Atomic Power’s Cheap-Energy Tag Belied by Aid, Greenpeace Says

Comment: We do not want our tax money to go toward Nuke Power and the French are involved in the push for Nuke Power in America! In addition, the Nuke dude from the Dem side is pushing for nuke plants! The question is why - the nuke corporations like it because to them it is free. The taxpayers PAY for the nuke plant, the taxpayers pay for the insurance, the taxpayers suffer from exposure to uranium mining and milling so the nuke corporations walk away with all the money! STOP PAYING FOR NUKE PLANTS WITH OUR TAX MONEY; MAKE THE NUKES PAY FOR THEIR OWN NUKE PLANTS NOW! DEMAND OUR GOVERNMENT TO STOP PAYING FOR NUKE PLANTS NOW!

By Brian Parkin and Jeremy van Loon

Sept. 3 (Bloomberg) -- German taxpayer subsidies that keep nuclear plants running belie the image that atomic power is too cheap to be phased out, a study commissioned by Greenpeace said.

Direct and indirect aid from 1950 to 2008 was 165 billion euros ($235 billion) and 92.5 billion euros more will be given through 2021, when the reactors are set to close, the Amsterdam- based environmental advocate said today, citing research showing aid fails to appear in federal subsidy reports.

“Nuclear energy is subsidized to the hilt, is not cheap and squeezes out aid that could be used to support developing renewable energy,” Greenpeace energy spokesman Andree Boehling told reporters in Berlin. “The shroud that’s been drawn over the real costs of subsidizing atomic power is a scandal.”

Atomic energy is on the minds of German voters. Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged to review the phase-out of Germany’s 17 reactors, introduced in 2002 by the previous Social Democrat government, if she wins the Sept. 27 federal election.

Merkel said she may extend the life of the reactors to blend affordable power with costlier output from renewable plants. She’s ruled out building new reactors.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and power market, generates about 28 percent of its electricity through nuclear fission. The country may be able to get almost half of its electricity from renewable sources such as wind and solar energy by 2020 from about 15 percent today, according to Bundesverband Erneubare Energie, the umbrella organization for Germany’s renewable energy groups.

Taxpayers Pay

The bill for taxpayers to clean up a radioactive waste dump in a former salt mine used by power companies in the 1970s may be as much as 4 billion euros, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on July 10. Utilities have contributed less than 1 million euros of the “billions” in costs to pay for nuclear waste disposal, the minister added at the time.

Greenpeace and auditors FOES, a Berlin-based independent non-profit group, today claimed that their study is the closest yet to accurately assess nuclear energy subsidies while granting that relevant data such as aid from Germany’s 16 states was not accessed.

The study incorporates direct budget finance including research and indirect support such as tax breaks, FOES said. The subsidies mean taxpayers pay some 4 cents extra per kilowatt of power at 2008 prices.

Officials at the environment ministry, which oversees the reactors, weren´t immediately available to comment.

Almost two-thirds of Germans are in favor of closing the country’s 17 nuclear power plants, according to a Forsa survey commissioned by the environment ministry.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Parkin in Berlin at bparkin@bloomberg.net. Jeremy van Loon in Berlin at jvanloon@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 3, 2009 10:37 EDT

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601130&sid=aeu3Q6i0rAlQ

POWER POLITICS: Is the proposed clean energy agency a dirty deal for taxpayers and the environment?

Photo of Entergy's Arkansas nuclear plant from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's website)

Comment: The nuke bunch is just so greedy and willing to ruin people lives with their Nuke Plants and Uranium mining! Our gov't will sail us down the nuke river while they take money from the nuke bunch but the taxpayers pay for the nuke plants! Demand your senators to stop talking money from groups that are subsidies by the taxpayers! No to nuke Power and ban uranium mining now!

By Sue Sturgis on July 27, 2009 9:12 AM

POWER POLITICS: Is the proposed clean energy agency a dirty deal for taxpayers and the environment?

U.S. lawmakers are considering legislation that would create a new independent federal agency to promote government investment in clean energy.

But watchdogs are raising questions about whether the way the proposed agency is structured is unfair to taxpayers and bad for the environment. Among their concerns are its bias toward nuclear power -- a critical issue for the South, which is at the center of the nuclear industry's planned revival.

