Inside front cover

Inside front cover

FRONT COVER

Hands Up for Nuclear Science !

Staff and graduate students of the Research School of

Nuclear Science at the Australian National University in
Canberra.
The research school is one of the few places in Australia
where nuclear science is studied and taught at advanced
level. Their enthusiasm is obvious.
As the inevitable events predicted in this book unfold,
graduates in nuclear science and engineering will be
absolutely essential for assisting a change for the better in
Australia's vulnerable future prospects.
It is impossible to overstate the vital importance of high
level trained personnel to replace those now retiring or
about to retire, but far too few are currently in training.
The current shortage of science and mathematics students
in secondary schools will not help the situation,
remembering that the better part of ten years is needed to
train a nuclear scientist or engineer to make a useful
contribution to a highly technological enterprise such as
nuclear electricity production.

Photo courtesy of Prof. George Dracoulis, Head, Nuclear Science, ANU.

 Nuclear Common Sense
-
Opportunity for Prosperity

Colin Keay PhD DSc

The Enlightenment Press

2003
 2

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author is a retired physicist and astronomer who, as an
associate professor at the University of Newcastle for 24 years,
taught nuclear and reactor physics to senior classes.
During his professional career as a university scientist he
encountered under laboratory and research conditions radioactive
substances and high-voltage electricity, learning to respect each for
their lethal hazards. He considers it paradoxical that most people
are comfortable with electricity, happily harbouring its deadly
dangers in every home, while on the other hand nuclear radiation
usually sends chills up the spine, notwithstanding the fact that
radioactivity and nuclear radiations are harmlessly present all
around us. There can be no such thing as a truly nuclear-free zone
anywhere in the known universe.
This booklet outlines a golden opportunity for Australia to take
full advantage of nature's gifts and emerge as one of the most
prosperous countries in the world. It brings some facts to bear on
one of the most contentious issues facing Australia and to confront
the exaggerated scares so often presented by the media and various
irresponsible organisations. If Australians can conquer irrational
fears on nuclear issues our future is bright. But not if anti-nuclear
activists keep us in the dark, both mentally and electrically.
The author has no past or present connection with the nuclear
industry. All he desires is a better future for his grandchildren.

Copyright ©2003 by Colin S Keay. All rights reserved.

First published in Australia by The Enlightenment Press

ISBN 0-9578946-3-5

Printed by Longworth & Goodwin Pty Ltd, NSW 2305

Second printing (2005)

 3

INTRODUCTION

Australia is said to be the Lucky Country. Our national anthem

extols the benefits of living on our island continent. There are,
however, a couple of crucial advantages that usually do not rate a
mention. If, in coming decades they are sensibly exploited they
could make Australia the most prosperous - and politically moral -
country in the world. The trouble is, there are too many
organisations who see the benefits we are about to discuss in an
implacably negative light.
What are these benefits? In the first place, Australia has more
uranium ore than any other country in the world - something like
one third of the proved global total. "Keep it in the ground!" cry
the anti-nukes, without thought of the dangers of doing what they
urge. The second factor is that Australia has the oldest stable rock
provinces in the world, ideal for safe nuclear waste disposal. But the
Pangea proposal, which sought to utilise this fact, has been
politically buried despite being endorsed by senior Australian
scientists1.
Just as there are very few Australians with the qualifications and
skills to undertake brain surgery, so too are there few with the
training and knowledge to make sensible judgements about nuclear
science and engineering. Especially in the case of nuclear waste
management and, for that matter, the nuclear fuel cycle in general.
Far too many instant experts - with little experience in nuclear
matters - appeal to purely emotive responses through the use of
pejorative terms like 'nuclear sewage', which have no justification
whatever.
This book is an appeal to common sense based on understanding
the real issues. A case will be presented for Australia to take the
moral high ground in a world beset by the evil of nuclear weapons,
but hungry for safe, clean nuclear energy. Australia is in a unique
position to make the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty work as it
should by exercising effective control of the nuclear fuel cycle from
mining to ultimate waste disposal. What's more, we could stop
exporting uranium ore because once it leaves our shores we have
little control over its end use. We can do much better by processing
it ourselves.
Opponents of nuclear electricity claim it has three unresolved
problems: weapon proliferation; waste disposal (including reactor
decommissioning); and disastrous accidents. The problems are all

1
e.g. "N-dumps: why waste a chance?", Sir Gustav Nossal, The Australian 11 December 1998.
 4

socio-political - not technological. It is the purpose of this book to

show that such fears are quite unjustified and that solutions to all
three of these allegedly 'unresolved' problems are well within reach.
Briefly speaking, this book aims to show that the three imagined
stumbling blocks completely disappear if we mine uranium and
manufacture fuel assemblies which we then lease to countries
needing reactor fuel to produce nuclear electricity. An essential
condition of the lease is that the rods muct be returned here to
salvage their plutonium content and thereby satisfy requirements
of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT) which ban military
use of the plutonium. The plutonium is recycled through the use of
mixed oxide (MOX) reactor fuel and kept out of the waste stream.
And we limit the scope for nuclear disasters by leasing the fuel rods
only for use in reactors of proven safe design.
Not only is this a highly moral stance to adopt in a world needing
safe, clean electricity production but it makes Australia much less
vulnerable to attack by countries having envious eyes on our
massive resources of uranium. Remember that Japan's imperialist
ambitions leading to their entry into the second world war were
driven by a desire to secure overseas raw materials essential to fulfil
their dreams of industrial expansion. These days they need reactor
fuel.
Furthermore, nuclear power is the only proven way of meeting
the terms of the Kyoto Protocol for the reduction of greenhouse
gases. The so-called hydrogen economy using fuel cells is touted as
the best method for powering transport vehicles. But producing the
hydrogen in sufficient quantity for widespread use will not come
from solar or wind power. J G Ballard, developer of the hydrogen-
powered Ballard buses succesfully operating in some North
American cities, is on record as statng that nuclear power is the
only viable option.
Another global problem solvable by nuclear power is
desalination. Australia in particular has an urgent need for
desalination on a scale that only nuclear power can meet. For years
the Soviets successfully operated a desalination plant at
Shevchenko, on the Caspian Sea, powered by a breeder reactor.
Anti-nuclear activists don't like to talk about this long-term success
story.
So there we are. Wise use of nuclear energy can solve many of the
world's pressing needs if approached with an open mind. To clarify
the way this desirable state of affairs can be brought about we need
to first of all take a careful look at the nuclear fuel cycle.
 5

NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE

1
Mining
U Ore

2 3 6 7
Convert Enrich- Fuel Nuclear
to UF6 ment Rods Power
Reactor

4 5 8
Depleted MOX Spent
Uranium Fuel Fuel

10
Salvage
Pluton'm
9
Reproc-
11 essing
Salvaged
Uranium

13 12
Final Hi-level
Disposal Waste

The nuclear fuel cycle shown is a comprehensive one identifying

the stages and processes that may be involved in a real situation.
For one reason or another, depending on the type of power reactor,
 6

one or more stages may be bypassed, but we shall consider them

all.

1 MINING

Due to relentless agitation, including endless demonstrations

and blockades, Australians are deeply divided on the issue of
uranium mining. The indigenous people are likewise split on the
issue. At Jabiluka in the Northern Territory the Gugadji tribe
favour mining while the Mirrar tribe oppose it. The number of
mines has been limited by federal policy and in at least two states,
New South Wales and Victoria, activists have succeeded in
persuading their parliaments to pass legislation banning not only
uranium mining but even the act of prospecting for it.
With modern techniques the dangers of uranium mining are
minimal. The health of the miners is continually monitored,
especially their radiation exposure2, and there is little industrial
trouble. Unlike coal mining, its safety record is exemplary.
The mined uranium ore is generally milled (purified) close to the
mine and concentrated into yellowcake (U3O8) for delivery. It is not
highly radioactive. Tailings (leftover material) from a mine contain
radioactive daughter isotopes from the uranium. A hostile letter to
a newspaper editor about uranium mining and the resulting tailings
contains the assertion “No country has yet discovered how to
treat these cancerous insidious substances. ” 3 It is not really
a problem. As the radioactive isotopes in the tailings were originally
in the ore body anyway, there is no good reason why they could not
be put back in the mine and left to fade away, which they would do
because there is no longer any parent uranium to replenish them.

2 CONVERSION

Natural uranium contains only 0.7% of the U-235 isotope which

is the one readily fissionable by slow (thermal) neutrons. Most
power reactors require a higher percentage of U-235 (compared to
the less fissionable U-238 in the ore) so enrichment of U-235 to
several percent (usually 3% to 5%) is necessary. The processes for
doing this require the uranium to be in the form of a gas.
Surprisingly for such a heavy atom as uranium, there is a gaseous
2
See "Nuclear Radiation Exposed, Enlightenment Press 2001
3
Newcastle Herald, 24 October 1997.
 7

form. Uranium combines with fluorine (which fortunately has only

one isotope, thereby keeping the compound from having more
mass variation) to form UF6 (uranium hexafluoride) molecules
which are gaseous at 60 degrees celsius.

3 ENRICHMENT

After more than half a century of experience the currently

favoured technique for enriching uranium is the high-speed
centrifuge method. It is around forty times more efficient than the
earlier diffusion method and therefore demands much less energy.
Within a spinning rotor, the heavier U-238 is flung outwards
further than the lighter U-235. The greater the velocity the greater
the separation of enriched and depleted fractions. A cascade of
centrifuges can effect enrichment to a degree dependent on the
number of stages.
Australia had at one time a good start in uranium enrichment
work (see Hardy 1996). A research and development program
conducted by the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC,
now ANSTO) was terminated by a political decision in 1983, after it
had demonstrated an economical program for enriching U-235 to
3%, which is enough for some power reactors. At one time there
were serious plans for building an enrichment plant on the Spencer
Gulf in South Australia to add value to uranium exports. A golden
opportunity to establish a major value-added export industry was
thrown away after the necessary research and development for it
had essentially been completed.
Other methods of uranium enrichment include the old and very
inefficient diffusion technique which is now quite obselete and the
newer laser techique which is not as promising as was initially
hoped.

4 DEPLETED URANIUM

The fraction left over from the enrichment process is depleted

uranium, mainly U-238. It is still useful as further reactor fuel
because in a breeder reactor it can be converted into fissionable
plutonium, thereby releasing almost one hundred times the energy
than by using only the U-235. Because of this, using depleted
uranium to boost certain types of military weapons is an
unconscionable waste of a valuable energy resource. Incidentally,
 8

the level of radioactivity of depleted uranium is forty percent lower

than natural uranium which we ingest in tiny amounts with our
food anyway. It makes a small contribution to the natural level of
inherent radioactivity of everyone, humans and animals alike.

