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Nuclear Power: A Cold War Propaganda Tool Editorial by Arjun Makhijani and Michele Boyd Based on the book The Nuclear Power Deception by Arjun Makhijani and Scott Saleska1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter..." - Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, 1954 "Heat will be so plentiful that it will even be used to melt snow as it falls....[T]he central atomic power plant will provide all the heat, light, and power required by the community and these utilities will be so cheap that their cost can hardly be reckoned." -Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, site of the first nuclear chain reaction, 1946
Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1953, had "faith in the atomic future" and believed that the progress of nuclear power would be guided by " Divine Providence." The US Congress also caught the fever. Its vision was embodied in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the major legislation to define the terms for commercialization of atomic energy in ways that were compatible with the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The Act declares that: the development, use and control of atomic energy shall be directed so as to promote world peace, improve the general welfare, increase the standard of living, and strengthen free competition in private enterprise. Applications of nuclear energy to promote the "general welfare" were to be "subject at all times to the paramount objective of making the maximum contribution to the common defense and security." The US wanted to present a benign image of the atom to the world, even as it built a huge arsenal of ever more powerful weapons. Inaccurate and misleading statements and technological bravado about nuclear power soon became part of the Cold War hysteria that prevailed in the US. By the early 1980s it was clear not only on Main Street but also on Wall Street that far from being "too cheap to meter" nuclear energy was too costly to afford. But other dubious claims have gained currency, such as that the industry can build "inherently safe" reactors or that nuclear power can be used as a practical solution to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.2 Atoms for Peace After the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949, the United States decided to press ahead with the development of the hydrogen bomb. It began the design, manufacture, and testing of nuclear weapons and opened the Nevada Test Site. The Soviets followed a similar course. The US tested a thermonuclear device on October 31, 1952, and the Soviets did so on August 12, 1953. Thomas Murray, an AEC commissioner, saw clear "propaganda" benefits in diverting attention from bombs to civilian power, since both the US and the Soviet Union were rushing headlong into the era of the thermonuclear weapons. Such propaganda would show the United States as the promoter of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy in contrast to the horror of the Soviet thermonuclear program. In addition to the propaganda advantage gained by casting the Soviets as the militaristic side (despite the parallel development of Soviet nuclear power plants), another aspect of US urgency to embark on commercial civilian nuclear energy generation on a significant scale was the fear that, if the US delayed, the Soviets would be the first to achieve it. As it turned out, both the Soviets (1954) and the British (1956) succeeded in producing commercial nuclear electricity before the United States (1957). A speech by President Eisenhower to the United Nations in December 1953 was prepared against this backdrop of US and Soviet nuclear arms development and testing. Initial drafts of the speech focused on the terribly destructive nature of atomic and thermonuclear weapons. In the revised speech, one part contained graphic descriptions of the power and terror of nuclear weapons; another part spoke in glowing terms about the promise of the peaceful atom. Eisenhower focused a large part of his UN speech on promoting civilian nuclear power development, which became known as the "Atoms for Peace" program. In his speech, Eisenhower said: The US would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military purposes. A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world. Thus the contributing powers would be dedicating some of their strength to serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind. In the Atoms for Peace program, countries would contribute fissionable materials to a new international atomic energy agency to be created under the auspices of the United Nations. This agency would prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons and, at the same time, assist in the development of nuclear power. Eisenhower also outlined the functions of the new agency in allocating fissionable material and in providing experts around the world. Eisenhower's statement that nuclear power could "rapidly be transformed" from a developmental technology into a "universal, efficient and economic usage" was not based on sound analysis. Rather, it converted the early messianic statements about nuclear power into a calculated tool in the Cold War. On nuclear energy, there was no difference of opinion across the Cold War ideological divide. True believers in the Soviet Union were at least as enthusiastic about nuclear energy, which joined the famous dictum of Lenin, that soviets plus electricity equaled communism with Stalin's penchant for massive industrial projects. A decade-and-a-half later, the US Atoms for Peace policy was given more formal and fervent