"We support the financing of clean energy technologies to promote the domestic development and deployment of technologies that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the most efficient, environmentally sound manner possible," stated a recent letter to lawmakers signed by 17 environmental groups. "However, the proposed Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) will not achieve these important goals and will in fact, as drafted, pose unnecessary and potentially enormous risks to our environment and to the U.S. taxpayer."

CEDA would be established within the Department of Energy through legislation titled the "21st Century Energy Technology Deployment Act" introduced by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and set to be combined with the Senate version of the climate bill. CEDA would provide billions of dollars in taxpayer-financed credit, including loans and loan guarantees, to the private sector to invest in energy technologies.

Similar legislation was also introduced in the House by U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and added via amendment to the recently approved House climate bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) that passed June 26 by a vote of 219-212.

There are significant differences between the House and Senate CEDA proposals, with the version now being considered in the Senate drawing strong criticism from sustainable energy advocates. Some of the key concerns:

* The Senate version allows unlimited loan guarantees without congressional oversight. It provides an exemption from Section 504(b) of the Federal Credit Reform Act, circumventing the congressional appropriations process and relying instead on the White House Office of Management and Budget's model calculating default risk and how much of that cost of that risk should be borne by the company.

The House version of the legislation doesn't include this exemption, which means CEDA would have to get congressional approval for requested loan guarantees. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office have warned that the default risk cost is hard to calculate and is likely to be underestimated, leaving taxpayers to bail out private companies that can't make their loan payments.

* The Senate version allows one technology to hog all the money. The House caps at 30% the amount of total dollars available that can be given to any one technology. However, the Senate version has no caps, which means one technology could enjoy the lion's share of the available subsidies.

* The Senate version does not include a greenhouse gas metric. That is, the bill does nothing to ensure priority is given to those technologies that cut the most greenhouse gas emissions per dollar invested in the shortest amount of time. The House version, on the other hand, requires that priority be given to projects that cut greenhouse gases the quickest and cheapest.

Given those provisions -- coupled with the Senate climate legislation's general friendliness toward nuclear power, which it calls a "clean and secure domestic energy" whose use should be expanded -- energy policy expert Michele Boyd of Physicians for Social Responsibility said during a recent discussion of the bill that CEDA could essentially act as a "slush fund" for nuclear power. That would be a bad deal for taxpayers, given how costly nuclear power is compared to other more environmentally sustainable energy sources.

How much more expensive? A recent study [pdf] by Mark Cooper of the University of Vermont Law School's Institute for Energy and the Environment estimated that new nuclear plants will cost between 12 and 20 cents per kilowatt-hour compared to an average of 6 cents for efficiency and renewables. Cooper calculated that the plan being promoted by Senate Energy Committee member Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) to build 100 new reactors across the United States would result in up to $4 trillion in costs over and above what it would cost to generate the same equivalent power from efficiency and renewables.

How did the Senate's CEDA proposal end up so biased toward nuclear power -- even though the technology is not only expensive but also a poor solution to the global warming problem due to its long construction time, the nuclear fuel chain's sizable carbon footprint, and nuclear plants' considerable heat emissions? It might be helpful to consider the relationship between the measure's primary sponsors and the nuclear power industry.

When he was last up for re-election in 2006, Sen. Bingaman was the top Democratic recipient of campaign cash from the Nuclear Energy Institute PAC, which represents the interests of the nuclear industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org database. He received $6,000 from NEI's PAC that year, tied with Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and surpassed only by three Republicans -- Mike DeWine of Ohio, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and James Talent of Missouri -- who received $7,000 each. When co-sponsor Lisa Murkowski was up for re-election in 2004, NEI contributed $6,000 to her campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org. Altogether since 2000, Bingaman has received a total of $7,999 from NEI and Murkowski $9,500.

And Bingaman has gotten more from NEI than just money: In 2006, he also won NEI's William S. Lee Award for Leadership, asking the lobbying group in his acceptance speech to "do your part to use those tools that Congress has put in place to ensure that nuclear power achieves its potential as part of our future energy mix." It now appears the industry is doing just that -- with Bingaman's help.

But watchdogs are fighting back against the legislation's proposed nuclear giveaways. They are calling on concerned citizens to write to their Senators and President Obama and ask them to oppose any additional taxpayer subsidies for the nuclear power industry in the climate legislation. As PSR notes, the industry's own estimates say it already stands to profit by $1 billion a year from a carbon cap.

