Premier Debate 2016 September/October ld brief

AFF—Econ

Nuclear power will continue the problem of energy over consumption and will not come cheap

Verbruggen 08 [Aviel Verbruggen, Full professor at the University of Antwerp, Energy & Environmental Economist, "Renewable and nuclear power: A common future?" Energy Policy 36, 2008, 4036–4047] [Premier]

The myths of nuclear power as cheap and abundant (first wave), as solution for the oil crisis (second wave), as salvation against climate change (third wave, brought in position today), do not stand the test of reality and of the sustainability criteria (Table 2). On the diagnosis of the life-support system crisis, occasioned mainly by the over-use of commercial energy sources, nuclear and efficiency/renewable power diverge in opinion. As a corollary, their basic prescriptions/remedies for the obese energy patient diverge: nuclear power expansion is the continuation/extension of supplying overdoses, while efficiency/renewable power is the remedy for past and present obesity by a healthy diet with an adapted programme of exercising. I miss the imagination to see what the goal and meaning can be of combining fat and sugar bulk food with a cure of healthy dieting. When such combining takes place, the effects are mostly clear: obesity overcrowds health, because the former is bulky and uncontrolled and the latter requires understanding, self-control and permanent monitoring. The bulky approach of the past is not fitted to develop the slim and lean solutions of the future, efficiency and renewable energy need. Although nuclear power is advertised as cheap, IEA identifies as the second barrier nuclear plans face, following public acceptance, that ‘investment costs based on current technology (including working capital during the construction period, waste treatment and decommissioning) are high’ (IEA, 2006a, p. 134). ‘Capital cost reduction can be achieved through improved construction methods, reduced construction time, design improvement, standardization, building multiple units on the same site and improving project management’ (IEA, 2006a, p. 242). ‘Serial production (red.: of the Gen III+1700 MW plants) may enable further cost reductions’ (IEA, 2006a, p. 134). ‘‘Large scale, serial production, multiple units on the same site’’ were the success factors of the French nuclear programme of the 1970–1980s that finally jammed in the overcapacity of the 1990s. Every success factor also implies its own risk: the loss of a single large-scale unit is a high loss, serial production often is beset by serial faults and multiple units on the same site can cause domino effects (see the loss of the four units at Chernobyl). But it is not our task to think in nuclear logic. Our point is that this expansive approach is contradictory to the essential attributes the new energy policy must adopt: lean, efficient, flexible and adaptive. The over-supply of commercial energy during the last decades has turned our economies and societies in energy-addicted, obese patients. It has put our development on a non-sustainable track with looming climate change and nuclear risks at the horizon. Continuing this ‘‘business-as-usual’’ is a one-way ticket to catastrophe.

Also economically costly

Lucas 12 [Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion and a member of the cross-party parliamentary environment audit committee, “Why we must phase out nuclear power,” The Guardian, February 17, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/17/phase-out-nuclear-power] [Premier]

Fukushima showed us that nuclear remains a high risk technology. But what is also clear is that nuclear fails to make the grade even in economic terms. As we have seen with the two new nuclear reactors under construction in Europe, the already prohibitive upfront constructions costs have been grossly underestimated. The EPR reactors under construction in Finland and France are both around 100% over budget, with the end date for construction being constantly postponed. The hidden costs of nuclear - such as waste disposal, insurance and decommissioning - are also huge, and it is the public that ends up footing the bill. Surely it makes more sense to invest billions of pounds in genuinely sustainable and low risk technologies? One year on from Fukushima, we should not wait for another disaster to finally convince us to give up on nuclear power.

Bad Investments

Nuke power investments are a disaster

Pedraza 12

Jorge Morales Pedraza, consultant on international affairs, ambassador to the IAEA for 26 yrs, degree in math and economy sciences, former professor, Energy Science, Engineering and Technology : Nuclear Power: Current and Future Role in the World Electricity Generation : Current and Future Role in the World Electricity Generation, New York. [Premier]

The main problems faced by the US nuclear industry related with the construction of new nuclear power reactors could be summarized in the following manner: Economic, problems in construction and opposition to them, which led to increased construction times and subsequently increased construction costs. Many utilities went bankrupt over nuclear power projects. The estimated cost of building a nuclear power plant rose from less than US$400 million in the 1970s to around US$4,000 million by the 1990s, while construction times doubled from 1970s to 1980s. These facts led the US business magazine Forbes in 1985 to describe the indust ry as ―the largest managerial disaster in US business history, involving US$100 billion in wasted investments and cost overruns, exceeded in magnitude only by the Vietnam War and the then Savings and Loan crisis‖. ( Schneider and Froggatt, 2007)

AFF—Generic

Laundry list of harms from nuclear power

Martin 7 [Brian; Honorary professorial fellow at the University of Wollongong, Australia; "Opposing Nuclear Power: Past And Present"; 2016. Bmartin.Cc. Accessed August 8 2016. http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/07sa.html] [Premier]

