nuclear power should be banned essay

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Should we abandon nuclear energy? Time for a nuclear power phase-out?

Nuclear energy is one of the most important ressources of our day. We vote and discuss if we should abandon this power for the risks it entails.

Nuclear power stations are used in many countries to generate electricity . It has been claimed to be a good alternative to fossil fuels which can mitigate problems of global warming and dependency on gas exporters . Nuclear technology can produce great amounts of energy in a very efficient way. About 12% of the total electricity generated in the world comes from nuclear fission power reactors. But there is a dark side to nuclear power too. Disasters  such as those of  Chernobyl (Ukraine) and  Fukushima (Japan) remind us of how vulnerable life is to the radioactive pollution from nuclear reactors. Before deciding whether nuclear power should be abandoned it is important to consider how it works and its mains pros and cons. 

How does a nuclear reactor make electricity

In simple terms, nuclear power is generated by a process in which atoms of uranium are split ( nuclear fission ). The neutrons, produced by fission of the uranium nuclei, trigger a chain reaction in other uranium atoms, which are in turn split. This process is controlled using water or graphite as moderators within the core of the reactor, The nuclear core reactor sits inside a steel pressure vessel which is capable of keeping water liquid even at temperatures of over 320°C. The fission products undergo radioactive decay, releasing more heat .  They are the main dangerous wastes from the process. Outside the core reactor the process to transform this energy in electricity is very similar to how coal or gas power stations work. The heat generated from nuclear fission boils water and the steam it produces make turbine generators spin, creating electricity.

Nuclear power pros and cons

The main advantages of nuclear power:

• It replaces fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) which reserves are finite.
• Fossil fuels produce large quantities of greenhouse gas emissions and are to a great extent responsible for global warming and pollution . From this point of view nuclear power contributes to mitigate environmental problems.
• Countries with nuclear capacity are less dependent on gas producers and the fluctuations of oil prices.
• Nuclear power plants have a more steady production of energy than hydro-electric, tidal and solar power generation . This stability contributes to governments energy plans and to ensure supply.  
• Nuclear energy is arguably the cheapest low-carbon option of power generation.

Hoever, there are also disadvantages to the use of nuclear energy.

• The radioactive waste generated in the process is difficult to eliminate and expensive to deal with. If nuclear waste is not dealt with properly it can have very severe consequences on the environment.
• Although accidents are rare, they are extremely lethal and have longstanding negative impacts. 
• Nuclear reactors for electricity generation could be the basis to develop nuclear weapons. 
• The dependency from foreign suppliers does not completely disappear. Gas producers are replaced by uranium producers.
• Nuclear power plants require high initial investments. Their running costs are high. Moreover it is also very expensive to dismantle them once they have been operational. 
• High security costs to preserve them from any potential external attack. 

Many argue that the solution would be to develop nuclear fusion as a cleaner and non-depletable alternative to the current nuclear fission. But until nuclear fusion becomes a reality in practical terms, what should we do? Do the pros of nuclear power outweight its cons? Is this energy as dangerous and harmful as many activists claim? 

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The 3,122-megawatt Civaux Nuclear Power Plant in France, which opened in 1997. GUILLAUME SOUVANT / AFP / Getty Images

Why Nuclear Power Must Be Part of the Energy Solution

By Richard Rhodes • July 19, 2018

Many environmentalists have opposed nuclear power, citing its dangers and the difficulty of disposing of its radioactive waste. But a Pulitzer Prize-winning author argues that nuclear is safer than most energy sources and is needed if the world hopes to radically decrease its carbon emissions. 

In the late 16th century, when the increasing cost of firewood forced ordinary Londoners to switch reluctantly to coal, Elizabethan preachers railed against a fuel they believed to be, literally, the Devil’s excrement. Coal was black, after all, dirty, found in layers underground — down toward Hell at the center of the earth — and smelled strongly of sulfur when it burned. Switching to coal, in houses that usually lacked chimneys, was difficult enough; the clergy’s outspoken condemnation, while certainly justified environmentally, further complicated and delayed the timely resolution of an urgent problem in energy supply.

For too many environmentalists concerned with global warming, nuclear energy is today’s Devil’s excrement. They condemn it for its production and use of radioactive fuels and for the supposed problem of disposing of its waste. In my judgment, their condemnation of this efficient, low-carbon source of baseload energy is misplaced. Far from being the Devil’s excrement, nuclear power can be, and should be, one major component of our rescue from a hotter, more meteorologically destructive world.

Like all energy sources, nuclear power has advantages and disadvantages. What are nuclear power’s benefits? First and foremost, since it produces energy via nuclear fission rather than chemical burning, it generates baseload electricity with no output of carbon, the villainous element of global warming. Switching from coal to natural gas is a step toward decarbonizing, since burning natural gas produces about half the carbon dioxide of burning coal. But switching from coal to nuclear power is radically decarbonizing, since nuclear power plants release greenhouse gases only from the ancillary use of fossil fuels during their construction, mining, fuel processing, maintenance, and decommissioning — about as much as solar power does, which is about 4 to 5 percent as much as a natural gas-fired power plant.

Nuclear power releases less radiation into the environment than any other major energy source.

Second, nuclear power plants operate at much higher capacity factors than renewable energy sources or fossil fuels. Capacity factor is a measure of what percentage of the time a power plant actually produces energy. It’s a problem for all intermittent energy sources. The sun doesn’t always shine, nor the wind always blow, nor water always fall through the turbines of a dam.

In the United States in 2016, nuclear power plants, which generated almost 20 percent of U.S. electricity, had an average capacity factor of 92.3 percent , meaning they operated at full power on 336 out of 365 days per year. (The other 29 days they were taken off the grid for maintenance.) In contrast , U.S. hydroelectric systems delivered power 38.2 percent of the time (138 days per year), wind turbines 34.5 percent of the time (127 days per year) and solar electricity arrays only 25.1 percent of the time (92 days per year). Even plants powered with coal or natural gas only generate electricity about half the time for reasons such as fuel costs and seasonal and nocturnal variations in demand. Nuclear is a clear winner on reliability.

Third, nuclear power releases less radiation into the environment than any other major energy source. This statement will seem paradoxical to many readers, since it’s not commonly known that non-nuclear energy sources release any radiation into the environment. They do. The worst offender is coal, a mineral of the earth’s crust that contains a substantial volume of the radioactive elements uranium and thorium. Burning coal gasifies its organic materials, concentrating its mineral components into the remaining waste, called fly ash. So much coal is burned in the world and so much fly ash produced that coal is actually the major source of radioactive releases into the environment. 

Anti-nuclear activists protest the construction of a nuclear power station in Seabrook, New Hampshire in 1977.  AP Photo

In the early 1950s, when the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission believed high-grade uranium ores to be in short supply domestically, it considered extracting uranium for nuclear weapons from the abundant U.S. supply of fly ash from coal burning. In 2007, China began exploring such extraction, drawing on a pile of some 5.3 million metric tons of brown-coal fly ash at Xiaolongtang in Yunnan. The Chinese ash averages about 0.4 pounds of triuranium octoxide (U3O8), a uranium compound, per metric ton. Hungary and South Africa are also exploring uranium extraction from coal fly ash. 

What are nuclear’s downsides? In the public’s perception, there are two, both related to radiation: the risk of accidents, and the question of disposal of nuclear waste.

There have been three large-scale accidents involving nuclear power reactors since the onset of commercial nuclear power in the mid-1950s: Three-Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Chernobyl in Ukraine, and Fukushima in Japan.

Studies indicate even the worst possible accident at a nuclear plant is less destructive than other major industrial accidents.

The partial meltdown of the Three-Mile Island reactor in March 1979, while a disaster for the owners of the Pennsylvania plant, released only a minimal quantity of radiation to the surrounding population. According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission :

“The approximately 2 million people around TMI-2 during the accident are estimated to have received an average radiation dose of only about 1 millirem above the usual background dose. To put this into context, exposure from a chest X-ray is about 6 millirem and the area’s natural radioactive background dose is about 100-125 millirem per year… In spite of serious damage to the reactor, the actual release had negligible effects on the physical health of individuals or the environment.”

The explosion and subsequent burnout of a large graphite-moderated, water-cooled reactor at Chernobyl in 1986 was easily the worst nuclear accident in history. Twenty-nine disaster relief workers died of acute radiation exposure in the immediate aftermath of the accident. In the subsequent three decades, UNSCEAR — the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, composed of senior scientists from 27 member states — has observed and reported at regular intervals on the health effects of the Chernobyl accident. It has identified no long-term health consequences to populations exposed to Chernobyl fallout except for thyroid cancers in residents of Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia who were children or adolescents at the time of the accident, who drank milk contaminated with 131iodine, and who were not evacuated. By 2008, UNSCEAR had attributed some 6,500 excess cases of thyroid cancer in the Chernobyl region to the accident, with 15 deaths.  The occurrence of these cancers increased dramatically from 1991 to 1995, which researchers attributed mostly to radiation exposure. No increase occurred in adults.

The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, located near Avila Beach, California, will be decommissioned starting in 2024. Pacific Gas and Electric

“The average effective doses” of radiation from Chernobyl, UNSCEAR also concluded , “due to both external and internal exposures, received by members of the general public during 1986-2005 [were] about 30 mSv for the evacuees, 1 mSv for the residents of the former Soviet Union, and 0.3 mSv for the populations of the rest of Europe.”  A sievert is a measure of radiation exposure, a millisievert is one-one-thousandth of a sievert. A full-body CT scan delivers about 10-30 mSv. A U.S. resident receives an average background radiation dose, exclusive of radon, of about 1 mSv per year.

The statistics of Chernobyl irradiations cited here are so low that they must seem intentionally minimized to those who followed the extensive media coverage of the accident and its aftermath. Yet they are the peer-reviewed products of extensive investigation by an international scientific agency of the United Nations. They indicate that even the worst possible accident at a nuclear power plant — the complete meltdown and burnup of its radioactive fuel — was yet far less destructive than other major industrial accidents across the past century. To name only two: Bhopal, in India, where at least 3,800 people died immediately and many thousands more were sickened when 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide plant; and Henan Province, in China, where at least 26,000 people drowned following the failure of a major hydroelectric dam in a typhoon. “Measured as early deaths per electricity units produced by the Chernobyl facility (9 years of operation, total electricity production of 36 GWe-years, 31 early deaths) yields 0.86 death/GWe-year),” concludes Zbigniew Jaworowski, a physician and former UNSCEAR chairman active during the Chernobyl accident. “This rate is lower than the average fatalities from [accidents involving] a majority of other energy sources. For example, the Chernobyl rate is nine times lower than the death rate from liquefied gas… and 47 times lower than from hydroelectric stations.” 

Nuclear waste disposal, although a continuing political problem, is not any longer a technological problem.

The accident in Japan at Fukushima Daiichi in March 2011 followed a major earthquake and tsunami. The tsunami flooded out the power supply and cooling systems of three power reactors, causing them to melt down and explode, breaching their confinement. Although 154,000 Japanese citizens were evacuated from a 12-mile exclusion zone around the power station, radiation exposure beyond the station grounds was limited. According to the report submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency in June 2011:

“No harmful health effects were found in 195,345 residents living in the vicinity of the plant who were screened by the end of May 2011. All the 1,080 children tested for thyroid gland exposure showed results within safe limits. By December, government health checks of some 1,700 residents who were evacuated from three municipalities showed that two-thirds received an external radiation dose within the normal international limit of 1 mSv/year, 98 percent were below 5 mSv/year, and 10 people were exposed to more than 10 mSv… [There] was no major public exposure, let alone deaths from radiation.” 