"We can have nuclear power or we can address the climate crisis," the Nuclear Information & Resource Service says in its call for action on the legislation. "We can't do both."

http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/07/power-politics-is-the-proposed-clean-energy-agency-a-dirty-deal-for-taxpayers-and-the-environment.html

Nuclear 101

Public Forum Letter

Updated: 06/26/2009 06:10:19 PM MDT


Sen. Bob Bennett proposed that we build 100 new nuclear power plants by 2030, 21 years from now. ("Bennett: U.S. needs 100 more N-power plants," Tribune , June 23). Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi was stumped why anyone would oppose such a construction blitz.

Here's why. One hundred large nuclear plants of 1,000 megawatts each would constitute a generating capacity of 100,000 megawatts. It costs an estimated $8 a watt to construct nuclear plants today, so the total estimated cost would be around $800 billion! Divide this by 21 years, and this requires an annual expenditure of around $40 billion. Divide this by the 300 million people in America today and you have a cost of approximately $130 each year until 2030 for every man, woman and child in America.

Why do we need this large expenditure for electricity generation? To meet the anticipated needs of the growing U.S. population (births plus immigrants).

One of the benefits of stopping U.S. population growth would be the elimination of the need for all these proposed nuclear power plants and of the associated problems of waste disposal.

Albert A. Bartlett

Boulder, Colo.



http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_12699338

Taxpayers will pay dearly for nuclear power

Comment: No Nuke Plants, they are too expensive, the taxpayers for for them, no one will insure Nuke Plants, Tell Virginia, we do not want nuke power or uranium mining!!

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The Prince Albert Daily Herald

Editor,

The Herald:

The proposed nuclear reactor is going to cost Bruce Power a lot of money. Guess again. The private sector does not invest in nuclear power - for good reason: the public will be on the hook for many generations for the biggest part of the costs.

Nuclear power plants are usually over budget and start up behind schedule. If power is needed in the meantime, we will have to purchase elsewhere. It would be 10 years or likely more before a nuclear plant starts producing electricity.

Construction of power grids to export to possibly Alberta and the U.S. will be a large expense - estimated at $1 billion, again largely at public expense.

Power backup for both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance and refurbishing is necessary. Note that eight nuclear power plants were once shut down for a whole decade in Ontario. The UDP report says that nuclear is compatible with 'clean' coal. It better be, as coal will be required when the huge, equally highly centralized nuclear system goes down. Note that there is not an operational clean coal plant on the planet. $1.4 billion plus of our money is being spent on an experimental project to produce only 100 MW of clean coal power. What if it does not work or is too costly to expand? Where does the backup power come from? Old dirty coal that will cost us in carbon charges?

Refurbishing of nuclear power plants is again usually over budget and behind schedule, often needing to be done earlier than predicted.

Decommissioning costs are huge and nuclear companies set aside only modest funds for this. Will Bruce Power even be in business at that stage? It is a complex process.

The public will be burdened with the costs of storing radioactive waste somewhere for hundreds of thousands of years. The $10-billion Yucca Mountain site in the U.S. was abandoned before being used.

There seems to be a lot of expensive experimenting going on for a province of one million people. Are we the sparsely populated area that is being coerced into being the guinea pigs - just in case something goes wrong?

Why would we support even more socialism for the rich? Why not a proven, safe energy system that private capital will invest in, will provide many jobs and financial benefits to many communities, rural municipalities, farmers, ranchers and First Nations?

Renewable energies, energy conservation and efficiencies and cogeneration combined with some hydro from Manitoba as needed seems to be a more attractive choice.

Mike Bray Indian Head

http://www.paherald.sk.ca/index.cfm?sid=263435&sc=643

Nuclear Power: A Placebo for Global Warming

Comment: Do not be fool that Nuke Power Plants is green, Uranium Mining is not green, No Reprocessing Nuke spent rods, too expensive and dangerous!

Last week, I wrote about how the difficulties and dangers of storing or disposing of nuclear waste.

This week, I will touch on another option—the aforementioned reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel which has been banned in the U.S. since 1977.

This process reuses old fuel which not only decreases the amount of waste left over but also reduces the need for mining uranium, a process which in and of itself creates radiation and pollution.

The major drawback is that reprocessing creates plutonium which has vast destructive potential.

