Nuclear industry exploits green issues

The nuclear industry is alive and well, and spending millions of dollars to push its agenda. And as Johanna Son writes in this Inter Press Service report, it will use a global environment meeting in December to lobby its case.

MANILA: Stung by growing public rejection and a fall in demand for nuclear plants, the world's nuclear industry is anxiously seeking a second lease on life.

Nuclear experts and green activists say its strategy is to paint nuclear power as the alternative, clean technology -- one that can address soaring energy needs without spewing harmful greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuel facilities.

And with climate change negotiations being held in Japan in December, the nuclear industry is expected to lobby its case at the crucial conference, they say.

The third conference of parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in Kyoto, aims to set new, binding targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that heat up the atmosphere and contribute to global warming.

But as governments and countries debate over how, and how much, to cut back on these emissions, activists say the nuclear argument is muddling the discussion. Jinzaburo Takagi, a former nuclear chemist who heads the Tokyo-based Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, says there are signs the Japanese government is using the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions to pursue its nuclear power program.

He says the government and nuclear power utilities are using the Kyoto meeting to advocate carbon dioxide emission-free nuclear energy in order to show that Japan's nuclear industry is alive and well, despite recent setbacks.

In 1996, a subcommittee that advises the ministry of international trade and industry said the expansion of Japan's nuclear capacity by 70 gigawatts is needed by the year 2020 to meet targets for reducing carbon emissions.

The industry has been through a series of public rejections and accidents in Japan in recent years, provoking public anger.

Corin Millais of the environmental group Greenpeace said: "The nuclear industry is spending millions of dollars on advertising around the world."

For instance, an advertisement by the French power firm Framatome in magazines like European Voice in June says nuclear power is the answer to the effects of global warming -- like rising sea levels and more severe natural disasters.

"With zero carbon dioxide releases, nuclear energy occupies a privileged position among the energy sources that can considerably limit the worrisome heating of the earth," the advertisement said. "Nuclear power is badly understood and often perceived as something negative. But today it's the cleanest, most closely monitored and most environmentally friendly source of large amounts of energy," it continued.

Athena Ronquillo-Ballesteros, Southeast Asia energy campaigner for Greenpeace, said: "The nuclear industry is muddling the climate change issue."

At a conference here this week on sustainable energy, Millais said the industry's use of the climate change argument is yet another attempt to get more business in the developing world, including Asia.

"The industry needs an argument to sustain itself," he said, "at a time when it has virtually stopped receiving orders for new plants among industrialized countries."

By the end of 1998, no new reactors will be under construction anywhere in either North America or Western Europe, says an August paper by Greenpeace, entitled Nuclear Energy: No Solution to Climate Change.

There are 440 nuclear power stations in the world, making up 5 percent of the world's primary energy mix. In 1976, the International Atomic Energy Agency projected that nuclear power capacity for the year 2000 would be 2,300 gigawatts, but this estimate has now fallen to only 380 gigawatts.

As demand falls in industrialized markets, Millais said nuclear power firms are -- looking for politicians in Asian countries to accept their arguments (on climate change).

Activists say it is worrisome that Asia is increasingly turning to nuclear power at a time when the industry is on the decline elsewhere. Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan have plans to expand their nuclear power programs.

Half of all new plants under construction are in Asia, Greenpeace says.

Takagi says Japan's actions -- both as a country that gets 12 percent of its primary energy needs from nuclear power and as host of talks on climate change -- have serious implications for the region's nuclear ambitions.

Japan's attitude would affect the rapidly developing Asian countries in the same direction, said the Citizens' Nuclear Information Center in Japan.

The center says efforts by Japan's nuclear industry to use the climate change argument goes against signs of trouble for the industry in the country, though the decline is not as a spectacular as in western countries, Takagi observed.

Last year, residents of Maki town in Miigata prefecture rejected plans to build a nuclear plant. Since 1990, Takagi says, there have been only two orders for reactors in Japan.

Big companies like Mitsubishi, Toshiba and Hitachi have had to reduce their nuclear divisions and nuclear engineering departments have disappeared from many national universities.

Anti-nuclear campaigners also dispute arguments that nuclear power is cleaner and cheaper. Many of nuclear power's steepest costs, like where to store waste, damage to human health and the environment from accidents, are difficult to estimate.

Global expansion of nuclear power would mean unmanageable amounts of radioactive waste, adding to problems already being experienced today on where to store them. Huge amounts of spent nuclear fuel, from which plutonium could be extracted, would pose a colossal security threat, said a 1995 study by the Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change.

If the number of existing nuclear power stations were tripled in 25 years' time, there would be 1,320 reactors. But where would they be built, what communities would accept them and what would be done with the waste they produce, Millais asked.

Even this tripling of nuclear plants would not do much to fill growing energy demand, which is projected to increase by at least one half in the next 25 years. But despite these arguments, activists say they expect the nuclear lobby to go to Kyoto in full force.

Of the nuclear industry's claim to be the answer to global warming, Millais said: It's a fantasy.

-- IPS