Nuclear accidents: the core of a nuclear power plant could overheat and melt down, releasing massive amounts of radioactivity. Waste disposal: nuclear power results in large amounts of radioactive waste, some of which remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Nuclear proliferation: the facilities and expertise to produce nuclear power can be readily adapted to produce nuclear weapons. Cost: nuclear power is very expensive. Nuclear terrorism: nuclear facilities could be targeted by terrorists or criminals. Civil liberties: the risk of nuclear accidents, proliferation and terrorism may be used to justify restraints on citizen rights. Uranium mining: much uranium is found on indigenous land. Alternatives: energy efficiency and renewable energy sources provide a viable alternative to nuclear power.

Most countries are not ready to develop nuclear power.

Cherp 12 [Aleh; Professor of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University; 2012; “Chapter 5 – Energy and Security. In Global Energy Assessment – Toward a Sustainable Future”; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria; pp. 325-384] [Premier]

The final reason for the lack of success may lie in the fundamental limitations to conceive and implement an energy security strategy by a single nation-state acting alone. It is quite obvious that small economies are rarely, if ever, able to implement energy system transformations on their own, since they simply do not possess the necessary financial, technological, and human resources. For example, a study shows that launching a national nuclear power program relying on their own resources may be out of reach for at least 28 of the 52 countries that expressed an interest in nuclear energy based on their energy security imperatives (Jewell, 2011).

Laundry List of disadvantages to nuclear power

CND [Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; “No to Nuclear Power”; http://www.cnduk.org/campaigns/nuclear-power; [Premier]

Nuclear power is not carbon emission free. The whole nuclear cycle from uranium mining onwards produces more greenhouse gases than most renewable energy sources with up to 50% more emissions than wind power. Even if we doubled nuclear power in the UK it would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8%. This is because nuclear power only contributes to electricity generation which only accounts for up to a third of all carbon emissions (transport and industry account for most of the rest).

Climate change is happening now. A new nuclear power station will take at least 10 years to build and longer to generate electricity. Wind farms can be up and running in less than a year.

It’s expensive. The nuclear industry is massively subsidised by the British public. Sizewell B, the UK’s most recent power station cost the taxpayer around £3.7billion just to install Decommissioning and cleaning up all of our current nuclear sites is costing more than £70 billion.

It’s not sustainable. The reserves of uranium ores used to generate nuclear power are going to run out. There is only 50 years worth of high uranium ores left in the world. There may be only 200 years left of all uranium ores including poor uranium ores which take more energy to mine and process and thus release more carbon emissions.

Nuclear power threatens the environment and people’s health. It produces enormous amounts of carcinogenic toxic radioactive waste, some of which is dangerous for thousands of years. No safe solution has yet been devised to store it. In particular, there is evidence of cancer clusters linked to nuclear power production. Building new nuclear power stations would increase the most toxic high level waste five-fold. Read CND's summary of the German government-commissioned research that shows increases in cancer in children under five living near nuclear power stations.

Uranium mining kills. Uranium mining is the first step in the nuclear power cycle; it has taken the lives of many miners all over the world causing environmental contamination, cancers and nuclear waste.

Nuclear accidents. The risk of terrible nuclear accidents like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Windscale (Sellafield) will plague a new generation of power stations as it did the first. Read more about these accidents.

A terrorist target. Nuclear power carries with it the risk of nuclear terrorism. In this age of uncertainty, dirty bombs and attacks on power stations are a terrifying threat.

The proliferation of nuclear weapons is inextricably linked to nuclear power by a shared need for enriched uranium, and through the generation of plutonium as a by-product of spent nuclear fuel. The two industries have been linked since the very beginning and a nuclear weapons free world requires a non-nuclear energy policy.

5 internal warrants to reject nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels

Verbruggen 08 [Aviel Verbruggen, Full professor at the University of Antwerp, Energy & Environmental Economist, "Renewable and nuclear power: A common future?" Energy Policy 36, 2008, 4036–4047] [Premier]