Nuclear waste disposal, although a continuing political problem in the U.S., is not any longer a technological problem. Most U.S. spent fuel, more than 90 percent of which could be recycled to extend nuclear power production by hundreds of years, is stored at present safely in impenetrable concrete-and-steel dry casks on the grounds of operating reactors, its radiation slowly declining. 

An activist in March 2017 demanding closure of the Fessenheim Nuclear Power Plant in France. Authorities announced in April that they will close the facility by 2020. SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP / Getty Images

The U.S. Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico currently stores low-level and transuranic military waste and could store commercial nuclear waste in a 2-kilometer thick bed of crystalline salt, the remains of an ancient sea. The salt formation extends from southern New Mexico all the way northeast to southwestern Kansas. It could easily accommodate the entire world’s nuclear waste for the next thousand years.

Finland is even further advanced in carving out a permanent repository in granite bedrock 400 meters under Olkiluoto, an island in the Baltic Sea off the nation’s west coast. It expects to begin permanent waste storage in 2023.

A final complaint against nuclear power is that it costs too much. Whether or not nuclear power costs too much will ultimately be a matter for markets to decide, but there is no question that a full accounting of the external costs of different energy systems would find nuclear cheaper than coal or natural gas. 

Nuclear power is not the only answer to the world-scale threat of global warming. Renewables have their place; so, at least for leveling the flow of electricity when renewables vary, does natural gas. But nuclear deserves better than the anti-nuclear prejudices and fears that have plagued it. It isn’t the 21st century’s version of the Devil’s excrement. It’s a valuable, even an irreplaceable, part of the solution to the greatest energy threat in the history of humankind.

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Argument: 3 Reasons Nuclear Power Has Returned to the Energy Debate

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3 Reasons Nuclear Power Has Returned to the Energy Debate

If we believed our own rhetoric about the climate crisis, support for nuclear would be much higher..

• Climate Change
• United States
• Jason Bordoff

If you still needed proof that nuclear energy has returned to the conversation after decades of disfavor, it came with an unexpected celebrity boost last month. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the Canadian singer Grimes separately used their star power to advocate against the closure of nuclear power plants, echoing growing pressure for California to reconsider plans to shut its last such plant. Over the weekend, Europe also saw a fresh boost for nuclear energy with the leaked draft of a European Commission plan to include zero-carbon nuclear energy on its list of what counts as a “green” investment.

Notwithstanding Germany’s long-planned closure of three of its remaining six nuclear plants on New Year’s Eve, even as Europe struggles with energy shortages , support from celebrities and the EU was just the latest in a string of good news for nuclear energy in 2021. In the United States, private investment in nuclear projects and companies reached eye-popping levels. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm became increasingly vocal in support of nuclear power as a zero-carbon energy source. In Europe, several countries—including France—recently announced new plans to build nuclear reactors in order to meet looming deadlines to decarbonize their electricity systems.

A decade after the Fukushima nuclear accident set back nuclear power’s prospects worldwide, the outlook may finally be brightening for three reasons: the urgency of meeting increasingly ambitious climate goals, significant advances in nuclear technology, and national security concerns about China’s and Russia’s growing leadership in nuclear power.

Until recently, nuclear power’s outlook seemed bleak. Following Fukushima, Japan suspended nearly all of its 50 nuclear reactors; today, only nine have resumed operations. Several other countries, most notably Germany, decided to phase out nuclear power. Still others, such as Spain, Switzerland, and Italy, scrapped plans to add new nuclear plants. Between 2011 and 2020, a total of 65 reactors were either shut down or did not have their operational lifetimes extended.

In the United States, the number of nuclear reactors peaked at more than 100 in 2012. Since then, 12 reactors have been shut down, while only one was added. (Nuclear power continues to supply about 20 percent of total U.S. electricity generation.) Cheap natural gas unlocked by the shale revolution and dramatic cost declines in wind and solar power have made it harder for nuclear power to compete. Meanwhile, projects to build new nuclear power plants in the United States have ballooned in cost, seen their timelines lengthened, or been scrapped altogether. Two reactors being built in Georgia are now projected to cost twice as much and take more than twice as long to complete as originally estimated. Two other reactors under construction in South Carolina were scrapped in 2017 after $9 billion in expenditures, leaving ratepayers with nothing to show for their money.

So, given all these setbacks, why the sudden new interest in nuclear power?

First, as the urgency to combat the climate crisis grows, there is growing recognition that the pathway to net-zero emissions will be faster, easier, and cheaper if nuclear energy is part of the mix of solutions.

As Grimes explained in her viral video calling for California to reverse its decision to shut the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, “This is crisis mode, and we should be using all the tools that we have.” She went on: “If we push the closure back by a decade, it will help the state decarbonize faster and make the transition to clean energy faster and cheaper.”

The pop star’s claims are backed up by analysis. To achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, global electricity use will need to more than double, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), as cars, home heating, and other sectors are electrified. Vast amounts of electricity will also be required to make fuels, such as hydrogen and ammonia, to power sectors that are harder to electrify, such as ship transportation and steelmaking.

All that electricity must then come from zero-carbon sources. Solar and wind power can provide much of that but not all. They are intermittent, as the sun does not always shine nor the wind always blow, and face other limitations, such as the greater amount of land needed. Batteries, whose costs have fallen sharply, can store renewable energy for hours but not yet days or weeks to handle seasonal fluctuations or extended periods of low winds or gray skies.

Thus, the cheapest path to decarbonize electricity is to have some amount—estimates vary—of so-called firm generation: reliable sources that can produce low-carbon electricity on demand whenever it is needed. Today, nuclear power is the only carbon-free energy source operating at scale that can reliably deliver power at any time.

In their Net-Zero America analysis , Princeton University researchers modeled a range of scenarios to decarbonize the country by 2050 and found that all of them require about as much firm generation as exists today, even with dramatic growth in renewable energy. The cheapest pathway they modeled was one in which nuclear power in the United States increases to three times its current level, while the costliest scenario assumed all energy needs would be met by renewables alone.

“Without nuclear investment, achieving a sustainable energy system will be much harder,” the IEA explained.

A recent study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University found that continued operation of Diablo Canyon (which accounts for 15 percent of California’s carbon-free electricity production) beyond its scheduled closure in 2025 would reduce the state’s emissions, bolster grid reliability to mitigate brownouts, and save California $2.6 billion through 2035. Without nuclear power, California’s use of natural gas will go up, even as renewable use also rises, because the state will need to rely on natural gas plants to meet demand in times when energy demand peaks. This is exactly what happened after both the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant and California’s San Onofre were closed nearly a decade ago.

Nuclear power also requires much less land and new transmission infrastructure than renewable energy to produce the same power. The Princeton researchers, for example, found that a net-zero pathway relying only on renewable energy required quintupling existing electricity transmission, while one that relied less on renewable energy required only a doubling. That is important because building long-distance power lines to transport renewable energy remains very difficult , given local opposition (not least because of environmental concerns), incumbent utility power , and government permitting delays. U.S. President Joe Biden has promised to streamline the process of building new transmission infrastructure, and the federal government has several tools at its disposal, but doing so is easier said than done. I served in the White House when then-President Barack Obama tried to accelerate the permitting of seven new transmission lines; only two were completed. The United States needs to produce and transmit vastly larger amounts of renewable energy, to be sure, but given the permitting and siting challenges, it makes good sense to include nuclear power—which faces opposition of its own but has a much smaller physical and environmental footprint—among the zero-emission tools to achieve deep decarbonization.

In Washington, Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on much, but one of the few areas of bipartisanship is the need to invest in nuclear power. The recently enacted bipartisan infrastructure bill included $6 billion to prevent struggling nuclear power plants from shuttering. Without that support, more than half of the nation’s nuclear plants were projected to retire by 2030, according to a report from the Rhodium Group. In addition, the bill included $2.5 billion to support advanced reactor demonstration. The Build Back Better Act (currently on life support in the U.S. Senate given Joe Manchin’s opposition) would increase the production tax credit that could be claimed by nuclear power.

Looking beyond the United States, the need for nuclear power to achieve climate goals is even greater around the world. Nuclear power is the world’s second-largest source of zero-carbon energy today after hydropower. In its road map to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, the IEA projects nuclear power generation globally will nearly double. It finds that 100 new nuclear plants need to be built by 2030 alone—just eight short years away. One Chinese study projected that the country could achieve its new 2060 net-zero emissions goal by nearly quintupling its nuclear power generation—an even bigger rise than the study estimated for wind power.

Similarly, in 2019 the IEA found that absent any additional investment in reactor lifetime extensions or new nuclear projects, fossil fuels (especially natural gas) would account for the bulk of the increase in electricity generation to offset the decline in the nuclear power and consumer electricity bills would become more expensive. “Without nuclear investment, achieving a sustainable energy system will be much harder,” the IEA explained.

The second reason for a brighter nuclear outlook is technological advancements that reduce costs, waste, and safety concerns. Companies such as NuScale Power, TerraPower, X-energy, GE, Kairos Power, and others are pioneering advanced reactor designs that incorporate greater inherent safety and could produce power more cheaply than past reactor generations.

There is a range of advanced reactor designs under development. Some continue to be water-cooled like past designs but employ advanced passive safety design features such as natural circulation of the coolant. These features eliminate the safety vulnerability of needing offsite electricity or emergency diesel generators to power pumps for cooling the fuel. Other advanced reactor designs use coolants such as helium, molten salt, and sodium, which—in addition to more robust fuel forms—provide inherent safety benefits compared to traditional reactors that use water as a coolant. TerraPower, a U.S. company backed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, just announced plans to build a sodium-cooled reactor in Wyoming to replace coal power. Advanced reactors using coolants other than water typically operate at higher temperatures, enabling greater efficiencies in the conversion of heat to electricity—ultimately producing less radioactive waste relative to the amount of power generated.

Many companies are also planning a modular approach to power plant construction, where some components of the plant are assembled in a controlled factory environment before being shipped to construction sites for installation. This strategy could reduce the time it takes to build a nuclear power plant as well as the costs. Most companies are also pursuing smaller designs that would place less capital at risk for the utilities building them as opposed to the large light-water reactor projects of the past. These so-called small modular reactors could be an important part of nuclear energy’s future.

Nuclear power may also have a brighter future in an entirely different way if nuclear fusion (as opposed to fission) technology becomes commercially viable. Rather than generate power by splitting atoms, nuclear fusion employs the same process that powers the sun—fusing the nuclei of atoms such as hydrogen at extremely high temperatures.

The old joke among nuclear experts is that nuclear fusion is 20 years away and always will be. Yet while fusion is still experimental, real progress is being made. At least 35 private fusion companies have been launched in recent years, raising more than $2.3 billion of funding . In May 2021, an experimental machine in China managed to sustain a fusion reaction at 120 million degrees Celsius for a record 101 seconds. A nuclear fusion start-up spun out of MIT just announced a massive capital raise of $1.8 billion following its successful demonstration in September of its high-temperature superconducting electromagnet, a key milestone on its path to develop an experimental reactor by 2025. In November, another nuclear fusion start-up company, Helion, secured $500 million to build what could be the first electricity-generating fusion facility by 2024. Also promising is TAE Technologies, which raised $880 million and has plans to manufacture prototype commercial fusion reactors by the end of the decade.