5 MIXED OXIDE (MOX) FUEL

A combination of (depleted) uranium oxide and plutonium oxide

forms Mixed OXide (MOX) fuel, which in many power reactors is
just as useful as fuel consisting only of enriched uranium. It has
been so employed for over forty years and is a very practical means
of gaining the usable energy from plutonium while getting rid of it!
And it is a great way of safely utilising military stocks of plutonium.

6 FUEL ELEMENT FABRICATION

Generally in power reactors the fuel is an oxide in the form of a

ceramic that can withstand high temperatures without
disintegrating. The ceramic rods or pellets are usually housed in
zirconium alloy tubes or 'pins'. A bundle of such tubes forms a fuel
element having a size and cross-sectional form dictated by the
structure of the reactor.

7 NUCLEAR POWER REACTOR

Of the 440 or so power reactors in the world, the vast majority

are the tried and proven Pressurised (PWR) or Boiling (BWR)
Water Reactors which use ordinary water to moderate (slow down)
the neutrons to initiate fission and also act as a heat transfer fluid.
Some others use heavy water (deuterium oxide) as moderator and a
few use a gas as the heat transfer fluid. There are also some fast
breeder reactors that make very efficient use of their fuel, breed
more fuel as outlined earlier, and can also incinerate certain
radioactive wastes.
It is impossible for a power reactor to explode like a nuclear
bomb. The Chernobyl disaster was a steam explosion caused by an
excursion of power under conditions the operators had not been
warned about. That ignited a chemical fire in the graphite
moderator within the reactor core, causing widespread dispersal of
the radioactivity.
 9

The Chernobyl reactor had little protection for its highly

radioactive core. In the West, power reactors are required to have
several layers of defence against release of radioactivity: these
include the use of refractory fuel - confined within stout cladding -
in a core within a thick steel vessel - all contained within a
reinforced concrete dome with walls up to three metres thick. That
is why only a trifling amount of radioactive gas escaped from the
major core meltdown at Three Mile Island - causing no casualties.

8 SPENT FUEL

After two or three years, when the fuel elements are spent and
removed from the reactor core, they are sent to a cooling pond close
by until their intense short-lived radiaoactivity from the fission
products has had time to die away. They could remain there for
decades without problems as long as there is enough pond space to
accommodate them. As the activity dies away the fuel elements
become easier to transport and handle.

9 REPROCESSING

This is the most complex operation in the fuel cycle as it involves

the remote handling of highly radioactive materials. However it has
been undertaken for almost seventy years with remarkably good
safety. And of course much has been learned over that timespan to
make the process easier and more efficient. As in aviation, progress
does not stand still.
Since 1960 the tried and proven Purex solvent-extraction
process has been most commonly adopted at most facilities around
the world. As the flow chart indicates, the plutonium (10) and
unfissioned uranium (11) may be separated out from the spent fuel
for further use, leaving for disposal a residue somewhat less in
weight and volume. The fissionable elements are regarded as
valuable resources in France and Japan, but not in the USA where,
as a result of regarding their spent fuel (8) as waste they have
greater amounts requiring disposal.
 10

The plutonium, having an isotope mix rendering it unsuitable

for weapons, is ideal as a fuel to be mixed in (5) with the uranium
in new fuel-rods, particularly in fast breeder reactors which can
cope better with the difficult to utilise even-numbered isotopes of
plutonium. The spent uranium can be sent back to an enrichment
plant (3) to reclaim the small amount of fissile uranium-235
remaining in it.

12, 13 HIGH-LEVEL WASTE AND ITS

DISPOSAL

One of the most deeply ingrained anti-nuclear myths4 is that

there is no safe way to get rid of nuclear waste. It is frequently used
as if it is a trump card in discussions and debates on the subject of
nuclear power. Generally the opposing argument runs something
like this: “Well maybe the statistics prove you right about
the safety of the nuclear industry, the fact remains there
is no safe way to get rid of nuclear wastes .” In an otherwise
first-rate international best-seller by author Dava Sobel, there is a
false analogy intended to bolster the story: “One would imagine
that Harrison grew up well aware of the longitude
problem - just as any alert schoolchild nowadays knows
that cancer cries out for a cure and there’s no good way
to get rid of nuclear waste.”5 If these were the only people
parroting that insidious falsehood there would be little harm done.
However the anti-nuclear propagandists have, by ceaseless
repetition, drummed this lie into the minds of everyone not in full
possession of the facts.
Years ago this situation prompted Beckmann (1979) to cite what
he calls “five well kept secrets:

1. It is utterly untrue that no method of nuclear waste

disposal is known;
2. It is utterly untrue that nuclear wastes must be
guarded for thousands of years;
3. The paramount issue that is being covered up is a
simple comparison: Is nuclear waste disposal a
significant advantage in safety, public health, and
environmental impact over the wastes of fossil -fired

4
This and many other anti-nuclear lies and disinformation are gathered and exposed in the author's
booklet "Nuclear Energy Fallacies - Forty Reasions to Stop and Think".
5
Sobel, D, “Longitude”, Fourth Estate, London, p67, 1995
 11

power plants (let alone industrial wastes in general )

or not?
4. Much of the answer to the question above is contained
in two simple statistics: For the same power, nuclear
wastes are some 3.5 million times smaller in volume;
and in the duration of their toxicity, the advantage
ranges from a few percent to infinity.
5. Nuclear power does not add any radioactivity to the
Earth; on the contrary, it reduces the radioactivity
that Mother Nature would otherwise be producing .”

In his last point, Beckmann is referring to a long-term reduction of

radioactivity compared to the gradual decay of parent elements.
We will now look further into the points raised by Beckmann.
The most intractable problems of radioactive waste disposal are
neither physical nor technical. They are legal, political and
sociological. An eminent environmental lawyer, Michael Gerrard,
who has represented litigants on both sides of these issues, has
drawn heavily on his own broad experience to write Whose
Backyard, Whose Risk, a comprehensive work which addresses the
non-scientific ramifications of the disposal of wastes of all types.
Noting the complete failure of the US Government to establish safe
disposal sites for high-level nuclear wastes, mainly of military
origin, Gerrard considers that the current socio-political approach
is at fault. He proposes a radical new approach whereby
communities are invited to host waste disposal facilities - “a
method that, experience surprisingly shows, can attract
numerous offers.” It is a matter of community psychology. No
region wants a waste disposal facility foisted onto it and the
affected communities react by raising all sorts of objections.
However if the same people are offered compensatory benefits by
choosing to host such a facility their reaction is much more likely to
be receptive.
Although his data refers to the United States, Gerrard (1996)
cites figures which give some idea of the amounts of various types
of waste that have to be dealt with. From his table it is clear that the
amounts of industrial and municipal wastes are much greater than
radioactive wastes, although the activity of spent fuel (high-level
radioactive waste) is very much greater. Because the amounts of
radioactive wastes are tens of thousand times less than normal
community wastes their disposal sites can be much smaller, even
allowing for adequate radiation shielding and isolation from the
biosphere.
 12

The challenge of radioactive waste disposal is not so much that

presented by the wastes themselves as it is to define the level of
safety that will be acceptable. Objectors demand nothing less than
absolute safety, which is an unattainable goal in any endeavour.

Waste stream Annual production (tons)

Naturally occurring radioactive
materials that are mined* Approx. 50,000,000,000
Industrial wastes 430,000,000
Municipal solid waste (MSW) 180,000,000
Sewage sludge 8,500,000
MSW incineration ash 5,500,000
Medical waste 500,000
Low-level radioactive waste 36,000
Spent nuclear fuel 1,900
* Most of this is residue from phosphate mining, oil and gas production and
other extractive industries. Perhaps as much as ten percent would be in tailings
from uranium mining. (US data from Gerrard, 1996)

That fact of life does not deter them. Somehow they expect that the
wastes must be totally removed from the face of the Earth. This, in
turn, has encouraged hare-brained solutions such as rocketing
high-level nuclear wastes into the Sun!
In reality the disposal of nuclear wastes, even high-level wastes,
is not a serious problem. Those who argue otherwise overlook the
fact that the radioactivity they contain did not come from nowhere.
It is directly derived from radioactive elements already present in
the biosphere, as Beckmann and others have made clear. The
isotopes in reactor wastes may be temporarily more active, which
obviously makes them more dangerous, but, like a barbecue plate
left aside to cool until it no longer sears and can be readily handled,
high-level radioactive wastes are stored safely in cooling ponds for
a time until they can be more easily dealt with.
 13

Beckmann also cites another example of anti-nuclear mythology,

namely the ridiculous assertion that high-level nuclear wastes
containing plutonium will have to be guarded for centuries to stop
terrorists gaining access to it and reclaiming the plutonium for
bomb manufacture. This scenario is quite absurd because the
plutonium in high-burnup reactor fuel is not only unsuitable for
bombs6 but the handling and reprocessing problems are immense
unless the terrorists have ready access to a highly sophisticated
facility designed with remote handling equipment to safely deal
with such materials.
Another myth is that, given the plutonium, any competent person
could build a bomb in a garage workshop. Those making such a
claim have no idea of the complexity of the task.

LOW-LEVEL WASTES

Before continuing on with a discussion of high-level nuclear

waste disposal, a few words about dealing with low-level
radioactive wastes. They are much less of a problem than many
other wastes, such as the safe disposal of home computer
components and the immense volumes of industrial wastes. Some
of these have half-lives of infinity because they are stable and never
decay away to become harmless.
Even so, low-level radioactive waste has caused much angst in
many communities where groundless fears have been encouraged
by irresponsible scare campaigns. Nobel Laureate (Medicine 1977)
Rosalyn Yalow7 pointed out that a human body contains natural
radioactivity of an amount that had a laboratory animal received as
much, and died with that amount still in its body, current
regulations would require that animal to be sealed in a drum and
transported to a radioactive waste disposal site, “thereafter to
occupy needlessly space that should be reserved for
measurably hazardous material.” This is yet another example
of the application of ridiculously conservative regulations
governing radioactive waste disposal. Even so rigid controls are
essential, but they must be sensible and not excessive.

