Trading greenhouse gas emissions for plutonium production

UPDATE 2/6/09: Since I wrote this post yesterday, Sweden has announced that it is reversing a decision to phase out the nation’s 10 nuclear reactors. The power plants will now be replaced at the end of their lifetimes with new reactors as part of a program to help combat global warming. Go here for a story from Agence France-Presse.

Nuclear power has been looking increasingly seductive as a way to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

President Obama, for example, may be among the seduced. During the campaign he voiced at least qualified support for nuclear power “as part of the energy mix.” His new Secretary of Energy, Nobelist Steven Chu has said that nuclear energy “has to be a necessary part of the portfolio.” In 2007, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had a change of heart about nukes, saying ”I bring a more open mind to that subject now.”

And even among some environmentalists, nuclear power isn’t looking quite like the boogeyman it once did. 

But at a seminar here at the Center for Environmental Journalism today, my colleague Len Ackland cautioned that the pressing need to find solutions to climate change may lead some people to a false sense of security about nukes.

Nuclear power plants produce plutonium — and not just a little. Globally, the world’s nuclear power plants produce some 42,000 pounds of the stuff each year. If that seems entirely reasonable, consider that the atomic bomb that exploded over Nagasaki, Japan, contained just 14 pounds of plutonium, not all of which actually fissioned. The result was a blast, equivalent to 21,000 tons of TNT, that killed at least 39,000 people. 

According to Ackland, nuclear power produces just 15 percent of the world’s electricity today, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 6 percent below what they would otherwise be if the power were produced by coal-fired plants. So let’s do some math: If we want to use nukes to reduce emissions by, say, 60 percent, we’d need 10 times more nuclear reactors than we have today. That would mean about 4,400 reactors. Barring some change in reactor technology, these would produce some 420,000 pounds of plutonium each year — enough to make about 30,000 atomic bombs like the one that obliterated Nagasaki. 

So in order to make a dent in global warming using nuclear power, “you are looking at potential bomb factories all over the world,” Ackland says. “Who is going to ensure that bombs aren’t going to be developed?”

Those of us, myself included, who lived within a hundred or so miles of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania might remember the fear that was triggered by the partial meltdown of one of the reactors there — fear that was primed exquisitely by the film “The China Syndrome” starring Jane Fonda, which had been released just 12 days prior. But the reactor at Three Mile Island did not melt its way into the Earth, let alone all the way down to China. No similar accident has happened since then — at least not in the United States — perhaps contributing to the sense of security we now may be experiencing. And while Chernobyl was horrific, the fear of nuclear power has clearly been supplanted by the fear of what has been come to be called “the climate crisis.”

The issue that journalists covering energy and climate issues must address is not just whether relying on nuclear power to reduce global warming might lead to more Chernobyls. Ackland urges us to think about the potential spread of weapons of mass desctruction. “For me, the biggest issue is proliferation,” he says.

So we need to ask whether trading greenhouse gas emissions for plutonium production is as low risk as some people are making it out to be.