http://www.beyondnuclear.org/about/
About Beyond Nuclear
Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic. The Beyond Nuclear team works with diverse partners and allies to provide the public, government officials, and the media with the critical information necessary to move humanity toward a world beyond nuclear.
Contact Beyond Nuclear at:
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 400, Takoma Park, MD 20912
Tel: 301.270.2209; Fax: 301.270.4000; Email: info@beyondnuclear.org
Our Beyond Nuclear Team
THE STAFF
Paul Gunter: Director, Reactor Oversight Project
Paul Gunter specializes in reactor hazards and security of operating reactors; prevention of new reactor construction; regulatory oversight; climate change; the nuclear power-nuclear weapons connection; organizing and movement-building; radiation impacts on health; and wildlife impacts. Click on Paul's name to open full bio. And watch Paul Gunter at PowerShift 2009 on the Beyond Nuclear YouTube Channel. paul@beyondnuclear.org. 301.270.2209 x 3.
Kevin Kamps: Radioactive Waste WatchdogKevin Kamps specializes in high-level waste management and transportation; new and existing reactors; decommissioning; Congress watch; climate change; federal subsidies.Click on Kevin's name to open full bio. And see Kevin Kamps' 1992 Walk Across America for Mother Earth "Winter Count Poster" and key, documenting the cross country march that introduced him to anti-nuclear activism. A more detailed bio can be found here. kevin@beyondnuclear.org. 301.270.2209 x 1
Cindy Folkers: Radiation and Health Specialist; Administration; Cindy Folkers specializes in radiation impacts on health; Congress watch; energy legislation; climate change, federal subsidies, and handles the administrative operations of Beyond Nuclear.Click on Cindy's name to open full bio. Cindy Folkers: cindy@beyondnuclear.org. 301.270.2209 x 0
Linda Pentz Gunter: International Specialist; Media and Development Director
Linda Pentz Gunter specializes in international nuclear issues. She also serves as director of media and development. Linda's issue works focuses on the nuclear power-nuclear weapons connection; wildlife impacts; nuclear France; and uranium mining and human rights. Click on Linda's name to open full bio. Linda Gunter: linda@beyondnuclear.org. 301.270.2209 x 2
FOUNDING PRESIDENT
Dr. Helen Caldicott. Dr Helen Caldicott, has devoted the last 35 years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction. In the U.S. she co-founded the Physicians for Social Responsibility. The international umbrella group (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. She also founded the Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND and now known as Women's Action for New Direction) in the US in 1980. She is the author of numerous books and currently hosts a radio show in the U.S. - If You Love This Planet.
HONORARY CHAIRMAN
Ed Asner. Edward Asner. Ed is an American film and television actor and former President of the Screen Actors Guild, primarily known for his role asLLou Grant on the Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off series, Lou Grant. More recently, he provided the voice of Carl in Up and continues to tour in live theater productions.
THE BOARD
Kay Drey (St. Louis, MO; anti-nuclear activist). Kay Drey, now retired, has worked for 30 years as an advocate for the protection of the general public, workers and the environment from the hazards of nuclear power and radioactive waste. She made her first speech against nuclear power on November 13, 1974 before a Missouri State Senate committee and today still conducts research and maintains a comprehensive library used by media, government officials and members of the public.
Lou Friedman (Canton, CT; consultant; peace and environment). Lou Friedman's 20 years in secondary education culminated as the Director of an alternative multi-cultural high school. He has worked for 35 years since as a consultant, facilitator, producer and press coordinator in international environmental and peace organizations such as Promoting Enduring Peace, EarthKind, EKTAS, Int'l. (Russia), PACE (Peoples Action for Clean Energy) and Beyond Nuclear. He has an MAT from Yale University.
Karl Grossman(Sag Harbor, NY; professor and journalist). Karl teaches at the State University of New York/College at Old Wesbury. He has been writing and making television programs about nuclear technology since 1974. His books include: Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power and his television documentaries include Three Mile Island Revisited and The Push to Revive Nuclear Power.
