November 15, 2000

Contact:

Ed Smeloff – Pace Energy Project: 914-422-4221

Kyle Rabin – Environmental Advocates: 518-462-5526 ext. 240

PRESS RELEASE

Nuclear Power Point of Contention at

‘Make or Break’ Global Warming Summit

Environmental Groups Call on Clinton Administration to Resist

General Electric’s and other Nuclear Technology Companies’ Push for More Subsidies

As global climate treaty negotiations heat up in The Hague, Netherlands this week, groups are calling on the Clinton-Gore administration to resist the nuclear power industry’s sly attempts to get nuclear power accepted as a tool in the fight against global warming. Aware of its bleak future, the nuclear industry is jockeying for a position in energy markets in the developing world by selling itself as sustainable energy technology that can help mitigate global climate change. Working through the United States, Japanese, and French delegations, a handful of power companies, including General Electric (GE), Mitsubishi and Framatome, hope to create massive international subsidies for building new nuclear plants in countries like China, India and Vietnam. Western nuclear companies, like GE, unable to construct new nuclear plants in North America or Europe due to safety, environmental and costs concerns, are attempting to shackle the developing world to a high cost and high risk approach to meeting their electricity needs at a time when small scale and decentralized power plants are becoming more economic.

A key decision to be made at the sixth annual meeting (scheduled to run from November 13 - 24) of the Conference of the Parties (COP-6) to the Climate Change Convention will be whether nuclear power should be part of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a program designed to stimulate sustainable development in the developing world and decrease global greenhouse gas emissions.

The CDM is an important part of the Kyoto Protocol – an international trade agreement designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in both industrialized and industrializing nations. Companies like GE are seeking to structure the CDM so they could get a pollution credit for building nuclear plants in a country like China and then sell those to the United States that must realize specific reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This policy would slow down the deployment of renewable energy technologies like solar and wind in the countries of the industrialized world that can afford to spur their development.

An important question facing climate treaty negotiators is the definition of sustainable development. Recently the European Union has taken a position to exclude nuclear power from the CDM by requiring COP-6 to adopt a list of sustainable technologies based on renewable energy sources, energy efficiency improvements and demand-side management. However, the United States is opposing the development of a list of eligible and environmentally sound projects by arguing that each country should determine for itself what qualifies as sustainable technologies. This negotiating tactic is intended to allow countries like China and India to label nuclear power as sustainable development and to qualify for tradable credits under the climate treaty.

Environmentalists in New York are calling on the Clinton administration to abandon this opportunistic negotiating strategy. “The effort to pump life into the comatose nuclear industry by furtively funneling U.S. taxpayer dollars to countries like China and Vietnam is a colossal waste of money,” said Ed Smeloff, Executive Director of the Pace Law School Energy Project. “At best such subsidies will only have a marginal short-term impact on greenhouse gas emissions and clearly will not lead to a path of sustainable development.” He pointed out that the nuclear industry is reeling in Europe and North America with no power plants under construction. And no new orders have been placed for a nuclear power plant in the United States in over 20 years. He asked, “Why would the United States want to subsidize nuclear technology in countries like China when it is clear that it is not economic in our own country?”

Kyle Rabin of Environmental Advocates (EA) stated, “Investments in nuclear power plants will drain badly-needed funds from much more cost-effective energy efficiency and clean energy technologies.” Rabin, Nuclear Energy Policy Project Director for EA, also noted that “nuclear power remains especially dangerous and difficult to control as serious accidents in Ukraine, Japan and the United States have proven.” He explained that last year’s serious nuclear accident in Tokaimura, Japan has shaken that country’s confidence in nuclear power as a safe source of energy. He said, “The radioactive waste problem remains unsolved and nuclear proliferation is one of the greatest threats to international peace.”

“Granting nuclear power Clean Development Mechanism credits will give the nuclear industry a new lease on life at a time when our nation and other countries should be phasing out this dangerous technology,” said Keegan Cox of the Student Environmental Action Coalition. Cox is one of over 200

U.S. student delegates who are attending the climate treaty talks in The Hague. “We will be demanding that the Clinton/Gore Administration not sacrifice our environmental future to corporate polluters. Allowing nuclear power to be included in the Clean Development Mechanism will undermine the treaty,” Cox added.

“In order to make sustainable energy sources more available, it is time to give solar, wind and fuel cells subsidies similar to those originally given to nuclear power,” said Mark Jacobs, Director of Westchester Peoples Action Coalition. “Further investment in nuclear would divert funds away from renewable energy development.”

