The Nuclear Fuel Cycle - Not 'Clean and Green'
fact is that it takes energy to make energy - even nuclear energy. And the true `energetic costs' of making nuclear energy - the amounts
of traditionally generated fuel it takes to create `new' nuclear
energy - have not been tallied up until very recently.... One is led to
believe that the nuclear reactor stands alone, an autonomous creator
of energy. In fact, the vast infrastructure necessary to create
nuclear energy, called the nuclear fuel cycle, is a prodigious user of
fossil fuel and coal"
- Dr Helen Caldicott, "Nuclear Power is Not the Answer", The New
Press, New York, 2006
1. URANIUM MINING & MILLING:
• Aside from being a limited, finite resource, variable grades of
uranium ore exist at different mines around the world. While energy
must be expended to mine any grade of uranium, a greater amount of
energy (typically diesel fuel used by bulldozers and shovels) is
required to extract uranium from a mine containing a low-grade uranium
ore. Millions of tons of ore must be mined each year to fuel just one
nuclear power plant.
• From mine to mill involves transportation by trucks that consume
diesel fuel and must be serviced and repaired in maintenance shops
that consume additional energy.
• Milling involves grinding the millions of tons of mined ore into a
fine powder before treatment with sulphuric acid and other chemicals
to produce a compound called `yellow cake'. In addition to the
grinding operation, additional energy must be used to create the steam
and heated gases, and all the chemicals used had to be manufactured in
other chemical plants.
2. MILL TAILINGS
• The millions of tons of radioactive mill tailings that remain after
the extraction of uranium should be remediated rather than just dumped
on the ground. The necessary remediation process involves;
- neutralizing with limestone;
- immobilizing by mixing the tailings with bentonite to isolate them
from groundwater;
- transportation back to the mine for interment; and
- covering with an overburden of soil.
The remediation process uses enough energy by itself to make the
energetic price of nuclear electricity unreasonable.
3. URANIUM ENRICHMENT
• Uranium must first be converted to uranium hexafluoride in order for
the fissionable uranium 235 to be separated from non-fissionable
uranium 238.
• Enrichment of uranium 235 requires the construction, operation and
maintenance of an enrichment plant.
• Enrichment methods - by either gaseous diffusion or ultracentrifuge
- require large amounts of energy. The currently operating enrichment
facility in Paducah, KY, uses the electrical output of 2 older, 1,000
mega-watt, coal-fired generating plants for its enrichment operation.
4. FUEL ELEMENT FABRICATION
• Considerable use of fossil fuel is required for the fabrication of
cigarette filter-sized uranium pellets and the 12 foot long zirconium
fuel rods. A typical 1,000 megawatt reactor contains 50,000 rods -
about 100 tons of uranium.
• The pellets and rods, once fabricated, must be shipped to the plant
and carefully handled and installed using complicated machinery.
• The interim storage of spent irradiated fuel elements also carries
energetic costs. At present, these elements are confined to `cooling
pools' on reactor sites in order to keep them from heating to the
point of bursting. As the pools fill up, the used rods are placed in
"dry cask' storage, usually outside at the plan site. The construction
of these highly specialized containers uses as much energy as the
construction of the original reactor itself.
5. CONSTRUCTION OF THE REACTOR
• The construction of a nuclear power plant requires an immense
collection of goods and services and its high-tech nature demands an
extensive and costly industrial infrastructure. Huge amounts of
concrete and steel - each of which uses a large amount of energy in
its manufacture, transportation and installation - are used to build a
reactor.
• The complexity of operations, maintenance and security precautions
contribute additional energetic costs to the generation of electricity
at a nuclear power plant.
6. DECOMMISSIONING AND DISMANTLING
NOTE: There is very limited experience available on which to base
energetic costs for decommissioning and dismantling because a large
nuclear power plant has never actually been dismantled completely
after a long operational lifetime.
• Decommissioning and dismantling a reactor is not the same as
closing, cutting up and hauling off a coal or natural gas electrical
generating plant. Radioactive products such as cobalt 60 and iron 55
formed inside the reactor must be left to decay for a period of 10 to
100 years before the reactor can even be entered. The site must be
continually guarded by a security force to protect it from damage or
unwarranted intrusion during this time, adding an additional layer of
energy use.
• After the decay period, the reactor must be cut into pieces and the
still radioactive pieces packed into containers for transportation to
some distant (to date, non-existent) location for permanent disposal.
7. SITE CLEANUP AND DISPOSAL OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE
• At the end of its lifetime, the reactor will need to be cleaned of
accumulated radioactive material which is a collection of elements
from the reactor itself, the cooling system and the highly radioactive
fission and `actinide' elements that have escaped from leaking and
damaged fuel rods.
• The water that cools the reactor, heavily contaminated with tritium
(200-year radioactive life) or radioactive hydrogen and with carbon 14
(114,600-year radioactive life), should theoretically be stored,
immobilized in drying agents or cement, and placed in appropriate,
long-lived containers rather than being discharged into seas, rivers
or lakes.
• As with decommissioning and dismantling, there is presently no
adequate estimate of the true energetic costs associated with this
phase of the fuel cycle. That, however, cannot be construed to mean
there is none.
• The five classifications of radioactive waste materials (V1 - V5)
require specific types of containers for transportation. The
production, filling, handling and transport of the radioactive waste
in containers V2 - V5 is estimated to use per ton almost as much
energy as the construction of the nuclear reactor itself.
8. TRANSPORTATION OF HIGH-LEVEL AND INTERMEDIATE WASTE AND LONG -TERM
STORAGE FOR 240,000 YEARS
• The calculations for this part of the nuclear fuel cycle have not
yet been done, but clearly huge amounts of fossil fuel will be used to
transport the waste over long distances through towns and cities over
long periods of time, to prepare an adequate geological waste storage
facility (such as Yucca Mountain) and to operate, maintain, supervise
and guard this site for periods of time almost beyond our
comprehension - up to 240,000 years.
IN SUMMARY: Nuclear energy is not `clean and green' as the industry
claims, because large amounts of traditional fossil fuels are required
to mine and refine the uranium needed to run nuclear power reactors,
to construct the massive concrete reactor buildings and to transport
and store the toxic radioactive waste created by the nuclear process.
Industry comparisons of lower CO2 production by existing nuclear
power plants to those using fossil fuels are, at best, transitory as
the concentration of available uranium ore declines and more and more
fossil fuels are required to extract the ore from less concentrated
ore veins. When this occurs, nuclear power plants will then produce
exactly the same amounts of greenhouse gasses and air pollution as
standard power plants and will, in fact, continue to worsen until the
availability of useable uranium declines to a point where it takes
more energy to produce electricity than the energy value of the
electricity itself - a net loss in power to provide electricity.
Source: "NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT THE ANSWER" by Dr. Helen Caldicott - The
New Press, New York, 2006)
This flier was produced by NONUKESNOW, a decidedly unapologetic
anti-nuclear power group that is composed of like-minded individuals
and groups who do not believe the myth of nuclear energy as being
either "too cheap to meter" or the answer to greenhouse gas reduction.
This group and many of its members are committed to active resistance
to nuclear energy and the type of world it will bring.
Email: [email protected]
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