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http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/083105EC.shtml
Nuclear Energy: A Fallacious Response to the Oil Crisis
Le Monde, 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."