The third reason nuclear power is back at the center of the U.S. energy debate is national security, which has motivated recent efforts to invest in advanced reactors and retain the domestic nuclear industry. Since President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his famous “Atoms for Peace” speech at the United Nations in 1953, the U.S. government has seen a national security component to engagement with other countries on civilian nuclear energy. Participation in the supplier regime for reactor fuels and equipment, for example, affords Washington points of influence to shape nonproliferation aspects of other countries’ civilian programs.

Much has changed since the 20th century, however. The United States is no longer the predominant supplier of reactors; that title is currently held by Russia. Of the 72 nuclear reactors planned or under construction outside Russia’s borders in 2018, more than 50 percent involved Russian companies , and around 20 percent involved Chinese ones; fewer than 3 percent were being built by U.S. companies. China is especially well positioned to play a large role in the global nuclear energy regime given its gargantuan domestic reactor build program. In just over a decade, China looks likely to overtake the United States as possessing the world’s largest reactor fleet.

Two-thirds of new nuclear power capacity will be built in emerging market and developing economies in the IEA’s pathway to net-zero emissions by 2050. Countries around the world have many other capable suppliers to choose from if the United States exits the nuclear power sector—deliberately or otherwise. In that case, it will be Beijing and Moscow setting future norms for nuclear commerce and safety, with potentially negative consequences for nuclear nonproliferation efforts. Last year’s investment of more than $5 billion by the United States in advanced reactors was motivated to some degree by these national security risks, along with those of climate change.

To be clear, nuclear power is by no means a silver bullet and brings with it significant challenges and risks.

Disposal of spent nuclear fuel, in particular, remains a persistent challenge. While countries, including the United States, have opened disposal sites for low-level nuclear waste, progress on disposing of the high-level waste from commercial reactors has been elusive. Finland is now within a few years of potentially becoming the first country to successfully dispose of spent nuclear fuel from its power reactors, and other countries are making tangible progress as well. But in other nations, advances have been slow if at all discernible, and the U.S. program has effectively ceased to make progress in the last decade.

Chernobyl and Fukushima remain seared in the public’s memory, weakening popular support for nuclear energy. Yet nuclear power has resulted in vastly fewer deaths than other energy sources—especially when the basis of comparison is the amount of energy generated. For example, the number of deaths associated with coal-fired energy—including from mining accidents and air pollution—is around 350 times higher than from nuclear plants per terawatt-hour of power produced.

Nuclear power is not without problems. But at the same time, when we refer to climate change as a crisis and existential risk, too often we do not act as if we believe that rhetoric to be true. If we did, we would approach many of the tradeoffs involved in accelerating the pace of climate action differently. When it comes to nuclear power, support would be much stronger if we took our own rhetoric seriously. This is not to ignore the risks and the many other reasons to be skeptical about nuclear power. The question to ask, however, is whether it is easier to address nuclear power’s risks and challenges than to try to achieve net-zero without nuclear in the mix. Available evidence suggests it is.

Electricity use will grow dramatically as we decarbonize the energy system. Including zero-carbon nuclear power as part of a diverse mix of electricity sources will lower total costs, improve reliability and resilience, and help achieve the rapid decarbonization the world so urgently needs.

Jason Bordoff is a columnist at Foreign Policy , a co-founding dean at the Columbia Climate School, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, a professor of professional practice in international and public affairs, and a former senior director on the staff of the U.S. National Security Council and special assistant to former U.S. President Barack Obama. Twitter:  @JasonBordoff

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Why does the Nuclear Ban Treaty matter?

On 22 January 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has entered into force as the first instrument of international humanitarian law to mitigate the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of using and testing nuclear weapons.

1. Which countries have ratified the Nuclear Ban Treaty?

As of 22 January 2021, 51 countries across the world have ratified or acceded to the treaty :

Antigua and Barbuda, Austria, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Botswana, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Fiji, Gambia, Guyana, Holy See, Honduras, Ireland, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Lesotho, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mexico, Namibia, Nauru, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Niue, Palau, Palestine, Panama, Paraguay, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, South Africa, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam.

We banned the bomb! A rare piece of good news in 2020: nuclear weapons are about to become illegal, after the 50th State ratified the #NuclearBan . pic.twitter.com/zFS7WYQ0Ua — ICRC (@ICRC) October 24, 2020

In addition, 37 States have signed the Treaty but not yet ratified it, and some 40 States have expressed support for the Treaty in the UN but so far neither signed nor ratified. The ICRC is working to encourage States to take steps towards ratifying or adhering to this Treaty. And our work will not be done until all States have joined this Treaty.

2. What does the nuclear ban treaty make illegal?

The entry into force of the nuclear ban treaty – or the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, as it is officially called – bans the use, threat of use, development, testing, production, manufacturing, acquisition, possession or stockpiling of nuclear weapons. It also makes it illegal to assist, encourage or induce anyone, in any way, to engage in any activity prohibited by the Treaty.

From 22 January 2021, the Treaty is legally binding for the 51 States that have ratified or acceded to it, and in the future will bind other States when they join it.

The Treaty is the first instrument of international law to help mitigate the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of using and testing nuclear weapons, notably by requiring states to help victims of nuclear testing and use and clearing contaminated areas. It formalizes into law a strong international understanding, by States and civil society alike, that any use of nuclear weapons, regardless of its rationale is unacceptable.

By explicitly and unequivocally prohibiting the use of nuclear weapons , the TPNW sends a powerful signal that such use would not only be unacceptable from a moral and humanitarian perspective, but also illegal under international humanitarian law (IHL) .

3. Will the Nuclear Ban Treaty force nations to destroy their nuclear weapons?

Yes and no. The entry into force of the TPNW means that the treaty's provisions will be legally binding for the states that have ratified or acceded to it . States with nuclear weapons would either have to destroy their nuclear weapons before joining the Treaty, or commit to doing so according to a "legally binding, time-bound plan" that will eliminate their nuclear weapon programme in a verifiable and irreversible way.

However, for this to take effect, the nuclear weapons possessors will have to join the Treaty, which they have not yet done.

4. Now that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has entered into force, what will concretely change? Would the nuclear threat be closer to zero?

There is already a strong international rejection of the potential use of nuclear weapons. This taboo has stigmatized nuclear weapons as unacceptable means of warfare, from a moral, humanitarian and now also a legal point of view. Partly because of this, nuclear weapons have not been used since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

But as long as nuclear weapons exist, there is a risk that they may be used again, by accident, miscalculation or intent. And today, we see that the risk of use of nuclear weapons is growing. 

Make no mistake: the entry into force of the TPNW is a momentous achievement and a significant victory, but it marks a new beginning — and not the end — of our efforts to strengthen the taboo against nuclear use. It would therefore be illusory to expect the TPNW to deliver a world without nuclear weapons tomorrow. Rather, the TPNW should be viewed as the humanitarian, moral and legal starting point of a long-term effort to achieve nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. This is how international law works. 

This said, the norms established by previous weapons prohibitions in the past have impacted the policies of governments, companies and banks in countries that had not joined such treaties. The prohibitions of the TPNW establish a clear standard—a benchmark against which all efforts towards a world without nuclear weapons will be judged.

5. None of the countries who possess nuclear weapons have signed the treaty: what does it mean for them?

The nuclear ban treaty strengthens the taboo against use of nuclear weapons . As such, the treaty increases the pressure on the nuclear-armed States to reduce and eliminate their nuclear arsenals, in line with their international commitments and obligations, notably those under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The Treaty also gives actors advocating the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons a powerful tool of influence. Regardless of the time frame one believes is needed to achieve a world without nuclear weapons, an unambiguous norm establishing the illegality of such weapons will be needed.

6. What would happen to a nation who decides to launch a nuclear attack anyways?

Given the humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented proportions that any use of nuclear weapons is likely to generate, a nuclear attack would be met with widespread international condemnation and horror.

Their devastating and unmanageable consequences are an important reason why nuclear weapons haven't been used in 75 years .

As concluded by the ICRC, their catastrophic humanitarian consequences render it extremely doubtful that nuclear weapons could ever be used in line with international humanitarian law. This is also the reason why we must act now to prevent a nuclear explosion from happening in the first place, by removing any use and testing of nuclear weapons from the realm of possibility.

The entry into force of the nuclear ban treaty is the beginning – not the end.

7. What are the main differences between the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)? What does the TPNW does that the NPT didn't?

By providing pathways for the elimination of nuclear weapons, the TPNW is a concrete step towards fulfilling the NPT's disarmament obligations. However, the NPT is generally seen as a 'grand bargain' in which the non-nuclear-weapon States forsake the option of developing nuclear weapons in exchange, among others, for a legal obligation on the part of the nuclear-weapon States to disarm and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons.

The TPNW, in contrast, prohibits nuclear weapons outright, comprehensively, for all States Parties, irrespective of whether they possess nuclear weapons when they join the Treaty.

Importantly, the TPNW also prohibits the use of nuclear weapons, while the NPT is focused on the transfer, manufacture and acquisition of these weapons.

8. Doesn't the TPNW undermine the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)?

Far from undermining the NPT, the TPNW complements and supports the NPT's nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation objectives. Indeed, the TPNW's clear and comprehensive prohibition of nuclear weapons creates a further disincentive for the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It represents a concrete step towards implementing the NPT's Article VI obligation to pursue negotiations on effective measures for nuclear disarmament. 

Concerns about safeguarding the Non-Proliferation Treaty as the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament efforts should focus on ensuring the full and effective implementation of its article VI obligations and, in particular, the disarmament and risk reduction commitments undertaken in the Action Plan of the 2010 NPT Review Conference.

9. What's next now in the fight against nuclear weapons?

The entry into force of the TPNW marks a new start in our efforts to achieve a world without nuclear weapons. We must now work, over the coming years and decades, to promote adherence to the Treaty's prohibitions. This is the task currently at hand. Every signature and every ratification will bring us closer to realizing the potential of this Treaty. We must ensure that its provisions are faithfully implemented by States Parties.

In addition, we must keep urging the nuclear-armed States and their allies to take measures to reduce the risk that nuclear weapons may be used, notably by taking nuclear weapons off 'high alert' status and reducing the role of nuclear weapons in their security policies and military doctrines and in the long term, or course, to sign and ratify the Treaty .

More practically, the entry into force of the TPNW will kick-start its implementation, triggering the obligation for State Parties to declare, within a month, whether they possess nuclear weapons, and, if so, explain how they plan to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.

The first Meeting of States Parties must be organized within 12 months of the entry into force. This will create avenues to rally more State Parties and provide important opportunities to discuss how to most effectively assist victims and survivors of nuclear testing and use to remediate areas contaminated by radiation.

Finally, we must not forget that the evidence of their suffering and devastation provides the strongest reason for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons. We must therefore continue to raise awareness of the catastrophic humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons and the need to protect current and future generations from these uniquely horrific weapons.

