by Roger Diamond
As global warming gets hotter on the international political agenda, and with recent oil price volatility, the nuclear power proponents have jumped on a bandwagon to promote “the peaceful atom” as a means to power our society. Although some of these proponents are reasonable and measured about the realities of nuclear power, others belt out a list of truly amazing nonsense about nuclear power, including it being carbon free, nearly infinite in supply, totally safe and cheap.
Let’s look at some of these claims in a little detail. Carbon free? When uranium, or any other fissionable material, reacts, indeed, it does not give off any carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gases. However, almost every other aspect of the production of nuclear power does.
Let’s start with mining uranium. It’s one of the least abundant elements in the earth, but fortunately for us, it has been concentrated in the crust and further into certain rock types, such as granites (like in the Cape) sandstones (like in the Karoo) and conglomerates (like the gold-bearing Witwatersrand Supergroup). But even in these rocks it occurs in very small quantities — so small that the occurrence is measured in parts per million! This means that you have to process whatever ore you mine to get the uranium out.
Then we need to bear in mind the physics of uranium, where only 0.7% of the uranium you get is the 235U that is fissionable — fissionable is a fancy word meaning that the atom can split apart and give off energy in the process, according the famous E = mc2 equation. So the uranium has to be refined in a way that concentrates the 235U isotope and reduces the 238U concentration. This refined uranium then has to be made into very hi-tech fuel elements, long rods made with carbon, boron, special steel alloys and other expensive items. All of this has to take place under strict radiation safety controls, with well-trained and paid staff, at hi-tech facilities. Lastly there is the transport of the fuel elements to the nuclear reactors — in the case of Koeberg, fuel now comes from France, although once it was made at Pelindaba near Pretoria.
All of this mining, processing and transporting activity uses energy — fossil fuels to be precise. But that’s not even the big energy user in nuclear power. The biggest factor is probably the building of the power stations that have to be over-engineered for terrorist strikes, earthquakes, careless operators and Greenpeace, who have a tendency to jump the fence and dangle banners all over the big concrete containment structures! Seriously though, the energy consumed in earth moving, making thousands of tons of cement and building a nuclear power station, is very significant. Maintenance of the power station also consumes energy, as does the transport and disposal of the low and medium-level radioactive waste, but the big unknowns in nuclear power are decommissioning and disposal of high-level nuclear waste.
All of this activity is driven by fossil fuels and so to say that nuclear power is carbon free is to pretend that nuclear power stations descend from the heavens and that fuel rods grow on trees, neither of which are particularly believable. It is also to ignore the challenge that decommissioning and high-level waste disposal pose.
Next is the claim that uranium is so abundant. The problem with uranium reserves is just like any other resource, in that the ores range in concentration from those that yield lots of uranium, to those with very low concentrations that will require greater energy to mine and process. Ultimately the activity reaches a point where the energy invested is greater than the energy returned — a negative EROEI (energy return on energy invested). Some estimates are that if all electricity globally had to come from nuclear power, we’d have only a few decades of such energy.
Thirdly is the claim that nuclear power can be made totally safe. Even if there was no radiation involved with nuclear power, it still involves mining, processing and heavy industrial activity that has safety hazards. It is likely though that the radiation hazards are the greatest concern, in the mining arena, at the power station and with waste disposal. The latter is an area that has not even been fully appreciated, as nowhere on earth has any high-level nuclear waste been finally and permanently disposed of — all are waiting in storage for a solution to this difficult problem.
Finally, the clincher is that all of this adds up to make nuclear power rather expensive and uncertain, and so the predicted boom in nuclear power has not materialised and in fact, the construction of new nuclear power stations is only keeping pace with the decommissioning of old ones built in the 1960s. This is even without the years of expense that we look forward to in guarding and maintaining radioactive hulks of concrete for the rest of civilisation so that they don’t crumble and leak radiation or demolishing the monstrosities and finding a hole to bury them in.
So, exactly how much power are we getting for all the fossil fuel we have used and will continue to use in suckling “the peaceful atom” on our society? Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d say not much. Nuclear power is not much more than an obtuse way of burning fossil fuels and passing on an uncertain legacy to future generations.