Former US Ambassador “at large”, Robert Gallucci believes, spent fuel remains one of the clear links between nuclear power and the possible spread of nuclear weapons.” Gunnar Skogmar, author of Nuclear Energy and Dominance: Some Interrelationships Between Military and Civil Aspects of Nuclear Energy in U.S. Foreign Policy Since 1945, believes that, “the military and civil aspects of nuclear energy cannot be separated” because “if a nuclear weapon ladder has ten rungs, nine might be needed for civil nuclear energy.”

In other words, by leading the rest of the world towards the nuclear power we will be also moving possible unstable countries towards development of nuclear weapons. One only has to look at the unrest and instability of nuclear weapon possessing Pakistan or the bellicosity of North Korea and Iran regarding their own nuclear ambitions to see how increasing the number of nuclear weaponized nations might not be the best move for the world.

Despite the voices of opposition, which includes groups such as the US National Academy of Scientists (USNAS), former President Bush pushed for his Global Nuclear Energy Program (GNEP) which proposed that the US lift its thirty-year ban on reprocessing spent fuel and fund the construction of nuclear reactors in developing countries with the intent to supply plutonium created in the US to these countries.

President Bush was not without his supporters. In 2006, when the planned was unveiled, countries including, China, the UK, Japan, Russia, and France supported the plan. Even Mohamed El Baradei, former director of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA), supported this new program. With that being said, El Baradei’s support is tempered with caution. He is noted for stating, “Any country has the right to master these operations for civilian uses. But in doing so, it also masters the most difficult steps in making a nuclear bomb” which highlights his awareness of the concerns voiced by Skogmar and the USNAS.

The concerns involved in a switch to reprocessing include: an increase in the amount of plutonium in the world, the cost of reprocessing which is rooted in the need to build not only reprocessing plants but also fast breeder reactors, the only kind which can use the plutonium (the US currently uses light water reactors which cannot run on reprocessed fuel), and the ability of nations to use their newly developed civilian power as a stepping stone to nuclear weapons. These are highly salient concerns, as North Korea, Pakistan, India, South Africa, Iran, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, Taiwan, and South Korea—has each pursued nuclear weapons under the cover of a nuclear energy program. We all know that at least three (Israel, Pakistan and India) have succeed and at least two others (Iran and North Korea) are probably not as far from success as we would like. The question remains—do these concerns outweigh the potential benefits of a predicted decrease in nuclear waste, global cut in carbon emissions, reduced dependence on uranium (and subsequently the negative impact of its mining), and a potential decrease in cost of energy production when compared to once-through cycles used in current U.S. nuclear power plants?

The first issue, increased production of plutonium, has already proven to be a problem for France, Japan and the UK.

All three are currently struggling with their rapidly growing stockpiles of unwanted, uneconomical, weapon-capable plutonium. These countries have not managed to reuse more than 60% of all their reprocessed fuels.

In Japan, this stockpiling of plutonium has placed immense pressure on the nation as it tries to prevent diversion or theft. The stockpiling has been brought on by the inability of these nations to build enough fast-breeder reactors to support the amount of reprocessed fuel created.

Construction delays are largely attributed to cost issues and public opposition.

Additionally, switching to a closed-cycle requires building not only fast-breeder reactors but also fuel-fabrication plants and separation facilities. While awaiting sufficient facilities, this stockpiled plutonium is stored in 2-kilogram amounts in small welded steel cans which safely contain the radiation but are also a little too easy to carry-off.

Because of these overly convenient containers, the plutonium could be stolen or diverted without concerns regarding transport or radiation.

Diversion or theft poses a significant threat since, the amount of plutonium that would be created by this plan would produce about 5 million kilograms per year and the amount of plutonium needed to make a nuclear weapon is less than 10 kilograms. (Since I began writing this blog, a dead Nazi sympathizer’s home in Maine was found to contain numerous containers of radioactive material including small amounts of uranium held in similar small steel cans http://www.securitymanagement.com/news/slain-neo-nazi-wanted-build-dirty-bomb-005238.)

The cost savings are equally debatable. According to Susan E. Pickett, author of Japan's Nuclear Energy Policy: From Firm Commitment to Difficult Dilemma--Addressing Growing Stocks of Plutonium, Progam Delays, Domestic Opposition and International Pressure, proponents believe that they could “ideally produce 60 times more power” from using reprocessed fuel in fast breeder reactors than from traditional fuel in light-water reactors.