We cannot prepare for the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear detonation. And what we cannot prepare for, we must prevent. To date, 86 States have signed the Treaty and 51 States have also ratified or acceded to it. Our work will not be done until all States have joined this Treaty.

...as long as nuclear weapons exist, there is a risk that they may be used again...

10. why do we need to ban nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons should be banned because they have unacceptable humanitarian consequences and pose a threat to humanity. The simple reality is that the international community could never hope to deal with the impact of nuclear weapons use.

If a nuclear bomb dropped tomorrow, this is what could happen to you. This is why we need a #nuclearban . pic.twitter.com/3xZc6E0OpD — ICRC (@ICRC) September 26, 2019

No nation is prepared to deal with the humanitarian catastrophe generated by a nuclear detonation. The effects of a nuclear weapon detonation, notably the radioactive fallout carried downwind, cannot be contained within national borders. 

Similarly, no international body could address, in an appropriate manner, the immediate humanitarian emergency nor the long-term consequences of a nuclear weapon detonation, in particular for detonations in or near a populated area, nor provide adequate assistance to those affected. Owing to the massive suffering and destruction caused by a nuclear detonation, it would probably not be possible to establish such capacities, even if attempted.

11. What would be the concrete impact of a nuclear confrontation?

First, the blast wave, thermal wave, radiation and radioactive fallout generated by nuclear explosions cause countless deaths and have devastating short- and long-term effects on the human body, which existing health services are not equipped to alleviate in any significant way. 

Then, a nuclear weapon detonation, especially those in or near a populated area, would likely trigger large-scale displacement, as well as long-term damage to the environment, infrastructure, socioeconomic development and social order. It would take several decades to reconstruct infrastructure and regenerate economic activities, trade, communications, health-care facilities and schools. 

Finally, modern environmental modelling techniques demonstrate that even a "small-scale" use of some 100 nuclear weapons would, in addition to spreading radiation around the world, lead to a cooling of the atmosphere, shorter growing seasons, food shortages and a global famine. That's why nuclear weapons constitute a threat not to any one individual country, but to humanity as a whole.

12. What can people do individually to support the ratification of the TPNW by more countries?

Citizens can raise awareness of what is at stake by putting the issue of nuclear weapons on the agendas of civic, religious, social and other organizations they're part of, spreading the word by sharing relevant ICRC content on social media platforms, and writing letters to local media to share these concerns.

"...we will continue to raise awareness of the catastrophic humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons..."

Depending on where individuals live, they can urge political leaders and those who can influence them to fulfill long-standing commitments to nuclear weapon reductions and elimination, join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and work urgently to reduce the risks that nuclear weapons may be used.

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10 Reasons to Oppose Nuclear Energy

Green America is active in  addressing the climate crisis  by transitioning the US electricity mix away from its heavy emphasis on coal-fired and natural gas power. But all of that work will be wasted if we transition from fossil fuels to an equally dangerous source – nuclear energy. Nuclear fission power is not a climate solution. It may produce lower-carbon energy, but this energy comes with a great deal of risk.

Solar power, wind power, geothermal power, hybrid and electric cars, and aggressive energy efficiency are  climate solutions  that are safer, cheaper, faster, more secure, and less wasteful than nuclear power. Our country needs a massive influx of investment in these solutions if we are to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, enjoy energy security, jump-start our economy, create jobs, and work to lead the world in development of clean energy.

Currently there are 444 nuclear fission power plants in 30 countries worldwide, with another 63 plants potentially under construction. Those plants should not be built for the following reasons:

Ten Strikes Against Nuclear Energy

1. nuclear waste:.

The waste generated by nuclear reactors remains radioactive for tens to hundreds of thousands of years (1). Currently, there are no long-term storage solutions for radioactive waste, and most is stored in temporary, above-ground facilities. These facilities are running out of storage space, so the nuclear industry is turning to other types of storage that are more costly and potentially less safe (2).

2. Nuclear proliferation:

There is great concern that the development of nuclear energy programs increases the likelihood of proliferation of nuclear weapons. As nuclear fuel and technologies become globally available, the risk of these falling into the wrong hands is increasingly present. To avoid weapons proliferation, it is important that countries with high levels of corruption and instability be discouraged from creating nuclear programs, and the US should be a leader in nonproliferation by not pushing for more nuclear power at home (3).

3. National security

Nuclear power plants are a potential target for terrorist operations. An attack could cause major explosions, putting population centers at risk, as well as ejecting dangerous radioactive material into the atmosphere and surrounding region. Nuclear research facilities, uranium enrichment plants, and uranium mines are also potentially at risk for attacks that could cause widespread contamination with radioactive material (9).

4. Accidents

In addition to the risks posed by terrorist attacks, human error and natural disasters can lead to dangerous and costly accidents. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine led to the deaths of 30 employees in the initial explosion and has has had a variety of negative health effects on thousands across Russia and Eastern Europe. A massive tsunami bypassed the safety mechanisms of several power plants in 2011, causing three nuclear meltdowns at a power plant in Fukushima, Japan, resulting in the release of radioactive materials into the surrounding area. In both disasters, hundreds of thousands were relocated, millions of dollars spent, and the radiation-related deaths are being evaluated to this day. Cancer rates among populations living in proximity to Chernobyl and Fukushima, especially among children, rose significantly in the years after the accidents (4)(5).

5. Cancer risk

In addition to the significant risk of cancer associated with fallout from nuclear disasters, studies also show increased risk for those who reside near a nuclear power plant, especially for childhood cancers such as leukemia (6)(7)(8). Workers in the nuclear industry are also exposed to higher than normal levels of radiation, and as a result are at a higher risk of death from cancer (10).

6. Energy production

The 444 nuclear power plants currently in existence provide about 11% of the world’s energy (11). Studies show that in order to meet current and future energy needs, the nuclear sector would have to scale up to around 14,500 plants. Uranium, the fuel for nuclear reactors, is energy-intensive to mine, and deposits discovered in the future are likely to be harder to get to to. As a result, much of the net energy created would be offset by the energy input required to build and decommission plants and to mine and process uranium ore. The same is true for any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions brought about by switching from coal to nuclear (12).

7. Not enough sites

Scaling up to 14,500 nuclear plants isn’t possible simply due to the limitation of feasible sites. Nuclear plants need to be located near a source of water for cooling, and there aren’t enough locations in the world that are safe from droughts, flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes, or other potential disasters that could trigger a nuclear accident. The increase in extreme weather events predicted by climate models only compounds this risk.

Unlike renewables, which are now the cheapest energy sources, nuclear costs are on the rise, and many plants are being shut down or in danger of being shut down for economic reasons. Initial capital costs, fuel, and maintenance costs are much higher for nuclear plants than wind and solar, and nuclear projects tend to suffer  cost overruns  and construction delays. The price of renewable energy has fallen significantly over the past decade, and it projected to continue to fall (14).

9. Competition with renewables

Investment in nuclear plants, security, mining infrastructure, etc. draws funding away from investment in cleaner sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal. Financing for renewable energy is already scarce, and increasing nuclear capacity will only add to the competition for funding.

10. Energy dependence of poor countries

Going down the nuclear route would mean that poor countries, that don't have the financial resources to invest in and develop nuclear power, would become reliant on rich, technologically advanced nations. Alternatively, poor nations without experience in the building and maintaining of nuclear plants may decide to build them anyway. Countries with a history of nuclear power use have learned the importance of regulation, oversight, and investment in safety when it comes to nuclear. Dr. Peter Bradford of Vermont Law, a former member of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, writes, "A world more reliant on nuclear power would involve many plants in countries that have little experience with nuclear energy, no regulatory background in the field and some questionable records on quality control, safety and corruption." (15). The U.S. should lead by example and encourage poor countries to invest in safe energy technology.

Please also see the piece  Nuclear Energy is not a Climate Solution

(1) Bruno, J., and R. C. Ewing. "Spent Nuclear Fuel."  Elements  2.6 (2006): 343-49

(2) United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Dry Cask Storage”.  USNRC  (2016)

(3) Miller, Steven E., and Scott D. Sagan. "Nuclear Power without Nuclear Proliferation?"  Daedalus  138.4 (2009): 7-18

(4) Tsuda, Toshihide, Akiko Tokinobu, Eiji Yamamoto, and Etsuji Suzuki. "Thyroid Cancer Detection by Ultrasound Among Residents Ages 18 Years and Younger in Fukushima, Japan."  Epidemiology  (2016): 316-22.

(5) Astakhova, Larisa N., Lynn R. Anspaugh, Gilbert W. Beebe, André Bouville, Vladimir V. Drozdovitch, Vera Garber, Yuri I. Gavrilin, Valeri T. Khrouch, Arthur V. Kuvshinnikov, Yuri N. Kuzmenkov, Victor P. Minenko, Konstantin V. Moschik, Alexander S. Nalivko, Jacob Robbins, Elena V. Shemiakina, Sergei Shinkarev, Svetlana I. Tochitskaya, Myron A. Waclawiw, and Andre Bouville. "Chernobyl-Related Thyroid Cancer in Children of Belarus: A Case-Control Study."  Radiation Research  150.3 (1998): 349

(6) Schmitz-Feuerhake I, Dannheim B, Heimers A, et al. Leukemia in the proximity of a boiling-water nuclear reactor: Evidence of population exposure by chromosome studies and environmental radioactivity.  Environmental Health Perspectives  105 (1997): 1499-1504

(7) Spix C, Schmiedel S, Kaatsch P, Schulze-Rath R, Blettner M. "Case–control study on childhood cancer in the vicinity of nuclear power plants in Germany 1980–2003."  European Journal of Cancer  44.2 (2008): 275–284

(8) Baker PJ, Hoel DG. "Meta-analysis of standardized incidence and mortality rates of childhood leukemia in proximity to nuclear facilities."  European Journal of Cancer Care  16.4 (2007):355–363

(9) Ferguson, Charles D., and Frank A. Settle. "The Future of Nuclear Power in the United States."  Federation of American Scientists  (2012)

(10) Richardson, DB, Elisabeth Cardis, Robert Daniels, Michael Gillies, Jacqueline A O’Hagan, Ghassan B Hamra, Richard Haylock, Dominique Laurier, Klervi Leuraud, Monika Moissonnier, Mary K Schubauer-Berigan, Isabelle Thierry-Chef, Ausrele Kesminiene. "Risk of Cancer from Occupational Exposure to Ionising Radiation: Retrospective Cohort Study of Workers in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States"  BMJ  (2015)

(11) "World Statistics."  nei.org.  Nuclear Energy Institute.,Web. 04 Oct. 2016.

(12) Pearce, Joshua M. "Thermodynamic Limitations to Nuclear Energy Deployment as a Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Technology."  International Journal of Nuclear Governance ,  Economy and Ecology  2.1 (2008): 113.

(13) "World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2014."  World Nuclear Industry Status Report . World Nuclear Industry, July 2014. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

(14) "Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis  - Version 9.0. "  Lazard.com . Lazard. 2015.

(15) Lynas, Mark, and Peter Bradford. "Should the World Increase Its Reliance on Nuclear Energy?"  The Wall Street Journal . Dow Jones & Company, 08 Oct. 2012. Web. 10 Jan. 2017.

