A Condemnation of Nuclear Power & the Kyoto Protocol

by: Jill Richardson Sat Nov 08, 2008 at 03:09:53 AM PST

We might not be nuking anyone with a bomb these days, but we’re nuking them all the same. We’re just doing it quietly. Vandana Shiva, an Indian activist trained in nuclear physics, just published a book called Soil Not Oil in which she provides an absolutely DAMNING description of nuclear power AND of the Kyoto Protocol.Now that I’m reading it, I’m utterly depressed. We just spent the last 8 years bemoaning the fact that we aren’t signed onto Kyoto, and now that we have a president who would gladly sign onto it (or onto whatever comes next), I find out that the whole thing is a bunch of BS anyway. We SHOULD HAVE spent the last 8 years calling for real solutions to global warming, not debating whether or not global warming exists. Thank goodness we’re back to business with a leader who gets that our energy problems are real and we need something other than oil. Follow me below so you can hear Vandana Shiva’s arguments on why nuclear is unjust and unsustainable and so is Kyoto.

Jill Richardson :: A Condemnation of Nuclear Power & the Kyoto Protocol

How are we nuking the world’s poor? Via uranium mining. Read this, about India’s uranium mine that provides all of the country’s uranium. Remember as you read that the US made a nuclear agreement with India under Bush: The mine, operated by the Uranium Corporation of India LTD (UCIL), was opened in 1967. It impacts 30,000 people living in 15 villages within a 5-kilometer radius of the complex. The ore is first crushed into a fine powder, and then chemically treated to remove the uranium. After uranium extraction, 99.94 percent of the mined rock is left as waste. Jaduguda processes 1000 tons of ore per day and produces 200 tons of uranium in the form of yellowcake every year. Some 350,000 tons of rock are being mined, crushed, and dumped in Jaduguda every year.This crushed rock, or uranium tailings, contains more than a dozen radioactive materials, including thorium-230, radium-226, and the gas radon-222. If the tailings are allowed to remain on the surface and dry out, they can be carried by wind onto faraway vegetation, entering the radioactive material into the food chain, or be washed into rivers and lakes, contaminating the water supply. At the Jaduguda mine the coarse tailings are dumped back into the mine and the fine tailings are mixed with water and pumped via a pipeline to the tailing dams near Jaduguda village. A study of people living within 1 kilometer of the tailing dams showed that 42 percent of women had developed menstrual problems, 18 percent had suffered miscarriages or had given birth to stillborn babies, and 30 percent had other fertility problems. Children born in the area are born with deformities, skeletal distortions, partly deformed skulls and organs. The more than 7000 mine workers are also continuously exposed to radiation hazards. What is happening to the Ho and the Santhals in Jaduguda happened to the Navajo in the U.S. Joe Shirley Jr, the Navajo tribal president, has referred to uranium mining as “genocide.” Robert Stweard Sr, a Navajo who worked in the uranium mines for five years, said “You look around the reservation and see so many elderly people who are crippled and can barely breathe.” Fortunately, the Navajo banned mining on their land. But if we are to have nuclear power, SOMEBODY will have to mine the uranium. It’s gotta come from somewhere. My guess is that the unlucky people who live near whatever mines are operated to come up with the necessary uranium and near wherever we end up dumping nuclear waste will be those with the least power and money. What really kills me is not only how toxic and lethal uranium mining is, but also how inefficient it is. According to Shiva, almost 100,000 tons of rock must be mined to come up with 1 ton of uranium. And a standard reactor takes 100 times that. Here are some more details: From the Jaduguda mines, yellowcake (U3O8) is transferred to the nuclear fuel complex in Hyderabad for fabrication into fuel rods. Yellowcake contains only about 0.7 percent uranium-235, which is the primary ingredient for nuclear fission reactors. To increase the concentrate to the necessary 3 to 5 percent, the yellowcake is mixed with fluoride and heated. The lighter U-235 molecules are separated from the heavier U-238 molecules. The enriched uranium is used for fuel rods. The remaining 85 percent becomes depleted uranium. Re: Kyoto, Shiva talks about “CDMs” – Clean Development Mechanisms – programs that earn polluters carbon credits to use or sell. Here’s her money quote about Kyoto and the idea of carbon trading: That such schemes are more about privatizing the atmosphere than preventing climate change is made clear by the fact that the emission rights given away in the Kyoto Protocol were several times higher than the levels needed to prevent a 2 degree Celsius rise in global temperature. Notice that she says these emission rights are given away – not sold. The world’s nations got together and decided that their companies had the right to pollute far more than we can afford with absolutely no penalties or costs. As for the CDMs, she says only 2% of them are actually renewable. What?? Apparently you don’t get carbon credits for doing things that suck carbon out of the atmosphere. You get credits for making a less dirty technology or process instead of a more dirty one. But this in itself IS more dirty. For example: One controversial Chinese CDM project destroys HFC-23, a potent greenouse gas whose effect on global warming is, ton for ton, 11,200 imes greater than that of carbon dioxide. HFC-23 is a byproduct of the production of HCFC-22, a refrigerant. The US CDM board has registered 16 HFC-23 projects, the majority in China, with the potential to generate 65 million carbon credits per year. It is extremely cheap to destroy the HFC-23 and the polluting gas has become more profitable than the actual product. There is no incentive to develop clean technologies.Furthremore, since HFC destruction earns credits, it makes sense to not ban HFC. This underminds the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which mandates phasing out HFCs in Souther countries by 2010. As Lohmann observes, “The CDM has now provided a perverse incentive to hike production of HFCs in order to cash in as much as possible on credit sales.” To sum up her section on Kyoto – which is far more in depth than I’ve included here, she says: Nonpolluting, nonindustrial activity does not even figure in Kyoto’s CDM. To be counted as clean, you must first be dirty. This sounds to me like a system in which driving a Prius was counted more than biking. Biking emits no carbon – save for whatever was used to manufacture the bike. Driving a Prius pollutes, although less than other cars. And what about, say, planting a tree? That actually takes carbon OUT of the atmosphere – even better than biking. In other words, let’s say driving an SUV is considered the “norm.” So you get a certain amount of rights to drive an SUV and if you want to do more, you need to buy credits. So someone else drives a Prius and earns credits for however much their Prius pollutes less than driving the SUV. The more they drive, the more they earn – even though they are polluting as they go. Then they can sell you their credits. What about the people who ride bikes and plant trees? They aren’t rewarded. So in the end we get more greenhouse gas emissions overall instead of less. Maybe that Prius driver could actually bike to work but they want the money earned by driving that Prius. Of course, this is just an analogy to the large scale industrial projects that corporations are doing under Kyoto. Individuals like us don’t figure into this. A friend of mine is an organic farmer. She grows fruit trees, so her farm is doing a lot of good for climate change. She asked me if I knew anything about a possibility that she could earn and sell carbon credits because her orchards obviously takes a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere. Now I don’t want my friend’s farm to be used as a means for someone else to pollute more. That makes no sense. I’d rather have less pollution overall than maintain the same levels. But wouldn’t it make more sense for my friend to earn carbon credits to sell, instead of an industry that is dirty but just slightly less dirty than its own most dirtiest version? Vandana Shiva makes the point that those who will suffer the most from climate change are those least responsible for causing it. She’s right. And we here in America have the power to do something. Now that we have someone with a brain in the White House, we can choose actual change, or we can just pay lip service to change by going with dirty technologies like nuclear and like these stupid CDM projects okay’d under Kyoto. We can do better. http://www.lavidalocavore.org/showDiary.do?diaryId=593