In the meantime, the estimated front-end cost for the GNEP ranges from $80-$100 billion. But the Department of Energy estimated that the cost could reach $280 billion and take 117 years to complete—very likely a gross underestimate given the department’s average cost overrun of 500 percent on large capital projects. The price of uranium is so low and the cost of reprocessing so high, that reprocessing spent fuel is not practical. The French national utility, Electicite de France, has admitted that “plutonium retrieved from reprocessing is three to four times as expensive as the same quantity of fuel obtained from low-enriched uranium.”

Putting aside the costs concerns and the technical issues, a real political issue of nuclear weapons proliferation presents itself if the United States leads the world into a wholesale switch to nuclear power, regardless of whether the process used is a once-through process or a reprocessing process.

A huge nuclear expansion would increase the danger of nuclear proliferation. According to Brice Smith, author of Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change, to affect climate change the “world’s capacity to enrich uranium would have to go up dramatically by a factor of 2.5 to 6.” A mere dozen new enrichment plants would produce thousands of tons of plutonium each year. As Smith states, just “one percent of that capacity would be enough to support the construction of 210 nuclear weapons per year.”

Article IV of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) allows signatories to develop civilian power under the watchful eye of the IAEA, but as we have seen—most recently with Iran and North Korea—such measures can fall short of effectiveness. If every nation were to develop a civilian nuclear program, each such nation could also develop a parallel program not subject to safeguards that can draw on the expertise and resources of the civilian power program and produce nuclear weapons. As George Perkovich, Director of the Nonproliferation program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of India's Nuclear Bomb, has said “civilian nuclear power provides cover and comfort” for the development of nuclear weapons.” And “the larger a nation’s civilian program, the easier it is to hide weapons work.”

Despite these concerns, it is open to debate whether or not a U.S. decision to discontinue the GNEP would have any effect on other nation’s desire to obtain nuclear power. As nuclear historian Richard Rhodes stated in his book, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of a Nuclear Arms Race, “Eliminating US support for all nuclear power operations in the world would not prevent proliferation.” The proof is in the news papers—a 2006 article in the International Herald Tribune reported that “the son of Egypt's president urged his father's party on Tuesday to consider a proposal to develop nuclear energy” (Associated Press, 2006) and in 2006 the New York Times reported that “at least six Arab countries have reportedly sought to develop nuclear power programs, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria” (Fattah, 2006). Furthermore, a 2005 issue of Scientific American stated that Brazil, China, Egypt, Finland, India, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea and Vietnam are building or planning nuclear plants (Hannum and Stanford 2005). With nuclear power expanding vertically and horizontally across the globe with or without US’s support, it would behoove the US to lead the way in developing a safer cheaper alternative. Our lack of support may not stop them, but our leadership could provide an option too beneficial for those countries combating energy poverty to resist.
With thirty countries possessing 435 commercial nuclear power reactors and 56 civil research reactors and only eight countries possessing nuclear weapons capability, concerns over proliferation at the state level; while valid, should not be overblown. The threat of non-state actors could still prove to be the world’s biggest concern as it grows its nuclear power capabilities.

Just how easily can the radioactive material and technology be redirected towards military use by terrorists?

Once again, the views on this subject are split. Garwin, author of Megawatts and Megatons: The Future of Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons cites a DOE report which claims that a “subnational organization could build a nuclear weapon with a yield of 1-3 kilotons from reactor grade plutonium” while Robert Gallucci, author of Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, attests that “no terrorist group on earth is capable of building nuclear weapons, even with assistance.” The truth probably rests somewhere in the middle, in that it is not possible for a fly-by-night terrorist group to create a sophisticated nuclear device, however it is conceivable that a group with state support could obtain the necessary resources, facilities, and the time required to fashion a nuclear device. Regardless of this possibility, nearly all sources analyzed agree that the amount of effort needed to develop even a simple “dirty bomb” precludes terrorist organizations from choosing such a path when equally devastating methods are available at greater ease. Of course it wasn’t that easy to hi-jack planes and fly them into buildings either, so such a possibility should not be fully discounted.

The US absolutely needs to resolve its energy concerns. The 103 nuclear power plants currently operating have either met or will soon hit their forty-year lifespan i.e. how long a large nuclear plant can safely operate. Those that have already reached the forty-year mark have received twenty-year extensions, it is doubtful they will be given another such extension when those twenty years end. The last nuclear power plant in the US took thirty years to complete, if the US intends to, at the bare minimum, replace existing plants with new plants, the decision has to be made now if there is any hope of completing construction before the extended life-span has expired.

