There is no bigger myth within the nuclear energy industry than their claim that nuclear energy and commercial reactors are an environmentally friendly CO2 source of electricity. From the very beginning of the uranium fuel cycle, the massive creation of and dumping of CO2 into our environment begins, as well as a trail of far deadlier contaminants. First, you have to get the uranium out of the ground...uranium mining is very equipment intensive, and the large pieces of equipment use MASSIVE amounts of fossil fuels. Further, it takes tons and tons of ore containing trace amounts of uranium to get enough actual raw uranium to be of any use. This means said materials have to be carted to processing plants...again, transporting of such vast quantities of these raw start- up materials burn up vast amounts of carbon based fuels, adding to nuclear CO2 contributions to Global Warming.
Once the materials have been mined, they then must be milled, or crushed. These milling operations are usually fairly close to the mines. Once the materials are crushed, various impurities are removed (creating vast amounts of toxic waste, mill tailings), and the end product of this segment of the processing creates what is known as yellowcake. This yellow cake is then packaged into 55 gallon drums, and is ready...TO BE SHIPPED AGAIN, thus using even more fossil fuels.
This yellow cake is about 70 percent pure, but still needs further processing to remove more impurities. A refining facility handles this purification, and then chemically transforms the yellow cake into uranium trioxide, which is now suitable for FURTHER PROCESSING. Think about how much CO2 has been pumped into the environment already, and we are still not even close to being done with the process of having fuel that can actually be used to power a nuclear reactor.
Depending on the country, and enrichment means to be used, the uranium trioxide goes through even more processing at a conversion plant, where it is transformed into either uranium dioxide or uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for enriched light water reactor fuel. At this point, the materials are ready...TO BE SHIPPED AGAIN, this time to a fuel fabrication facility. Using Canada as one example...once they have created uranium hexafluride, said materials are sent for fuel fabrication to the United States, France, the U.K., Germany or the Netherlands. Sure is a whole lot of CO2 being created that the commercial nuclear industry does not want to admit to.
For over five decades, most fuel rods produced for commercial reactors were fabricated at the Gaseous Diffusion plants in Portsmouth, Ohio and Paducah, Kentucky, with most of that production under the watchful eye of the DOE until 1992 when then President George Bush privatized the facilities and transferred oversight over to the NRC with the signing of the 1992 Energy Policy Act. This is where the nuclear industry's CO2 contributions to Global Warming really skyrocket.
Looking just at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plants 50 years of operation, you realize the true folly that is nuclear energy. First, this plant is the largest under-one- roof manufacturing facility ever built in its time. Sadly, it was built less than one mile from the Sciota River, less than 20 miles upstream from the Ohio River, and sits atop the largest underground aquifer in the United States of America...BRILLIANT SITING decision!
This plant was fueled by nine coal-burning energy plants, and used enough electricity each and every day of operation to power all of Los Angeles county for a year. If you do the math, the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant burned enough coal, used enough electricity, to power all of Los Angeles county for six million, six hundred and sixty one thousand, two hundred and fifty days, or 18,250 years! America is just over 200 years old folks! Imagine how much CO2 would not be in the atmosphere if it were not for those 9 coal burning power plants running 24 hours a day, all to supply America's nuclear reactors with fuel rods. Even scarier...these figures do not include the CO2 and energy consumptions for the Paducah, Kentucky plant.
Factor in the building of the nuclear facilities, and the vast amount of fossil fuels that will be burned during decommissioning, and it is obvious who the major contributor to Global Warming really is.
It would be nice if this was the end of nuclear energy's CO2 contributions to the environment, but it is not. It would be nice if these CO2 emissions were the only contaminants and contributions to Global Warming that nuclear reactors created, but sadly, it is but the tip of the iceberg. The fuel rods, as one example, still have to be SHIPPED to the reactor sites. Again, additional fossil fuels being burned up, and we have not seen one watt of electrical energy produced as of yet. A big lie, a failed technology.
http://greennuclearbutterfly.blogspot.com
For more information contact –
CITIZENS AWARENESS NETWORK................www.nukebusters.org
PO Box 83, Shelburne Falls, MA 01370............413-339-5781
PO Box 16, Hancock, VT 05748...…..... 802-767-9131
01/01/08