Judith Johnsrud, Ph.D. (State College, PA; radiation and nuclear power specialist). Judith's many decades of activism include work on: the geography of nuclear energy; its entire system of production, utilization, and waste isolation; radiation impacts on humans and the environment; and the problems of sequestration of "high-level," "low-level," and recycled radioactive wastes.
Judith Kaufman (Cornish, NH; community development consultant, antinuclear activist). Judith Kaufman's environmental activism started with her work with the Upper Valley Energy Coalition and the Clamshell Alliance in 1976. She has since worked with coalitions of activists fighting regional plant and waste siting and relicensing of nuclear plants in Northern New England. As a professional, she launched the now largest microlending program in Kazakhstan - a nuclear weapons-free zone.
LAUNCH PARTNERS
Ed Asner, Ed Begley,Jr., Christie Brinkley, Susan Clark, David Cortright, James Cromwell, Judi Friedman, Keith Gunter, Joan MacIntosh, Friedrike Merck, John McEnroe, Bonnie Raitt, Susan Sarandon, Marilyn Strong, Steven Strong, Paul Winter, Gretchen Wyler (1932-2007).
For more about Beyond Nuclear, read our general organizational pamphlet.
Annual Reports
Beyond Nuclear is a member of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, the Apollo Alliance, the Campaign for a Nuclear-Weapons Free World and the French network, Sortir du Nucleaire. Beyond Nuclear is on the Advisory Board of the Environmental Media Association and works in coalition with hundreds of groups and thousands of individuals around the world.
Copyright © 2009, Beyond Nuclear. All rights reserved.
===============================================================
"Nuclear Power: Dirty, Dangerous and Expensive" -- Enviro Close-Up with Karl
アップロード日: 2010/08/08
Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear explodes the myths now being promulgated by those promoting nuclear power. He tells of the insoluble problems of nuclear waste, how nuclear power plants routinely emit radioactive poisons, how catastrophic accidents can happen, how nuclear power plants are pre-deployed weapons of mass destruction for terrorists, and the enormously high costs of nuclear power. He exposes that nuclear power does not contribute to global warming.
非営利団体と社会活動
===============================================================
Fukushima...radiation so high - even robots not safe
公開日: 2012/03/30
Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear joins Thom Hartmann. More than a year into the nuclear crisis at Fukushima - radiation levels have now reached their highest point yet. What does all this mean - and what should nuclear supporters in America be taking away from the continuing crisis?
カテゴリ
ニュースと政治
===============================================================
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2013/3/29/beyond-nuclear-and-others-take-action-to-lower-radioactivity.html
Beyond Nuclear
Beyond Nuclear and others take action to lower radioactivity allowed in food
Is there radiation in the food? Ami is 10 and lives in Yanaizu, Fukushima prefecture. Artwork is from the Strong Children Project, portrait by Geoff Read
Beyond Nuclear, in coalition with other groups and individuals from Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network or FFAN, filed a petition with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to drastically reduce the amount of radioactive cesium permitted in food, from a ridiculous 1200 Bq/kg, to 5 Bq/kg (see why here, read why here). The Bq (Becquerel) is a measure of radioactivity. This week the FDA officially accepted the petition into its process, which means they are now accepting comments.
Our petition asks for a binding limit of 5 Bq/kg of cesium 134 & 137 combined, in food, nutritional supplements and pharmaceuticals. This is necessary because of continuing exposure to radiation from atomic bomb testing and routine releases from nuclear power, and in the wake of the ongoing catastrophe at Fukushima, where the reactors are still releasing radioactivity. We also ask that testing be widespread and, when technologically feasible, measurements below 5 Bq/kg be taken. Through this effort, we would like a database of contamination levels to be established and maintained, with information relevant to researchers, so that movement of the cesium radionuclide in our environment can be tracked since it tends to biomagnify once released.
