Nuclear

Deplet­ed Ura­ni­um | Reac­tor Security

[Print­able PDF ver­sion of this fact­sheet]

Nuclear pow­er is an expen­sive, pol­lut­ing, dan­ger­ous, racist, depletable, and now for­eign source of ener­gy. 80–90% of ura­ni­um used in the U.S. is import­ed from Cana­da, Aus­tralia, the for­mer Sovi­et Union and Africa.¹ At the cur­rent con­sump­tion rate, low-cost ura­ni­um reserves will be exhaust­ed in about 50 years.²

Ura­ni­um Min­ing
The nuclear chain begins with ura­ni­um min­ing, a pol­lut­ing activ­i­ty that dev­as­tates large areas. Ura­ni­um ore can con­tains as lit­tle as 500 grams recov­er­able ura­ni­um per mil­lion grams of earth. ³ Enor­mous amounts of rock have to be dug up, crushed and chem­i­cal­ly processed to extract the uranium.

The remain­ing wastes, still con­tain­ing large amounts of radioac­tiv­i­ty, remain at the mines. These “tail­ings” are often stored in a very poor con­di­tion, result­ing in the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of sur­face- and groundwater.

Nat­ur­al ura­ni­um con­tains two dif­fer­ent forms, or iso­topes: U‑238 and U‑235. U‑235 is fis­sion­able, which means its atoms can be split, releas­ing large amounts of heat. How­ev­er, nat­ur­al ura­ni­um con­sists of more than 99% U‑238 and less than 1% U‑235. To be used as a fuel, large amounts of U‑238 must be removed to increase the pro­por­tion of U‑235 to 3–5%.⁴

Nuclear Weapons
Deplet­ed ura­ni­um (DU) is the U‑238 waste prod­uct that has been “deplet­ed” of U‑235. DU has been used to make armor pierc­ing bul­lets, tank shield­ing and more. When used in war­fare, DU bursts into flames upon impact, spread­ing ura­ni­um dust into the envi­ron­ment. DU is radioac­tive for bil­lions of years and hun­dreds of tons of it have con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and test­ing loca­tions like Vieques, Puer­to Rico. It’s the pri­ma­ry cul­prit in Gulf War Syn­drome and many oth­er health prob­lems.⁵

The same process used to make reac­tor fuel can be used to high­ly enrich ura­ni­um for nuclear bombs. This is why nuclear pow­er pro­grams have led to nuclear weapons pro­grams in oth­er countries.

Pol­lu­tion in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle
Many steps are required to make ura­ni­um suit­able for use in nuclear reac­tors. From min­ing to milling to con­ver­sion to enrich­ment to fuel fab­ri­ca­tion, each step involves sep­a­rate facil­i­ties through­out the U.S. poi­son­ing com­mu­ni­ties with radioac­tive and chem­i­cal pol­lu­tion (most­ly in west­ern and mid-west­ern states).

Glob­al warm­ing
While the nuclear reac­tors them­selves release few green­house gas­es, the nuclear fuel cycle is a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor. In 2001, 93% of the nation’s report­ed emis­sions of CFC-114,⁶ a potent green­house gas, were released from the U.S. Enrich­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, where ura­ni­um is enriched to make nuclear reac­tor fuel. These facil­i­ties are so ener­gy inten­sive that some of the nation’s dirty, old coal plants exist just to pow­er the nuclear fuel facil­i­ties.⁷

Liv­ing near a nuclear facil­i­ty increas­es your chances of dying from breast can­cer. A nation­wide sur­vey of 268 coun­ties with­in 50 miles of 51 nuclear reac­tors, found breast can­cer deaths in these “nuclear coun­ties” to be 10 times the nation­al rate from 1950 to 1989.⁹

In the 7 years after the clo­sure of 8 nuclear reac­tors, infant mor­tal­i­ty rates (deaths to infants under 1 year of age) fell dra­mat­i­cal­ly in down­wind com­mu­ni­ties.¹⁰

Stron­tium-90, a radioac­tive pol­lu­tant now released only from nuclear reac­tors, ends up in milk and bones, con­tribut­ing to bone can­cer and leukemia. Stud­ies of Sr-90 in baby teeth found lev­els 30–50% high­er in teeth of chil­dren liv­ing near reac­tors.¹¹ Back­ground lev­els are ris­ing with con­tin­ued use of nuclear reac­tors, ris­ing to lev­els com­pa­ra­ble to when atmos­pher­ic nuclear bomb tests con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed the nation in the 1940s and ‘50s. Lev­els in the teeth of babies born in the late 1990s are about 50% high­er than those born in the late 1980s.

Of the 7 areas exam­ined so far in the baby tooth stud­ies, the high­est Sr-90 lev­els have been found in south­east­ern PA – around the Lim­er­ick reactor.

Liv­ing near reac­tors is also cor­re­lat­ed with increas­es in leukemia and child­hood cancer.