Even if this bare minimum is done, nuclear power will not resolve America’s dependence on oil unless cars suddenly start running on electricity, nor will it resolve America’s concerns about climate change unless the magnitude of growth previously mentioned can be fully realized within a few decades.

According to Thomas Friedman, author of Hot, Flat and Crowded, we would need to build a one nuclear plant a day for thirty-six years to reduce carbon emissions to levels significant enough to slow climate change.

If such growth does occur, the technical problem of waste would have to be resolved or else we’d merely prevent one environmental crisis while leaving another for the next generation.

And the cost of securing waste and weapons-capable material would need to be fully factored into the plan.

Finally, it should be recognized that if nuclear power is to be considered a solution to the global energy crisis all of its faults must be fully considered and addressed or else; instead of a panacea, the world will get a costly placebo.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NUCLEAR POWER

Comment: We do not need new nuclear power plants, we do not need uranium mining, use "True Green" energy.

Eurpope's anti-Nuclear Plants will help everyone against uranium mining plus some companies uses France as a model Nuclear Power power, well France is polluting the water, land & air!

Don't forget to tell your grandchildren tomake sure they let their grandchildren knowhow to instruct their grandchildren to showtheir grandchildren how to clarify to theirgrandchildren in what way their grandchildrencould enable their grandchildren to look afterour nuclear waste.

Europe must stop wasting taxpayers' money to protect a dangerous and expensive technology. 20 years after the Chernobyl disaster, nuclear power, despite its widespread use also in Europe, remains the most dirty and dangerous form of energy.

Instead of nuclear power, Europe needs massive investments in energy efficiency and renewable energies. Any sensible energy policy must have these two elements at its heart.

The nuclear industry hopes for a nuclear come-back -- despite its dangers, despite its astronomical costs. A disaster like the Chernobyl accident, now 20 years ago, can happen anytime anyplace, and since Chernobyl, there were 22 serious nuclear accidents around the world..

A solution for the long-term storage & treatment of radioactive waste has yet to be found. Radioactive material from nuclear power generation can be used to build nuclear weapons. And, globalised terrorism makes nuclear power stations and the uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear material a serious security hazard.

And nuclear power is economically insane. Not a single nuclear power plant was ever built without direct or indirect subsidies, paid by taxpayers and increasing the profits of the nuclear industry. Nuclear power is also no solution to climate change: each Euro invested in nuclear energy would save ten times more greenhouse gases if it was invested in energy efficiency measures instead.

Despite this, and despite the fact that many EU Member States and the majority of their citizens are not in favour of nuclear energy, the so-called EURATOM Treaty officially obliges all EU countries to promote nuclear power.

Clearly, this treaty must be abolished, it being an old relic that has no role to play in a modern Europe.

Read on: 6 reasons against nuclear power

1. Nuclear power is dangerous, safety is a myth

Nuclear power remains the most dangerous form of energy. A disaster like the Chernobyl accident, now 20 years ago, can happen anytime anyplace. The history of the Nuclear Age is a history of accidents.

20 years after Chernobyl, people are still suffering from health problems caused by the accident. An accident can occur at any nuclear reactor, causing the release of large quantities of radioactivity into the environment. Even during normal operation, radioactive materials are regularly discharged into the air and water. Transports of large quantities of low and intermediate level wastes are also increasing the risks to populations.

Although nuclear power is a hazardous business, the nuclear industry hardly has any financial liability. In the case of a nuclear disaster, most of the damages will be paid by society and not the companies' insurances. None of the various international conventions on nuclear damage currently in force are designed to make operators, or owners, of nuclear facilities liable for damage they cause.

2. Nuclear power is a deadly legacy for our children

A solution for the long-term storage & treatment of radioactive waste has yet to be found. Highly radioactive spent fuels need to be isolated from the biosphere for hundreds and thousands years. Nuclear waste is produced at every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining and reactors to the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. Radioactive waste remains dangerous for hundreds and thousands of years and radiation can lead to cancer and birth defects.