expression in Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which guaranteed its signatories an "inalienable right" to the benefits of nuclear technology, including nuclear energy (full text of Article IV). In just over two decades, nuclear energy was elevated to a status akin to the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," which inspired not only the founders of the United States, but people all over the world ever since. To many leaders of countries emerging from colonialism hoping for quick alleviation of economic misery, nuclear energy seemed to be a material counterpart of the flags and national anthems that became the symbols of newly acquired freedom. Nuclear energy was "modern" and, like steel plants and national airlines companies, it was assumed that such modernization would propel the "backward" former colonies full steam ahead and put them on a par with the industrialized nations. Even India, where Gandhi had vigorously advocated a course of development different from that pursued in the West, did not undertake an independent evaluation of western claims, despite the fact that it had the scientific and technical capacity in the late 1940s to do so.3 Atomic Skeptics Unfortunately for the true believers, the idea of energy "too cheap to meter" that was required for transforming the gossamer stuff of extravagant dreams into hard economic reality was a combination of self-delusion and propaganda without technical foundation. Indeed, all technical evaluations, from those undertaken in the secrecy of the Manhattan Project to studies by government, industry, and academics during the late 1940s and early 1950s, came to the same conclusions. Nuclear energy would be difficult to master and it would not be competitive with coal-generated electricity for quite some time, though it might be competitive with coal, especially if coal prices rose. None came to the conclusion that it would be cheap, much less "too cheap to meter." According to C.G. Suits, Vice-President and Director of Research of General Electric, in a December 1950 speech, At present, atomic power presents an exceptionally costly and inconvenient means of obtaining energy which can be extracted more economically from conventional fuels....The economics of atomic power are not attractive at present, not are they likely to be for a long time in the future. This is expensive power, nor cheap power as the public as been led to believe. As another example, in 1948, the AEC presented a report to Congress in which it cited "unwarranted optimism as to the character of the technical difficulties [facing nuclear power] and the time required to surmount these difficulties." This committee, which included Enrico Fermi, Glenn Seaborg, and J.R. Oppenheimer, was not even uniformly optimistic about fuel costs, even though low fuel costs were the minimum necessary requirement for nuclear power to be competitive with fossil fuel-generated electricity. During the 1940s and 1950s, the United States was undergoing a considerable transformation in its energy situation. Prior to and during World War II, the US was virtually self-sufficient in petroleum. But the enormous growth in the number of automobiles in the decade, as well as the explosive growth of other uses of petroleum, resulted in the United States becoming a consistent net importer by the end of the 1940s. By 1960, the US was importing almost one-fifth of its petroleum consumption. One of the official reviews of the resource situation in the early 1950s was conducted by a commission appointed by President Truman, called The President's Materials Policy Commission. It came to be known as the Paley Commission, after its chairman. In the energy sector, the prime area of concern that the Paley Commission addressed was petroleum. The 1952 report predicted oil shortages by the 1970s. Furthermore, the Paley Commission made a strong negative assessment of nuclear energy and called for "aggressive research in the whole field of solar energy - an effort in which the United States could make an immense contribution to the welfare of the world." The Commission also encouraged work on wind energy and biomass. However, despite the Commission's conclusions, a significant renewable energy effort was not made until the oil crisis was upon the US in the 1970s. Given the assessment that nuclear energy could meet only a modest fraction of energy requirements at best, it seems illogical that nuclear energy was pursued vigorously rather than solar and other renewable energy sources. Evidently, it was assumed that renewable energy sources would not provide the same propaganda capital in the Cold War as nuclear energy. Interestingly, a lack of government money for renewables was accompanied by a lack of corporate research effort and an absence of interest on the part of large numbers of scientists and engineers. A Persistent Illusion The history of nuclear power has not sustained the hopes of its proponents. Almost half a century after a nuclear reactor first lighted an electric bulb,4 orders for nuclear reactors in the industrialized countries are near zero. Sales to the developing world, repair jobs on existing reactors, and decommissioning fill much of the order book of the nuclear power manufacturers and other nuclear vendors. In the United States, no new reactor has been ordered since 1978, and every reactor ordered between 1974 and 1978 has been canceled. Even in France, the bastion of nuclear power where reactors generate about fourth-fifths of the country's electricity, it is now acknowledged that natural gas fired combined cycle plants are more economical than nuclear reactors. In 1986, Chernobyl