By Sam Arnold
Nuclear power generation (NPG) has declined over the past several decades due to growing costs with aging reactors and the inability to find safe and acceptable locations to permanently store toxic nuclear waste. And yet, despite all the adversity surrounding NPG, advocates continue to trumpet a false need for it, doing so with no apparent regard for reality.
NPG was developed during the 1950s following the end of World War II. The atom bomb was created by the USA and its allies, including Canada, in the Manhattan Project, resulting in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed between 129,000 and 226,000 innocent Japanese people and harmed the lives of many more. Luckily, no nuclear bombs have been dropped since, even though nuclear weapons are frightfully abundant in nine competing nations today. Those countries collectively have more than 12,500 nuclear weapons, but the United States and Russia today own 11,113 nuclear weapons between them. Canada is one of thirty-four countries that today endorse or condone the possession of nuclear weapons.
Ending the war with the two atomic bombs was shocking and proved beyond all doubt that this weapon was devastatingly effective. But the resulting horror felt around the globe created a dilemma for the future of nuclear weapons use by the U.S. military, and by other nations.
In 1952 President Truman, who ordered the bombing of Japan in 1945, sent the Paley Commission report to Congress. It proposed the development of solar energy, seen to have great potential. The Commission reported: “Nuclear fuels, for various technical reasons, are unlikely ever to bear more than about one-fifth of the load. We must look to solar energy.” The report concluded, “Efforts made to date to harness solar energy economically are infinitesimal. It is time for aggressive research in the whole field of solar energy – an effort in which the United States could make an immense contribution to the welfare of the free world.”
But the following year the newly-elected Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, announced a strikingly different program, Atoms for Peace, that scuttled Truman’s solar plan. Atoms for Peace was never the plan to create affordable, or plentiful, electricity. The Atomic Energy Commission behind the deceptive Atoms for Peace name, bluntly stated that the purpose for reactors was to make plutonium for the nuclear weapons arsenal, and generating electricity was a secondary by-product. Reactors had a dual purpose, primarily to produce plutonium for weapons, giving nuclear power a permanent seat at the energy table, and secondly, to create the impression that nuclear would provide the nation with plentiful cheap electricity. NPG supplanted renewable energy development that the Paley Commission had recommended, since renewable energy had no utility to the military sector.
Seventy years later the situation has hardly improved. NPG never provided plentiful cheap electricity, but the U.S. government and military continue to authorize and produce nuclear weapons that gather dust and constantly require upgrading to compete with other nations. Meanwhile in the U.S., nuclear generates only 18.2 per cent of its electricity, with renewables producing 21.3 per cent. In Canada, nuclear generates about 15 per cent of its electricity, with 19 per cent being renewables. In New Brunswick nuclear produces about 38 per cent of electricity, and renewables about 44 per cent.
Throughout the seventy years of NPG, the industry has failed to exceed 20 per cent of global electricity production, and yet with entrenched government funding has successfully hampered the production of competitive renewable energy. But with the aging fleet of nuclear reactors approaching their end of service life and becoming more costly to maintain, the industry has become increasingly desperate to find new ways to continue operations with a steady supply of plutonium needed for weapons. This is why small modular nuclear reactors (SMNRs) have become the latest experimental technology intended to replace large geriatric reactors. But the slow-paced progress of the pricey technology has not kept them on track to accomplish this objective, despite increasing government-subsidized funding. By comparison, renewable energy is producing much-needed results far cheaper and quicker with less government funding. Crucially, SMNRs can’t take advantage of the economies of scale which large reactors use to drive down per unit costs. New Brunswick has mandated NB Power to purchase power from the first SMNRs promised by both ARC and Moltex, at a cost determined by the government that could be higher than the alternatives, but the lack of a market for SMNRs makes it unlikely that multiple units will ever be built.
Radioactive waste remains the unsolved conundrum, coming with predicted great risk and endless cost to taxpayers far into the future. Deep geological repositories for the disposal of high-level nuclear waste fuel are not yet operational anywhere in the world. The two locations under consideration in Ontario, outside Ignace on Treaty 3 territory and on Saugeen Ojibway Nation territory, are opposed by many, including Indigenous peoples. The exorbitant cost of decommissioning all nuclear reactors must be included in the total expense 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.
The sum-total for nuclear power generation with its direct connection to nuclear weapons presents a portentous ethical dilemma demanding immediate attention. But this acute obstacle can be dislodged by leaving NPG behind and stop serving military interests with nuclear weapons. Renewable energy can provide a far better legacy: more affordable electricity, a realistic climate strategy, the decreasing likelihood of nuclear war – thereby hopefully reducing the risk of humanity’s demise.
Samuel Arnold is part of the Sustainable Energy Group and the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development (CRED-NB). He lives in Woodstock, New Brunswick.