A Close Look At A Pronuclear “Environmentalist”

A Close Look At A Pronuclear “Environmentalist”
By Jim Harding

It’s important to know “both sides” of the nuclear waste controversy now that Saskatchewan is being targeted as a nuclear dump. Even if you are skeptical of industry claims that a nuclear waste solution “is in the works”, and see this as a ploy to get more nuclear power plants approved, there’s lots to learn about the nuclear worldview.

Bruno Comby of the French-based “Environmentalist for Nuclear Energy” argues that “nuclear waste has undeniable environmental benefits”. Comby lists three benefits: its “small amount”, it not being “disposed of in the biosphere” and it being “almost totally confined.” He claims that “reprocessed radioactive waste” can be decreased “to the natural level of radioactivity of the original ore after only 5,000 years”, and that “safe, simply and efficient solutions exist to make nuclear waste inert” and to isolate it “from the biosphere until it is no longer toxic”. Finally he claims that a naturally-occurring nuclear reaction 2 billion years ago at Okla, Gabon shows that “waste, after being left unconfined…has not migrated more than three meters.” He concludes the nuclear waste issue is “technically and ecologically solved by a combination of reprocessing technology, vitrification and deep geological disposal.”

This is quite a mouthful. If it’s this “pat” then why, nearly 70 years after the first atom was split, are governments struggling with what to do with nuclear wastes? Comby’s argument is constructed to make real problems disappear. Notice his phrase “after only 5,000 years”, as though it would be acceptable to continue to create high-level wastes threatening environmental health for 50 generations. (It’s actually many more generations when you consider that plutonium has a half-life of 26,000 years.) He claims that because it takes a smaller quantity of uranium than oil to produce the same amount of energy, nuclear wastes are less problematic. But he completely ignores the build-up of long-lived radioactive uranium tailings, which are part of the nuclear waste stream; there are already more than 200 million tons of such tailings in Canada. Comby trivializes the toxicity of spent fuel, claiming that once plutonium is “reprocessed and recycled” as fuel for new reactors the remaining waste “is totally isolated from the environment”. Furthermore, Comby completely ignores the increased dangers of proliferation from plutonium becoming more available.

MORE DISINFORMATION
Comby states that over time nuclear wastes “…are only weakly radioactive. And these…are alpha-ray emitters from which we can easily protect ourselves.” Actually alpha radiation is highly mobile and much more dangerous than previously thought, and is highly carcinogenic if breathed and imbedded in our lungs. Radon gas, which after smoking is the greatest cause of lung cancer worldwide, is an alpha-emitter. But Comby tries to minimize the dangers from nuclear waste build-up by focusing on the dangers of other energy systems. He quotes pronuclear “gaia” theorist James Lovelock that “there is at present no other safe, practical and economic substitute for … burning carbon fuels.” Lovelock said this in 2003, when the global shift to renewables was already underway. By 2005 electricity from renewables surpassed that from nuclear power worldwide, and the gap keeps growing.

Comby tries...

http://sites.google.com/site/cleangreensaskca/Home/jim-harding-s-column/a-close-look-at-a-pronuclear-environmentalist

when scientists thought seriously about how to keep nuclear wastes out of the environment. Forty years ago, before Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island, there was an article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists about putting nuclear power plants underground.* Far enough underground that when it was time to decommission the plant, or if ever a problem occurred, the plant could be abandoned in place. That's really the only safe way of dealing with the problem, and not really that expensive, given the number of no-longer producing salt, potash, and hard rock mines that could be used as sites. Unfortunately, when nuclear power is run as a capitalist business, any added safety expense is quickly cut so as to add to profit.

*You can find it in Google Books in the Oct. 1971 issue if the following link doesn't work:
http://books.google.com/books?id=LQsAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=%22underground+nuclear+power+plants%22+rogers&source=bl&ots=Xx-hnCN5E8&sig=gR4KY36OtH8qJmlZe66FMTEuOME&hl=en&ei=CMeYTqmhLIyTtwfY1rXxAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22underground%20nuclear%20power%20plants%22%20rogers&f=false

"Unfortunately, when nuclear power is run as a capitalist business, any added safety expense is quickly cut so as to add to profit."

"Unfortunately, when nuclear power anything is run as a capitalist business, any added safety expense is quickly cut so as to add to profit."

In many instances Harding is clearly misinterpreting Comby to make him look bad. For instance, when Comby says we can "easily protect ourselves" from alpha emitters he's absolutely correct when the exposure is to an external source. Harding's "correction" starts with a non-sequitur (there's no sense in which alpha radiation itself is "more mobile" than gamma or beta radiation) before moving on to correctly point out that some alpha emitters like radon are significant hazards.

Similarly, Harding reveals his lack of understanding of different fuel cycles by arguing that Comby's 5,000 year time for waste to decay to the radioactivity of the original ore is incorrect because of plutonium's longer half-life. Comby consistently writes with the assumption that plutonium will be separated from other fission products; given that assumption, he is correct. Harding is correct only in reference to "once through" fuel schemes such at that used by the US, where plutonium is not extracted but treated as waste. One can certainly raise the question of the wisdom of extracting the plutonium for use as nuclear fuel, especially in the context of proliferation risks, but that question does not invalidate the Comby's claim about other wastes.

At the same time, in my brief search for Comby's writings he certainly does at times adhere to questionable claims to spin a pro-nuclear story. For instance, in http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/BENEFITS-of-NUCLEAR.pdf">his pamplet "Benefits of Nuclear energy," he asserts,
This position on LNT is defensible (and a favorite of Ann Coulter) but by no means represents scientific fact, and it is dishonest of him to assert as proven the hypothesis that a "moderate amount" of radiation is beneficial, in contradiction to the generally accepted philosophy adopted by professionals in radiation protection.

It's fine to point out that there are different assumptions but leaving it at that seems a subtle attempt to defend what really cannot be defended.

Do the logistics of reprocessing support Comby's claims?

http://www.ieer.org/reports/reprocessing2010.pdf



http://www.ieer.org/reports/reprocessing2010.pdf


For a review of the actual state of global processing programs see the work of the International Panel of Fissile Materials' work. Makhijani draws on it, and it is available for download in full here:

February 2010
Fast Breeder Reactor Programs: History and Status
http://www.fissilematerials.org/blog/rr08.pdf

Research Report 8 International Panel on Fissile Materials
Thomas B. Cochran, Harold A. Feiveson, Walt Patterson, Gennadi Pshakin, M.V. Ramana, Mycle Schneider, Tatsujiro Suzuki, Frank von Hippel
www.fissilematerials.org

Harding was one of the experts in the 2007 Keystone Center report,
to claim he "reveals his lack of understanding" is just ignorant.