6
Because power reactor wastes contain too much of the plutonium-240 isotope which has a
high spontaneous fission rate rendering a bomb unreliable and inefficient (see Cohen 1990).
7
Disposal of Low-Level Radioactive Waste: Perspective of the Biomedical Community” in
“Radioactive Waste”, NCRP Proceedings No 7, Bethesda MD 1986
 14

Yalow pointed out that disposal of wastes from medical

experiments involving the use of radioisotopes was costing almost
twenty million dollars a year when the amounts of radioactivity
were absurdly small. Disposal by incineration would, for a city like
New York, release radioactivity amounting to only a few percent of
that falling on the city in the form of carbon-14 and tritium
(hydrogen-3) produced naturally by cosmic rays all the time as they
hit the atmosphere.
Usually shallow burial of low-level wastes is a safe enough
method of disposal where laws permit it. Incineration is also
appropriate for combustibles in many instances for the reasons
Rosalyn Yalow discussed.
Quite frequently the distinction between low- and high-level
nuclear wastes is ignored or confused by the media. High-level
wastes contain 99% of the radioactivity from a nuclear installation,
while low-level wastes account for 99% of the volume. Beckmann
(1979) cites an article and photograph from Time Magazine in 1977
which fails to note the difference and thereby sows the seeds of
doubt in the minds of its readers. It is thanks to such irresponsible
reporting that two of the six sites in the United States licensed for
the burial of low-level wastes were closed due to intense local
opposition after they had operated without any public health
problems for more than a decade (Eisenbud 1987).
To quote Gerrard (1996) once more, “The search for
scientific rationality in the siting process is illusory as
long as important constituencies are unhappy with the
scientific results.” The general public distrust bland scientific
reassurances about site safety because they suspect them to be
biassed by commercial or political influences. Many honest
scientists despair that the public give greater credence to alarmist
junk science on important issues such as nuclear waste disposal.
The sensationalist media delight to spread horrific claims while
ignoring the actual facts, and the 'better safe than sorry' argument
has been done to death.
Recently, right here in Australia, a decision to store low-level
nuclear wastes at a remote site in the north of South Australia drew
intense criticism. A street-poll in Adelaide showed ninety percent
condemned the proposal. It is relevant to notice that if the low-level
wastes requiring disposal were mixed in with the reburied tailings
at Roxby Downs, nearby in the north of South Australia, the
amount of radioactivity per unit volume would be less than in the
mined material before the uranium was extracted from it!
 15

Some perceptive people have pointed out that yellowcake has

been transported along roads in South Australia with little
hullabaloo, but the transport of low-level waste of lower
radioactivity (and contained in approved protective canisters) has
been roundly condemned.
Before leaving the topic, there is another curious double standard
with respect to materials having low levels of radioactivity. The
radiation dose rate allowable from such materials originating from
non-nuclear industries is in some countries as much as thirty times
the dose rate allowable from exposure to materials from the nuclear
industry!

HIGH LEVEL WASTE DISPOSAL

Moving on to the disposal of high-level nuclear waste from civil

power reactors, it is nowhere near as great a problem as anti-
nuclear activists would have us believe. After three years storage in
a cooling pond close by the reactor in the power station the
radioactivity of the spent fuel rods has diminished to less than one
percent of the amount on exit from the reactor. The fuel rods are
then cool enough to be transferred to dry storage within air-cooled
shielding. After forty years the radioactivity has diminished to less
than one thousandth of the original level and permanent disposal
becomes an option. However there is no hurry and there are
benefits to be had by reprocessing high-level waste to extract useful
radioisotopes. Edward Teller argues we should abolish the idea of
nuclear waste. “Let’s call it by-products and use it” he
maintains8.
Russian scientist Professor Victor Orlov agrees9, saying “There
are no great problems here, It is a very practical
question because actinides (the heavier radi oactive
elements) burn quite well in fast reactors. We should take
them from the nuclear waste and return them to the fast
reactors, and they will burn in the reactor, turning into
fission products, And if we take the fission products -
long-lived technetium and iodine - God almighty
provided in such a way that they will also burn in the
fast reactor, so these fission products can be burned.
Most (other) fission products decay fairly quickly. You
can put them together under controlled observation
8
21st Century Science and Technology, Vol 6, No 1, 1993.
9
Same source.
 16

where they will decay on their own down to the level of

the natural uranium mined from the earth. Then you can
return it to the earth...” Professor Orlov goes on to advocate
that fission products such as strontium and cesium, which have
intermediate half-lives, should be used for radiation treatments of
various kinds, citing their use in China for irradiating rice seeds to
gain larger harvests.
There are many positive ways of looking at the situation with
high-level nuclear wastes. In the case of nuclear energy from
uranium, each fission releases a little over 200 MeV of energy as
heat compared with the sum total of around 50 MeV released
through the natural step-by-step decay processes. So taking a long-
term view, nuclear fission rids the globe of the energy of
radioactivity four times more effectively than nature herself!
Before we examine the finer points of high-level nuclear waste
disposal and the options that are available we need to know exactly
what it is. When expended fuel rods are withdrawn from a nuclear
reactor they are highly radioactive due almost entirely to the fission
products held within them by the fuel cladding. As we said earlier,
they are transferred immediately to cooling ponds close to the
reactor where one may gaze down through several meters of clear
water to see the ethereal blue glow of the Cerenkov radiation
produced by high energy electrons as they are slowed down and
absorbed by the water. Since the total volume of rods is not large, a
single pool can contain the used rods from several years of reactor
operation. As mentioned above, temporary storage and cooling
reduces the level of radioactivity contained within the fuel rods by a
huge factor due to the rapid decay of the most radioactive fission
products such as iodine-131 and strontium-90. Further storage for
a few decades allows the concentrated waste to cool thermally and
lose radioactivity sufficiently to either make reprocessing easier or
permit vitrification. Of course if the waste is diluted by mixing it
with non-radioactive material the disposal can be speeded up.
Economics and reduced storage space requirements favour leaving
the waste in concentrated form for as long as possible.
In 1990 the US National Academy of Sciences concluded that
continued at-reactor storage of spent fuel should be safe for at least
one hundred years (Gerrard 1996). That is taking the pessimistic
view that the purely political objections to safe geological disposal
have not been overcome by then.
 17

NATURE’S ANSWERS

If, for some reason, it is deemed imperative that something must

be done to permanently isolate high level nuclear wastes there exist
disposal options so extraordinarily safe that only the most
unreasonable and unlikely circumstances could lead to failure. It is
probably fair to state that no other aspect of nuclear power
generation has so deeply engaged the concern of those responsible
for the health and safety of the public and the protection of the
environment. To them it has been a considerable reassurance that
one of the most astonishing demonstrations of the effectiveness of
underground storage of nuclear reactor wastes was conducted by
nature nearly two billion years ago at Oklo in Central Africa (see
Wilson 1996).
The discovery of the Oklo reactor was made by the French who
were mining the rich deposits of uranium in the southeast of the
Gabon Republic, formerly a French colony. In 1972 their testing
laboratories found a deficiency of the U-235 isotope in the uranium
they were intending to enrich. After ruling out contamination from
used reactor fuel they performed isotope assays on batches of newly
mined uranium. To their great surprise they found some samples of
ore contained as little as half of the normal fraction which,
everywhere else in the world, is a precise 0.7202 percent U-235.
Field work at Oklo soon turned up sample cores proving, by the
presence of decayed fission products, that there were six lens-
shaped zones in the uranium ore body where natural nuclear
reactors had functioned nearly two billion years ago. This amazing
phenomenon has been described as “surely one of the most
exciting scientific discoveries of the decade .”10. The six or
more natural reactors at the site achieved a level of fuel utilisation
(called 'burn-up') about as good as that of a modern light-water
reactor.
Field studies revealed that a thick vein of rich uranium ore had
been permeated by fresh water in sufficient quantity to moderate
and thereby slow down enough neutrons to spontaneously initiate
chain reactions and keep them ticking over for up to half a million
years. It was important that the vein be thick to reduce the number
of neutrons managing to escape and by doing so failing to maintain
the chain reaction. The power levels remained low due to the self-
regulation provided by the water, which, wherever it formed steam,
shut down the reaction in the vicinity until the heat escaped and

10
Weinberg, A, “Assessing the Oklo Phenomenon”, Nature, Vol 266, p 266, 17 March 1977
 18

fissioning could resume. Due to the confining pressure of overlying

strata there was no risk of a steam explosion.
The fission products were formed in the presence of flowing
water, which would have removed the radioactive gases and some
of the more soluble species. Most of the other fission products and
the actinides (elements heavier than lead formed by normal
radioactive decay and not by fission) remained entirely within the
reaction zone.
Another example of nature showing the way is at the Morro do
Ferro near the top of a hill in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. It is
one of the most radioactive localities on Earth. It is a highly
weathered deposit of thorium and rare-earth elements which has
been invaded by ground water and eroded to the surface (Eisenbud
and Gesell, 1997). Studies have shown that the 30,000 tonnes of
thorium remain in situ despite the weathering. Since ions of
thorium and the rare-earth element lanthanum behave like
plutonium and other trans-uranic ions, the Morro do Ferro
example fails to support claims that ground-water will be a problem
for the safe disposal of high-level nuclear wastes.
A feature that Oklo and the Morro do Ferro have in common is
the presence of abundant clay minerals which prevent the escape of
the radioactive elements. The lesson is clear and simple - blocks of
waste, vitrified or encapsulated by any of the methods we are about
to discuss, should be enclosed in clay if underground burial is
adopted.
Yet activists continue to wail that there is no safe way to dispose
of nuclear wastes. Nonsense. Nature has shown the way to achieve
this goal and has essentially validated the approach that was
adopted by the nuclear power industry long before Oklo was
discovered. This was, and still is, the strategy of storing used fuel
rods under water until the short-lived (and hence most active)
fission products have decayed, then where possible reprocessing
the rest to extract useful elements such as unconsumed uranium
and plutonium for further use as fuel, then encapsulating the
remainder for eventual permanent disposal. 'Eventual' is the
operative word. As long as the quantities are not large, about one
cubic meter for every year of operation of a 600 MW(e) reactor, it is
advantageous to store the high-level waste for as long as convenient
in order to reduce the activity of the volume that needs to be
isolated from the biosphere by vitrification and burial or whatever.
Because the time-scale for this is several decades or longer, there
has not been enough time to conduct definitive experiments to see
what shortcuts might be found, so a conservative approach has
 19

generally been adopted (except by the military, whose inferior

methods of waste storage are not what we are discussing here). To
gain some perspective we shall shortly take a close look at the
horrendous extent of the military waste problem, which is about
one hundred times that from civil nuclear power production.

