Nuclear Power? No Thanks!
Siad | 11.11.2009 10:05 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Energy Crisis | World
1.
The world's endowment of uranium ore is now so depleted that the nuclear industry will never, from its own resources, be able to generate the energy it needs to clear up its own backlog of waste.
2. It is essential that the waste should be made safe and placed in permanent storage. High-level wastes, in their temporary storage facilities, have to be managed and kept cool to prevent fire and leaks which would otherwise contaminate large areas.
3. Shortages of uranium - and the lack of realistic alternatives - leading to interruptions in supply, can be expected to start in the middle years of the decade 2010-2019, and to deepen thereafter.
4. The task of disposing finally of the waste could not, therefore, now be completed using only energy generated by the nuclear industry, even if the whole of the industry's output were to be devoted to it. In order to deal with its waste, the industry will need to be a major net user of energy, almost all of it from fossil fuels.
5. Every stage in the nuclear process, except fission, produces carbon dioxide. As the richest ores are used up, emissions will rise.
6. Uranium enrichment uses large volumes of uranium hexafluoride, a halogenated compound (HC). Other HCs are also used in the nuclear life-cycle. HCs are greenhouse gases with global warming potentials ranging up to 10,000 times that of carbon dioxide.
7. An independent audit should now review these findings. The quality of available data is poor, and totally inadequate in relation to the importance of the nuclear question. The audit should set out an energy-budget which establishes how much energy will be needed to make all nuclear waste safe, and where it will come from. It should also supply a briefing on the consequences of the worldwide waste backlog being abandoned untreated.
8. There is no single solution to the coming energy gap. What is needed is a speedy programme of Lean Energy, comprising: (1) energy conservation and efficiency; (2) structural change in patterns of energy-use and land-use; and (3) renewable energy; all within (4) a framework for managing the energy descent, such as Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs).
The world's endowment of uranium ore is now so depleted that the nuclear industry will never, from its own resources, be able to generate the energy it needs to clear up its own backlog of waste.
2. It is essential that the waste should be made safe and placed in permanent storage. High-level wastes, in their temporary storage facilities, have to be managed and kept cool to prevent fire and leaks which would otherwise contaminate large areas.
3. Shortages of uranium - and the lack of realistic alternatives - leading to interruptions in supply, can be expected to start in the middle years of the decade 2010-2019, and to deepen thereafter.
4. The task of disposing finally of the waste could not, therefore, now be completed using only energy generated by the nuclear industry, even if the whole of the industry's output were to be devoted to it. In order to deal with its waste, the industry will need to be a major net user of energy, almost all of it from fossil fuels.
5. Every stage in the nuclear process, except fission, produces carbon dioxide. As the richest ores are used up, emissions will rise.
6. Uranium enrichment uses large volumes of uranium hexafluoride, a halogenated compound (HC). Other HCs are also used in the nuclear life-cycle. HCs are greenhouse gases with global warming potentials ranging up to 10,000 times that of carbon dioxide.
7. An independent audit should now review these findings. The quality of available data is poor, and totally inadequate in relation to the importance of the nuclear question. The audit should set out an energy-budget which establishes how much energy will be needed to make all nuclear waste safe, and where it will come from. It should also supply a briefing on the consequences of the worldwide waste backlog being abandoned untreated.
8. There is no single solution to the coming energy gap. What is needed is a speedy programme of Lean Energy, comprising: (1) energy conservation and efficiency; (2) structural change in patterns of energy-use and land-use; and (3) renewable energy; all within (4) a framework for managing the energy descent, such as Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs).
Siad
Homepage:
http://www.theleaneconomyconnection.net/downloads.html#Nuclear
Comments
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Time to get organised and stop the new generation of nuclear power stations.
11.11.2009 10:19
London
11am Saturday 21st until 4pm Sunday 22nd November 2009
The weekend will be a space for grassroots campaigners to network, share ideas and information and make plans to win.
Full details here:
No New Nuclear
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No New Nuclear
Emotionalism
11.11.2009 19:44
The real lesson of Chernobyl was the failure of the Soviet system not of nuclear power, a system that came up with shoddy, dangerous and inefficient designs and reckless management. Almost everything designed in Soviet times from submarines to hydro-electric dams to planes and buildings has turned out to be disaster-prone. Think of the Kursk submarine, the explosion at the Sayano Sushenskaya dam, the fire at the Moscow TV tower etc.
No-one is proposing to build anything like the inherently dangerous Chernobyl in the UK.
Not an emo
Emo
11.11.2009 21:48
however what is your problem wrong with emotion anyway? should we all just be consumer robots?
Siad
More Emo
12.11.2009 01:53
As for what is written above about the flakeyness of the old Soviet inferstructure, its worth remembering that the West has already had a clutch of nuclear near disasters, Windscale and Three mile island spring to mind. Despite the presumed efficiency and attention to safety of our western ways of doing things, it is our society and technology that is pushing the world into runaway climate change, which if not stopped will cause countless suffering and deaths around the world.
We must radically change the way we live if we are to avert the future catastophes that threaten us. Building more nukes isn't the solution, renewables and drastically reducing waste is the way forward
a digger
@not an emo
16.11.2009 12:25
Yeah right, and the capitalist system doesn't come up with shoddy, dangerous and inefficient designs and reckless management as well? lol. Ever considered a career as a stand-up comedian?
I predict the government are going to have a bit of a fight on their hands with this. Things could kick off big time.
anon