The current US FDA recommendation, which is not binding, is twelve times higher than the limit in Japan. Before the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan’s now accepted limit of 100 Bq/kg would have been enough radioactivity to handle the contaminated material like nuclear waste is handled. But after Fukushima, it is considered all right to eat it. Anything above that 100 Bq/kg could be placed in the markets of other countries, like the US, who have higher cesium limits.
Studies indicate that, in post-Chernobyl Belarus, at just 11 Bq/kg of internal cesium contamination children can be susceptible to heart problems. At 50 Bq/kg, children can start to have permanent tissue damage.
Additionally, in a 2011 report, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), Germany, has determined that the European Union cesium limit of 370 Bq/kg for babies and 600 for adults is woefully unprotective. Such high limits for cesium could be responsible, in combination with other man-made radioactivity, like strontium-90, plutonium-239 and iodine-131 (cesium-137 is a sentinel-indicator for the presence of these other isotopes and often does not exist without them), for roughly 150,000 additional cancer deaths in Germany alone if people consume only products contaminated to the maximum permissible limit. This number does not account for incidence of cancer nor any other wide-ranging diseases or genetic disorders radiation could cause.
The highest limit in Europe is half of the 1200 Bq/kg of cesium the US FDA recommends as its action limit. We should note, however, that the US recommendation comports very closely with the 1250 Bq/kg limit for most foodstuffs proposed by EURATOM (European Atomic Energy Community), the body of the EU that promotes nuclear power.
The IPPNW report recommends a 4 Bq/kg of cesium 137 and a 4 Bq/kg limit of cesium 134 for children, limits very similar to the 5 Bq/kg we are asking the FDA to implement for everyone. Beyond Nuclear believes it is impractical for the US to have one standard for adults and one for children. It would be difficult to regulate, and add to the cost of implementation, so protection for the most vulnerable, those up to age 17 at least, should be the guiding principle used to set the standard. In fact, the IPPNW report recognizes this fact as well.
Beyond Nuclear and other FFAN coalition partners will be spearheading public participation initiatives in support of this FDA petition, in addition to adding more supporting materials and amendments through the petition process as we help educate the public, the FDA and Congress on this issue. Stay tuned for upcoming actions!
Artwork is from the Strong Children Project.
Update on April 6, 2013 by 
admin
admin
SIGN OUR PETITION. Earlier this week, we posted a citizens’ sign on petition in support of our FDA filing. Sign it and tell the FDA, President Obama and our Congress members that we want to know if and when our food is contaminated so that we can protect ourselves and our children. This is a choice they should not keep from us. It is our decision.
Copyright © 2009, Beyond Nuclear. All rights reserved.
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Copyright © 2009, Beyond Nuclear. All rights reserved.
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http://www.beyondnuclear.org/fact-sheets/
Beyond Nuclear
Fact Sheets
Beyond Nuclear and others take action to lower radioactivity allowed in food
These fact sheets were created by Beyond Nuclear. Please feel free to reproduce and distribute with credit.
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/documents/BN_FreezeOrFukushimasFActSheet_2012.pdf
FREEZE OUR FUKUSHIMAS
A BEYOND NUCLEAR FACT SHEET
March 2012
Introduction
On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake in Japan knocked out electric grid power to the
six reactor units at the coastal Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant complex operated by
Tokyo Electric Power Company. A short time later, a tsunami possibly as high as 21 meters
(68.9 feet) inundated the reactor site destroying the emergency backup power systems. Over
the next several days, three reactor cores overheated, exploded and melted down. Different
accident scenarios can lead to the same root cause of the nuclear catastrophe; the extended
loss of electrical power to reactor safety and cooling systems followed by containment failure
and the release of radioactivity.
Among many responses, Beyond Nuclear has launched a nationwide Freeze our Fukushimas
campaign, working with Mark I communities and other interested parties around the country
toward the goal of halting operation at the country’s 23 GE Mark I boiling water reactors, close
to identical in design to those at Fukushima Daiichi.
