“The world was not meant to be a prison in which man awaits his execution” – John F. Kennedy
The announcement by President Barack Obama to close down the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Depository raised eyebrows among lawmakers in the U.S. On April 3, at the NATO Summit in Strasbourg, Germany, President Obama pledged to work to stop nuclear weapons proliferation. Obama said, “In Prague, I will lay out an agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons” The only statements reported in the media were related to negotiating the reduction of existing nuclear arsenals starting with the U.S. and Russia.
Some reports say that President Obama is likely to scale back the Bush administration’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), as if that would be a bad thing, but is it? GNEP is designed “to seek development of new nuclear technologies and new international nuclear fuel arrangements”. Over 21 countries have signed up to this agreement including Canada.1
The stated aim is to cut nuclear waste and markedly reduce the risk of an increase in nuclear weapons proliferation from the contemplated growth in nuclear energy plants. However, GNEP is likely to lead to proliferation of present technologies before the newer ones have been developed. There is some question that the newer technologies might even lead to easier manufacture of nuclear weapons.2
Obama said in a campaign speech in Jacksonville Florida in June 2008, “I think that nuclear should be in the mix when it comes to energy.” He continued with this statement, “I don’t think it’s our optimal energy source because we haven’t figured out how to store the waste safely or recycle the waste.”3
When President Obama announced the closing of Yucca Mountain, in the face of huge amounts of stranded nuclear waste in many parts of the country, it is no wonder that nuclear proponents may have been left gasping for air!
GNEP aims to build a taxpayer funded reprocessing plant for spent nuclear fuel, even though reprocessing would violate U.S. law and pollute wherever it happened. GNEP would allow the failing nuclear industry to go on polluting and generating more waste. The reprocessed waste called MOX is more hazardous than regular waste because of all the impurities created in its previous use as nuclear fuel in electricity generation plants that can never be completely removed. MOX itself cannot be recycled. Even the production of MOX causes a “horrendous trail of deadly vapors, liquids, partially solidified radioactive sludge”. Some of the waste from MOX production has been poured into the oceans under the assumption that diluting nuclear waste renders it harmless. Scientifically, that assumption is easily proven wrong. Most of the waste is stored inadequately since there is no completely safe way to store nuclear waste. It must be monitored essentially for the life of the Earth.
At present, The U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) and Steven Chu, Obama’s energy secretary, see GNEP and MOX as the “solution” to nuclear waste. In our view the likelihood of nuclear proliferation will not be solved through the GNEP plans. In fact, it will make the threat worse.
The Obama administration should be requested to make the only reality-based decision to phase out nuclear power plants and other nuclear installations.
The answer is to phase-out nuclear while the infrastructure and development of clean and green sustainable energy sources occurs. This is the only answer.
References
1 GNEP proposal www.gnep.energy.gov
2 Nuclear Energy Futures Research Project Publication, Nov. 11, 2008
3 Reuters 2008
Other sources of information:
• GNEP_Watch_11_Jan7.pdf
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Nuclear_Energy_Partnerships