VITRIFICATION

Tipping high-level radioactive wastes into a vat of molten glass

and letting it solidify was the first attempt at containing them.
Depending on the extent of dilution, the resulting glass blocks are
radioactive to a greater or lesser degree. The problem with
vitrification in glass stems from the fact that glass has some of the
properties of a very viscous fluid and the wastes are not firmly
locked in place. They can be leached out. When the first wastes
were produced from the Chalk River reactor in Canada, some of it
was vitrified and the resulting block of glass was placed in a stream
of running water, with geiger counters placed downstream to
measure the radioactivity released. The results were encouraging.
The leach rate was low enough for the radioactivity of the flowing
water to remain within acceptable limits. The glass retained its
integrity, like pieces of glass cast in ancient times and salvaged in
good condition from under the ocean.
However it has been found that the type of glass used is most
important. With common soda glass the sodium can be detached in
the course of time by heat and irradiation from the nuclear waste
dissolved within it. Over long periods the degraded glass becomes
susceptible to corrosive attack, particularly if the blocks of waste
are stored in salt formations and water gains entry. Borosilicate
glass does not suffer this problem. But during storage periods of
thousands of centuries another process becomes important. If high-
level wastes are vitrified in any kind of glass there must be some
kind of buffer material, such as a clay, between the glass and the
metal container enclosing it. Otherwise tracks produced by alpha
particles from waste decay etch the metal and render it more prone
to corrosion in the presence of water, and especially salt water. So
there are problems with vitrification in glass, but they are being
recognised and know-how to overcome them is steadily
accumulating.
Vitrification of high-level waste in borosilicate glass has been
adopted by several countries, notably France where a plant at
Marcoule has been operating since 1978. By 1982 it had produced
 20

264 tonnes of vitrified waste, which I would think includes military

wastes as well as that from the few civilian power reactors
operating by that time. The final product is in the form of cylinders
of glass encased in stainless steel, 1.5 or 3 metres long and 30
centimetres in diameter.11 But there is no urgency for final disposal
since the dangerous radioactivity is completely immobilised. The
main French vitrification plant is now situated at La Hague.
In 1991 a highly automated vitrification facility was opened at
Sellafield in Great Britain. In the Sellafield process highly
radioactive liquid wastes are piped into a slowly revolving furnace,
mixed with suitable chemicals (including common sugar!) heated to
850 degrees celsius and reduced to a coffee-like brown powder. The
powder is then mixed with three times its volume of glass flakes
and again heated in a furnace, this time to 1150 degrees to melt the
glass and produce a molten mix which can then be poured into
stainless steel containers to solidify. When it has cooled sufficiently
the container is placed in a transport flask and moved by rail to a
well-ventilated building where it is loaded into a storage channel. It
can stay there indefinitely because the total volume of containers is
not great. Eventually the containers may be moved to a deep
underground repository if that form of disposal is mandated, or it
may be reprocessed sometime in the future to reclaim valuable
elements such as radium.

COPPER ENCAPSULATION

This novel method of isolating high-level nuclear waste has been

developed in Sweden. It relies on the long-term integrity of a thick
copper containment vessel. The Swedes plan to bury the vessels
deep in a stable rock formation, surrounding them with clay
material to inhibit access by ground water and slow the release of
radioactive material in the unlikely event that the vessels fail in
some way.
At the Aspo Hard Rock Laboratory construction of a test
repository is well advanced. The facility is a 3,600 metres long
underground laboratory tunnel, five metres in diameter, reaching a
depth of 450 metres in the bedrock. An elevator gives access to the
repository area from service facilities above ground, where wastes
can be temporarily stored prior to final disposal in containment
vessels.
Sites for final nuclear waste disposal in deep geological
repositories have been narrowed to two from an initial eight
11
“Radioactive Wastes”, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna 1983.
 21

locations where their municipalities have voted acceptance. The

two, at Oskarshamn and Osthammer (close to the Forsmark
nuclear power station) were selected for their suitable bedrock
properties.

SYNROC

Due to its superior retention properties and impermeability to

water the Australian invention of Synroc (Synthetic rock) is the
Rolls Royce of encapsulation methods for permanently
immobilising high level nuclear wastes. The Russians and Chinese
are examining its unique advantages. The process (but not the
name!) has been licensed to ANSTO where a small pilot plant has
been built at Lucas Heights.
Synroc was developed in 1979 by the late Professor Ted
Ringwood of the Australian National University. He spent many
years studying the abilities of countless minerals to trap within
their crystal structures the wide variety of radioactive components
in high level waste from nuclear reactors. He came up with a recipe
for a crystalline ceramic composed of minerals known as titanates
because they are all based on titanium. The mixture Professor
Ringwood found to be most effective is a combination of four
simple minerals known to mineralogists as rutile, hollandite,
perovskite and zirconolite. These provide a highly stable crystal
lattice structure which immobilises the actinides and hazardous
fission products from nuclear reactors. The zirconolite takes up the
actinides (the heavy radioactive decay products of uranium and
plutonium); the perovskite locks in the dangerous strontium-90
while the hollandite takes care of barium, cesium and rubidium.
The rutile binds them all together.
To create the ceramic, four parts of the component mineral
ingredients are mixed with one part of high level waste (which
dilutes the radioactivity by twenty percent anyway) and the mixture
is dried, calcined in a furnace at 750C, then hot pressed at 1150C to
produce a dense, hard block of Synroc. The wastes are so tightly
locked into the mineral structure of the rock that after two months
the rate at which the wastes leach out is down to only one
thousandth that of wastes vitrified in borosilicate glass (which, as
the French will argue, is still a very good option). The leach rate is
higher to start with, about one tenth that of the vitrified wastes,
until a small residue of less tightly bound waste is flushed out. It is
worth noting that by this stage the leach rate is down to one tenth
 22

that of the common radioactive mineral, granite (as used in many

kitchen benchtops!).
After two months the loaded synroc is ready for burial. After
about a thousand years, depending on how much the original waste
has been allowed to stand and how much it is diluted, the synroc
will be no more radioactive than the ore from which the original
uranium was mined. It can be dropped down a drill shaft in a stable
rock formation and forgotten. Scare stories about it being so
dangerous it must be guarded for millions of years are just that -
scare tactics - even when the waste contains a typical amount of
unsalvaged plutonium.

UNDERGROUND DISPOSAL

There is nowhere on this planet where nuclear wastes can be

stored without raising a chorus of complaint by anti-nuclear
activists. Even if repositories are chosen in rock provinces of proven
stability for billions of years, as at the Swedish sites mentioned
earlier, there will still be the incessant “What if .... ?” objections,
citing the most absurd failure scenarios. In the eons of time before
the dying Sun wipes out all life on this planet, who, with the
technology to tunnel deep into basement rock formations where the
wastes repose, is likely to do so without continuously watching
what emerges from their boring machine and monitoring radiation
levels whenever abnormal strata are encountered? Besides, in a few
hundred years after burial the radioactivity of the highest level
wastes will be no greater than that of a rich new radioactive ore
body which they could easily strike at any number of locations.
Obviously encapsulated high level nuclear wastes should not be
buried near geotechnically active regions, such as fault lines,
volcanos and tectonic plate margins, with the exception of
subduction zones which we will come to later. There are plenty of
places in the world that satisfy these conditions. Australia currently
holds the record, snatched from Canada, for the oldest terrestrial
rocks. Rocks from northwestern Australia have been dated at a
shade under four billion years. Rocks in the Canadian shield are
only slightly younger and it would surprise nobody if the Russians
discover some almost as old on their vast continent. The Chinese
too have access to extremely old rock provinces in the west of their
country, where it is believed they already plan to dispose of their
nuclear wastes.
 23

As mentioned earlier, the Swedes and the Finns as well, are

pressing ahead with nuclear waste disposal in deep bedrock
repositories within their own national boundaries, with fading
objections from anti-nuclear activists.
There is no shortage of suitable sites and it is pleasing to note
that there are some far-sighted people in Australia who are
investigating the best ones. The Federal Bureau of Resource
Sciences, as custodians of a massive amount of seismic
information, has a project for offering advice on possible locations
for new low-level waste repositories. “This exercise .... uses a
range of data on geology, populations, economic value
and existing infrastructure to come up with a number of
possible locations...(for the repository) ” Of course this
groundwork, so to speak, will provide an invaluable basis for the
selection of a future repository for high-level nuclear wastes if, and
when, a decision is made to create one on the Australian continent.

OCEAN DISPOSAL

The first reaction to this method is usually one of horror that

such a proposal should be so much as mentioned. In fact the oceans
are a vast repository of radioactive materials to the extent that the
recovery of uranium from sea-water is a practical proposition, but
not at present an economic one because there are only about three
parts per billion of uranium in sea-water. Even so the world’s
oceans contain about four billion tonnes of uranium. The Japanese
have successfully obtained uranium from the sea and are keeping
the technique up their sleeves in case they are for any reason cut-
off from their normal supplies. They have built a plant at Nio, 550
km southwest of Tokyo, to extract as much as a thousand tonnes of
uranium a year from the sea. Other nations are also experimenting
with similar schemes. Uranium is not the only radioactive element
in ocean water and in the light of the vast quantities that exist there
the addition of quite large quantities of man-made nuclear wastes
could go completely unnoticed if it were not for the extraordinary
sensitivity of nuclear measurement devices which can record events
atom-by-atom.
Once high-level radioactive wastes are immobilised by
vitrification, encapsulation or mineral entrapment (Synroc) - it
hardly matters which - they can be taken to suitable locations near
the edges of the deepest oceanic trenches and simply dropped
overboard. Suitable trenches are found off the coasts of the
 24

