospitalized with serious burns, did not involve the nuclear part of the power plant and no radioactivity was released. It could have occurred in any plant producing hot water under high pressure. It is nevertheless an example of inexcusable industrial negligence.)