Hard lessons from Fukushima Daiichi, Japan
Nuclear accidents happen. In times of national crisis and natural catastrophe, nuclear power is a
dangerous liability. During routine operation, reactor safety systems rely upon power from the
electric grid. While reactors are designed to shut down when the grid fails, if emergency backup
power systems fail, or if cooling pumps are destroyed, the reactor core overheats causing fuel
damage, hydrogen gas explosions, core meltdowns and the release of dangerous amounts of
long-lasting radioactivity into the environment.
The radioactive releases from the Japan nuclear accident foiled earthquake and tsunami relief
efforts, causing the US 7th Fleet to retreat from coastal operation.
Large portions of a 12-mile radius area evacuated around the destroyed reactor site will not be
recovered for generations because it is too radioactive for human habitation.
Radioactive fallout containing iodine-131, plutonium-239, cesium-137 and strontium-90 has
contaminated the land, agriculture and groundwater well beyond the prohibited re-entry zone
and uncontrolled releases of highly radioactive cooling water are leaking offshore into ocean
currents, threatening the marine food chain.
Even highly technological societies can lose control of atomic power with deadly and long-term
consequences that threaten environmental quality and human health for decades, even
centuries.
The GE Mark I Boiling Water Reactor: Warnings covered up and
repeatedly ignored
The destroyed Fukushima Daiichi reactors were the same design as 23 General Electric Mark I
Boiling Water Reactors (Mark I) now operating in the United States.1
GE marketed the 1960s vintage Mark I “pressure suppression containment” design to
economically undercut its competitors. The Mark I containment is one-sixth the volume of
Pressurized Water Reactor containment structures. As a result, the Mark 1 has long been
known to be vulnerable to containment failure during a severe accident.
On September 20,1972, Dr. Stephen Hanauer, a senior safety officer with the Atomic Energy
Commission warned, “I recommend that the agency adopt a policy to discourage further use of
the pressure suppression containments, and that such designs not be accepted for construction
permits filed after a date to be determined.”2
On September 25, 1972, Joseph Hendrie, the AEC deputy director, replied “Steve’s idea to ban
pressure suppression containment is an attractive one in some ways.”3 However, Hendrie
stated “Reversal of this hallowed policy, particularly at this time, could well be the end of nuclear
power.“4 Ignoring Hanauer’s warning, the AEC and its successor, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC), would issue 16 more Mark I operating licenses including three new
construction permits.
On February 2, 1976 three GE engineers publicly resigned prestigious [ ] management
positions. Testifying before Congress, they stated nuclear power was “so dangerous that it now
threatens the very existence of life on this planet.”5 Singling out the Mark I containment they
said, “The consequences of containment failure are frightening. It is unthinkable that plant
operation can be continued on the very tenuous argument that the probability of the accident
occurring is low.”6
1 List of US GE Mark I Boiling Water Reactors
2 Memo from Dr. Stephen Hanauer to O’Leary, Kruesi, Rogers, US AEC, September 20, 1972
3 Note to John O’Leary, Joseph Hendrie, AEC, September 25, 1972
4 Ibid, Hendrie to O’Leary
5 “Testimony of Dale Bridenbaugh, Richard B. Hubbard, and Gregory C. Minor before the Joint
Committee on Atomic Energy, February 18, 1976,” from The Silent Bomb: A guide to the nuclear
energy controversy, 1976, Appendix A, p. 281
6 Ibid, p. 298
Vent containment to save it: The voluntary “fix” that didn’t work
In June 1986, Dr. Harold Denton, the chief safety officer with the NRC, told an industry
conference that if a GE Mark I reactor had a severe nuclear accident there was a 90% chance
of containment failure. Rather than close the dangerous reactors, however, they concluded that
a severe accident was highly improbable and allowed continued operations.