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Nuclear weapons: Why reducing the risk of nuclear war should be a key concern of our generation

The consequences of nuclear war would be devastating. much more should – and can – be done to reduce the risk that humanity will ever fight such a war..

The shockwave and heat that the detonation of a single nuclear weapon creates can end the lives of millions of people immediately.

But even larger is the devastation that would follow a nuclear war.

The first reason for this is nuclear fallout. Radioactive dust from the detonating bombs rises up into the atmosphere and spreads out over large areas of the world from where it falls down and causes deadly levels of radiation.

The second reason is less widely known. But this consequence – 'nuclear winter' and the worldwide famine that would follow – is now believed to be the most serious consequence of nuclear war.

Cities that are attacked by nuclear missiles burn at such an intensity that they create their own wind system, a firestorm: hot air above the burning city ascends and is replaced by air that rushes in from all directions. The storm-force winds fan the flames and create immense heat.

From this firestorm, large columns of smoke and soot rise up above the burning cities and travel all the way up to the stratosphere. There it spreads around the planet and blocks the sun’s light. At that great height – far above the clouds – it cannot be rained out, meaning that it will remain there for years, darkening the sky and thereby drying and chilling the planet.

The nuclear winter that would follow a large-scale nuclear war is expected to lead to temperature declines of 20 or even 30 degrees Celsius (60–86° F) in many of the world’s agricultural regions – including much of Eurasia and North America. Nuclear winter would cause a 'nuclear famine'. The world’s food production would fail and billions of people would starve. 1

These consequences – nuclear fallout and nuclear winter leading to famine – mean that the destruction caused by nuclear weapons is not contained to the battlefield. It would not just harm the attacked country. Nuclear war would devastate all countries, including the attacker.

The possibility of global devastation is what makes the prospect of nuclear war so very terrifying. And it is also why nuclear weapons are so unattractive for warfare. A weapon that can lead to self-destruction is not a weapon that can be used strategically.

US President Reagan put it in clear words at the height of the Cold War: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?” 2

Nuclear stockpiles have been reduced, but the risk remains high

40 years after Reagan’s words, the Cold War is over and nuclear stockpiles have been reduced considerably, as the chart shows.

The world has learned that nuclear armament is not the one-way street that it was once believed to be. Disarmament is possible.

But the chart also shows that there are still almost ten thousand nuclear weapons distributed among nine countries on our planet, at least. 3 Each of these weapons can cause enormous destruction; many are much larger than the ones that the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 4

Collectively these weapons are immensely destructive. The nuclear winter scenario outlined above would kill billions of people— billions— in the years that follow a large-scale nuclear war, even if it was fought “only” with today’s reduced stockpiles. 5

It is unclear whether humanity as a species could possibly survive a full-scale nuclear war with the current stockpiles. 6 A nuclear war might well be humanity’s final war.

Close Calls: Instances that threatened to push the ‘balance of terror’ out of balance and into war

The ‘balance of terror’ is the idea that all involved political leaders are so scared of nuclear war that they never launch a nuclear attack.

If this is achievable at all, it can only be achieved if all nuclear powers keep their weapons in check. This is because the balance is vulnerable to accidents: a nuclear bomb that detonates accidentally – or even just a false alarm, with no weapons even involved – can trigger nuclear retaliation because several countries keep their nuclear weapons on ‘launch on warning’; in response to a warning, their leaders can decide within minutes whether they want to launch a retaliatory strike.

For the balance of terror to be a balance, all parties need to be in control at all times. This however is not the case.

In the timeline, you can read through some of the close calls during the past decades.

The risk of nuclear war might well be low – because neither side would want to fight such a war that would have such awful consequences for everyone on the planet. But there is a risk that the kinds of technical errors and accidents listed here could lead accidentally to the use of nuclear weapons, as a nuclear power can incorrectly come to believe that they are under attack.

This is why false alarms, errors, and close calls are so crucial to monitor: they are the incidents that can push the ‘balance of terror’ out of balance and into war.

Accidents and errors are of course not the only possible path that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. There is the risk of a terribly irresponsible person leading a country possessing nuclear weapons. There is the risk of nuclear terrorism, possibly after a terrorist organization steals weapons. There is the possibility that hackers can take control of the nuclear chain of command. And there is the possibility that several of these factors play a role at the same time.

A timeline of nuclear weapons ‘close calls’ 7

Below this post, you find additional lists of close calls, where you find much more information on each of these incidents.

How to reduce the risk of nuclear war?

An escalating conflict between nuclear powers – but also an accident, a hacker, a terrorist, or an irresponsible leader – could lead to the detonation of nuclear weapons.

Those risks only go to zero if all nuclear weapons are removed from the world. I believe this is what humanity should work towards, but it is exceedingly hard to achieve, at least in the short term. It is therefore important to see that there are additional ways that can reduce the chance of the world suffering the horrors of nuclear war. 8

A more peaceful world : Many world regions in which our ancestors fought merciless wars over countless generations are extraordinarily peaceful in our times. The rise of democracy, international trade, diplomacy, and a cultural attitude shift against the glorification of war are some of the drivers credited for this development. 9

Making the world a more peaceful place will reduce the risk of nuclear confrontation. Efforts that reduce the chance of any war reduce the chance of nuclear war.

Nuclear treaties : Several non-proliferation treaties have been key in achieving the large reduction of nuclear stockpiles. However, key treaties – like the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty between the US and Russia – have been suspended and additional agreements could be reached.

The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which became effective in 2021, is a recent development in this direction.

Smaller nuclear stockpiles : Reducing the stockpiles further is seen as an important and achievable goal by experts.

It is considered achievable because smaller stockpiles would still provide the deterrence benefits from nuclear weapons. And it is important as it reduces the risk of accidents and the chance that a possible nuclear war would end civilization.

Better monitoring, better control: The risk can be further reduced by efforts to better control nuclear weapons – so that close calls occur less frequently. Similarly better monitoring systems would reduce the chance of false alarms.

Taking nuclear weapons off ‘hair-trigger alert’ would reduce the risk that any accident that does occur can rapidly spiral out of control. And a well-resourced International Atomic Energy Agency can verify that the agreements in the treaties are met.

Better public understanding, global relations, and culture : Finally I also believe that it will help to see clearly that billions of us share the same goal. None of us wants to live through a nuclear war, none of us wants to die in one. As Reagan said, a nuclear war cannot be won and it would be better to do away with these weapons entirely.

A generation ago a broad and highly visible societal movement pursued the goal of nuclear disarmament. These efforts were to a good extent successful. But since then, this goal has unfortunately lost much of the attention it once received – and this is despite the fact that things have not fundamentally changed: the world still possesses weapons that could kill billions. 10 I wish it was a more prominent concern in our generation so that more young people would set themselves the goal to make the world safe from nuclear weapons.

Below this post you find resources on where you can get engaged or donate, to help reduce the danger from nuclear weapons.

I believe some dangers are exaggerated – for example, I believe that the fear of terrorist attacks is often wildly out of proportion with the actual risk. But when it comes to nuclear weapons I believe the opposite is true.

There are many today who hardly give nuclear conflict a thought and I think this is a big mistake.

For eight decades, people have been producing nuclear weapons. Several countries have dedicated vast sums of money to their construction. And now we live in a world in which these weapons endanger our entire civilization and our future.

These destructive weapons are perhaps the clearest example that technology and innovation are not only forces for good, they can also enable catastrophic destruction.

Without the Second World War and the Cold War, the world might have never developed these weapons and we might find the idea that anyone could possibly build such weapons unimaginable. But this is not the world we live in. We live in a world with weapons of enormous destructiveness and we have to see the risks that they pose to all of us and find ways to reduce them.

I hope that there are many in the world today who take on the challenge to make the world more peaceful and to reduce the risk from nuclear weapons. The goal has to be that humanity never ends up using this most destructive technology that we ever developed.

Resources to continue reading and finding ways to reduce the risk of nuclear weapons

• Hiroshima : John Hersey’s report for the New Yorker about the bombing of Hiroshima, published in August 1946.
• ’80,000 Hours’ profile on Nuclear Security : an article focusing on the question of how to choose a career that makes the world safer from nuclear weapons.
• The ‘Future of Life Institute’ on Nuclear Weapons : this page includes an extensive list of additional references – including videos, research papers, and many organizations that are dedicated to reducing the risk from nuclear weapons.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Charlie Giattino, Hannah Ritchie, and Edouard Mathieu for reading drafts of this and for their very helpful comments and ideas.

Additional lists of close calls with nuclear weapons

* Future of Life Institute – Accidental nuclear war: A timeline of close calls .

* Alan F. Philips, M.D. – 20 Mishaps That Might Have Started Accidental Nuclear War , published on Nuclear Files

* Josh Harkinson (2014) – That Time We Almost Nuked North Carolina

* Union of Concerned Scientists (2015) – Close Calls with Nuclear Weapons

* Chatham House Report (2014) – Too Close for Comfort: Cases of Near Nuclear Use and Options for Policy authored by Patricia Lewis, Heather Williams, Benoît Pelopidas, and Sasan Aghlani

* Wikipedia – List of Nuclear Close Calls

On Nuclear Winter see:

* Jägermeyr, Jonas, Alan Robock, Joshua Elliott, Christoph Müller, Lili Xia, Nikolay Khabarov, Christian Folberth, et al. (2020) – ‘ A Regional Nuclear Conflict Would Compromise Global Food Security’ . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 13 (31 March 2020): 7071–81.

* Robock, A., L. Oman, and G. L. Stenchikov (2007) – Nuclear winter revisited with a modern climate model and current nuclear arsenals: Still catastrophic consequences , J. Geophys. Res., 112, D13107, doi:10.1029/2006JD008235.

* Alan Robock & Owen Brian Toon (2012) – Self-assured destruction: The climate impacts of nuclear war . In Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 68, 66–74.

* Alan Robock & Owen Brian Toon (2016) – Let’s End the Peril of a Nuclear Winter , In the New York Times, Feb. 11, 2016.

Some additional points:

* The risk of nuclear winter (initially termed ‘nuclear twilight’) was only discovered in the early 1980s, more than 3 decades after the bombs were first used.

* The main mechanism by which a nuclear winter is expected to cause a decline in global food production is by reducing the growing season, the days in a row without frost. See Robock, Oman, and Stenchikov (2007).

* Robock estimates that the smoke and soot would rise as high as 40 kilometers (25 miles) into the atmosphere. See Robock and Toon (2016).

* Before the nuclear famine kills people from hunger, many will die from hypothermia.

* In addition to the impact on the climate, the ozone layer is expected to get depleted in such a scenario. This would allow more ultraviolet radiation to reach our planet’s surface, harming plant and animal life.

* In general there is only relatively little scientific work that focuses on nuclear winter and additional, good research could be useful to provide a better understanding. Due to the lack of research there remains uncertainty about how devastating a nuclear winter would be. In particular there is disagreement on how likely it is that all of humanity would die in a nuclear winter.

* The paper by Jägermeyr et al (2020) shows that among the countries with the largest food production losses would be the US and Russia, those countries that have the largest stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

For anyone who interested in the impact of nuclear winter on food production and famine, Ord (2020) cites the following:

* Cropper, W. P., and Harwell, M. A. (1986) – “Food Availability after Nuclear War,” in M. A. Harwell and T. C. Hutchinson (eds.), The Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War (SCOPE 28), vol. 2: Ecological, Agricultural, and Human Effects. John Wiley and Sons.