For realizing a low carbon electricity supply, there are not a thousand options. Only two antagonists are now in the ring: nuclear power and the twin efficiency/renewable power. What could be the ultimate backstop power generation technology? First the ‘unlimited source’ aspect of the backstop supply technology has to be extended with the criteria of sustainability (WCED, 1987). On the sustainability balance, the performance of nuclear power weighs very light (Table 2), contrary to efficiency/ renewable power technologies (Table 3). Therefore it is quite rational that a large majority of the population prefers the latter above the former (Eurobarometer, 2007). For getting a third chance for nuclear power, its advocates want to arrange a marriage with the renewable energy sector. There are five arguments as to why the efficiency/renewable power option should reject the nuclear advances. First, nuclear power is architect of the business-as-usual that has to be changed urgently and drastically. Second, nuclear and renewable power need a very different add-on by fossil-fuelled power plants; for nuclear the add-on is bulky and expansive, and for renewable power it is distributed, flexible and contracting over time. Third, the power grids for spreading bulky nuclear outputs are of another kind than the interconnection between millions of distributed power sources requires. Fourth, the risks and externalities of nuclear power make this technology non-sustainable and therefore without a future, while efficiency/renewable power are still in their infancy. Fifth, the antagonist options also fight for RD&D resources and for production capacities. Now that the skewed distribution in favour of nuclear starts to be adjusted somewhat, it is time to stop wasting money on the expensive and dangerous water cookers that nuclear reactors are. Better to turn to the real future-oriented technologies that drive efficiency and renewable power. Summarizing, nuclear and efficiency/renewable power have no common future in safeguarding ‘‘Our Common Future’’. The nuclear technology has had two chances of unseen means in human history to prove its validity, and failed. Giving nuclear a third chance will waste the scarce RD&D resources and solidify barriers against its sustainable antagonist: electricity efficiency and renewable power technologies.

Nuclear resources are scarce while current energy sources are abundant and can provide energy for decades to come

Hiroaki 11 [Koide Hiroaki, Assistant Professor at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, “The Truth About Nuclear Power: Japanese Nuclear Engineer Calls for Abolition,” The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol 9 Issue 31, August 8, 2011, http://apjjf.org/2011/9/31/Satoko-Norimatsu/3582/article.html] [Premier]

I came here today to offer my candid advice to the Japanese government and its administrators who have managed the country’s nuclear power policy to today. I entered the field of nuclear engineering with high hopes and dreams, because I believed that nuclear power was the energy source for the future. Oil and coal would be exhausted some day, but nuclear power was inexhaustible, so I thought nuclear power was the way forward. However, once I entered the field, I realized that nuclear power was actually a very poor energy source. Let me explain why. Shown in the figure above are the remaining non-renewable energy resources on this earth. The largest deposits are of coal. It is known to exist on our planet in enormous quantities. The white square indicates the total reserves. What is known to be commercially exploitable is called proven reserves, the blue part of the square. Now look at the tiny square on the top right corner of the slide. This is the world’s total annual energy consumption. The proven reserves of coal alone can provide 60 to 70 years worth of global energy demand. If we could use the total reserve of coal, it would provide 800 years’ worth of world demand. Next to that, we have reserves of natural gas, oil, and other sources that we are not really using right now, like oil shale and tar sands. I had thought that these fossil fuels would someday be exhausted and nuclear energy was the future, but in fact, the world’s reserve of uranium is only a fraction of that of oil, and a small percentage of that of coal. Uranium is actually a very scarce resource. But when I say this, people in the pro-nuclear camp say that I’m wrong. They argue that what I am talking about is only the amount of fissile uranium resource, which is limited, but by converting non-fissile uranium to plutonium, we can make nuclear energy that is recyclable.

Plenty of fissile material present in the world to continue energy production

Turkenberg 03 [William C. Turkenberg, professor STS, Copernicus Institute, Utrecht University, “Nuclear Energy and Sustainable Development,” International Conference held in Vienna, organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency, June 23, 2003] [Premier]

An efficient use of scarce resources is one of the characteristics of sustainable development. In addition, the need to reduce the production of waste implies that also materials should be used very efficiently. However, this should not compromise requirements formulated with respect to safety, nuclear waste management and proliferation. Within this context, it should be demonstrated that we have enough resources to apply nuclear energy in a meaningful way. Assuming a globally installed nuclear capacity of 3,500 GWe, it should be possible to use this capacity for at least a number of generations (consequently, well beyond the year 2100). From a study we did in 1989 on “Nuclear Energy and the CO2 Problem” it was concluded that the ultimately recoverable resources of uranium might be estimated at about 30 million ton, whereas the known recoverable resources were about a factor 10 less [22]. In essence, these figures still apply. The known recoverable resources of uranium are estimated at present at about 3.3 million ton, the ultimately recoverable resources at 30 – 100 million ton, depending on the acceptance of a steep increase of the uranium price [3, 15, 23]. If the generation of 1 MWhe requires 24 gram of uranium – which is the case in a LWR assuming a once through approach - 30 million ton would allow the generation of 125 x 104 TWhe, about 100 times the present annual world electricity production. If, as a result of reprocessing, the fuel cycle would require 12 gram of uranium per MWhe, this figure would be 200 times the present annual electricity production. It should be noted that in modern power plants the efficiency of fissile material use will probably be better than assumed here. It certainly increases strongly if breeder concepts are applied. Also it should be noted that the nuclear fuel cycle consumes fossil fuels, from cradle to grave, causing indirect emissions of greenhouse gases. However, these emissions are far less than the greenhouse gas emissions of conventional natural gas or coal plants. From scenario studies it is concluded that the greenhouse gas mitigation potential of nuclear energy could be reductions in CO2 emissions of 100 - 300 GtC during the next hundred year – reductions that may be equivalent to about 10 – 20% of the emissions under a business-as-usual future [3, 8, 22]. Finally, it should be noted that beside uranium also thorium could be used to generate electricity. The recoverability of thorium is at least as good as uranium, probably even better [3, 15]. Consequently, it is concluded that scarcity of resources it not an argument to disregard the nuclear option as a potential source of energy to be applied to achieve sustainable development.

