It has often been said that declining aristocracies spend all
their time reliving the glories of the past. I can think of no
better example than American environmentalism’s obsession that
abstaining from nuclear power in this country will prevent the
proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world.
Get into a debate with any anti-nuclear advocate (and I’m doing a
lot of that these days) and they will soon lay down their trump
card — “nuclear proliferation.” When I interviewed three
executives of Greenpeace in Washington two years ago, I began
with a deliberately naïve question — “What’s wrong with nuclear
power?” They practically levitated out of their chairs in horror.
“Do we have to explain it to you?” they bellowed. “Did
you ever hear of nuclear weapons?”
Last December, Mark Jacobson, professor of environmental
engineering at Stanford, produced yet another dreary study
showing that wind and solar energy are the best way to power
America. What made it interesting is that he criticized biofuels
because they chew up huge quantities of land and would need half
the lower 48 to replace our oil consumption.
So how about nuclear power, whose land requirements are about
1,000,000.000.000 times smaller than those of solar collectors?
Jacobsen dismissed nuclear in one paragraph:
Once you have a nuclear energy facility, it’s straightforward to
start refining uranium in that facility, which is what Iran is
doing and Venezuela is planning to do. The potential for
terrorists to obtain a nuclear weapon or for states to develop
nuclear weapons that could be used in limited regional wars will
certainly increase with an increase in the number of nuclear
energy facilities worldwide.
Wake up, Professor Jacobsen! You’re living in the 21st century.
Things have changed since 1976. America no longer decides these
issues.
Berkeley has carried all this one step further by declaring
itself “nuclear-free.” Any company doing business with the city
must sign a pledge to refrain from nuclear research. This became
a crisis last month when the Peace and Justice Commission (yes,
that’s its name) refused to grant a waiver to 3M Corporation so
it could service the self-checkout scanners in the public
library. The machines were in need of repair, no other company
services them, and patrons were tired of waiting in long lines.
Still, the commission wouldn’t relent. “We really mean it when we
say we don’t want to be part of the nuclear machinery,” said
commissioner George Lippman. “The act is meant to be a blow
against nuclear war.” (The Berkeley City Council finally relented
and overruled them.)
All this heroic effort is built on the premise that it is still
1976 and the United States is the world’s master of nuclear
technology. Countries all over the world have gone ahead without
us. Meanwhile, by hiding our heads in the sand, we have managed
to cripple our energy sector, sacrifice our technological
leadership and are on the verge of becoming an economic colony of
the more advanced nations. Although it may come as a shock, we
are no longer leading the parade.
THIS DECLINE FROM WORLD DOMINANCE began in 1973, when New
Yorker journalist John McPhee became acquainted with Ted
Taylor, a brilliant but eccentric nuclear engineer who had
designed both the Army’s biggest and the smallest bombs while
working at Los Alamos. Taylor came from a line of missionaries,
was a pacifist by nature and became obsessed with the idea that
anyone else could build a bomb as well as he could. He was
particularly concerned that we were about to begin nuclear
reprocessing — the recycling of spent reactor fuel. One of the
recycled materials is plutonium, the only element besides
enriched uranium that undergoes nuclear fission. Taylor was
convinced that terrorists would steal our plutonium and use it to
fashion bombs in their basement.
“I think we have to live with the expectation that once every
four or five years a nuclear explosion will take place that will
kill a lot of people,” Taylor told McPhee in The Curve of
Binding Energy, which became a best seller. “I can imagine
— in the worst situation — hundreds of explosions a year.…What
we are taking with the nuclear industry is a calculated risk.”
Everyone else interviewed in the book told McPhee that Taylor was
wildly exaggerating. Pilfering plutonium from processes involving
highly radioactive material was unlikely at best. Putting a bomb
together in a freelance terrorist operation would be next to
impossible. There was, however, reason to fear state
actors could do it. Canada had given India a research reactor in
1956 and the Indians extracted plutonium and exploded a nuclear
weapon in 1974. This made it clear that the advanced countries
would have to exercise extreme caution in passing on the
technology. Enforcement of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty and
the whole apparatus of the International Atomic Energy Agency
were the result.
In this U.S., however, environmental organizations decided that
giving up reprocessing in this country would be the best
way to prevent nuclear proliferation. Shortly after taking
office, President Jimmy Carter heeded their advice and canceled
the Clinch River Breeder Reactor, which was scheduled to use
recycled plutonium from the privately financed Barnwell
Reprocessing Center in South Carolina. Barnwell’s investors
quickly pulled out and reprocessing was abandoned — immediately
creating the everlasting problem of “nuclear waste.”
