FROM JOANATHAN SYMONS (Macquarie Unversity, Australia)

24 Aug 2014

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FROM JOSEPH CAMILLERI

Dear Jon,

You pose a critically important question that has exercised my mind over recent years. 

My view of the role of nuclear energy remains essentially unchanged.

I readily accept that when I took up the campaign against nculear power expansion back in 1975 we had little inkling of the grave dangers posed by our carbon footprint. And you are right to say that a few noted environmentalists have come to see nuclear energy as a useful step in the transition to a low carbon economy.

I regard this view as deeply flawed. May I explain in shorthand:

1. It is a  shortsighted strategy to try and solve a problem by creating or exacerbating another one. The risks posed by nuclear energy to human health, the environment, and global security remain as severe as they have ever been.

2. Significantly, the worst reactor accidents have occurred in the industrialised world. We need only think of Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fuskushima - some 30 other serious accidents are known to have occurred over the past 50 years.

3. To this record must be added the future risk of sabotage or terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants and the risk that nuclear materials will be stolen and used to create nuclear devices, which, however primitive, could unleash untold devastation.

4. The handling of spent nuclear fuel still presents daunting waste disposal problems - both technical and political. Despite numerous technical fixes proposed at different times, no country has yet implemented a permanent disposal system for the most hazardous radioactive waste: intermediate-level and high-level waste.

5. Perhaps the most worrying threat is that of nuclear proliferation. It is a sobering thought that in Iraq the United States embarked on a ruinous military expedition in 2003, the horrendous efects of which will be felt for years to come, precisely because it feared that nuclear materials could be diverted to miltiary purposes. Israel has made exactly the same argument in relation to Iran's nculear program. North Korea offers yet another example. It is not just that this or that country may decide to use the subterfuge of a civilian nuclear program to disguise its true military ambitions, but that regional or great powers may point to such a threat, real, imagined or contrived, to justify a military strike, which as the decade old Iraq war has shown can have devastating consequences.

6. The magnitude of the risks involved is matched only by the high costs of nuclear energy. Over the last sxity years the nuclear industry has benefited from massive public subsidies. Governments have funded hugely expensive research and development programs; provided capital subsidies towards construction, financing and decommissioning costs; covered many of the costs associated with the management of uranium stockpiles and enrichment processes; accepted at least partial liability for nuclear accidents; borne the brunt of waste-management risks; and carried virtually the entire cost of the global non-proliferation effort. If fully calculated across all countries these historical public subsidies which continue to this day may exceed $1,000 billion. Yet, for all this support, the nuclear industry has stuggled to be competitive.

There is no surprise therefore in the failure of the industry to achieve the growth projections tenaciouly but unrealistically envisaged by its proponents.  Eelctricity generation at US nuclear power plants is now falling. Having plateaued between 2007 and 2010, it has been steadily declining since. With reactors retiring early and proposed projects being abandoned, many consider nuclear power’s days in the United states to be numbered.