Water Use: Harm­ing Wildlife
Reac­tors require huge amounts of cool­ing water, which is why they’re often locat­ed near rivers, lakes or oceans. Reac­tors with cool­ing tow­ers or ponds can use 28–30 mil­lion gal­lons of water per day.¹² The 48 reac­tors with once-through cool­ing sys­tems use far more (up to 1.5 bil­lion gal­lons per day). A typ­i­cal two-unit reac­tor using once-through cool­ing takes in about a square mile of water, 14 feet deep, each day.

The ini­tial dev­as­ta­tion of marine life and ecosys­tems stems from the pow­er­ful intake of water into the nuclear reac­tor. Marine life, rang­ing from endan­gered sea tur­tles and man­a­tees down to del­i­cate fish lar­vae and micro­scop­ic plank­ton­ic organ­isms vital to the ocean ecosys­tem, is sucked irre­sistibly into the reac­tor cool­ing sys­tem. Some of these ani­mals are killed when trapped against fil­ters, grates, and oth­er struc­tures, or, in the case of air-breath­ing ani­mals like tur­tles, seals, and man­a­tees, they drown or suf­fo­cate.¹³

An equal­ly huge vol­ume of waste­water is dis­charged at tem­per­a­tures up to 25 o F hot­ter than the water into which it flows. Indige­nous marine life suit­ed to cold­er tem­per­a­tures is elim­i­nat­ed or forced to move, dis­rupt­ing del­i­cate­ly bal­anced ecosystems.

Waste
Radioac­tive wastes are pro­duced con­tin­u­al­ly in reac­tors. There are two basic types of nuclear waste: high-lev­el nuclear waste (the used fuel rods) and “low-lev­el radioac­tive waste” (every­thing else).

High-lev­el nuclear waste (also called irra­di­at­ed or “spent” fuel) is lit­er­al­ly about one mil­lion times more radioac­tive than when the fuel rods were loaded into the reac­tor. This waste is so lethal that stand­ing near it with­out shield­ing would kill you with­in min­utes. This waste will be haz­ardous for mil­lions of years. No tech­nol­o­gy exists to keep it iso­lat­ed this long. Irra­di­at­ed fuel rods are stored in stor­age pools inside reac­tor build­ings, often sev­er­al sto­ries high, where they’re high­ly vul­ner­a­ble to air­craft attacks.¹⁴ If the water is drained from the pool, expos­ing the rods to open air, a melt­down would cause a mas­sive release of radi­a­tion. Some util­i­ties have begun stor­ing this waste in dry casks on out­door con­crete pads in the back­yard of the reac­tors, intro­duc­ing sep­a­rate stor­age, pack­ag­ing and secu­ri­ty problems.

A per­ma­nent “dis­pos­al” site planned for Yuc­ca Moun­tain, Neva­da has many prob­lems. It’s far from where most waste is pro­duced, requir­ing unprece­dent­ed num­bers of ship­ments through 43 states, risk­ing acci­dents and attacks. Yuc­ca Moun­tain is on Native Amer­i­can lands and is too leaky to keep the waste dry.¹⁵ The site is amid active fault lines and is too small to store the amount of waste that would be gen­er­at­ed by the time it opens (if it ever does). Cur­rent­ly, a site on Native lands in Utah is pro­posed to store the waste “tem­porar­i­ly.”

Envi­ron­men­tal Racism
Nuclear pow­er dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affects com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, from the min­ing of ura­ni­um on Native Amer­i­can and Abo­rig­i­nal lands, to the tar­get­ing of black and His­pan­ic com­mu­ni­ties for new ura­ni­um pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties to the tar­get­ing of black and His­pan­ic and Native Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties for “low-lev­el” nuclear waste dumps. All sites pro­posed for “tem­po­rary” and per­ma­nent stor­age of high lev­el nuclear waste have been Native Amer­i­can lands.¹⁷

Too Expen­sive
Nuclear pow­er is the most expen­sive form of pow­er and could not exist with mas­sive sub­si­dies, includ­ing the “Price-Ander­son” law that places a cap on indus­try lia­bil­i­ty in the event of a nuclear accident.

Fusion
Fusion still pro­duces nuclear waste, includ­ing tri­tium, a very dan­ger­ous, hard-to-con­tain air and water con­t­a­m­i­nant.¹⁸ Like fis­sion, it would be very expen­sive and high­ly cen­tral­ized. Despite mas­sive research spend­ing, it’s still decades away from real­i­ty. The same mon­ey spent on clean solu­tions (con­ser­va­tion, effi­cien­cy, wind and solar) would do far more.

