Nuclear energy is inextricably linked to the manufacture of nuclear weapons. A country using nuclear power has the chemical materials and the technical skills to enable the manufacture of a nuclear arsenal. The UK and the US are currently raising concerns about Iran’s enrichment program, but see no irony in our continued commitment to a nuclear weapons programme, despite the fact that we are signed up under a UN treaty to get rid of our bombs.
The first nuclear bombs were manufactured in the United States under the Manhattan Project. The Project at one point employed more than 130,000 people and cost nearly $24 billion in 2008 dollars. This immense cost and effort resulted in the first nuclear attack. After the Second World War the British Government set up our nuclear programme. We were not the only country that wanted to have nuclear weapons and the situation was getting out of hand. An international treaty was written in the 1960s and it came into force in 1970.
The treaty binds the five ‘nuclear weapons states’ (USA, France, Britain, China and Russia [formerly USSR]) to get rid of their bombs, on condition that the other countries in the world do not develop bombs themselves. This Treaty is known as the ‘Non-Proliferation Treaty’ although, on paper, it could equally be called the ‘Abolition Treaty’.
Although the Treaty has been very successful in terms of preventing the majority of non-nuclear weapons countries developing weapons, the original five have doggedly maintained their stockpiles. By the year 2000 - the thirtieth anniversary of the Treaty - there was a degree of determination in the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference to achieve more definite moves towards abolition. On the final day of the conference the United Nations issued a statement calling the conference’s outcome a “historic consensus crucial to the security of all the peoples of the United Nations.”
This happened on the same day that Tony Blair’s son, Leo, was born. But, despite the fact that his Government signed up to an agreement that gave the other countries of the world a belief that there would be disarmament, the Labour administration are now in the midst of replacing Thatcher’s bombs with Blair’s bombs.
Previous research on the impact of deploying nuclear weapons in a war has focussed on the Mutually Assured Destruction scenarios with apocalyptic outcomes. More recent research has looked at what might be the possible impacts of smaller, regional exchanges of warheads. For example, three papers using climatic models have been published in the last few years looking at the effects of an exchange involving around 50 nuclear warheads. Findings indicate that there would be significant climatic changes - but cooling rather than warming. The effects are greater than those predicted previously (the nuclear winter scenarios).
Studies have shown that such a conflict would throw five million tonnes of black soot into the atmosphere, triggering a reduction of 1.25°C of the average temperature of the world’s surface for several years (this would trigger mass starvation with one billion people starving as the annual growing season would shrink significantly).
This kind of exchange would cause severe damage to the ozone layer - destroying 30-40% of it.
The global climate could be disrupted for up to two decades.
So what is it about nuclear material that makes it so dangerous? Two of the most important effects are the enormous amount of energy released when a nucleus splits open; and secondly the radiation. A nuclear warhead can easily release energy of the order of a thousand kilotonnes of TNT. In addition to this the atomic fragments that remain when an atom splits - the so-called ‘fission products’ - actually jeopardises DNA itself.
Apart from the UK’s weapons programme, it was also decided that Britain’s nuclear electricity system should be set up on the basis of maximising the production of the nuclear weapon material plutonium. Thus the waste nuclear fuel rods from the older (but still used) nuclear power stations are sent to Sellafield for plutonium separation.
Now, sixty years on, the UK has built up over 100t of separated plutonium. It takes about 10 kilograms to make a bomb, giving us enough to make 100,000 bombs. Furthermore, the extraction process requires that the waste fuel rods are liquefied. This means that the wastes, which are so dangerous that just to stand next to them would kill you, have ended up in a large liquid stockpile – that would devastate the North of England if it were to be dispersed. We also have no idea what to do with the wastes in the long term.
Risk calculations are being pulled together to try and justify the burial of these materials – however, these calculations have an error factor that is quite routinely of the order of ‘one to ten thousand’ units; or even ‘one to one hundred million’ units. Furthermore, much of the data that is used is not actually measured, but obtained through “data elicitation by expert judgement” - otherwise known as ‘guessing’.
Quite apart from the unknown risks associated with the long-term behaviour of the fission products (and also the plutonium), nuclear facilities routinely discharge radiation to the air and the sea. There is also the risk of a nuclear reactor explosion that would release large amounts of radiation far and wide.
In May 2000 the International community was optimistic that disarmament could be achieved. Now that the world is in financial crisis we should be looking to re-deploy military budgets to the Green New Deal and leave future generations, including Blair’s own children, a legacy of clean energy, rather than a legacy of mass destruction.
Rachel Western is a Green Party member and thanks CND for help with writing this piece
