NUCLEAR POWER - NO TECHNICAL CHANGES TO REDUCE RISK When we are confronted with the energy crisis, environmental change, air pollution, and declining oil reserves, we again hear voices calling for the return of nuclear energy.
Environmental Commission of the European Region Humanist opposes the use of nuclear energy for the following reasons:
1. Reactors today but have been improved after the accident at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, continue to operate with inadequate security standards. Accidents in which nuclear fuel melt can occur even in the most modern reactors. On the other hand nuclear power plants have become repositories of huge amounts of radioactive waste storage awaiting permanent repository construktion.
2. It is not possible effective separation of civil applications and military applications. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has never worked properly yesterday and today both as a state that has the power you can get nuclear bombs with relatively small investments and periods of a few years.
3. Radioactive wastes are a problem without solution. Radioactive waste decay periods of tens of thousands of years, ie a period beyond the horizon quite understandable to humans. No country in the world has built a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel due to enormous technical difficulties and risks. On the other hand is absolutely unacceptable that is exporting nuclear waste, each country has to accept responsibility for its own nuclear waste.
4. The enormous sums spent on nuclear research should be transferred urgently to the development of renobables energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal etc. that can operate successfully in the short term and allow to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that accelerate global warming. Research in the field of nuclear technology will need a lot more decades for reactors that would eventually be safer and applicable on a large scale for energy production. Brief confrontation
between the reactors in use today and future prospects:
type fission fission reactor (fast neutrons) fusion (hot)
time used today use for energy production by at least 15 years
at least 30 to 50 years . First prototypes possibly in 10 years. Safety
power plants accidents and terrorist attacks may be higher risks for the presence of liquid metals total uncertainty about the ability to control high temperatures
radioactive waste in huge quantities, radioactive for more than 10 000 years in smaller amounts but intensely radioactive for hundreds of years is not radioactive, but probably pro-reactor materials should be treated as radioactive waste
extremely high risks of proliferation lower elevations, but none ever present
modest energy efficiency (only 5 to 6% of Potential Energy) high, nearly 99 % of Potential
high energy fuel reserves of uranium reserves would be exhausted in a few decades for long-term available almost to times indefinite general Judgement
unacceptable. Pronounced "high risk in virtually all aspects despite major improvements, risks are inacceptable-able due to lack of safety and radioactive waste no certainty that the research carried-ran concrete results in the near future.
Nuclear Waste nuclear industry says it can store radioactive waste in geological repositories deep underground, and insurance. But in fact no nuclear storage system can guarantee with 100% certainty that no radioactivity will escape eventually to the surrounding environment for thousands of years. The decay of radioactive elements takes thousands of years, a quite long time horizon beyond comprehensible to humans. If we consider that since the time of ancient Rome nearly 2000 years have passed! Sooner or later the release of radioactive material to permanent repositories happen, probably not affecting our generation or our children or grandchildren, but perhaps those who live within 10 or 100 generations. No technology can exclude with certainty the possibility of radioactive dispersion in the distant future.
has not yet built a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel, demonstrating that the problem of nuclear waste remains unresolved. The spent fuel removed from reactors, is the most dangerous kind of nuclear waste. Some countries spent nuclear fuel dissolved in nitric acid to extract plutonium for military purposes. This process produces significant quantities of radioactive liquid.
Most of the 270000 tonnes of radioactive waste in the world accumulate within the nuclear power plants, cooling pools and its volume increases at 12000 tons each year. The amount of nuclear waste that would be produced by nuclear energy production on a large scale would be as huge as a storage site that is projected (but never finished) by the U.S. at Yucca Mountain would be enough to store anything other than the waste produced in three years.
Leave a problem as the unresolved nuclear waste, a legacy to future generations, may appear acceptable only to those who consider everything in terms of profit immediate staff. The companies of the future will be unintended and innocent victims of the actions in the present. We accept our responsibility for living conditions that force them to future generations. These conditions must be at least as healthy as we are at the moment we were born (which is far from being a reality in today's world considering the ongoing process of the massive destruction of natural environment). No one can predict what will happen within 100 years, nothing to say in 10000 years, which occur periods of political instability and acute social and natural or manmade events
exceptional. What will happen to all those nuclear dumps circumstances we can not predict at all?
is not only irresponsible, but criminal to leave future generations we can not solve problems today!