In 1989, the NRC asked Mark I owners to voluntarily design and install a “hardened vent” on the
small, weak containments so that control room operators would have the option to “temporarily”
vent unfiltered, radioactive, pressurized steam and the hydrogen gas generated during a
nuclear accident, to the environment as a “last resort”.
The voluntary vents were installed without NRC oversight and inspections. In fact, the
Fitzpatrick nuclear power plant in Oswego, NY refused to install the hardened vent and instead
relies on “venting” a nuclear accident by blowing out double doors on an adjacent building to
relieve the radioactive pressure and explosive hydrogen gas.7
Following the March 2011 triple catastrophe, Fukushima demonstrated that both the Mark I
containment and its experimental vent are unreliable. The NRC now wants operators to make
yet another dangerous containment modification with the installation of a supposedly more
“reliable” hardened vent system, so that these badly designed and aging reactors can extend
their operations for decades longer.8
However, the NRC’s own documents identify that the hardened vent is not reliable for all severe
accident scenarios and in certain accident conditions the act of venting itself can increase the
likelihood of reactor core damage and containment failure.9
Rooftop Nuclear Waste Storage Pools Outside Primary Containment
The storage pools for high-level radioactive waste at Mark I reactors sit several stories high, and
are located outside of any primary radiological containment structure. They have long been
recognized as at risk of accidents – such as heavy load drops or natural disasters – as well as
intentional attacks.
A sudden drain down, or a slow motion boil down, of pool cooling water, exposing densely
packed irradiated nuclear fuel to air, would very likely lead, in a short few hours, to an
unstoppable waste inferno and catastrophic radioactivity release to the environment.
7 “Hardened Wetwell Vent Capability at the James A. Fitzpatrick Nuclear Power Plant,” US NRC
Safety Evaluation Report, September 28, 1992
8 “Recommendations for Enhancing Nuclear Safety in the 21st Century: The Near-Term Task
Force for Review of Insights from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Accident,” US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, July 2011, Recommendation 5, p. 41
9 Filtered Venting Considerations in the United States,” Idaho National Energy Laboratory and
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1988, joint presentation in Paris, France /
Evidence has mounted that a radioactive waste fire occurred at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4,
resulting in large-scale releases of hazardous Cesium-137 into the environment; many U.S.
Mark Is have more waste packed into their individual pools than Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4
put together.
Even NRC-commissioned studies have acknowledged that many tens of thousands of latent
cancer fatalities, out to 500 miles downwind, could result from a waste pool fire, as well as
thousands of square miles of agricultural land condemned, and economic costs due to
evacuation running into the hundreds of billions of dollars. The National Academy of Sciences
have confirmed such risks are real.
Beyond Nuclear and countless environmental allies have petitioned the NRC for safety
upgrades – such as backup power, make-up water, and needed monitors – on pools until they
can be emptied into Hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS): monitorable, retrievable, very high
quality dry casks, safeguarded against accidents, fortified against attacks, and built well enough
to last for centuries.
Environmental Contamination and Public Health
Contamination from a nuclear catastrophe like Chernobyl or Fukushima will not diminish for
hundreds of years. The result of generations of human beings being exposed to this sort of
contamination is not known, but since 90% of genetic mutations are not beneficial, humans risk
their very existence by living in these areas, spreading this contamination around or consuming
foodstuffs grown in radiologically contaminated areas.
After Fukushima exploded, the government of Japan instituted a “cleanup” policy of spreading
the radioactive rubble throughout the country, and even urning it, in order to “share the burden”.
But this burden has to be isolated. It cannot be “shared,” or re-released into the environment
without causing more disease.
The Japanese government opted to “clean up” rather than permanently close some areas. The
destruction of vegetation, trees and removal of top-soil will permanently destroy habitat,
decimate indigenous species and destroy drainage to the landscape, thus creating a new
environmental disaster.
