[extropy-chat] FWD (SK) Nuclear Energy: A Fallacious Response to the Oil Crisis

[Terry W. Colvin]

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3232,36-683369,0.html

    Nuclear Energy: A Fallacious Response to the Oil Crisis
    By Stéphane Lhomme
    Le Monde

    Monday 29 August 2005

    The price of oil takes off and global warming gets worse. At the 
same time, the French population has been practically bludgeoned to 
prostrate themselves before the Millau viaduct and the Airbus A380, even 
though they are perfect examples of the constant increase in energy 
consumption and greenhouse gas emissions - in France as much as elsewhere.

    To try to cover up this sad reality, new media spectaculars have 
been organized to celebrate the decisions to construct the ITER and EPR 
nuclear reactors. Officially, the atom would allow us to fight against 
global warming and suffer less from the global rise in crude prices. As 
though nuclear generators breathed in greenhouse gases or cooled down 
the atmosphere! And as if nuclear energy itself weren't expensive beyond 
measure ...

    Why, in spite of its 58 nuclear reactors - practically one for every 
million inhabitants - is France still hit along with everyone else with 
the full force of the takeoff in crude oil prices? The explanation is 
simple: contrary to the fanciful assertions of diverse personalities, 
including Nicolas Sarkozy, the atom does not represent 50%, but only 17% 
of the energy consumed in France! After having lied to citizens to make 
them believe in the "nuclear miracle" for decades, France was forced to 
adopt international conventions with regard to energy accounting in 
2002. The nuclear share was automatically dropped to its real value, 
some 17%, rather than the 50% unduly advertised.

    From the perspective of anti-nuclear proponents, that's 17% too 
much. But ultimately, it's a pathetic performance. In fact, France, 
"kingdom of the atom," has a 75% dependence on fossil energies (oil, 
gas, coal) and remains one of the major greenhouse gas emitting countries.

    Over the entire planet, with 440 reactors, nuclear energy represents 
barely 6% of the energy consumed: a share much too marginal to limit 
recourse to hydrocarbons and to have an influence on the climate. And 
it's a share in decline: the International Energy Agency (IEA), although 
favorable to nuclear energy, acknowledged on October 27 that by around 
2030 it would be less than 5% (World Energy Outlook).

    Nonetheless, the atom's proponents would like to generalize the 
French model on a Continental, even global, scale. By keeping one 
nuclear reactor per million people as a guideline, that implies the 
construction of around 7,000 nuclear reactors in 20 years. All that to 
cover only around 17% of world energy usage, to remain 75% dependent on 
fossil fuels and to continue to aggravate global warming.

    Now, in any case, that will not actually happen. China is presented 
as a veritable nuclear Eldorado because it foresees building ... 30 
reactors. Far, very far, from the thousands evoked. And that to royally 
achieve 4% of its electricity from nuclear power. There is more: in the 
next twenty years, half the nuclear reactors now operating will have 
been closed down.

    The decline of nuclear energy is an inexorable reality, given that 
global reserves of uranium - the fuel that feeds reactors - are also on 
the road to exhaustion. According to estimates, at the present rate of 
extraction, there's enough for another 52 years.

    If we suddenly multiplied the number of nuclear reactors on the 
earth by ten, at best there would be only 20 years of uranium left and 
humanity would then soon find itself in charge of an immense nuclear 
park ... definitively shut down!

    Finally, the veil is beginning to come off the real cost of nuclear 
energy, which grows heavier as least as quickly as the oil bill. 
Interviewed on January 2 by le Journal du dimanche [a Sunday news 
program], Industrial Minister Patrick Devedjian confessed what 
anti-nuclear activists have claimed for a long time: "For years the 
French have contributed to the development of nuclear parks through 
their taxes."

    These sums do not appear on electricity bills, which appear 
artificially low, in the sense that they also fail to include the costs 
of dismantling nuclear installations and taking care of their waste.

    Thus, on January 26, 2005, the Court of Accounts showed that the 
money necessary for those two activities did not exist, or only in 
ridiculously inadequate amounts. Fortunately - in a manner of speaking - 
there are also nuclear reactors in Great Britain: that's where the true 
numbers are little by little coming from.

    August 11, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority estimated the cost 
of dismantling Britain's 20 nuclear sites at 66 billion Pounds Sterling 
(96 billion Euros), versus the preceding estimate of 48 billion pounds 
(70 billion Euros).

    Carrying back these numbers and applying them to the French nuclear 
industry - which, apart from its 58 reactors, counts dozens of sites and 
installations - would produce a minimum cost of 150 billion Euros! It 
would be even more surprising if the actual bill were not even more....

    Finally, not only will the explosion in oil prices and global 
warming not save nuclear energy, but, on the contrary, the aggravation 
of these phenomena will rapidly demonstrate the atom's utter inability 
to provide an alternative.

    All this data is well-known to French nuclearcrats. Therefore, if 
they persist, it's neither through ignorance nor stupidity: by 
pretending to save the planet, they hope to just succeed in perpetuating 
nuclear energy ... in France. When public opinion wakes up to the fraud, 
they will say: "We have brand new nuclear reactors. Perhaps we shouldn't 
have built them, but now that they're there, we may as well use them."

    Now, the truth is that the solutions for getting out of nuclear 
energy are precisely the only ones that allow us to really fight global 
warming and consuming more oil.

    Rich countries must make major reductions in their energy 
consumption and, at the same time, finance the development of renewable 
energies on the planet.

    May those who believe that to be a Utopian program acknowledge that 
they do not want to leave future generations a habitable earth.


    Stéphane Lhomme is the spokesman for the network Sortir du nucléaire 
[Get out of Nuclear Energy].

------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie 
Thatcher <mailto:leslie.thatcher at truthout.org>.

 

-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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