Security Risks in 1979 Three Mile Island, Chernobyl in 1986 and Tokaimura in 1999 are just some of hundreds of nuclear accidents that have occurred to date. Reactors remain extremely vulnerable. The probability of accidents is increasing, because most of the reactors operating today have more than 20 years and therefore are more prone to errors related to the aging process of the construction materials for reactors and accessories . Many power plants were designed for a lifespan of 40 years are being updated to work for 60 years, posing new risks.
No technology or security system immune to accidents. Deregulation and market pressures that demand cheap energy, nuclear utilities are pushing to reduce maintenance and routine inspections, and as a result, reducing safety margins and accelerating the aging power plants.
addition to technical accidents should be considered vulnerable to terrorist attack or sabotage.
Nuclear Proliferation
Most experts believe that an absolute separation of civilian nuclear technology and the military is impossible and extremely difficult to control globally. The "NPT" between states never worked and never will work. Making a nuclear weapon fissile material required such as uranium 235 or plutonium 239. Most nuclear reactors use uranium as fuel and plutonium is as a byproduct. A plutonium separation plant can be built in a few months, so any country with power plants can accumulate plutonium, and eventually a nuclear arsenal within a relatively short term.
Nuclear technology was designed for military purposes and only later was adapted to civilian applications. Today research and development in this field is mainly directed towards the production of weapons rather than energy production. Consider these figures: there are now about 440 nuclear reactors operating around the world, while the number of nuclear weapons was produced about 36500! Despite the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea showed that the civilian and military applications are closely related and that international monitoring can be easily evaded. Iran also is in possession of uranium enrichment plants. Limiting the production of fissile material to a few countries does not work. U.S. that wants to be in charge of controlling nuclear proliferation is the only country to use nuclear weapons against civilian populations, 6 August 1945 in Hiroshima and three days later in Nagasaki.
The only way to prevent nuclear proliferation is to eliminate the use of nuclear energy worldwide. Conclusions
New technologies often touted as magical solutions available in the near future are actually still in a phase of study and experimentation. Neutron reactors Fast as well as hot and cold nuclear fusion require decades of research and substantial investment to enable large-scale energy production. These "technologies of the future" at the moment are only vague promises and conjecture.
research and development towards fission and fusion of the Fast Neutron must continue, but strictly out of any military context. Any future development and practical use of these technologies should be subject to careful risk assessment before being implemented anywhere in the world, and respond to all concerns related to:
- Security
reactors - certainty about the application of the non-proliferation and military uses
- solving the waste problem without impacting future generations
Under pressure from the energy and environmental crisis, the nuclear industry, governments and the media are trying to make us believe that nuclear power has a minor impact on our planet than fossil fuels because it produces no greenhouse gases.
The great danger of the nuclear solution is exactly this discussion, further to the security concerns: the risk that the expense of future generations this energy relatively cheap (thanks to heavy subsidies) and available is being used to continue business as usual, continuing the exploitation of the planet beyond any reasonable limit, producing and consuming huge amounts of unnecessary goods, worsening social inequalities, allowing the absurdity of the system free market to dominate unchallenged by other decades, enough time to bring our planet definitely on the brink of human and environmental collapse.
If we eliminate the use of nuclear energy, we will certainly face a difficult but exciting challenge, a technological challenge as well as political and social, replace fuel fossil by:
1. Massive energy savings in all areas
2. Extensive development of truly renewable energy sources
That means stopping waste, applied research and development to the perfection of renewable energy sources, reduce consumption, but also use new lifestyles based on intangible values \u200b\u200band find we can really be happier with less.
Bibliography:
- Environmental Inventory, Report No. 10 - European Environment Agency
- Magazine Le Scienze, In November 2006
- Scientific American, December 2005
- after oil - Geographic National
August 2005 - (R) evolution in the Energy, www.greenpeace.org
- Massimo Bassini: Global warming and nuclear energy - a new vision.
04/05/2006 - nuclear proliferation yesterday, today and especially tomorrow - Angelo Baracca
- The Manifesto 11/02/2007: The reunion of the G7 with the fear of inflation and energy shortages
- "The West would be really happier with less? The small world - Serge Latouche - The diplomatic world