The release of radioactivity from Fukushima - both as atmospheric fallout and direct discharge
to the ocean - represents the largest accidental release of radiation to the ocean in history,
according to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In June and July 2011, radioactive
contamination was 10-10,000 times higher than background, reaching from the Japan coast out
to 400 miles and contaminating seafood.
The US quickly stopped any emergency monitoring of contamination levels from the Fukushima
catastrophe on US soil, and while some regularly scheduled monitoring has continued, it is
woefully inadequate.
Consequences of catastrophic radioactive releases and impacts on
public health
Under current radiation standards and assessment methods, radiation doses to the Japanese
population downwind, downstream, and up the food chain from Fukushima are likely being
significantly underestimated, as are the negative health consequences for current and future
generations.
Radiation dose estimates and protection standards do not fully account for the most vulnerable
populations, leaving children, the immune compromised, and women to disproportionately suffer
more risk.
The Safe Energy Solution
In 1999, The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) produced a "Wind versus
Plutonium" case study on Japan, showing that renewable energy sources could economically
compete. The utility of wind versus nuclear was demonstrated during the Fukushima accident
when Japan's offshore wind turbines continued supplying vitally needed electricity to the grid
despite the earthquake and tsunami of March 11th, while the melting reactors contributed to,
rather than aided, the crisis.
In its 2007 book "Carbon-Free, Nuclear-Free," IEER proved that both dirty, dangerous, and
expensive fossil fuels and nuclear power could be completely eliminated from the U.S.
economy, and replaced entirely by renewable sources and maximized efficiency, by 2040,
without any further technical breakthroughs required and for the same amount of our GDP we
currently spend on energy.
In the aftermath of Fukushima, Germany, the fourth largest economy in the world, decided to
completely phase out nuclear power by 2022, while remaining committed to climate goals of
dramatically lowering greenhouse gas emissions over the course of coming decades; Germany
aims to be 80%-100% renewable and efficient by 2050, as does Denmark.
In October 2010, the U.S. Energy Information Administration announced that renewables were
tied with nuclear power in terms of their share of primary energy production, at just over 11%
each; since then, renewables have surpassed nuclear power. Wind power has long been cost
competitive with new nuclear, and solar PV became so in 2010, despite the historic,
large disparity in subsidies; efficiency is still by far the most cost effective way to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, while renewables continue to decrease, and nuclear to increase, in
price.
Beyond Nuclear has challenged proposed 20-year license extensions at old, degraded, unsafe
atomic reactors like Seabrook, NH and Davis-Besse, OH by arguing that renewables, such as
offshore wind and solar PV, combined with energy efficiency and storage, can readily replace
dirty, dangerous, and expensive nuclear power.
Actions for a Safe Energy Future
Beyond Nuclear in coalition with other groups around the country, has long been advocating for
shutdown of the US GE Mark I BWRs. The March 2011 Fukushima meltdowns provided the
unfortunate opportunity to fully launch the campaign under the umbrella, Freeze our
Fukushimas, to shut down the country’s most dangerous reactors first, the Fukushima 23.
On April 13, 2011, Beyond Nuclear, eventually joined by 8,000 others, submitted an emergency
enforcement petition to the NRC urging the suspension of the Mark I operating licenses. The
NRC agreed to review two of our arguments but dismissed a key request for public meetings in
each of the 17 emergency planning zones around US Mark Is. Given the NRC’s refusal, the
“Freeze” campaign plans to:
•Organize independent public hearings in Mark I communities for educational purposes and
to help organize opposition to their continued operation.
•Hold governmental hearings, town hall meetings, press conferences, conduct media
campaigns and, where appropriate, hold demonstrations, to raise awareness of the risks
posed by the Mark I and to pressure for closure.
• Provide analysis of renewable energy replacement power capacity when Mark Is are shut
down.
• You can join Freeze our Fukushimas. Visit: httpwww.beyondnuclear.org/freeze-ourfukushimas/.
Or contact Beyond Nuclear directly: 301.270.2209 or
info@beyondnuclear.org.