* Helfand, I. (2013) – Nuclear Famine: Two Billion People at Risk? Physicians for Social Responsibility.

* Xia, L., Robock, A., Mills, M., Stenke, A., and Helfand, I. (2015) – Decadal Reduction of Chinese Agriculture after a Regional Nuclear War . Earth’s Future, 3(2), 37–48.

Reagan in his State of the Union address in 1984, quoted in the New York Times: Bernard Gwertzman (1984) – Reagan reassures Russians on war . In the New York Times January 26, 1984.

There are nine countries that are known to possess nuclear weapons: Russia, United States, France, China, United Kingdom, Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea. South Africa once possessed nuclear weapons and is the first state to voluntarily give up nuclear weapons.

The explosive power of a nuclear weapon is called the yield of a nuclear weapon. It is the amount of energy released when that weapon is detonated. It is usually measured in ‘TNT equivalents’.

The bomb that the US dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 13–18 kilotons of TNT. (one kiloton are 1000 tonnes)

The largest bomb that was ever detonated is the ‘Tsar Bomba’ built by the USSR and detonated in October 1961. Its yield was about 50 megatons of TNT. That’s 50,000 kilotons of TNT or about 3,333-times the yield of the bomb in Hiroshima.

The scenario in Robock, Oman, and Stenchikov (2007) is based on the nuclear stockpiles after the large reduction that was achieved after the end of the Cold War. It shows that the world still retains enough weapons to produce “a large, long-lasting, unprecedented global climate change,” as the authors put it. Since the publication of this study, the stockpiles have been reduced further, as the chart shows, but not very strongly so.

For a recent discussion of this question see Ord (2020) – The Precipice.

This list is largely based on Toby Ord’s 2020 book The Precipice . His list can be found in Chapter 4 and Appendix C of his book.

Ord in turn relies mostly on a document from the US Department of Defense from 1981: Narrative Summaries of Accidents Involving US Nuclear Weapons (1950–1980) .

This list is mostly based on the ’80,000 Hours’ profile on Nuclear Security and Toby Ord (2020) – The Precipice.

For big overviews of this literature see the forthcoming book Christopher Blattman (2022) – Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace and Steven Pinker (2011) – The Better Angels of our Nature for a big overview

Lawrence S. Wittner – Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement . Stanford University Press.

One indication for the declining interest in the last generation: Mentions of “nuclear war” in books and newspapers peaked in 1985 and declined strongly since then (see Google Ngram for ‘nuclear war’ ).

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• Social Issues

Nuclear Power

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Nuclear Energy

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Should nuclear power be banned?

Nuclear power is one of the latest ways to make energy. Although it is non-renewable it provides 6.3% of the world’s energy and 15% of the world’s electricity. It is designed to extract energy from the nucleus of a Uranium atom. Unlike fossil fuels, nuclear power doesn’t give off any greenhouse gases but produces radioactive and nuclear waste.

France, Japan, and the United States of America generated 56.5% of nuclear power. In 2007, there were 439 nuclear power reactors operating around the world in 31 different countries. “The United States produces the most nuclear energy, with nuclear power providing 19% of the electricity it consumes, while France produces the highest percentage of its electrical energy from nuclear reactors – 78% as of 2006. The Nuclear energy policy differs between European Union countries, and some, such as Austria and Ireland, have no active nuclear power stations. In comparison, France has a large number of these plants with 16 multi-unit stations in current use.” according to Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power)

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“The atom is a basic unit of matter consisting of a dense, central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons. The electrons of an atom are bound to the nucleus by the electromagnetic force. Likewise, a group of atoms can remain bound to each other, forming a molecule. An atom containing an equal number of protons and electrons is electrically neutral; otherwise it has a positive or negative charge and is an ion. An atom is classified according to the number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus: the number of protons determines the chemical element, and the numbers of neutrons determine the isotope of the element.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom)

Nuclear power can be produced in the following ways:

1. Nuclear Fusion

2. Nuclear Fission

Nuclear Fusion

In nuclear fusion, energy is released by fusion of two light elements. This creates a larger atom. This is also the power that fuels the sun and all the other stars. (http://www.atomicarchive.com/Fusion/Fusion1.shtml)

Nuclear Fission

1. “Nuclear fission is a nuclear reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts, often producing free neutrons and lighter nuclei, which may eventually produce photons” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission)

Nuclear power plant

Nuclear power plants are genarally clean and efficient to operate but have major environmental risks bacuase it produces radioactive gases. These gases are normally kept inside the power plant but occasionally leak out. This means that major health risks can occur.

Nuclear power plants use uranium to as the fuel to produce power. The handling and mining of uranium is very dangerous and radiation leaks can occour.

“Uranium is a silvery-gray metallic chemical element and it has 146 electrons and 92 protons.” It is found underground. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium)

My case study is about wheather nuclear power should be banned. Here are the reasons for and agianst in more detail.

Lets stop a second, do we want to keep using fossil fuels until there is none left and then remember we banned nuclear power and have no real fuel left to make energy? Of course not, we want to have an alternative fuel source when fossil fuels run out. This is why we have nuclear power.

Although we have other sources of energy such as solar, geothermal, wind, tidal and biomass, nuclear is used the most worldwide. “Nuclear energy has always had its proponents, their ranks swollen now by people who dislike the technology but believe it may be essential. They point out that a reactor emits virtually no carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas released from human activities (though of course building the power station produces a lot of CO2).”(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4216302.stm)

I agree with this because we (human beings) have destroyed earth with fossil fuels. Although people say to use renewable sources it couldn’t provide us with enough energy and nuclear can. It may be non renewable but it has a much lower risk of affecting the environment with radio active gases than greenhouse gases.

“Since there are rising fuel costs, concerns about global warming and the growing demand from the developing world for energy, the burning question is whether the world needs nuclear power. Peter Hodgson, a nuclear physicist, says yes. Dennis Anderson, an economist, says that we should first explore the possibilities of renewable and other forms of energy. Finding ways of satisfying our energy needs is such an urgent problem that we must consider all possible sources, and evaluate them as objectively as possible, writes Peter Hodgson. In doing so, it is useful to apply the following criteria: capacity, cost, safety, reliability and environmental effects. No source can satisfy all our energy needs, and although there are several small-scale energy sources, such as solar panels for satellites, we must focus on the major sources such as nuclear power.”(http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/128)

Wood used to be a main energy source in ancient times but however impractical as a major energy source because we need to cut down trees to get the wood and we need the trees to take in the vast amount of carbon dioxide in the air mainly caused by fossil fuels. It is also wasteful to burn just like natural gas.

Another possibility is hydropower because it is an important source of energy, particularly as it is renewable and does not pollute the atmosphere. However it takes up too much land and supplies are limited since there are not many suitable rivers to do so. By geographical consideration tidal power is even more limited.

Further wind power isn’t suitable because it varies on the weather. In some parts of the world it will work very well but in others it won’t since the amount of wind will not be strong enough to turn the turbine. The amount of energy produced just won’t be enough to supply the world’s population. Also the lon term effect will make it too expensive especially now since the prices of many items have gone up.

Furthermore solar power isn’t suitable because it too also varies on the weather. In the countries in or near the equator it would be very good since it you have a lot of sunlight but every where in the world you have darkness at night some point in the year. This is when solar power is useless to get enough energy for the whole population with out fossil fuels you would need it in every country on every house and ensure it stays sunny for 24 hours 7 days a week every year. We all know that this will not happen and therefore it will not work. Also the cost of the solar panels will cost so much in the long run and will not provide the whole population with energy to start their cookers, heaters etc.

Geothermal energy is also renewable and isn’t suitable for a main energy source because geothermal energy is generated from heat underneath the earths crust. This heat comes mainly from the earth’s core. This means getting heat from volcanoes since the magma from the volcanoes comes from the core. If you do this you will need a lot of volcanoes to do so but there are not enough to give the entire population energy to heat their heaters or to start their cookers without fossil fuels. Also the machines that turn the heat into energy will cost a lot as well just like all the others.

Other advantages are that the technology is readily available and doesn’t have to be developed further.

Also because it is impossible to produce high amounts of electrical energy in one single plant (http://timeforchange.org/pros-and-cons-of-nuclear-power-and-sustainability)

Moreover nuclear power should be banned because it costs so much to build the power plants. Since there is also a major health risk that can occur if the radioactive gases leak out.

If nuclear power falls into the wrong hands such as terrorism, it can be lethal and can cause many people to die. Also if there is a mistake at the power plant many parts of the country around it would suffer terribly as well.

According to Greenpeace “Even if Britain built ten new reactors, nuclear power can only deliver a 4 per cent cut in carbon emissions some time after 2025. Even the Government admits this (Sustainable Development Commission figure). It’s too little too late at too high a price.”

Greenpeace also say “Most of the gas we use is for heating and hot water and for industrial purposes. Nuclear power cannot replace that energy. And it’s a similar case for oil as it’s virtually all used for transport – nuclear power can’t take its place. Indeed, 86 per cent of our oil and gas consumption is for purposes other than producing electricity. So nuclear power, which can only generate electricity, is almost irrelevant.” (http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/nuclear/the-case-against-nuclear-power-20080108)

I agree with Greenpeace because there is no point in having an alternative fuel just to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere when it hardly helps the environment at all. There are more disadvantages than advantages in nuclear power. I also agree with them because there is not a point in getting rid of oil and gas for nuclear power when we use oil and gas for other things apart from electricity while nuclear can only provide us with electricity.

“Nuclear power produces radioactive waste that remains dangerous for tens of thousands of years. The Government still does not know what to do with the waste that has accumulated from more than 50 years of nuclear power. Costs of disposal are estimated at about £56bn.” According to the independen (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/yes-please-no-thanks-for-and-against-nuclear-power-517402.html)

I feel very strongly about this because people in the world don’t have enough money to survive and the British government is wasting £56bn (£5600000000) on the dumping of radioactive gases.

When nuclear gases leak, major things can happen like in Russia, at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. “It is so far the worst nuclear power plant accident in history and the only level 7 instance on the International Nuclear Event Scale, resulting in a severe release of radioactivity into the environment following a massive power excursion which destroyed the reactor. Two people died in the initial steam explosion, but most deaths from the accident were attributed to fallout.”

This is a brief of what happened in the day of the explosion “On 26 April 1986 at 01:23:45 a.m. (UTC+3) reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant, near Pripyat in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, exploded. Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima”

“Although not much waste is produced, it is very, very dangerous. It must be sealed up and buried for many thousands of years to allow the radioactivity to die away. For all that time it must be kept safe from earthquakes, flooding, terrorists and everything else. This is difficult. Nuclear power is reliable, but a lot of money has to be spent on safety – if it does go wrong, a nuclear accident can be a major disaster. People are increasingly concerned about this – in the 1990’s nuclear power was the fastest-growing source of power in much of the world. In 2005 it was the second slowest-growing.” These are the reasons why darvill think nuclear power is dangerous. (http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/nuclear.htm#dis)

I agree with this because it is very hard to keep major destruction weapons from terrorist.

The alternative view point is to use renewable sources of energy or keep using fossil fuels.

