Nuclear Power is Not the Answer to Global Warming or Anything Else
Nuclear Power is Not the Answer to Global Warming or Anything Else – Review
If one believes as dogmatic truths even half of the incorrect information in this book, the sometimes pious opposition by some to nuclear power is understandable. Caldicott does a good job in painstakingly reassembling in one separate book about all the untruths about nuclear technology which have been spread around for decades. I think it is the highest value of this work, hence 2 stars. The major theme is that all « official » information, be it from nuclear organisations, public agencies, international bodies like the United Nations, is propaganda which seeks to minimize the dangers and averse results of nuclear power, and tries to advocate erroneously clear views of this industry. I only point out a few of the many pertinent incorrect statements. CO2 production According to Caldicott, the modern fuel cycle takes about 1/5 of the CO2 exhaust of equivalent oil consumption (1/3 for gas is about 1/5 for oil) (p 6). But there’s a regular argument that shows the claim wrong. 1 kg of raw uranium costs about 130,- and delivers the energy equivalent of about 10 000 kg of oil. According to Caldicott’s claim, extracting this 1 kg uses (today) already 1/5 of this « oil equivalent », so 2000 kg. But that’s 13 barrils of oil at each more than 100,- ! So an uranium mine uses for more than 1300,- of oil just to extract 1kg of uranium, which is subsequently sold for 1/10 that price, namely 130,-… Enrichment On p 10 it is stated that uranium enrichment is a huge CO2 generating activity. In France, in Pierlatte, there is a COGEMA factory that produces very enriched uranium for about 100 1GWe reactors, and uses the state of 3 reactors. So 1) it runs on nuclear power, not currently using fossil fuels doing so, and 2) it only uses three per cents of the «production capacity », hence barely diminishing nuclear efficiency with three per cents Tritium and C-14 Caldicott claims that the results of these two radioactive materials « are not still understood » (p 13) However, tritium is a material with low radiotoxicity, and the limit on yearly intake is given to be around 1 G Bq for ingestion, and around 10 T Bq for inhalation. For C-14, this is around 30 M Bq for ingestion, and 30 G Bq for inhalation. C-14 is also produced easily in the atmosphere by global radiation (that’s why one can use C-14 dating of archeological objects!). Breeder reactors On p 17, it is stated that breeder reactors have yet to be quickly realised, while there have been build about 20 of them world wide. The first one was the EBR-I, in 1954, and the French Phenix reactor which originally started out in 1973 is still in operation. Radiation and cancer On p 44 she states « it is commonly accepted that many cancers in the past and in the present are usually caused by background radiation ». But under the linear no threshold model which she uses, background radiation can account only at most for six per cents of death causes, while cancer in general is about twenty per cents of death causes. So about 35 times more cancers are of non-radiative origin. p 45 Cancer is on the rise and Caldicott suggests that is because we pollute the environment with « chemicals and radioactive materials », but nevertheless, the highest dose increase we receive is from medical diagnosis, and is still 10 times smaller than the background (and nuclear power accounts for still 100 times less). p 62: The argument « plutonium is so carcinogenic that the half load of plutonium released from the Chernobyl meltdown is theoretically enough to kill every one on earth with lung cancer 1100 times over if it were evenly distributed into the lung of every human being » is as pertinent as the claim that the world ocean includes enough water to drown every human being 100 billion times over if the water were widely distributed uniformly into the lungs of every human being. The obvious fact that this Chernobyl plutonium didn’t kill many people after all. Three Miles Island p 70 a picocurie is equal to 0.037 Bq. It is stated that some milk was located to contain 21300 picocuries per liter, which amounts to 780 Bq. Now, I-131 has a control of yearly intake of 900 000 Bq to remain below the permissible dose limit (1 mSv). This means that 1 liter of milk is less than 1/1000 of this yearly limit, and thus relates to a dose of 1 microsievert, or 0.1 millirem. Caldicott puts this erroneously to 0.3 rem, 3000 more than the actual dose. Global warming p 86 EdF finally got permission to raise the river water above the finally allowed temperature (simply because the inlet water temperature was already much higher than usual), this in order to be able to continue to operate the steam cycle, which produces waste heat. A coal fired plant, or a biofuel powered plant would have had exactly the same condition for functioning. But Caldicott presents it as if « the reactor was possibly overheating » and one desperately needed to « dump hot secundary water in the river ». Meltdown On p 96, when doses in mid-Manhattan are easily calculated to be of the order of 200 to 300 rem with peaks of 1500 rem. These are doses that are tens to hundreds of times higher than were the real case in the actual Chernobyl accident in the nearby town. The maximum doses poorly received are currently estimated to be 70 rem, but far most people in the nearby town met doses of a few rem. Gen III and IV reactors On p 129, it is stated that gen IV reactors are so complex that no country can develop it by themselves and that they will at earliest be there in 2045, while this contradicts the previously existing Superphenix build in France in the 80-ies (which is very close to one of the gen IV designs) and while France planned to have a original prototype up and currently running in 2020.