Ten reasons why nuclear power has no future

[Oscar]

COMMENTARY: Ten reasons why nuclear power has no future

[ https://nbmediacoop.org/2023/10/11/comm ... no-future/ ]

by Sam Arnold and Ann McAllister October 11, 2023

Nuclear power is dirty and dangerous now, and for many generations to come. The following ten reasons state why nuclear has no future.

1. Nuclear power is too slow to help mitigate the climate crisis. A 2022 report by the National Academies of Science found that most advanced reactors, including small modular nuclear reactors (SMNRs), “will confront significant challenges in meeting commercial deployment by 2050.” In contrast, the Burchill Wind Farm near Saint John took three and a half years from partnership to full deployment. Canada’s target to reduce carbon emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 is looming. Renewables with storage, energy efficiency and conservation, demand-side management, and interties such as the Atlantic Loop can provide reliable baseload electricity. To wait for the SMNR silver bullet, which may never come, is to court climate catastrophe.
2. Nuclear power is too expensive compared to alternatives. Wind and solar both undercut nuclear power rates. The authoritative Lazard energy analysis for 2023 costed storage-backed onshore wind and solar at US $42 to $114 per megawatt-hour, compared to nuclear power at US $141 to $221. Power from SMNRs will probably be more expensive than electricity from large nuclear plants with their history of cost increases. Crucially, SMNRs can’t take advantage of the economies of scale which large reactors do. There are orders for only single SMNRs, making it unlikely that multiple units will ever be built.
3. Chronic exposure to radioactive pollutants emitted from nuclear power plants can damage human health. The thyroid absorbs radioactive iodine as readily as non-radioactive iodine, putting children at particular risk of thyroid disease and cancer. Chronic exposure to radioactive materials, even at low doses, increases the incidence of cancer, leukemia, anemia, genetic damage, immune system damage, strokes, heart attacks, and low intelligence.
4. Liquid sodium and molten salt reactors pre-dating the ARC and Moltex SMR designs were unreliable and dangerous. Internationally, sodium reactors have not performed reliably; one in Russia experienced repeated fires. In the 1960s, the US Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (1965-1969) operated at only 40 per cent capacity compared to 90 per cent for the average US commercial nuclear power plant.
5. Nuclear power does not work effectively with renewable energy. A University of Sussex study of 123 countries over 25 years found that countries that invested in renewable energy reduced more carbon emissions than countries with large percentages of nuclear power. Contrary to the claim that nuclear energy and renewables work well together, the study found that they “crowd each other out.”
6. Radioactive waste remains an unsolved conundrum and will be an ongoing cost to taxpayers far into the future. Deep geological repositories (DGRs) for the disposal of high-level nuclear waste fuel are not operational anywhere in the world, including Finland and Sweden. The two locations Ignace and Saugeen Ojibway Nation under consideration in Ontario are opposed by many, including Indigenous peoples. A little-known fact is that while the waste fuel is the responsibility of the federal government, the provinces are responsible for the steel and concrete building materials which will ultimately become radioactive rubble. Would Canadians accept having a nuclear waste dump in or near their community?
7. Many Indigenous leaders and First Nations are skeptical of nuclear reactors, nuclear waste, environmental risks, and groundwater contamination posed by the long-term storage of such wastes. First Nations in Ontario and Quebec do not want radioactive waste from New Brunswick in their territories. Federal and provincial governments have a history of not consulting First Nations and ignoring their concerns about nuclear installations. The Peskotomukhati Nation at Skutik and the Wolastoq Grand Council are firmly opposed to nuclear development. Nuclear does not align with their sacred principle of caring for the next seven generations.
8. Transporting radioactive waste long distances to a proposed geological repository would come with higher costs and increased risk of accidents. The transport distance from Point Lepreau to a DGR proposed for northern Ontario could exceed 2,000 km. Considering the frequency of accidents involving transport trucks and freight trains, how would you feel about radioactive loads passing your home several times weekly for the next 40-plus years? To prevent such catastrophes, decommissioned nuclear reactors and their accumulated wastes must be stored safely in their present location.
9. Nuclear weapons are dependent on energy from the plutonium produced at nuclear power plants, making them partners in all nuclear weapons produced. Moltex Energy’s technology for separating plutonium, the explosive in atomic bombs, from nuclear waste fuel increases the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. Moltex’s claim that the plutonium would be too impure for use in nuclear weapons has been discredited in a 2022 report from the US National Academy of Sciences and Medicine. The experts stated that the method might delay the plutonium’s use in weapons, but would not prevent it. Nine US non-proliferation experts who advised six US presidents warned the Trudeau government that plutonium separation “will undermine the global nuclear weapons non-proliferation regime that Canada has done much to strengthen.”
10. The cost of decommissioning nuclear reactors must be added to all expenses incurred at every link in the nuclear chain, from mining and fuel fabrication to perpetual waste storage, from domestic safety and security to international proliferation prevention, from policy to regulation, from design to final disposition. Taxpayers are paying for these cumulative costs, so the tally must be made public.

Knowing the environmental dangers and financial and social liabilities nuclear power will impose on us and our descendants should galvanize us to demand that government regulations act in the public’s best interest.

Sam Arnold and Ann McAllister are with the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick (CRED-NB).