Nuclear Power is unsustainable.

Ahmed 13

[Nafeez--bestselling author, investigative journalist and international security scholar. He is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development, and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization among other books. He writes for the Guardian on the geopolitics of environmental, energy and economic crises on his blog. “The coming nuclear crunch,” Jul 02 2013, The Guardian] [Premier]

The new study acknowledges the dawn of a new production period in the last five years, during which a total of 250 ktons or uranium has been produced, but points out that increasingly producers must extract lower grade uranium which generates less energy than higher grades. On average, it finds, only 50-70% of initial uranium resource estimates can be extracted. Developing a model based on precise data about extraction rates and deposits for individual mines in Canada and Australia, the study concludes that planned new mines can only "partially compensate" a production decline from all mines currently in operation: "After 2015 uranium mining will decline by about 0.5 ktons/year up to 2025 and much faster thereafter... Assuming that the demand side will be increased by 1% annually, we predict both shortages of uranium and (inflation-adjusted) price hikes within the next five years." The study suggests that one way to delay the uranium supply crunch until 2025 would be a carefully coordinated "voluntary nuclear energy phase-out." Another alternative would be to open up access to "the still sizable quantities of the military uranium reserves from the USA and Russia especially after 2013." If countries do not voluntarily adopt a "slow phase-out scenario": "... we predict that the end of the cheap uranium supply will result in a chaotic phase-out scenario with price explosions, supply shortages and possible electricity shortages in many countries." Study author Dr. Michael Dittmar, a nuclear physicist at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, described the nuclear component of the UK's energy strategy to keep the national electric grid going even during the next 10 years as "effectively non-existent." The US, China, and India all plan to dramatically ramp up nuclear power production in coming decades, but like the UK, their energy strategies completely overlook potential uranium supply challenges.

Unsustainable—Resource shortages inevitable

Zyga 11

[--Lisa, “Why nuclear power will never supply the world's energy needs,” May 11, 2011, Phys.org] [Premier]

Exotic metals: The nuclear containment vessel is made of a variety of exotic rare metals that control and contain the nuclear reaction: hafnium as a neutron absorber, beryllium as a neutron reflector, zirconium for cladding, and niobium to alloy steel and make it last 40-60 years against neutron embrittlement. Extracting these metals raises issues involving cost, sustainability, and environmental impact. In addition, these metals have many competing industrial uses; for example, hafnium is used in microchips and beryllium by the semiconductor industry. If a nuclear reactor is built every day, the global supply of these exotic metals needed to build nuclear containment vessels would quickly run down and create a mineral resource crisis. This is a new argument that Abbott puts on the table, which places resource limits on all future-generation nuclear reactors, whether they are fueled by thorium or uranium. As Abbott notes, many of these same problems would plague fusion reactors in addition to fission reactors, even though commercial fusion is still likely a long way off. Of course, not many nuclear advocates are calling for a complete nuclear utopia, in which nuclear power supplies the entire world’s energy needs. But many nuclear advocates suggest that we should produce 1 TW of power from nuclear energy, which may be feasible, at least in the short term. However, if one divides Abbott’s figures by 15, one still finds that 1 TW is barely feasible. Therefore, Abbott argues that, if this technology cannot be fundamentally scaled further than 1 TW, perhaps the same investment would be better spent on a fully scalable technology.

Unpopular

Public debate shifts attitudes against nuclear power.

Martin 7 [Brian; Honorary professorial fellow at the University of Wollongong, Australia; "Opposing Nuclear Power: Past And Present"; 2016. Bmartin.Cc. Accessed August 8 2016. http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/07sa.html] [Premier]

A crucial part of opposing nuclear power is publicising its disadvantages. These are trivialised or left unmentioned by promoters: reactor accidents, disposal of high-level waste, cancers from radon released by uranium tailings over tens of thousands of years, increased risk of terrorism, promotion of a regional nuclear arms race, economic subsidies for nuclear power, lack of insurance coverage for nuclear hazards and increased police powers impacting on civil liberties.

When, in earlier decades, the pros and cons of the nuclear option were fully canvassed in public debate, opinion shifted against nuclear power. The same is likely to occur today.