Conclusion
The GE Mark I Boiling Water Reactor is not a quality product and does not have reasonably
adequate margins of safety for the all important containment structure, the final barrier to a
radioactive catastrophe.
Nuclear promotion, corporate financial protection and an electrical production agenda have
been prioritized over the protection of public health and safety, resulting in the continued
operation of a dangerous design, aging reactors and diminished margins of safety.
If public health and safety is to be the priority, all GE Mark I boiling water reactors must be
permanently shut down. Let’s Freeze our Fukushimas before the next catastrophe!
Beyond Nuclear
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 400
Takoma Park, MD 20912
www.BeyondNuclear.org
===============================================================
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/documents/BN_Final_FullFactsheet_IFR_Jan2013.pdf
PANDORA’S FALSE PROMISES
INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR: FACTS AND MYTHS
A Beyond Nuclear Fact Sheet
WWW.BEYONDNUCLEAR.ORG
January 2013
AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Pandora’s Promise is a new documentary that endeavors to make the case that nuclear power
should be embraced as a solution to climate change. While adopting many of the known
propaganda lines of the nuclear industry and its boosters, the film also touts the sodium-cooled
Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), a breeder reactor design long abandoned and which does not exist
today anywhere in the world. This fact sheet is intended to set the record straight on the IFR. A
separate fact sheet answering the misleading statements made in the film can be found in the
Fact Sheet section of the Beyond Nuclear website.
Beyond Nuclear recommends that any viewing of Pandora’s Promise be done from an informed
position and with a great deal of skepticism as to the veracity of its contents.
THE BASICS
The proposed US Integral Fast Reactor:
• is a sodium-cooled reactor that is fueled with a metallic alloy of uranium and plutonium.
• is a fast reactor — i.e. neutrons are not slowed down — and “breeds” or creates more
plutonium than is used as fuel. 1
• is integral because it operates in conjunction with an on-site “pyro-processing” facility to
separate plutonium and other long-lived isotopes from spent fuel. The transmutation process
also converts the long-lived waste radioisotopes into shorter-lived waste products. 2
• was developed as a prototype at the Argonne National Laboratory between 1983 and 1994 but
much of its technology was based on development programs used in the 1950s.
• was canceled under the Clinton administration due to its proliferation risks, costs, and
impracticalities.
• is not in existence anywhere in the world today.
PROLIFERATION
• The IFR must be fueled with plutonium and will produce more plutonium. This plutonium can
be used to make nuclear weapons.
• The use of plutonium as fuel breaks down the barrier between the civilian and military use of
plutonium and sets up the potential for theft or diversion by outside parties.
1
1 Nuclear Weapons and ‘Fourth Generation’ Nuclear Power. Friends of the Earth Australia. By Jim Green. January
2009. http://www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/issues/nfc/power-weapons/g4nw
2 ibid.
• Lack of nuclear materials that could be used to make even crude nuclear bombs is generally
considered to be the main obstacle to nuclear proliferation. Pyro-processing would lower the
proliferation bar considerably. 3
• The IFR can produce weapons-grade plutonium using a shorter irradiation time.