“Nuclear power is undeserving of energy credits,” said Deb Katz, Director of Citizens Awareness Network. “The radioactive waste the nuclear power generates is an intolerable legacy for our children and theirs,” said Katz. “There are much better solutions for America and the world.”

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“Slowing Global warming: A Worldwide Strategy” by Christopher Flavin, World watch Paper # 91 published by the Worldwatch Institute , October 1989
“. …for nuclear power to offset even 5 percent of global carbon emissions would require that worldwide nuclear capacity be nearly doubled from today’s level. That means that nuclear is simply not a medium term option for slowing global warming.”

World on Fire by Senator George Mitchell 1991
“…If nuclear plants replaced all coal-fired plants in the world, global warming could be cut by 20 to 30 percent by the middle of the next century (2050). But it would require bringing a nuclear power plant on line somewhere in the world every one to three days for the next forty years. The cost would be $9 trillion; the pace of construction would be ten times greater than any the world has ever seen. Both figures are unthinkable. A totally safe reactor, a totally safe place to dispose of its deadly wastes, and a totally safe way to keep the wrong kind of nuclear materials from falling into the wrong hands none of these things have been resolved. By the time they are resolved, if they ever can be, it will be too late. The projected global warming will be full upon us.”

Greenhouse Warming: Comparative Analysis of Nuclear and Efficiency Abatement Strategies by Bill Keepin and Gregory Katz, Energy Policy, December 1988
The authors posit a conservative scenario in which one-half of non-fossil energy is supplied by nuclear power with a construction program beginning in 1988.
“…This results in a total nuclear installed capacity of 8,180 GW by the year 2025, equivalent to some 8000 large nuclear power plants. This represents a 20-fold increase in world nuclear capacity, requiring that nuclear plants be built at an average rate of one new 1000 MW plant every 1.61 days for the next 37 years. At an assumed cost of $1.0 billion/1000MW installed, this results in a total capitol cost of 8.39 trillion (1987) dollars, an average of $227 billion each year for 37 years to build the required nuclear plants. Total electricity generation cost is $31.48 trillion, or an average of $787 billion/year. The required capitol investment is economically infeasible for the developing world…”

The authors point out that even with a massive nuclear construction program, the use of fossil fuels will continue to grow.

“ Thus, in this scenario, even bringing a new nuclear plant on line every day and a half for nearly four decades does not prevent annual CO₂ emissions from steadily increasing to a value 60% greater than they are today.”

While all energy technologies have some environmental ramification,

nuclear power is particularly non-sustainable for the following reasons:

Ø Each nuclear plant can cost one to several billion dollars in lifetime costs.For nuclear power to make a substantial reduction in CO₂ emissions, commercial reactors would not only have to supply much of the world's electricity growth but also replace many coal-fired plants as they are retired. The total cost penalty of using nuclear would amount to several trillion dollars.

Ø Further investment in nuclear would keep funds away from renewable energy development. This trade-off is exactly what has happened in the U.S. over the past 50 years. The nuclear power industry has received 96.3% of $150 billion in U.S. government subsidies since 1947 (according to the Renewable Energy Policy Project); that's $145 billion for nuclear reactors and only $5 billion for wind and solar.

Ø Many more reactors would result in the creation of thousands of metric tons of spent fuel, in addition to existing wastes. At the present time, there is no viable policy for the management of spent fuel, which will remain dangerous for many thousands of years.

Ø Once separated by reprocessing, the plutonium in spent fuel can be used to make nuclear weapons. If nuclear power were used as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the inventories of plutonium would rise dramatically. Each current 1000-megawatt commercial reactor produces 40 bombs worth of plutonium a year.

Ø Nuclear reactors threaten our health. As a matter of normal operation, reactors release radioactive substances to the air and water. Many human population studies demonstrate that additional, low, constant levels of radiation can cause cancer and genetic mutations in present and future generations. Subjects of these studies, often nuclear facility workers and reactor host communities, suffer higher rates of diseases than non-nuclear communities.

Ø With nuclear power there is the very real potential for serious accidents, as we have seen from Three Mile Island in the U.S., Chernobyl in the Ukraine, and most recently the 1999 criticality event at the Tokaimura uranium processing plant in Japan that released radiation, estimated at about 4,000 times the level considered safe for a person to receive in a year. These accidents resulted in human illness and premature death and have damaged the local economy.