Solar energy is light from the sun that influences Earth’s climate and weather and sustains life. We use solar panels to convert the light into energy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy)

Wind energy is when the wind blows. It is converted into energy with a turbine. When the wind pushes the blades on the turbine, it makes wind power. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_energy)

Tidal energy is a form of hydro power that converts tides into electricity and other useful forms of power. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_energy)

Geothermal energy is heat stored inside the earth or the collection of absorbed heat derived from underground, in the atmosphere and oceans. It is converted into energy using a power plant just like nuclear power. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power)

Fossil fuels are coal, natural gas and oil. It is the most common usage of fuel world wide today and is producing green house gases. It is affecting the climate and causing global warming.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuels)

In my concluding statement I conclude that nuclear power shouldn’t be banned because it can produce vast amounts of electricity and more than a fossil fuel plant. Since fossil fuels are now very limited it is now time for other sources of energy to step in, other sources of energy like nuclear power. Since it produces virtually no carbon dioxide or greenhouse gases into the atmosphere it shouldn’t be a problem.

Like other energy sources people don’t always agree with them. This is because nuclear power causes radioactive gases. Radioactive gases are lethal. It can kill so many people just from the side effect. This is why they bury it under desserts so that it is more or less harmless.

This isn’t the best idea in my opinion because radioactive waste stays active over 100 and 100 of years, if not 1000 of years just. Terrorist use this to their advantage because they know its there for a long time and eventually find it and use it in very bad ways by creating it into bombes and terrorizing cities. A nuclear bomb could destroy the whole of London even from a mile of the ground.

Further there was a Russian nuclear power plant that blew up because radioactive gases had leaked. “Two people died in the initial steam explosion, but most deaths from the accident were attributed to fallout.”

I still think that nuclear power is the only way forward after fossil fuels although it has its glitches. I say this because all renewable fuels will not be able to provide enough energy to provide the worlds population. This is because they all have major problems.

Solar power needs sunlight. It will be good near the equator because there is a lot of sunlight. But in the darkness at night it is useless.

Wind power needs to wind. This depends on the weather and the amount of wind. If there was not enough wind to push the blades on the turbine it would be useless.

Hydropower is a good source of energy but the cost is very expensive. This source is very limited and couldn’t provide the world with enough energy. Therefore this is also useless.

Nuclear power may be expensive to generate and dump the radioactive gases but can provide enough energy for the world.

These are the results of the survey I carried out in my neighborhood:

Frequency (people)

No 21 Don’t Know 6

I believe that nuclear power shouldn’t be banned because it provides almost 20% of the western worlds energy needs and is a clean fuel. When the oil runs out alternative sources of energy production would be required.

Moreover it does have its bad points such as radioactive gases and decommissioning costs are very high. The every day maintenance costs are also very high.

I do think that Wikipedia is an untrustworthy site because you can easily change the listing whereas BBC news or The Guardian is trustworthy because you cannot edit their site and is updated daily but however it can generally be biased.

1. http://www.macalester.edu/environmentalstudies/students/projects/nuclearpowerwebsite/images/action-at-the-nuclear-power-pl.jpg 2. http://helloworldbea.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/flowernuke.jpg 3. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Nuclear_power_stations.png 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom 6. http://www.atomicarchive.com/Fusion/Fusion1.shtml 7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission 8. http://www.lightandmatter.com/html_books/4em/ch02/figs/nuclear-power-plant.jpg 9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium 10. http://z.about.com/d/chemistry/1/0/0/R/uranium.jpg 11. http://prototypes.pbwiki.com/f/atom2.gif 12. http://www.green-planet-solar-energy.com/images/nuclear_fission_good_2a.jpg 13. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4216302.stm this is reliable because the article cannot tell lies or things that are not true. 14. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/128 15. http://www.green-planet-solar-energy.com/images/nuclear_fission_good_2a.jpg this is true but can be biased since they don’t like non renewable sources of energy. 16. http://www.niwa.cri.nz/__data/assets/image/0015/50532/hydropower2_large.jpg 17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydropower

18. http://www.coal-is-dirty.com/files/images/blogentry/wind-power.jpg

19. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_energy 20. http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/45/99545-004-404C20FE.jpg 21. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy 22. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power 23. http://www.treehugger.com/geothermal-power-plant-i01.jpg 24. http://timeforchange.org/pros-and-cons-of-nuclear-power-and-sustainability 25. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/nuclear/the-case-against-nuclear-power-20080108 26. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/yes-please-no-thanks-for-and-against-nuclear-power-517402.html 27. http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/nuclear.htm#dis

28. http://mesikammen.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/nuclear-bomb-badger350.jpg 29. http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/coldwar/images/chernobyl.jpg

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Israel and the US are currently balancing against Iran because both perceive a nucleararmed Iran as a threat to regional and world security. But does balancing really work? Does it reduce threat and provide security? I will use Stephan M. Walt’s “Balance of Threat” theory to address these questions. In addition to Walt’s theory, I assume that perceiving a state’s intention(s) as aggressive is decisive for that state being (perceived as) a threat. I hypothesise that balancing fails and likely backfires in that it exacerbates the security dilemma and reinforces the threat perceived by the balancing states (Israel und the US). The use of balancing strategies in the current Iranian nuclear crisis would be futile and, if anything, would only strengthen the belief in Tehran that Iranian nuclear weapons are a necessary means of deterrence and self-defence.

George P. Shultz & James E. Goodby (edt.) The War That Must Never Be Fought: Dilemmas of Nuclear Deterrence

Katarzyna Kubiak

Chapter 6 is a comparative analysis of German and Polish thinking about managing nuclear issues. The two countries have viewed security negotiations with Russia through different lenses, but the authors find important areas of consensus. They suggest promising ways to create a cooperative security regime in Europe.

Benoit Pelopidas

In this paper, I address three of the most frequently used arguments for maintaining a significant measure of dependence for international security on nuclear deterrence both globally and regionally: Nuclear weapons have deterred great powers from waging war against each other, so a world without nuclear weapons will lead to, or at least might encourage, great-power war. The US nuclear umbrella has deterred nuclear proliferation, so the reduction of the US nuclear arsenal will undermine the credibility of US extended deterrence and create additional incentives for nuclear proliferation. Nuclear weapons have deterred other powers from invading the territory of those states that possess nuclear weapons and thus leaders of countries with relatively weak conventional capabilities will keep their weapons as an equalizer. A version of this argument focuses on dictatorial regimes or “rogue states” whose very existence depends on their having nuclear weapons. After showing that these arguments are not as convincing as their frequency suggests, I delineate opportunities that advocates for a nuclear-free world or a world with few nuclear weapons should exploit on their way to advancing their goal, based on the decoupling of nuclear weapons and deterrence.

Pedro Fernandes

Vera Stofer

Seventy-three years after the first nuclear bomb was detonated, the debate of nuclear proliferation does not appear to have come close in providing a clear-cut answer. There are two theoretical schools which have dominated the debate of the spread of nuclear weapons among both scholars and policymakers circles. Nuclear optimism is proposed by the realist and neorealist school of international relations whereas nuclear pessimists is put forward by organizational theorists. Neo-realists use rational deterrence theory to support their view of the world should welcome the spread of nuclear weapons and argue the existence of the nuclear weapons have promoted international peace and stability under the assumption that states behave in absolute rational when it comes to states survival (Waltz, 1981). On the contrary, organizational theorists shield light on flaws of organizations, such as the internal power struggle, rigid routine and standard operation procedures, which limit the rationality of states and military establishments. They argue organization behaviors are likely to lead to deterrence failure, preventive war, deliberate and accident use (Sagan, 1996). Though structural realism and neorealism offer some notable insights to nuclear proliferation, the arguments presented show logical contradiction and fail to justify why states wager our thousands year of civilizations on the logically flawed theory of nuclear deterrence to support nuclear proliferation and therefore is unconvincing. Yet, the organizational theory addresses and exposes the majority of the pressing and catastrophic nuclear issues in reality (Sagan, 1994). In the landscape of neorealism, Waltz views that states are rational, unitary and self-interested entities. (Waltz, 1981). Survival is the ultimate concern of states operating within the anarchical international environment. Neorealists agree slow spread of nuclear weapons is the major contribution of international peace and stability as peace preservation and war avoidance are the key goals in the nuclear world. In the book The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, Waltz argues that the world has enjoyed over seven decades of peace and have avoided World War III largely due to the existence of nuclear weapons which deterred two superpower Russia and the United States to go to a full-scale war in Cold War era. He believes there is a correlation between possession of weapons and reduced probability of war with the adversaries. "The presence of nuclear weapons makes states exceedingly cautious" as states fully aware the war between nuclear weapon states can escalate from conventional war to a nuclear war. He argues "in a conventional world, one is uncertain about winning or losing (Waltz, 1981). In a nuclear world, one is uncertain about surviving or being annihilated." Waltz sees nuclear weapons is the ultimate weapon which serves as the most effective form of balancing of power in the international politics. Rational deterrence is theorized by Waltz that if more states possess nuclear weapons, more would benefit from the

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The Asahi Shimbun

EDITORIAL: Japan should not plug back into heavy reliance on nuclear power

August 26, 2022 at 13:42 JST

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s proposal to start expanding nuclear power generation again is a rash move to make a major energy policy shift under the pretext of overcoming the current “energy crisis.”

Kishida should rethink the proposal, which is certain to create serious problems for the nation’s future.

Kishida recently said his administration will consider building new reactors and expanding or rebuilding the existing nuclear plants while also weighing an extension of the legal reactor lifespan of 40 years.

His proposal clearly indicates the government’s intention to return to promoting nuclear power generation and represents the biggest energy policy change since the catastrophic accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in 2011.

The accelerating global trend toward a carbon-free future and the threat of an energy crisis engendered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine make it necessary for policymakers to consider ways to secure a stable power supply.

But the policy response to the challenge should not be one that disregards the vital lessons learned from the Fukushima disaster.

We urge the Kishida administration to preclude a policy option that would prolong and deepen the nation’s dependence on atomic energy.

HAS JAPAN FORGOTTEN LESSONS FROM FUKUSHIMA?

The accident that began to unfold on March 11, 2011, led to an unprecedented crisis of triple reactor core meltdowns, causing tremendous social and economic damage.

The calamity forced residents of areas around the stricken nuclear plant to leave their homes and generated profound anxiety in the entire Japanese society.

Even now, many people are being forced to live as evacuees without receiving sufficient compensation. It is completely unclear when the cleanup work including decommissioning the ruined reactors will be complete.

The safety standards for nuclear plants have been strengthened in response to the disaster. Still, building nuclear plants in Japan, a nation prone to such natural disasters as earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions, entails much higher risks than in other countries.

Nuclear power generation is an incomplete system for Japan, which has no final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste. High-level nuclear waste remains highly radioactive and extremely hazardous for tens of thousands of years before its radiation levels decline sufficiently.

There is no site in Japan where such radioactive waste can be disposed of in such a manner that it can be securely isolated for an unimaginably long period of time.

Plutonium contained in spent nuclear fuel can be used to make nuclear weapons and must be stored and managed strictly under international rules.

Japan has promised to reduce its stockpile of plutonium. But its project to develop fast-breeder reactor technology to use plutonium as fuel has fallen through despite massive government spending.

