From Peter Shepherd
Alan Berman posits that nuclear power is the only means to a low-carbon future (16 April, p 28). While the energy density achieved by nuclear reactors is attractive at first glance, it still entails approximately one-third as much CO2 emission as gas-fired electricity production. The rich uranium ores required to achieve this reduction are, however, so limited that if the entire world’s electricity demands were met by nuclear power, these ores would be exhausted within three years. Using the remaining poorer ores in nuclear reactors would produce more CO2 emission than burning fossil fuels directly, as researchers in the Netherlands have pointed out (www.oprit.rug.nl/deenen/).
Another problem with nuclear power that is addressed neither by Berman nor by Steuart Campbell in his letter, is that of nuclear weapons proliferation. As researchers at the US Institute for Energy and Environmental Research recently noted: “In order to fuel one thousand 1000-megawatt nuclear plants (a common reference case in many nuclear growth scenarios), a global uranium enrichment capacity roughly nine to ten times greater than that currently operating in the United States would be required. If just one percent of that capacity was instead used to manufacture highly enriched uranium (HEU), then enough HEU could be produced every year to make between 175 and 310 nuclear weapons. With an expanded trade in the specialized materials required to build and operate gas centrifuge and other enrichment plants…diversion of supposedly ‘peaceful’ technologies will become harder to identify” (www.ieer.org/sdafiles/13-1.pdf).
Society would be made much safer and debt reduced by looking to non-nuclear means to a low-carbon future.
Toronto, Canada