I guess you are talking percentages? As in the percentage of input to get these stations build to the yield in energy it would give us? I’m a bit confused by the coloumn as I understand the concerns but don’t really a comparison between the altenatives to nuclear energy and nuclear in at least the short term. Please feel free to compare it to your ideal source of energy without any fossil fuel footprint (or input)
“Your guess is as good as mine”
I’m certain my guess is far better than yours. How much CO2 is released to build and install a windmill? Relative to kilowatt-hours produced, more than is released in building and operating a nuclear power plant, including the mining you characterize as so terribly difficult.
This was the weakest anti-nuclear jeremiad I’ve read in a long time. I’m sure you can do better, this one is a C- effort.
Given that we are already facing a crisis with Acid Mine Drainage into the Witwatersrand basins, which will be increased by more uranium mining and the fact that radon gas is released in the mining process, further polluting water and air, nuclear is a very dirty option and extremely polluting from the initial stages.
The Finnish nuclear power station is already 3 years behind and way over budget. Areva has not given the Finns any idea of final costs and a completion date. The costs are well over our GDP. Finland is a wealthy nation. Can SA afford to pollute its water sources further in order to produce a plant which will bankrupt us and probably kill us all off as well? No the nuclear direction is not one we should be entertaining at all.
Your argument is straight out of a 1980′s text book.
Uranium is not the only nuclear option. Thorium is a much better nuclear option, and is abundant, and it burns down to virtually Zero waste. Plus with breeder reactors, Nuclear reactors can create their own fuel, which means that we have enough source fuel to power ourselves for thousands of years.
What we really need to do though, is to stop the building of Uranium based reactors and only build new generation reactors, Which is not on the agenda at the moment.
Wow, that was a phenomenally bad article. You argument about carbon being produced in the making of nuclear plants is ridiculous. By your reasoning we could argue against any form of human activity.
Nuclear power is the way forward if we are to save the atmosphere. Deal with it. Or at least do some research before mouthing off about the topic.
@Ronbin Grant
“What we really need to do though, is to stop the building of Uranium based reactors and only build new generation reactors, Which is not on the agenda at the moment.”
And why is it that there are hardly any bfreeders around and no thorium reactors?
Could it be that they have problems of their own which prohibit their use?
If they were an option they would be more hotly discussed, but I doubt that they ever will come into reality.
Hi
I would like some help. I was wondering if you could help me, I am in gr8 and live in South Africa. I am doing a project on nuclear power and would like to know some background info. Your help will be greatly appreciated, Thank you.
Safiyyah
This article is factually incorrect. The author does not seem to understand basic science. For instance fresh fuel is not radio-active. Also it is important to know that altough the initial cost of nuclear power is very high, the operational and maintenance costs are low for the 60 years it operates. Also fuel costs are very low as you only need to refuel every 18 months or so!
One concerning aspect of SA’s nuclear program is governments insistence to continue with PBMR in the face of persistent technology issues.
This from a report by Prof Steve Thomas, part of the panel appointed by SA gov to evaluate PBMR (the report from which has never been published incidentally):
“All the major countries involved in designing reactors, including the United States, Germany, France, Japan, and Britain, have put serious time and effort into developing high-temperature, gas-cooled reactors such as the PBMR. Despite more than 50 years of trying, however, no commercial-scale design has been produced. Yet China and South Africa have found the allure of pebble bed technology irresistible, as if it were an “unpolished gem” waiting to be developed, regardless of the consistent engineering problems it has had since the beginning.
South Africa took a particularly aggressive approach, believing that it could develop a commercial-size PBMR design without even operating a prototype. If the PBMR is proved to be fundamentally flawed, as indicated in the Jülich report, South Africa’s $980 million investment in the project will be seen in hindsight as wasteful, one that the country, plagued with many more pressing and basic problems, could ill afford.”
Basic research into global decommissioning provides a figure of $317million for Koeberg. Add three new stations as reported this week (assuming similar costs for stations quoted twice the capacity) and that’s ~R1Trillion of budget legacy which could fund meaningful sustainable renewable-energy research.