Carter solemnly asked other countries to follow our lead but no
one paid any attention. Britain, France, Canada, the Soviet Union
and Japan all continued with reprocessing and now have full-scale
operations. France, with the most mature technology, is now
recycling surplus uranium left over from the Soviet weapons
program and selling it to us. Half our reactor fuel comes from
former Soviet weapons. Meanwhile, France stores all the
high-level waste from thirty years of producing 75 percent of its
electricity with nuclear beneath the floor of a single large room
at Le Hague.
Now flash forward to 2009. Israel, South Africa, Pakistan and
North Korea have all developed their own nuclear weapons. (South
Africa destroyed its stockpile after Nelson Mandela took over.)
Iraq and Syria were toying with the technology at various points
and Iran is still trying. North Korea built a bomb with plutonium
extracted from a reactor given to it by the Soviets. In 2004,
shortly after we invaded Iraq, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the “father
of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon,” confessed to running a clandestine
international operation that provided centrifuges for uranium
enrichment to North Korea, Libya, and Iran. Two of Khan’s
assistants also reportedly had discussions with Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, pardoned Kahn shortly after
his confession and he is lionized as a hero throughout the
Islamic world.
Now here’s the point. None of this has ever had anything to
do with our reprocessing nuclear fuel. It’s a great big
world out there. There are a lot of smart people and nuclear
technology has never been that difficult to master. None of these
countries have had to steal anything from us, nor do we act as
gatekeepers as to who gets what. Instead, by abandoning
reprocessing, we have put ourselves back in the middle of the
pack.
Nuclear power is now keeping France afloat. Besides having
Europe’s lowest electric rates — plus the lowest carbon
emissions — electricity is now France’s third largest export.
Belgium, Germany and Italy would close down tomorrow if France
stopped sending them nuclear electricity. Marketing its
technology to other countries has also become a major source of
revenue. France is now building facilities in Finland, China,
South Korea, Poland, and — believe it or not — that backwater
of nuclear technology, the United States of America.
Russia, meanwhile, has bounced back from its economic doldrums,
put containment structures around its reactors (a little detail
it overlooked at Chernobyl), and renewed nuclear construction.
The Russians brought their first new reactor online in 2001 and
are now planning to add two or three more per year through 2030.
They are also building reactors for China and Bulgaria and have
signed various technological pacts with Brazil, Egypt, Morocco,
Algeria, Vietnam, South Korea, Finland, Chile, and Bangladesh. In
November 2008 the Russians announced they would build a reactor
in Venezuela for Hugo Chavez.
WHERE DOES THIS leave us? Well, in 2005 George Bush, Jr. tried to
revive America’s nuclear leadership with the Global Nuclear
Energy Partnership (GNEP). The deal was we would build reactors
for other countries, then keep control of the fuel so they
couldn’t extract plutonium for nuclear weapons. This would mean
reviving America’s nuclear reprocessing industry. GNEP hasn’t
made much progress, however, and the rest of the world is moving
along without us. In 2006, when I visited the Idaho National
Laboratories, the Chinese nuclear delegation was passing through,
consulting American scientists on which technology to pick for
their new construction program. They eventually chose
Westinghouse’s Advanced Passive 1000 design. Those reactors are
already under construction. Meanwhile, we are at least five years
from putting shovels in the ground for our first AP 1000. Nobody
will be looking to us for leadership in the future.
In fact, there is hardly any nuclear industry left in
this country. During the 1970s boom, Westinghouse and General
Electric were the “big two,” with Babcock and Wilcox chipping in
an occasional project (including Three Mile Island). B&W is
still servicing its existing facilities but has no new designs.
Toshiba bought Westinghouse in 2007. General Electric is peddling
its “Generation III” ESBWR (Economic Simplified Boiling Water
Reactor) but when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ranked 19
applicants for federal construction loan guarantees last October,
the ESBWR came out near the bottom. Exelon, the nation’s second
largest reactor owner, canceled two ESBWR projects and GE’s
nuclear days may be just about over.
All the new nuclear construction in the U.S. is now being
undertaken by Areva, the French nuclear giant. Last May Areva
announced plans for a uranium enrichment facility in Idaho Falls
and in October said it will join Northrop Grumman in building a
nuclear components factory in Newport News. When asked how Areva
planned to fund all these projects in the midst of a credit
crisis, Jacques Besnainou, head of Areva’s American operations,
smiled and replied, “Cash.” Reactors generally make about $2
million a day.
And so the world nuclear revival goes on without us. Meanwhile,
American anti-nuclear activists sit like Buddhist monks,
contemplating their navels and chanting, “I have banned all
thoughts of nuclear from my head. Everyone else must do the same
thing, too.”
So what will happen if Russia decides to look the other way while
Hugo Chavez extracts a little plutonium and develops a bomb to
defend himself against the Great Gringo of the North? We
certainly won’t have anything to say about it.
It would be poetic justice if he aimed it at Berkeley. He’ll
probably choose Dallas or New York or Washington instead.