Given the bitter past experiences and the raft of tough challenges for nuclear power generation, it is clear that reducing our society’s dependence on nuclear power gradually, if not ending it altogether immediately, is the only reasonable and realistic choice.

This view has apparently been behind the government’s pledge to lessen the nation’s dependence on atomic energy and its policy of ruling out the construction of new reactors or expanding existing plants.

It is questionable how seriously Kishida has considered the lessons from the accident and the formidable challenges facing nuclear power generation as he ordered these new proposals to be considered. There is no convincing case for taking the step.

QUESTIONABLE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS

The way the policy change was proposed and discussed is also open to dispute.

Kishida made the announcement in the second meeting of the government’s GX (green transformation) Implementation Council. During the council’s first meeting in July, Kishida ordered a list of policy measures that demand political decisions, and the ministry of trade and industry and other organizations involved compiled the list.

The council’s members include business leaders and power industry executives supporting the promotion of nuclear power generation and hold discussions behind closed doors. In contrast to the expert panel that is discussing the government’s basic energy plans openly, this council falls short on diversity and transparency.

It is inappropriate of the government to propose and discuss a radical change in a policy that is deeply linked to people’s lives at this council.

Before the July Upper House election, Kishida did not give any clear answer to the question of whether he was mulling over the possibility of building new reactors or expanding existing facilities.

Soon after the election, he started considering the idea and calling for a conclusion by the end of the year. This is a policymaking process that is far from democratic.

Moreover, there is no established technology for building new reactors. Proposed small-size reactors are still under development, while the fast-breeder reactor project is now up in the air.

There is no clear vision, either, for what the government calls a “next-generation innovative reactor,” presumably designed to be a safer reactor based on current technology. Kishida himself has admitted that it will take time to turn some of these ideas into a reality.

Nuclear power generation does not make economic sense, either. Electricity generated by a new reactor built in 2030 will be costlier than power generated by a solar power system for business use, according to the latest estimate by the ministry of trade and industry.

There are also risks involved in the early stages of the development of new reactor technology.

SAFETY REGULATIONS MUST NOT BE UNDERMINED

Referring to such unreliable technologies as a means to ensure a stable power supply for the time being amounts to trying to pull the wool over someone's eyes.

If the government opts to bring the nation back to expanding nuclear power generation, allowing it to fall behind other major industrial nations in the global race to develop new renewable energy technologies, Japan’s international competitiveness will further decline.

The list of proposals Kishida ordered to be considered includes extending the operational life span of nuclear reactors and mobilizing all the resources of the parties involved to restart offline reactors. Kishida said the government should take the initiative and make every possible effort to bring idled reactors back on stream.

We can understand his remarks if they mean the government will try to ensure that electric utilities operating nuclear plants comply with the advice and instructions from the Nuclear Regulation Authority.

We can also support his stance if that means the government is committed to taking responsibility for the safe evacuations of residents around nuclear plants in the event of serious accidents and responding sincerely to questions about the risks of accidents.

But the government must not be allowed to apply any political pressure on reviews and inspections that must be scientifically strict or the process of making decisions through winning the consensus of local communities involved.

One major lesson from the Fukushima nuclear disaster is the vital importance of respecting the decisions by local governments that host nuclear power plants and the independence of the NRA.

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which was used as a pretext for the policy change, has underscored the risk of armed attacks on nuclear facilities. Obviously, Russia’s brutal invasion must not be tolerated.

But the reality is that the danger of Japan operating many nuclear plants in its narrow territory is only growing.

There should be no doubt that a simple return to nuclear power is not the answer to the tough and complicated challenge of securing a stable power supply for the nation under the current situation.

The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 26

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Russia Says U.S. Ban on Russian Nuclear Fuel Will Harm Global Market

FILE PHOTO: A view shows a board with the logo of Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in Saint Petersburg, Russia June 16, 2022. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov/File Photo

By Anastasia Lyrchikova

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom said on Tuesday that a U.S. ban on Russian nuclear fuel was discriminatory political move that would undermine the global market for enriched uranium but said it would continue to develop its global business.

President Joe Biden signed into law a ban on Russian enriched uranium on Monday, the White House said. About 24% of the enriched uranium used by U.S. nuclear power plants comes from Russia.

"We consider the recently enacted U.S. law banning the import of Russian enriched uranium as discriminatory and non-market-oriented," Rosatom said in a written statement to Reuters.

"Rosatom maintains its strong position as a global leader in nuclear technologies and will continue to develop relations with foreign partners interested in long-term cooperation."

Rosatom said in 2022 that it was the world's biggest player in enriched uranium with 35% of the world market as well as holding the world's second largest uranium reserves and being the world's second largest uranium producer.

The Kremlin said the U.S. decision to ban Russian fuel was not critical for Russia but said that the Americans, when they found it difficult to compete with Russia, reached for measures which distorted and undermined the norms of global markets.

"This is nothing more than unfair competition," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "Our nuclear industry is one of the most advanced in the world, it is extremely competitive, and we will continue to develop this industry."

Rosatom said the U.S. decision was "harmful to the sustainable functioning of the global market for nuclear fuel cycle products and services."

Russia is currently boosting the share of nuclear energy in its energy production. The share of nuclear is projected to reach 25% by 2045 from 20% currently, according to Rosatom.

(Reporting by Anastasia Lyrchikova and Dmitry Antonov; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge)

Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters .

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A New Diplomatic Strategy Emerges as Artificial Intelligence Grows

The new U.S. approach to cyberthreats comes as early optimism about a “global internet” connecting the world has been shattered.

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By David E. Sanger

David E. Sanger has reported on a range of national security issues, including the use of cyber as a weapon of national power, for four decades.

American and Chinese diplomats plan to meet later this month to begin what amounts to the first, tentative arms control talks over the use of artificial intelligence.

A year in the making, the talks in Geneva are an attempt to find some common ground on how A.I. will be used and in which situations it could be banned — for example, in the command and control of each country’s nuclear arsenals.

The fact that Beijing agreed to the discussion at all was something of a surprise, since it has refused any discussion of limiting the size of nuclear arsenals themselves.

But for the Biden administration, the conversation represents the first serious foray into a new realm of diplomacy, which Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke about on Monday in a speech in San Francisco at the RSA Conference, Silicon Valley’s annual convention on both the technology and the politics of securing cyberspace.

“It’s true that ‘move fast and break things’ is literally the exact opposite of what we try to do at the State Department,” Mr. Blinken told the thousands of cyberexperts, coders and entrepreneurs, a reference to the Silicon Valley mantra about technological disruption.

But it is that disruption — from a quickening pace of sophisticated cyberattacks, to the vulnerability of undersea cables, to the battle for control of the internet and the influence operations it enables — that has driven agencies across the government to design strategies for dealing with emerging technology threats.

The Biden White House issued a national strategy for dealing with cyber. The Pentagon has written one focused on deterring attacks. The Department of Homeland Security homed in on resilience. But the last formal State Department strategy for diplomatic engagement on the topic was written a dozen years ago, in President Barack Obama’s first term.

Ransomware was not yet a scourge, and the technology behind Chat GPT was still years away. While cyberattacks were well underway — including some launched by U.S. intelligence agencies — they had not become a daily staple of geopolitical competition.

But the new strategy comes at a time when the early optimism about a “global internet” connecting the world has been shattered. What is left is what Nathaniel C. Fick, the State Department’s first ambassador for cyberspace and digital policy, who is expected to play a key role in the discussions with China, refers to as a “fragmented system” that is unlikely to ever be sewn back together.

“Just about everyone is willing to acknowledge that technology is an important element of foreign policy, but I would argue that tech is not just part of the game — it’s increasingly the entire game,” Mr. Fick said in an interview.

“Think about it — asymmetric advantage in the war in Ukraine, global competition with China on key technologies, the ability of Israel and its allies to intercept Iranian aerial attacks. All tech,” he said. “The international order will be defined by whose metaphorical operating system dominates.”

Mr. Fick’s strategy, written with Adam Segal, a Council on Foreign Relations expert on cyber whom Mr. Fick brought into the State Department’s new cyber and digital bureau to help write the strategy, focuses on the concept of “digital solidarity” with allies and partner states that have a common view of the rules that should govern technology and information flows.

“We have to hang together with allies and partners, truly investing in digital solidarity, or we’ll get picked apart by those who have a very different view of tech’s role in the world,” Mr. Fick said, a clear reference to the growing partnership of Russia and China.

As a result, the strategy goes beyond the rules of managing cyberconflict and focuses on American efforts to assure control over physical technologies like undersea cables, which connect countries, companies and individual users to cloud services.

Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, has been seeking to dominate the laying of cables across the Pacific and, increasingly, around the world. But Mr. Fick maintains that American, Japanese and European firms still dominate the market, and that “this remains one area where we can compete vigorously.”

Mr. Blinken, in his speech, made clear that part of the diplomacy he envisions involves persuading nations not to rely on undersea cables, data storage or cloud computing supplies from Chinese suppliers, or other states in China’s technological orbit. He describes an increasingly zero-sum competition, in which countries will be forced to choose between signing up for a Western-dominated “stack” of technologies or a Chinese-dominated one.

“In these arenas, the United States currently leads the world, but providers from authoritarian states are increasingly competitive,” Mr. Blinken told the RSA Conference. “It’s critical we work with trusted vendors and exclude untrustworthy ones from the ecosystem.”

Mr. Blinken made clear, by implication, that it was China’s firms he was labeling as untrustworthy.

He cited a U.S.-backed effort, along with Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Taiwan, to link up 100,000 people living in the Pacific islands — a tiny population, but one that China has targeted because of its strategic location — in its effort to expand its influence in the South Pacific.

“Any disruption — or compromise — could isolate a country, threaten national security or lead to billions of dollars in damage,” Mr. Blinken said.

The new State Department strategy acknowledges that cyberweaponry and a range of digital tools were central to Russia’s effort to take over Ukraine in 2022 — starting with the attacks on the Viasat satellite system that kept the country’s government agencies connected . And it notes that Ukraine was kept connected because of technology provided by Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Elon Musk’s Starlink, which enabled the embattled authorities in Kyiv to move their records and communications to the cloud, just days or weeks ahead of Russian attacks that destroyed computer servers around major cities.

But the new strategy says surprisingly little about how to deter state-directed attacks, a focus of the Obama-era strategy and a source of continuing frustration for American officials. It also acknowledges the degree to which China has penetrated American utility and water supply networks, installing malware that U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed are designed to trigger chaos and slow an American military response if Beijing decided to invade or choke off Taiwan.

The strategy describes that operation, which Microsoft’s investigators have named “Volt Typhoon,” in unusually stark terms. It characterizes China as capable of “launching cyberattacks that could disrupt oil and gas pipelines, rail systems and other critical infrastructure services within the United States or its allies and partners.”

“Attempts to compromise critical infrastructure by PRC actors are designed in part to pre-position themselves to be able to disrupt or destroy critical infrastructure in the event of a conflict,” the State Department report, using the initials for the People’s Republic of China, continued, “to either prevent the United States from being able to project power into Asia, or to affect our decision-making during a crisis by instigating societal chaos inside the United States.”

David E. Sanger covers the Biden administration and national security. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written several books on challenges to American national security. More about David E. Sanger