[Oscar]

New Brunswick Indigenous communities and all New Brunswickers need facts, not sales hype, about SMNRs

[ https://nbmediacoop.org/2023/10/02/comm ... out-smnrs/ ]

by Hugh Akagi and Susan O'Donnell October 2, 2023

Governments and other nuclear proponents are failing both Indigenous and settler communities by promoting sales and publicity material about small modular nuclear reactors (SMNRs) instead of sharing facts by independent researchers not tied to the industry.

For decades, nuclear proponents, including both the federal and New Brunswick government, have focused on the ‘dream of plentiful power’ without highlighting the risks. The nuclear fuel chain – mining uranium, chemically processing the ore, fabricating the fuel, fissioning uranium in a reactor creating toxic radioactive waste remaining hazardous for tens of thousands of years – leaves a legacy of injustices disproportionately felt by Indigenous peoples and all our relations.

Now the same is happening with the push for SMNRs. We are promised safer reactors by nuclear startup companies in New Brunswick using modifications of reactor designs – molten salt, sodium cooled – that have never operated successfully and safely on a grid anywhere despite billions of dollars of public funds spent in other countries.

Only one example of the misguided SMNR sales pitches for Indigenous and settler communities in New Brunswick is that used CANDU reactor fuel can be “recycled” to make new fuel. The technical name for this process is ‘reprocessing.’ Calling it ‘recycling’ is a buzzword meant to reassure people because the truth is impossible to accept. If the reprocessing project goes ahead, less than one percent of the used fuel at Point Lepreau is plutonium and other elements that could possibly be extracted and re-used for new fuel. The more than 99 percent left over will be a toxic mess of new kinds of nuclear waste that nobody knows how to safely contain.

The reprocessing process planned for New Brunswick is based on a technology developed by the Idaho National Laboratory, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars so far, over two decades, attempting to reprocess a small amount of used fuel.

In different countries, commercial reprocessing has been an environmental and financial disaster. In just one example, a small commercial reprocessing plant in the U.S. operated for six years – heavily subsidized by the federal government and New York State – before shutting down for safety improvements. After the owner abandoned the project in the 1970s, the multi-billion dollar clean up continues today.

The research on reprocessing used fuel is clear: it’s an expensive nuclear experiment that could leave a multi-million-dollar radioactive mess affecting entire ecosystems and the health of people and other living beings. Why are governments sharing sales and promotional material about the project and fantasies about ‘recycling’ instead of facts about reprocessing and the experiences in other countries? Why are New Brunswickers and First Nation leaders not demanding the evidence?

The lack of transparency by governments on the risks of SMNRs indicates that either they are not concerned with the risks, or they choose not to share them – the opposite of what is required under the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Much of society’s standards for integrity have been lost. We ‘accept’ circular references, we ‘accept’ that no one is declaring a conflict of interest in conversations surrounding nuclear. When our integrity is lost, so is our quality of life. Words such as ‘protect’ and ‘conservation’ have no meaning anymore. Though we use the terms ‘transparency,’ and ‘accountability,’ more and more often, they have less and less meaning.

The Peskotomuhkati Nation in Canada and Wolastoq Grand Council cannot provide consent for any new nuclear developments in New Brunswick without considering the lessons they have learned in the past, the current relationships and communications they are experiencing, and the impacts of toxic wastes that remain dangerous forever. First Nations in New Brunswick cannot provide consent for toxic radioactive waste to be sent to Ontario, where Indigenous nations also do not want it on their territories.

The Wolastoq Grand Council, which issued a statement on nuclear energy and nuclear waste in 2021, opposes any destruction or harm to Wolastokuk which includes all ‘Flora and Fauna’ in, on and above their homeland. Nuclear is not a green source of energy or solution to a healthier future for our Children, Grandchildren and the ones who are not born yet. Wolastoqewi-Elders define Nuclear in their language as ‘Askomiw Sanaqak,’ which translates as ‘Forever Dangerous.’

The Peskotomuhkatik ecosystem includes Point Lepreau. The Peskotomuhkati leadership in Canada has repeatedly tried to bring facts about both New Brunswick SMNR projects and their potential environmental implications to the attention of New Brunswickers and all Canadians, writing twice to Environment and Climate Change Minister Guilbeault urging him to designate the SMNR projects in New Brunswick for a federal impact assessment, so that all the facts could be made public. Both attempts were denied, the most recent in August this year.

Peskotomuhkati leadership has participated, and continues to participate, in Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) and various provincial processes and has firsthand experience that these past and current engagement and assessment tools do not provide a sufficient framework to address adverse effects and impacts to Indigenous rights.

The SMNR projects planned for Point Lepreau within Peskotomuhkatik homeland will have profound and lasting impacts on Indigenous rights as well as those of Indigenous communities in Ontario where the nuclear industry is proposing to build a deep geological repository for the used nuclear fuel and other sites for intermediate radioactive waste. The SMNR projects will also have profound and lasting impacts on the Bay of Fundy, the marine life the Bay supports and coastal communities.

Until the government begins to ask for and share facts about SMNRs instead of sales materials, Indigenous nations must assume that representation no longer means peoples’ representation, but rather representation of the industry.

An earlier version of this commentary was published by The Hill Times.

Hugh Akagi is Chief of the Peskotomuhkati Nation in Canada. Susan O’Donnell is the lead investigator of the CEDAR research project at St. Thomas University in Fredericton.