showed the terrible, widespread, long-lasting, and, to a large extent, irremediable consequences of a severe nuclear reactor accident. Every commercial nuclear reactor design carries with it vulnerabilities of such catastrophic accidents, though the probabilities and specific accident mechanisms may differ from one design to the next and from one country to another. Despite the dismal performance of nuclear energy relative to the hopes of its progenitors, most of the world's governments seem unwilling to give it up. That reluctance is a complex phenomenon, beyond the scope of this editorial. It seems partly the result of a feeling on the part of many non-nuclear developing countries that the main possessors of this technology in the West are unfairly depriving them of access to a technology guaranteed to them by Article IV of the NPT as part of the bargain for forgoing nuclear weapons. The idea that nuclear power is emblematic of modern "high" technology also continues to have a powerful hold. Yet, the problems with implementation of Article IV of the NPT are beside the point, for nuclear energy is generally uneconomical and undesirable from a number of different points of view. Even its status as "high" or "advanced" technology is much overrated. For instance, the design and building of photovoltaic cells and the construction of reliable, computer controlled distributed electricity grids that draw their energy from a variety of sources and power plants is, in many ways, a more complex and advanced technological enterprise than the design and construction of nuclear reactors. After the demise of the idea of nuclear energy as "too cheap to meter" by an exigent reality, the nuclear industry has been putting forward environmental and non-proliferation rationales as part of its promotion of nuclear power. Its spokespersons state that nuclear power could be a principal factor in reducing emissions of pollutants, notably carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. However, this claim ignores the environmental impacts of uranium mining and radioactive waste, which are inherent parts of the technology (see Science for the Critical Masses). Moreover, IEER's analysis has shown that high-efficiency natural gas power plants can reduce greenhouse gas emissions more per unit of investment than nuclear energy.5 Further, the problems associated with fossil fuels and nuclear energy are incommensurable. Should one trade off the potential for catastrophic accidents like Chernobyl with climate change? (See Dear Arjun) In the early years of the Cold War, many nuclear energy proponents proposed that military plutonium production be used to subsidize commercial nuclear power plants. After the end of the Cold War, there are proposals to use surplus military plutonium as fuel in reactors to subsidize existing power plants. The industry is claiming that it can help turn "swords into Plowshares" because surplus plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons would be used to make fuel for commercial nuclear power reactors. However, such a program would create the financial and physical infrastructure for making plutonium a "commercial" commodity, with attendant proliferation, environmental, and cost concerns.6 To address safety concerns, the nuclear industry has been promoting a second generation of commercial nuclear power reactors (see main article), some of which have been labeled "inherently safe" by their proponents. The safety question is a central one, since public skepticism of industry claims grew markedly after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents. However, regardless of the validity of claims about immunity to meltdown accidents, this terminology of "inherently safe" has more rhetorical merit than technical content. Although it may be possible to design reactors that are safer relative to existing reactors, the technology cannot be considered to have safety as an inherent characteristic. All reactors that have been proposed have some potential for severe accidents. There are far better
and safer energy options available now.7 It is time to leave nuclear energy
behind as a failed dream of the last century. We can and must replace
the false propaganda of "atoms for peace" with an "energy
for peace" program that can make the well-being of the present generation
compatible with the protection of the security and environment of future
generations. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also cooperate in contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.
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Institute for Energy
and Environmental Research
Endnotes 2. For a comparison of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions using nuclear power to replace coal-fired power plants versus using modern combined cycle natural gas fired power plants, see Science for Democratic Action, vol. 6 no. 3, March 1998. 3. George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, pp. 15-21. 4. In 1951, the Experimental Breeder Reactor I produced the first nuclear electricity that was used to power a light bulb. Both the reactor and the bulb are in a museum in Idaho. 5. See Science for Democratic Action, vol. 6 no. 3, March 1998. 6. See Science for Democratic Action, vol. 5 no. 4, February 1997. 7. See
for example IEER's report, Wind vs. Plutonium: An Examination of Wind
Energy Potential and a Comparison of Offshore Wind Energy to Plutonium
Use in Japan (1999), Chapter 9 of The Nuclear Power Deception, and Thomas
Johansson et al., Renewable Energy: Sources for Fuels and Electricity.
Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993. |