Philippines, Japan, Russia (beside the Kurile island chain) and the
United States (beside the Aleutians). Not to mention near to
'nuclear free' New Zealand!
The deep ocean trenches occur at places where tectonic plates are
slowly but irresistably colliding. For example, at the Kermadec
trench to the north of New Zealand. When an oceanic plate meets a
less dense continental plate the ocean plate slides under the
continental plate - a process known as subduction. Subduction at
colliding plate margins can be at the rate of up to 10 centimetres
per year and the crustal material is carried as deep as 700
kilometres into the Earth’s mantle.12
At the subduction trenches there is a piling up of light sediments
which are not dense enough to plunge into the Earth’s mantle
under the irresistable pressures of ocean-floor spreading
(Encrenaz, 1991). Therefore the trick in this method of disposal is to
drop the canisters of immobilised waste into the edge of the
sediment pile-up on the oceanic side of the subduction trench. The
greater density of the waste will ensure that it will work its way
down through the less-dense sediments to rest on the denser sea-
floor rock which is forced down into the mantle. Once on its way,
no conceivable human intervention will recover it and its complete
safety and removal from the biosphere is assured.
Another approach to undersea disposal of high-level nuclear
wastes is that proposed by a former member of the anti-nuclear
Union of Concerned Scientists, C D Hollister. Many kilometres
down under the oceans there are vast abyssal plains of little value to
the marine ecology since they are almost devoid of either plant or
animal life. These plains are like submerged mud-flats hundreds of
metres thick, composed of chocolate-coloured clays having the
consistency of peanut butter, overlaying the crustal rock below.
Hollister argues that a relatively straightforward deep sea drilling
rig could bore holes in the mud to allow waste canisters to be
deposited and sealed in place. The clays act as an excellent sealant
and greatly inhibit the mobility of the wastes should the canisters
leak their contents. Because seventy percent of the Earth’s surface
is ocean, and the abyssal plains extend across most of the sea floor,
there is more than enough area available to permanently bury all
the radioactive wastes ever likely to be produced by a nuclear-
powered global civilisation over many thousands of years.
Of course the greatest impediments to the disposal of radioactive
wastes in the sea would have to be political. Treaties and
agreements, such as the London Dumping Convention of 1972,
12
Dewey, J F, “Plate Tectonics” Scientific American, Vol 226, No 5, 56-68, May 1972.
 25

which were legitimately designed to eliminate or minimise harm to

the oceanic ecology, will be invoked to block such actions quite
regardless of the fact that the maximum possible leach rates from
properly immobilised radioactive wastes will make a negligible
contribution to existing levels of sea-water radioactivity. In clear
violation of these agreements Russia has scuttled several damaged
nuclear submarines in the Arctic Sea and dumped low level nuclear
wastes into the Sea of Japan (Gerrard 1996).
Summing up, regardless of politically inspired treaties, it would
seem that the best way of disposing of the 300 nuclear submarines
estimated to be obsolete by the year 2000 (Gerrard 1996) would be
to remove their fuel rods and scuttle them over the subduction
trench closest to their home ports. Their valuable fuel rods could be
reprocessed for use in civil power reactors - swords into
ploughshares approach - and any unusable high level nuclear
wastes could be encapsulated and buried either in the barren ocean
plains or in land repositories. In my view, nature has given us an
ideal solution to the problem of high-level waste disposal after
having shown us at Oklo that it is not such a big problem after all
said and done.
Not so different from ocean disposal is another scheme for which
Synroc is particularly well suited. If the Antarctic Treaty is
amended to allow it, blocks of high-level waste could be simply
dumped on the Antarctic ice plateau. Their heat of radioactive
decay would melt the ice below them and they would slowly sink
harmlessly several kilometres to the bedrock below, the ice
refreezing over the top of them as they sink, sealing them in
permanently. If it was deemed they should be recoverable, a tether
cable would allow them to be hauled back to the surface as long as
they were still generating sufficient heat. There is enough space
under the Antarctic ice to accommodate tens of thousands of years
production of high-level nuclear waste with total isolation from the
biosphere.

NUCLEAR WASTE INCINERATOR

A much less controversial solution may be close at hand.

Recently an innovative proposal for getting rid of high-level nuclear
waste was announced by one of the world’s leading physicists.
Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia (Physics prize 1984) has developed a
proposal for a prototype cyclotron-activated nuclear reactor which
will burn up the waste, stripping it of most of its radioactivity.
 26

Professor Rubbia, an Italian who headed the European laboratory

for particle physics (CERN) until 1993, has worked on this
controversial project for over a decade. The proposal has now
gained prominence due to it being recommended in a French
parliamentary report, and lately by apparently obtaining funding to
build a large prototype for the Spanish government. A 100 MW
prototype was quoted earlier at US$ 175 million. "Our goal is to
generate cheap nuclear energy which cannot cause
accidents, does not produce radioactive waste and does
not propagate plutonium", he said. "Our machine eats all its
own garbage".
The device is variously known as an 'energy amplifier' and a
'Rubbiatron'. It combines an accelerator with a reactor core of
thorium (or natural uranium) mixed with high-level nuclear waste,
all cooled by liquid lead. A high-energy proton beam from the
accelerator is directed on to the fuel to convert plentiful
thorium-232 to uranium-233 and initiate a fast-neutron breeder
reaction which then generates heat (and hence electricity to run the
accelerator with plenty to spare). The chain reaction is only
sustained while the proton bombardment continues, burning the
high-level waste to leave simply a residue of easily disposable
low-activity waste. The European Community has funded
experiments carried out at CERN which have demonstrated the
breakdown of both transuranic elements such as plutonium and
radioactive fission products such as technetium-99.13

MILITARY WASTES

Before leaving the subject of high-level nuclear waste, mention

should be made of military nuclear waste (besides the submarine
propulsion reactors discussed above). Those countries with nuclear
weapon programs are by far the worst offenders and the ones to be
worried about rather than the comparatively trivial amounts of
high-level nuclear wastes resulting from civil nuclear power
reactors. The country with the best cleanup record is France which
has two facilities in operation to deal with wastes from both its
military and civil nuclear programs.
The worst offender is the former Soviet Union, whose incredibly
messy military nuclear program generated an enormous quantity of
high-level wastes. According to a pie-chart published in the
American Institute of Physics journal "Physics Today" about ten
13
Nature 3/4/97
 27

years ago14, the Russian releases of radioactive material into the

environment were approximately 1130 Mc (million curies) from
Tomsk-7, 450 Mc from Krasnoyarsk-26 and 130 Mc from the
Mayak military reprocessing plants. Compare the above figures
with the grand total of 2.8 Mc altogether from their ocean
discharges, mining tailings, power reactor wastes and the dispersed
core material from the destroyed Chernobyl reactor. All of these
amount to little more than one percent of the military releases.
Other nuclear weapon states have similar problems, perhaps not
on such a huge scale. But it is surely apparent that military wastes
are a major problem because they are so much greater in quantity
than those from all the civil power reactors in the world. It is not
within the scope of this book to discuss the disposal of military
nuclear waste except to emphasise that centuries of civil nuclear
power reactor operation would hardly begin to rival the current
extent of the military-generated wastes in the world. It is not
proposed that Australia should become involved in military nuclear
waste disposal.

DECOMMISSIONING OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES

Another of the myths of nuclear power is the frequently voiced

canard that no nuclear power stations have ever been successfully
decommissioned. That might have been so in the early days of
nuclear power technology, but it is no longer true. The problems of
decommissioning a reactor at the end of its life are relatively simple
and cheap in contrast to the complexities encountered in cleaning
up after an accident that spreads radioactive materials throughout
a plant. The Three Mile Island cleanup took ten years and cost over
a billion dollars (Eisenbud and Gesell 1997).
To date, 70 commercial power reactors and upwards of 250
research reactors have been retired from operation along with a
number of other fuel-cycle facilities. Some of these have already
been completely dismantled and their sites returned to 'green field'
status with no restrictions on subsequent land use.
Years of experience in decommisioning nuclear reactors and
related facilities have validated the techniques for dismantling
them and safely disposing the associated radioactive wastes. Most
components of a nuclear power station do not become radioactive
or are contaminated at very low levels. Much of the recovered
materials are recyclable. As a result, decommissioning costs have
14
Which I have in the form of an undated lecture transparency.
 28

fallen to the point where they amount to less than five percent of
the total cost of electricity generation and are fully included in the
tariffs paid by consumers. Even when this cost overhead is included
the price of nuclear electricity is fully competitive with that from
any other source. In fact it should be remembered that nuclear
electricity production is the only major industry on this planet that
takes full financial and physical responsibility for the disposal and
clean-up of all of its operating and decommissioning wastes.
When a nuclear reactor reaches the end of its operating life,
usually 30 or more years, it is decommissioned in three stages, as
defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The first stage, obviously, is withdrawal of the fuel which
accounts for 99 percent of the radioactivity in the reactor. The
removed fuel is treated exactly like any spent fuel: allowed to cool
in storage ponds and later reprocessed to separate reusable
products from that which becomes waste. Then the ancilliary
reactor systems such as heat exchangers are drained, operating
systems such as control rods are disconnected, and all valves and
access openings are sealed shut. For the next five years or so while
the remaining one percent of its radioactivity decays the entire
facility is essentially mothballed and kept under constant
surveillance to ensure that it remains completely safe and presents
no hazard to its neighbours.
In the second stage of decommissioning the equipment and
buildings outside the reactor vessel and its shielding are
demolished to allow restricted re-use of the site. The reactor
remains sealed in what is known as a 'safe storage' condition while
its internal radioactivity further decays away. This residual
radioactivity is largely due to unavoidable activation products.
These are formed in the steel structures exposed for many years to
high neutron fluxes. The intense neutron bombardment creates
neutron-rich isotopes of the iron, nickel, cobalt and carbon atoms
in the steel and these exhibit high levels of gamma radioactivity
during their fairly short half-lives. During this time the defunct
reactor is regularly inspected to monitor the integrity of its seals
and ensure that there is no danger to adjacent activities at the site.
The third and final stage involves the complete dismantling of
the reactor core and removal of any residual radioactivity for
disposal by appropriate means. The extent of the final clean-up
depends on the intended re-use of the site. For some purposes it
doesn’t matter if fairly low levels of radioactivity remain. If the
removal of radioactive materials is so complete that only pre-
 29

existing radiation levels are restored, the site is said to be restored

to 'green field' status.
The time taken to complete all three stages of decommissioning
varies widely for different facilities in various countries. In Japan,
where land is at a premium, they like to complete all three stages in
from five to no more than ten years. At the other extreme, in the
United Kingdom, they plan to take more than a century to reach
completion of the third stage. Clearly, drawing on Japanese
experience, such a long time-scale could be contracted if necessary.
France allows a fifty-year period for complete decommissioning.
In the United States there are two distinct approaches to
decommissioning. In their 'Decon' option they move directly to
stage three even though higher levels of radioactivity need to be
dealt with. In other cases they reduce this problem through lengthy
periods of moth-balling, which is called the 'Safstor' option. Their
current regulations allow up to sixty years to reach completion of
stage three.
The first large reactor to be completely dismantled and have its
former site declared fit for unrestricted use was the 60 MWe
Shippingport reactor in Pennsylvania, a commercial version of the
design employed in the first nuclear-powered submarines. It ran
almost faultlessly for a quarter of a century and when it reached its
'use-by' date and became uneconomic by comparison with the
larger models coming into service it was retired in 1982. By 1984
the first stage decommissioning was successfully achieved and the
whole process completed by 1987 when its site was restored to
'green field' condition.
The 'Decon' option was also chosen for the large 330 MWe Fort
St Vrain high temperature gas-cooled reactor which was shut down
in 1989. Its decommissioning ran to schedule, the site was restored
and its nuclear facility licence relinquished in 1997. This was
achieved on a fixed price contract which cost consumers less than a
cent per kWh despite the short operating lifespan of this unusual
design.
By way of contrast the more conventional Rancho Seco 900 MWe
pressurised water reactor, which was also closed down in 1989, is
being decommissioned using the 'Safstor' option. It will remain in
stage two mothballing until stage three dismantling is commenced
in the year 2008 using funds already committed to it.
At multiple-reactor power stations where one reactor is closed
down it is most economic to proceed no further than stage two until
the remaining reactors cease operation. Then they can all be
brought to stage three decommissioning one after another until the
 30