There is not a single safe disposal option for the highly radioactive waste produced by nuclear power stations worldwide. In almost all countries waste is stored in bunkers, below surface or above ground, while the world desperately researches ways to safely store it for thousands of years to come. These 'intermediate' storages are expensive and require safety measures that are not comparable to any other waste or industrial process. As there is no safe way to store these wastes for the necessary periods of time, this alone should be enough reason to abandon nuclear power as a viable energy source.

3. Nuclear power is financially insane

If the European energy market was a level playing field, where energy pricing would reflect the true costs of producing energy from different sources, nuclear power would be economically insane.

All countries using its technology have seriously underestimated the full costs of nuclear power. Not a single nuclear power plant was ever built without direct or indirect subsidies, paid by taxpayers and increasing the profits of the nuclear industry. Also, nuclear power will not be able to compete with renewable energies without huge amounts of state aid. That nuclear power today produces on third of Europe's electricity is due to political that created favourable market conditions: Over the last 30 years, the EU's governments spent more than €45 billion for nuclear research.

As already said, Most of the costs of a (however likely) serious nuclear accident will be borne by society and not by the plant operator's insurance.

There is a huge gap between the expected costs of decommissioning and waste storage of the currently operating plants in the EU and the money set aside for that purpose by the operators. The hidden costs of waste disposal, decommissioning of plants at the end of their lifespan (the decommissiing costs alone could be as high as 500 billion Euro for the power stations currently operating within the EU) and provisioning for accidents have never been adequately accounted for, and will result in a massive burden on future economies and generations.

4. Nuclear power is no solution to climate change

In order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming, the world will have to cut back its emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by around 50% by 2050. Since by far the most of emissions happen in the energy sector, the nuclear industry hopes to use the climate crisis to stage a nuclear revival, arguing that nuclear power is cheap, emission-free and thus has a role to play in securing low-emissions supply of energy.

But nuclear power is not at all emissions free, if emissions in relation to uranium mining, transportation, plant construction and decommissioning and waste storage are included in the calculation. It has been calculated that for example in the UK with its 23 nuclear reactors, doubling capacity would cut emissions by no more than 8% . Globally, tripling nuclear capacity by 2050 might contribute 12.5%-20% to the necessary emission reductions. But such scenarios -- one plant every two weeks -- have no link to political reality, and the costs would be astronomic.

Compare this to the 20% reduction of energy consumption (and emissions) the European Union can achieve by 2020 (30 years earlier) at zero net costs, as the European Commission has pointed out in a "Green Paper" on energy efficiency. Also, nuclear power comes with high opportunity costs (since every Euro can be spent only once): Every Euro invested in new nuclear power could save ten times more emissions if it was invested in energy conservation measures instead -- thus also securing energy supply ten times cheaper.

5. Nuclear weapons are the flip side of nuclear power

Radioactive material from nuclear power generation can be used to build nuclear weapons. The global expansion of nuclear power could well contribute to an increase in the number of nuclear weapons states. So far India, Israel, South Africa, Pakistan, North Korea, and of course the five official nuclear weapons states (United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France and China), have developed arsenals of nuclear weapons using their "peaceful' nuclear facilities.

Nuclear power reactors have produced enough plutonium to build 160,000 nuclear weapons or an even wider range of radioactive materials for use in 'dirty bombs'. The spread of nuclear technology significantly increases the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. Smuggling of nuclear material, including from civil nuclear programs, also presents a significant challenge. The International Atomic Energy Association has recorded over 650 confirmed incidents of trafficking in nuclear or other radioactive materials since 1993. In 2004 alone almost a hundred such incidents occurred.

6. Nuclear power dependent on limited & dirty resources

Nuclear power plants run on uranium fuel. And uranium - like oil, gas and coal - is a finite resource that will only last a few more decades, at most 50 years (with the current level of use). A significant increase in the use of nuclear power will quickly result in a shortage of nuclear fuel.

The reprocessing of spent fuels has already been proven to be no solution. Reprocessing is a complicated and hazardous chemical process that creates an enormous amount of radioactive waste. Besides that, reprocessing is a very uneconomical technology, as past examples have clearly demonstrated.

Nevertheless there are two reprocessing units in Europe: Sellafield (UK) and La Hague (France).
Both are known to be the biggest sources of radioactive pollution in the European environment through the release of huge quantities of radioactive liquid effluents into the sea and gaseous discharges into the air.

And last but not least, the production of weapons from plutonium separated in reprocessing facilities is relatively simple, dramatically increasing the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.