Footnotes

1. Nuclear Fuel Pro­duc­tion: A Four Step Process. http://www.nei.org/howitworks/factsheets/nuclearfuelproduction/ Also as pdf
2. John Carl­son from the Aus­tralian Safe­guards and Non-pro­lif­er­a­tion Office. http://www.greenleft.org.au/2005/622/34954 This nuclear reg­u­la­to­ry agency acts more like a pro-nuclear PR agency
3. Ibid.
4. Nuclear Fuel Pro­duc­tion. http://web.archive.org/web/20031112071741/http://www.nei.org/doc.asp?catnum=3&catid=192&docid=&format=print
5. Deplet­ed Ura­ni­um. https://energyjusticenetwork.org/nuclear/du
6. US EPA Tox­ic Release Inventory.http://www.epa.gov.tri
7. Is Nuclear Pow­er the Ener­gy of the Future? http://www.eco-wnc.org/0710%20ECO%20Notes%20Nuclear%20Power.pdf
8. Rou­tine Radioac­tive Releas­es from Nuclear Reac­tors. http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/routineradioactivereleases.htmThe Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ence report­ed in its Bio­log­i­cal Effects of Radi­a­tion Report V11, 2005, that there is no thresh­old beneath which expo­sure to radi­a­tion is not dangerous
9. Jay M. Gould. The Ene­my With­in: The High Cost of Liv­ing Near Nuclear Reac­tors : Breast Can­cer, AIDS, Low Birth­weights, And Oth­er Radi­a­tion-induced Immune Defi­cien­cy Effects. Four Walls Eight Win­dows, 1996. 346 pgs http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=82314269 Also see, Radi­a­tion and Pub­lic Health Web­site www.radiation.org/
10. Envi­ron­men­tal Radi­a­tion from Nuclear Reac­tors and Child­hood Can­cer in South­east Flori­da, Radi­a­tion and Pub­lic Health Project, 9 April 2003. Sum­ma­ry avail­able at http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/index.html?http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/587/5518.html
11. Joseph Mangano. Low Lev­el Radi­a­tion and Immune Sys­tem Dam­age. Pub­lished by CRC, July 29th 1998.
    See also Radioac­tive Baby Teeth: The Can­cer Link. Pub­lished by Soci­ety For Human Resource Man­age­ment. Octo­ber 2007. ISBN-13: 9781566199094
12. Palia­ment of Aus­tralia. Water Require­ments of Nuclear Pow­er Sta­tions. 4 Decem­ber 2006, no. 12, 2006-07, ISSN 1449–8456.http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/2006–07/07rn12.pdf
13. Licensed to Kill – How the Nuclear Pow­er Indus­try destroys endan­gered marine wildlife and ocean habi­tat to save mon­ey.http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/licensedtokill/LiscencedtoKill.pdf
14. “Trans­mit­tal of Tech­ni­cal Study on Spent Fuel Pool Acci­dent Risk at Decom­mis­sion­ing Nuclear Pow­er
    Sta­tions,” U.S. Nuclear Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion, Jan­u­ary 18, 2001, Sec­tion 3.5.2 ‘Air­craft Crash­es,’ page -
    3–23. ADAMS Acces­sion # ML010180413. Also see, “Safe­ty and Secu­ri­ty of Com­mer­cial Spent Nuclear Fuel Stor­age, Nation­al Research Coun­cil, Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, 2006. http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ocga/briefings/Safety_and_Security_Commercial_Spent_Nuclear_Fuel_Storage.asp And “Reduc­ing the Haz­ards Stored Spent Pow­er Reac­tor Fuel in the Unit­ed States” (Tay­lor and Fran­cis, Alver­az, et al), 2003
15. Cit­i­zen Alert and Deni­is Weber, Ph.d and Ear­le Dixon, M.S. Analy­sis of the Neva­da Test Site Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tem for Ground­wa­ter Con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. March 2004. http://www.clarku.edu/mtafund/prodlib/citizen_alert/Citizen_Alert_of_Nevada.pdf A sum­ma­ry report avail­able at http://www.h‑o-m‑e.org/Legacy/LegacyDocs/NTS%20water%20summary%20report…. Also see, Plu­to­ni­um Found in Water at http://www.gdr.org/putoniumfoundinwater.htm Sep­tem­ber 1997.
16. Fact­sheet: “Low-Lev­el” Radioac­tive Waste by Diane D’Arrigo at NIRS.http://www.downwinders.org/llw_facts.htm
17. Tox­ic and Nuclear Wastes, Dump­ing on Native Amer­i­can Reser­va­tions. Bib­li­og­ra­phy avail­able online at www.bartlconsult.de/bc/proseminar/literatur/Bibliography%20Toxic%20and%20Nuclear%20Wastes.htm Also, Radioac­tive Racism: The His­to­ry of Tar­get­ing Native Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ties with High-Lev­el Atom­ic Waste Dumps. Avail­able at http://www.citizen.org/documents/radioactiveracism.pdf
18. Car­cino­genic, Muta­genic, Ter­ato­genic and Trans­mu­ta­tion­al Effects of Tri­tium. http://www.ipsecinfo.org/Tritium.htm Study con­duct­ed by www.nukebusters.org