entire site is restored. At San Onofre unit one, which ceased

operation in 1992, is now in 'Safstor' until units two and three are
shut down in the year 2013. Likewise the destroyed unit two at
Three Mile Island is in 'Safstor' until the operating licence of unit
one expires in the year 2014, when both units will be dismantled
together to complete the decommissioning of the whole facility.
In other countries the story is similar. At Chernobyl the three
undamaged RBMK reactors continued in operation supplying
essential power until substitute sources were found. The entire
Chernobyl station will be decommissioned in stages over several
decades, remembering that unit four went a long way toward
dismantling itself and is now in stage two of the process.
In Great Britain the two 138 MWe Magnox reactors at the
Berkely Station were retired in 1989 for economic reasons after
operating for 27 years. Stage one decommissioning was completed
in March 1992, they will remain at stage two until the year 2022,
then maintained at stage three for a further century.
France is proceeding a little faster. Three of its gas-cooled
reactors have been closed down and partially dismantled to stage
two. They do expect to reach stage three of the decommissioning
process for another half a century. However they are building at
their Marcoule nuclear facility a plant to recycle activated steel
from dismantled reactors.
Germany has speeded up its decommissioning operations. Their
first commercial power reactor, the 250 MWe Gundremmingen-A
unit operated from 1966 to 1977. Stage one was commenced in 1983
and dismantling of the highly contaminated parts began in 1990,
trialling underwater steel-cutting techniques and recycling much of
the material. This experience helped with the 100 MWe
Niederraichbach nuclear power station in Bavaria. It has been fully
decommissioned and its site was declared fit for unrestricted
agricultural use in 1995. The `Decon’ option has also been adopted
for the five reactors at the Greifswald power station in the former
East Germany.
In many countries enough experience has been gained in the
techniques and procedures for decommissioning commercial
nuclear power reactors for one to confidently assert that it is no
longer a problem, if it ever was.
The successful reactor decommissionings that have taken place,
and the great many others under way, should not be taken to imply
that the task is easy. But to assert that it cannot be done is quite
false. There are many similar challenges in our high-tech society
that have been overcome to the point where we take them for
 31

granted. Think of the problems in picking up 350 persons and their

baggage, whisking them in reasonable comfort at over 800
kilometers an hour to a destination 10,000 kilometers away with
greater safety than any alternative means of transportation. This
happens thousands of times a day, and even in the rare event of a
crash, in which the 350 passengers die, there is little outcry against
air travel. So why do the anti-nuclear propagandists pick on the
safe decommissioning of nuclear power reactors, with no loss of
life, and declare it an insurmountable problem?
In concluding his comprehensive analysis of the problems of
waste disposal of all kinds, Gerrard (1996) observes that “The
anti-nuclear groups (some of which are international,
some national, and some local) are similar to the
grassroots anti-toxics groups in that they have opposed
the siting of any facility. The agenda of many of these
groups involves not only the blocking of any new nuclear
power plants, but also the closure of all existing nuclear
plants and the elimination of the entire nuclear industry.
Unlike the anti-toxics groups, the anti-nuclear groups
have not focused on the cleanup of existing contaminated
sites. They hope that the unavailability of waste disposal
sites will increase pressure to eliminate the industry.
Thus no siting system of any kind is likely to be
acceptable to them, to the extent that it facilitates the
survival of the existing nuclear plants .”

TRANSPORT OF RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS

This is another target of anti-nuclear scaremongers. In Australia,

as in most other countries, there are strict requirements for the
confinement and transport of all grades of radioactive materials,
including wastes. And especially for protectively casked high-level
wastes. I would far rather have ten shipments a day of radioactive
nuclear wastes driven past my front door than a single petrol or
LPG tanker. Look at the statistics: flaming crashes of petrol tankers
occur quite frequently, with alarming pictures of fiercely burning
vehicles in newspapers and on television. When was the last time
you heard of a civil shipment of radioactive material coming to
grief, spilling, and causing life-threatening pollution? Yes, when? I
know of none.
There is concern that the mere passage of a shipment of low-level
waste being trucked past a bystander on the footpath could cause
 32

harm. In fact the bystander would get about as much radiation dose
from eating a banana!
A few decades ago the British conducted a spectacular test of the
safety of a shipment of high-level radioactive waste. A dummy load
was contained in a standard steel transport cask on the back of a
large semi-trailer, deliberately stalled on a level crossing. As the
cameras whirred, a remotely-controlled obsolete 136 tonne diesel
locomotive hauling three retired carriages was made to hurtle onto
the cask at more than 160 km/hr. The impact was awesome - far
exceeding the spectacle of any Hollywood train crash. When the
cloud of dust and debris finally settled the cask was found intact in
the middle of the pile of wreckage.
Sea transport of nuclear materials never fails to upset the
sensitive souls of those folk determined to be upset. In the event of
a disaster the shipping casks would sink to the sea-bed where they
would, over a timespan of millenia, eventually corrode. Any
remaining radioactivity leaking into the sea would be a trifling
addition to the amount already there. The world's oceans contain
many billions of tonnes of uranium and thorium and much other
radioactivity besides.

OTHER NUCLEAR CYCLES

Some reactors use heavy water for efficiently slowing down

neutrons to fission U-235 and do not require enriched uranium.
Most successful is the Canadian CANDU design, now operating in
several countries. The ill-fated Soviet RBMK design which operated
at Chernobyl at first used natural (unenriched) uranium for its fuel
because it employed graphite to slow its neutrons. For both of these
designs, stages (2) and (3) in the nuclear cycle (page 5) are quite
unnecessary. After the Chernobyl disaster the RBMK reactors were
modified to use slightly enriched uranium for more stable and safer
performance.
In the United States, stages (9), (10) and (11) of the nuclear fuel
cycle are by-passed, leading to excessive waste, as mentioned
earlier.
An exceedingly important cycle is the one for fast breeder
reactors. It is able to utilise depleted uranium and recovered
plutonium as in stages (4) and (10) but without stage (5). The
plutonium fuels the reactor while the uranium forms a blanket
around the core. In the blanket the otherwise difficult-to-fission U-
238 captures neutrons escaping from the core to form additional
 33

fissionable plutonium to be used as fuel during the next reactor

cycle. France, Japan and China are seriously working on breeders
to obtain roughly a hundred times more energy from their uranium
supplies. India is trying to develop breeder reactors to obtain
fissionable U-233 from thorium, because they have on their
continent extensive deposits of that fertile element.
Over several decades the Russians have been very successful with
their BN series of breeder reactors, notably their BN-350 (350
MWe) at Shevchenko by the Caspian Sea. The next larger model,
the BN-600, is considered to be the best-performing Russian
reactor. Several are operating in the Urals region and more are
planned, limited mainly by financial constraints. Their largest
model, the BN-800, is at present under advanced development.

ADVANCE AUSTRALIA - MAYBE

The nuclear fuel cycle has been a reality for over half a century.
Over that time, as in aviation, the industry has matured to the point
where the experience obtained can virtually guarantee the success
of a new venture that follows best practice. Moreover the nuclear
industry has a remarkably good safety record, which should
indicate that the litany of fears is without foundation. It would
appear that the "What if this.." or "What about that…" voices
are simply obstructionist.
Despite the construction of over 500 nuclear power reactors (of
which 440 are currently operating) and implementation of essential
ancilliary stages of the nuclear fuel cycle in several countries, the
past half century has seen a vast outpouring of anti-nuclear
hostility. At first this was due to an understandable loathing of
nuclear weapons. But as there is no nexus with weapons in most of
the countries enjoying nuclear electricity, the thrust of anti-nuclear
activism has refocussed on waste disposal and safety issues. We
have addressed these issues in this essay, but zealous activists are
not persuaded by fact or reason. In an age of post-modernist
relativism the facts of a matter are irrelevant and reason is of no
more worth than unreason (as in unreasonable).
In the United States, unreasonable demands and long drawn out
litigation by anti-nuclear bodies forced up the cost of nuclear power
stations by as much as ten times the original estimates (Cohen
1990). Then along came the Three Mile Island reactor melt-down
(causing no loss of life, remember) which dried up investor capital
and halted orders for new nuclear stations. Similar legal wrangling
 34

by activists has delayed for years the opening of the Yucca

Mountain radioactive waste repository in Nevada.
The construction and commissioning of new nuclear power
stations is booming in countries where strong governments put
sustainable progress ahead of unsustainable protests. Will Australia
join them?
At the present time there is little hope that Australia will adopt
safe, clean nuclear power, let alone embark on implementing the
complete nuclear fuel cycle. For a start there is green-inspired
legislation in both New South Wales and Victoria making nuclear
facilities illegal - even the act of prospecting for uranium is an
offence. Furthermore the Federal Minister for the Environment has
publicly pandered to a Greenhouse Conference (February 2003)
that the government has "a firm national commitment not to
develop nuclear power."
Other countries are either pushing ahead with nuclear electricity
or rethinking their position. So far in 2003 the Swiss and the
Swedes have rejected earlier decisions to phase out nuclear
electricity, as did the Germans the previous year. The only
European country to buck the trend is Belgium, where they have no
idea how they will make up a shortfall of sixty percent of their
electricity supply when their existing reactors eventually close
down. They may have no alternative but to buy nuclear electricity
from their neighbours because the European Union Parliament (in
Brussels!) strongly backs nuclear electricity generation in Europe.
More than thirty countries in the world have at least one nuclear
reactor for electricity generation. They have a head start on
Australia. We lost our way back in 1971, when the proposal for a
500 MWe nuclear power station at Jervis Bay was deferred
indefinitely. The sorry saga of Australian abandonment of nuclear
energy has been well described by Dr Clarence Hardy in his
comprehensive history of the Australian Atomic Energy
Commission up to the time of its demise in 1987.
Then there is finance. Even without legal frustrations the cost of
a gigawatt nuclear power station would run to over a billion
Australian dollars. But while each of the four major banks continue
to post profits of over a billion dollars every year, finance should
not be an insurmountable problem. The drive that made a success
of the Snowy scheme showed what can be achieved.
There are two factors that should force the issue. If greenhouse
gas concerns prohibit fossil-fueled power generation, the only
alternative is nuclear. Wind, sun and other so-called renewables are
 35

hopelessly inadequate15. And when there is not enough electricity

there will be blackouts with drastic impact on the Australian
economy. Across the country views will change. The false promises
of the anti-nuclear gurus will be cast aside. Common sense might at
last prevail.

BENEFITS FOR AUSTRALIA

We may now summarise the benefits to Australia by

implementing a complete, closed nuclear fuel cycle for ourselves
and other countries.

1. Exporting processed reactor fuel on a leasing basis yields

considerably greater economic return than selling uranium
yellowcake as a simple commodity.

2. Generating our electricity from nuclear energy can give us

cheap and reliable power for home and industry, ensuring future
prosperity.

3. Ample electricity will make possible the much-desired

"hydrogen economy" yielding fuel for transportation (using fuel
cells) when oil supplies run out. Moreover, hydrogen can be used to
hydrogenise low-grade crude oil and convert it to jet fuel for
aircraft where the weight of hydrogen storage would be prohibitive.

4. One of the most desperately needed projects for our parched

continent is large-scale water desalination made possible through
use of nuclear electricity from suitably located power reactors.

5. Australia's international ethical standing can only be

enhanced by making available our rich uranium resources and
extensive disposal potential to meet the needs of other less
fortunate countries, subject, of course, to full compliance with
existing nuclear non-proliferation treaties.

The benefits outlined above are all readily achievable using tried
and proven nuclear technology enjoying a well established safety
record. The fact that western reactors have clocked up more than
ten thousand reactor-years of power production with not a single

15
See the detailed discussion in "Nuclear Electricity Gigawatts", Enlightenment Press.
 36

radiation fatality makes the nuclear power industry one of the

safest undertakings on this planet.
By adopting tried and tested reactor types, upgraded to
incorporate the latest reliable control systems and passive safety
measures, Australia could maintain impeccable standards of
performance. Safety first must always be the paramount concern.
With a sensible approach, the financial returns will be immense
because the world needs abundant energy for industry, transport
and domestic use.
Ignore fusion power - decades of grappling enormous problems
with very limited success make it too much of a long-shot. Forget
so-called sustainable alternative energies - wind, solar and others -
they haven't a hope of supplying our energy needs16. The advocates
of these energy sources make fraudulent claims. In the latest issue
of their newsletter17 it is claimed that 400 MWe of wind generated
electricity is enough to power 200,000 Australian homes. That is 2
kWe per home, which is about right on average. But, and this is a
very big but, there is no mention whatever that the wind has to
blow strongly enough to provide that amount of electricity
continuously 24-hours a day to maintain the average. Under calm
conditions the very same wind installation will power exactly zero
Australian homes. None at all. That's why some continuous base-
load source of power is vital.
It is worth noting that a twenty percent contribution of power
from intermittent wind or solar sources is about the maximum that
a national grid system can accommodate without severe problems,
as the Danes and Germans are learning to their cost. What’s more,
base load plant must be kept available with turbines spinning ready
to take up the load when the wind drops or cloud blocks the sun. As
a result the net wind or solar contribution falls to roughly one third
of the twenty percent hoped for.
Australia at this point in time requires about 40 gigawatts total of
electrical generating capacity. The amount needed increases year by
year and quite heroic consumption cuts or gigantic efficiency
increases will be necessary to stem the demand. Even if some form
of energy storage having 100 percent efficiency became available,
which is impossible, there would still need to be 8,000 square
kilometres of solar panels or 200,000 megawatt-size wind turbines
(assuming 20 percent capacity factor) to generate this amount. The
ancilliary needs, transmission lines, etc., would be formidable
because, unlike nuclear power stations, most wind and solar farms

16
See "Nuclear Electricity Gigawatts" (Enlightenment Press) for a full discussion of this point.
17
"Watts News", June 2003.
 37

are of necessity quite distant from urban areas. (There will always
be a few choosing solar panels for household power and live
without most of the appliances Australians now take for granted.)
Please note that the above figures assumed that perfectly
efficient energy storage fortuitously becomes available in the near
future to take care of the times when there is no wind or sunshine.
So, multiply the number of wind turbines or area of solar panels by
a factor that takes into account the actual efficiency shortfall. That
factor is unlikely to be lower than two, even if reverse hydro
systems, as at the Tumut-5 power station in the Snowy Mountains,
are employed (that assumes more similar sites become available,
which is hardly likely).
The above analysis assumes that there is no other continuous
source of electricity present. To be realistic, that would have to be
either continued fossil fuel burning, with its pollution and
squandering of diminishing petrochemical resources, - or safe,
clean nuclear power.
Even if we adopt a hydrogen economy, as often advocated, it
cannot be stressed often enough that there needs to be some
primary source of energy to manufacture the hydrogen. In fact, a
hydrogen-based ground transportation regime would consume
more electric power for hydrogen production than that consumed
by all electricity consumers, industrial and domestic together.
Nuclear electricity will, quite literally, give Australia a future.

WHERE AUSTRALIA STANDS – WAKE UP !

A rescue effort, to go nuclear and give Australia a secure energy

future, will be a bitter struggle against ideological opposition. It
would be naïve to think otherwise. How much time will it take for
electricity rationing to really bite and lead to a swing of public
opinion in favour of nuclear power? Already, in Queensland,
shortages have forced spot prices for electric power up to $4.40 a
kilowatt-hour – almost one hundred times normal18. A warning of
things to come, maybe?
Electric power shortages have massive economic impact.
Commerce is so deeply dependent on reliable power. This has been
demonstrated several times in the past few years. There was chaos
in northeastern America when a solar storm tripped out much of
their electricity grid system. Then there was the Californian power
crisis which forced the richest State of the Union to purchase power
18
Sydney Morning Hrerald, 26 February 2002
 38

at prohibitive rates from as far away as Texas. The power cuts they
endured at that time and since may be one reason why the State of
California has officially gone broke.
Closer to home, a couple of years ago in New Zealand, the cable
failure that plunged the Auckland central business district into
darkness for days caused havoc in company offices, factories,
hospitals, hotels and the university. Inner city apartment owners
were none too pleased either when they surveyed the mushy
contents of their home freezers.
It is not possible to say exactly how soon such scenarios will
afflict Australians. Apart from the odd catastrophe, the onset of
power shortages will be gradual but gathering momentum unless
some form of base-load electricity supply is brought online to
replace the output of obsolete, clapped out generating stations. A
lot depends on how quickly fossil-fuel usage is phased out. Oil
supplies are dwindling, natural gas is limited and coal, while
relatively plentiful, is far too polluting. Besides, fossil fuels need to
be preserved for the future as petrochemical feedstock and as a
basis for aviation fuel.
Eventually the day must dawn when the average Aussie battler
takes a pay cut because of power blackouts and shortages of
electricity at the workplace, rides his bicycle home in the chill of
winter to an unheated house, is obliged to eat a cold meal by
candlelight, without TV, and with little alternative option than
going to bed. And spare a thought for commuters and others caught
in underground train tunnels, and lifts, when the electricity
suddenly cuts out. Events will then, hopefully, take a turn for the
better, because trapped, cold, hungry and angry citizens have a
vote. A vote bound to bring about an overdue change of fortune for
nuclear electricity in Australia. But the Aussie battler will not have
his frustrations eased overnight.
To cap off this gloomy scenario let us not forget that it will take
the better part of a decade to get the first nuclear power station up
and running from the word go. Several decades more to get enough
power reactors on line to meet even our most basic energy needs.
So there is no time to lose. Australia must go for nuclear
electricity.
It can be done. It must be done if Australia is to have a future in
the increasingly nuclear powered Asia-Pacific region. China, India,
Japan and South Korea are leading the way with others following.
Considering only countries in the southern hemisphere, the four
leading economies are Argentina, Australia, Brazil and South
Africa. Of these four, Australia is the only country without a nuclear
 39

power program and a strong ancilliary nuclear industry. Argentina

was the successful bidder to build the new Opal replacement
research reactor for Lucas Heights, while South Africa is, in
collaboration with China, developing the innovative super-safe
modular “pebble-bed” power reactor. On the other hand most
Australian politicians have been thoroughly spooked by the anti-
nuclear lobby with the result that our country is standing idly by
behind the starting gate in nuclear power production.
The big question is: how long will it take for the alternative
energy fraud to be exposed? Only when that comes about may
Australia at long last take the essential steps to guarantee stable
nuclear electricity resources that will underpin future prosperity.

AMERICA IS WAKING UP

As I write, I learn that the US Senate has passed a bill (247 to

175) supporting nuclear power. I let Senator Pete Domenici,
Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee,
have the last word: "We cannot ignore the vast benefits
that nuclear energy offers the nation ;" he said.
"America must once again start building nuclear
power plants using state -of-the-art technology. I
predict that we will one day look back and wonder
what took us so long to realise the promis e that
nuclear energy offers us."

SO WHY IS AUSTRALIA WAITING?

STOP PRESS! The December 2005 issue of the

highly respected journal Scientific American contains a
major article titled “Smarter use of Nuclear Waste” that
supports the general thrust of this book.
The article demonstrates how “Fast neutron reactors
could extract much more energy from recycled nuclear
fuel, minimise the risks of weapons proliferation and
markedly reduce the time nuclear waste must be stored”.
 40

Main Reference Sources

Bate, R (ed), "What Risk? Science, Politics and Public Health" Butterworth-
Heinemann, Oxford 1997. ISBN 0-7506-3810-9.

Beckmann, P, “The Non-problem of Nuclear Wastes” Golem Press, Boulder

CO, 1979. Also see Beckmann's book "The Health Hazards of NOT Going
Nuclear".

Cohen, B L, "Nuclear Energy Option", Plenum Press, New York 1990.

ISBN 0-306-43567-5.

Eisenbud, M, and T Gesell, "Environmental Radioactivity" Fourth edition,

Academic Press, San Diego CA 1997. ISBN 0-12-235154-1

Gerrard, M, "Whose Backyard, Whose Risk? Fear and Fairness in Toxic and
Nuclear Waste Siting", MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1996. ISBN 0-262-57113-7.

Hardy, C, "Enriching Experiences - Uranium Enrichment in Australia 1963-

1996", Glen Haven Publishing, Box 85, Peakhurst, NSW 1996. ISBN 0-646-
29063-0.

Hardy, C. "Atomic Rise and Fall", Glen Haven, 1999. ISBN 0-9586303-0-5.

Hayden, H C, "The Solar Fraud - Why Solar Energy won't Run the World",
Vales Lake Publishing, Pueblo West CO 2001. ISBN 0-9714845-0-3

Hollister, C D, and S Nadis, “Burial of Radioactive Waste under the Seabed”,

Scientific American, Vol 278, No 1, January 1998.

Krinov, A, "Nuclear Physics and Nuclear Reactors", Mir Publishers, Moscow

1975.

McEwan, A, “Nuclear New Zealand – Sorting Fact from Fiction”, Hazard Press
Publishers Ltd, Christchurch, New Zealand 2004. ISBN 1-877270-58-X.

Price, M S T, “Transport for the Nuclear Industry”, Nuclear Technology

Publishing, Ashford, Kent 1997.

Wilson, P D (ed), "The Nuclear Fuel Cycle - From Ore to Waste", Oxford
University Press, Oxford 1996. ISBN 0-19-856540-2.

Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the material presented in
this book. If an error is detected the author will be pleased for it to be
identified and be advised of a more authentic source. Should a correction be
needed, the author will be grateful and an amendment incorporated in future
printings.
Supplement 1

Nuclear Issues Series Supplement

2007 Colin Keay

The Outrageous Wind Power Swindle

It’s time someone nailed the big lie in the current energy debate: that
nuclear is too expensive compared with supposedly cheap wind electricity.
Wind farms are not an answer to the demands of large-scale electricity
generation. It is not simply their intermittency, creating problems of supply,
but their huge costs financially, socially, environmentally, aesthetically and not
least their global warming contribution. Wind power advocates airily dismiss
these concerns and suppress the evidence against them. Let us step by step
prove them wrong.
A common comparison between wind and nuclear electricity generation is
to compare peak powers. One gigawatt (1000 megawatts) is typical for a
modern nuclear power reactor. A typical modern wind turbine in a large wind
farm (a Vestas V90) is rated at a peak power of two megawatts, requiring 500
of them to match the nuclear reactor’s peak power level. To put this in
perspective, in 2006 the total installed power of all of the wind farms in
Australia amounted to a little over 800 megawatts – easily within the
capability of a single nuclear power reactor. However any meaningful cost
comparison must be in terms of energy rather than power, because energy is
what we use and pay for. Power is simply the rate of use or generation of
energy. In light of that, compare the energy produced by a wind farm with a
modern nuclear power reactor that is able to run at its peak rating for a
conservative 90 per cent of the time. The reactor will in one year deliver
almost 8000 million kilowatt-hours (the kWh is familiar as the unit of energy
used for domestic electricity billing).
On the other hand the sprawling wind farms of the European Union achieve
a load factor of a little under 20 per cent, according to the latest figures
presented in a European Commission newsletter. So the 500 wind turbines will
in one year deliver just 1750 million kilowatt-hours of energy, less than a
quarter of the amount from the nuclear power reactor. Thus the number of two-
megawatt wind turbines required to equal the energy production of a one-
gigawatt nuclear reactor jumps to 2,250, with a corresponding increase in
transmission lines. That huge number of wind turbines needed reflects the
inherent intermittency of wind as an energy source.
But that’s not all. Take the materials used in construction. A single Vestas
V90 turbine requires 250 tonnes of steel and, to prevent it toppling over in
gale-force winds, a base with about 1000 tonnes of reinforced concrete. The
actual amount depends on whether driven piles or rock anchors are employed.
Supplement 2

A 2250-turbine wind farm therefore needs 562,000 tonnes of steel and 2.25
million tonnes of concrete. The amounts for the nuclear equivalent are 35,000
and 200,000 tonnes respectively. In round figures, the wind farm uses 12 times
as much material as the nuclear plant. It follows that the wind farm’s
contribution to global warming in terms of energy production alone will be 12
times that of a nuclear power reactor.
But still there’s more. A wind farm of 2,250 turbines demands huge tracts of
land cleared of trees (another contribution to global warming!), high load-
bearing road access during construction and maintenance, and an expensive
transmission system because of its dispersed extent. By comparison the
nuclear station is compact, requiring less than a square kilometer of land
overall, including either access to cooling water or the provision of a pair of
cooling towers (access to some water is still needed for making up evaporation
loss by the towers) and a storage pool for spent fuel. By law in most countries
a nuclear power plant must make provision for eventual decommissioning to
Greenfield condition, usually after a licensed life of 50 years or so. On the
other hand wind turbines have a design life of 20 years and to the best of my
knowledge no money is earmarked for removing 2,250 gigantic blocks of
reinforced concrete.
The cost of electricity from wind comes out at 10 to 13 times that from a
modern advanced third generation nuclear reactor – where it is just over four
cents (Australian) per kilowatt-hour. A reactor would cost an estimated $1700
million and could be built in 36 months, not including site selection and
licensing and other delays. In the US most reactors have fully amortised their
capital costs and enjoy performance-based 20-year licence extensions,
dropping their electricity prices down to a low of 1.66 US cents per kilowatt-
hour. To those who argue that nuclear power stations take too long to build we
might ask how long it would take to construct a mind-boggling 2,250-turbine
wind farm. And the environmental degradation due to such a large farm is
frightening: simply to make an inefficient substitute for only a single nuclear
power plant!

In the words of Ari Vatanen, a Finnish member of the European Parliament:

“Without nuclear energy our industry cannot be competitive in a merciless
global marketplace. I feel sorry for the Germans whose government pays over
120 Euros per megawatt-hour for wind electricity [compared to 15 Euros for
Finnish nuclear power], which on average is available one hour out of four
and therefore ironically needs parallel fossil fuel back-up for 75 per cent of
the time. Common sense has gone with the wind”.
Supplement 3

Enrichment: What They Never Tell You

Uranium enrichment is in the news again. But what precisely is it? And
why is it necessary? Should Australia be involved?
To understand the enrichment process one must take into account the role
of a nucleus as the supreme boss of an atom. The number of protons in a
nucleus defines the element and hence its chemistry. This figure happens to
be 92 for uranium. Atomic nucleii also contain neutrons that do not affect
the chemistry of an atom but they lead to profound differences in its nuclear
behavior and whether it is stable or not. Atoms of the same element but with
differing numbers of nuclear neutrons are called isotopes.
Enrichment starts with natural uranium which is composed of two
isotopes with very different nuclear properties: their amounts are 0.7 per
cent U-235, which is fissile (especially so with slow neutrons), and 99.3 per
cent U-238, which is non-fissile (except when exposed to very fast
neutrons).
Increasing the proportion of U-235 in the mix is what enrichment is all
about, but the actual degree of enrichment is rarely mentioned in the media.
It is possible to build a reactor fueled by natural (unenriched) uranium,
but it needs to be very large, like the gigantic Soviet RBMK (Chernobyl)
monsters. However if uranium fuel is enriched to 4 or 5 per cent U-235,
ordinary water may then be used in a reactor to slow the neutrons. Such
power reactors are not so large , are much safer and are more manageable.
Uranium enriched to 4 ot 5 per cent U-235 is therefore closed as reactor-
grade fuel. That is far short of the 95 per cent or more U-235 required for a
nuclear weapon. Thus weapons-grade uranium requires roughly fifteen
times more enrichment than the fuel for power reactors.
It is interesting to note that Australia had at one stage developed a
successful pilot enrichment plant which was closed down for political
reasons in 1983. It could have been expanded to handle all the output from
our uranium mines. So instead of exporting yellow-cake, over which we
have little control of its end use, we could have leased – not sold – reactor
fuel rods on a strict return basis, giving us full control over our indigenous
uranium. And as a result of value adding by enrichment we could have
earned a very much greater financial return from our uranium. That is yet
another instance of Australia’s many lost technical and export opportunities.
The uranium enrichment process itself is well worth discussing. It is quite
remarkable that it can be done at all. As we said earlier, the isotopes of any
given chemical element are chemically identical regardless of their nuclear
dissimilarities.
Supplement 4

Therefore chemical methods cannot be used to separate isotopes,

especially when the mass difference between the two isotopes of uranium
amounts to only three parts in 235. The best technique employs a series of
ultra high-speed centrifuges. They require the uranium to be in the form of a
gas – a most unusual condition for heavy elements at reasonable
temperatures. Neverthe less uranium does happen to have a gaseous form
called uranium hexafluoride, thereby making enrichment practical.

Moral: Australia might just as well take full advantage of the gifts of
uranium deposits and the enrichment means that nature has given us.

A Very Important Principle of Radioactivity

There is a simple principle that says that the activity of radioactive

elements is inversely proportional to the length of their half-lives. The
shorter the half-life the higher the activity and, conversely, the longer the
half-life the weaker the activity. Makes good sense when you think about it.
So short-lived nuclear wastes are the most to be feared. That is the reason
why used reactor fuel rods are stored for a few decades under water that
shields and absorbs their intense short-lived radioactive emissions as they
rapidly decay. Long-term disposal is then made much easier.
Some wastes are quite useful. Many nuclear scientists consider it to be
very short-sighted to bury high-level nuclear waste because there is so much
in it that is rare and useful. For example, reactor generated Americium finds
a valuable use in smoke-detectors. Furthermore the plutonium extracted
from exhausted fuel rods is still useful for blending in with fresh reactor
fuel, even though it has an isotopic mix rendering it useless for bomb-
making. Finally those wastes not worth reprocessing may be “incinerated”
in high-flux reactors that are now at an advanced design stage. There are six
of these so-called fourth-generation reactors that promise cheaper electricity,
inherent safety, operating simplicity and short construction times.

Conclusion: It is hardly surprising that nuclear science has advanced a

long wayin the past half a century, not least in solving its earlier problems.

This supplement shows how thorough investigation is essential to refute

only two of the many unsupportable claims made by irresponsible elements
of those opposed to safe, clean nuclear electricity production. See the book
“Nuclear Energy Fallacies” in my Nuclear Issues series for many examples.
Inside back cover

Nuclear Issues Series by Dr Colin Keay

You are reading the fourth booklet in a series designed to provide a better
appreciation of the role of peaceful nuclear activities in making the world
a better place for its expanding population.
The three titles already published are….

Nuclear Energy Fallacies – (2nd edition)

Here are the Facts that Refute Them
Fortysix anti-nuclear lies and myths are listed and debunked.

Nuclear Radiation Exposed - (2nd edition)

A Guide to Better Understanding

We live in a sea of nuclear radiation. Contrary to conventional belief. a

growing body of evidence proves that it contributes to good health. A
chart is included for calculating radiation doses.

Nuclear Electricity Gigawatts -

Supporting Alternative Energies

Alternative energy sources that are intermittent are only useful as

supplements to reliable, continuous base-load electricity supplies available
to support them at times when they are inactive.

The four booklets of this Nuclear Issues series are no longer

on sale. They are now accessible on line in the form of four
PDF files that may be copied in full without change or in
part subject to normal copyright law.