• The initial load of fissile material in an IFR must come from existing civil or military stockpiles
which could provide the rationale for the on-going operation of enrichment and reprocessing
plants or even the construction of new ones. 4
• “No technical fix can remove the proliferation risks associated with reprocessing and the use of
plutonium-based fuel. . . New reprocessing technologies will leave the plutonium in a mixture
with other elements, but these are not radioactive enough to provide theft-resistance, and a
nation seeking nuclear weapons could readily separate the plutonium from the other elements
by chemical means. And some of these other elements are themselves usable in weapons.” 5
THE RISKS OF SODIUM
• Sodium reacts violently with water and burns if exposed to air. 6
• Sodium-cooled fast reactors can suffer from sodium leaks and fires, failures of cooling
equipment handling liquid sodium, and catastrophic super-criticality accidents. 7
• Any leak “results in a reaction that can rupture the tubes and lead to a major sodium-water
fire.” 8
• The Department of Energy noted in 2002 that “There have been small sodium leaks (and small
fires) at essentially every sodium-cooled reactor plant built; in some cases, several of them.” 9
SAFETY CHALLENGES
• A fast reactor is vulnerable to a “core disassembly accident”. Collapsing the fuel into a reduced
volume increases the rate at which the chain reaction occurs. If this were to happen quickly
enough, the pressure in the fuel would rise fast enough to lead to an explosion. This could
fracture the protective barriers around the core, including the containment building, and
release large fractions of the radioactive material in the reactor into the surroundings. Such a
2
3 http://ieer.org/resource/disarmamentpeace/revival-of-pyroprocessing-technology-for-nuclear-fuel-in-bushadministration-
energy-plan-poses-serious-proliferation-dangers/ Revival of Pyroprocessing Technology for Nuclear
Fuel in Bush Administration Energy Plan Poses Serious Proliferation Dangers. IEER. May 17, 2011.
4 ibid.
5 http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/NPWWch6.pdf Nuclear Power in a Warming World,
Chapter 6, Evaluating New Nuclear Reactor Designs. Union of Concerned Scientists. 2007.
6 http://www.princeton.edu/sgs/publications/articles/Time-to-give-up-BAS-May_June-2010.pdf It’s time to give up
on the breeder reactor. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. By Thomas B Cochran, Harold A. Feiveson, Zia Mian,
M.V. Ramana, Mycle Schneider & Frank N. von Hippel. May/June 2010.
7 http://ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2000/05/Annie-statement-transmu.pdf The Nuclear Alchemy Gamble: An
Assessment of Transmutation as a Nuclear Waste Management Strategy. Statement of Annie Makhijani, Project
Scientist, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, May 24, 2000.
8 Ibid. It’s time to give up on the breeder reactor.
9 Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee and Generation IV international forum, “Generation IV roadmap:
Description of candidate liquid-metal-cooled reactor systems report,” GIF-017-00, December 2002, p. 34.
“core disassembly accident” has therefore been an important concern among the fast reactor
design community ever since the first fast neutron reactors were constructed. 10
• Blanket statements that the IFR is unable to melt down are not credible. How a reactor
behaves under accident conditions is extremely complex and the modeling results have to be
critically evaluated to check whether the assertions of safety by designer really do hold good.
In the case of the Indian fast breeder reactor, this was not the case. 11
• According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, when looking at so-called Generation IV
reactors (which include the IFR, the Small Modular Reactor and the Thorium Fueled Reactor),
“there is no basis for assuming that any of the five designs now under study would be
significantly safer than today’s nuclear power plants.” 12
• The IFR has “little or no operating experience, so detailed computer models would be needed
to accurately predict their vulnerability to catastrophic accidents. However, this project is still in
its infancy, so developing and extensively validating computer models for each design will be a
formidable task.” 13
• An event that causes the core of an IFR to become more compact—such as a core meltdown
— could substantially raise reactivity, resulting in a rapid power increase that could vaporize
the fuel and blow the core apart. 14
• “The necessity of keeping air from coming into contact with the sodium coolant makes
refueling and repairing fast reactors much more difficult and time-consuming than for watercooled
reactors.” 15
• Princeton physicist, M.V. Ramana argues against the use of the IFR to address climate
change because these types of reactors “have never been built” and because they involve “an
associated new type of reprocessing technology called pyro-processing. Both breeders and
reprocessing plants have been notoriously problematic.” 16
• Fast reactors have a history of failure. One such, at Dounreay, Scotland, was abandoned two
decades ago with the heavily contaminated site now expected to cost more than $5 billion to
decommission. 17 On December 8th, 1995, 700 kg of molten sodium leaked from the
secondary cooling circuit of the Monju breeder reactor in Japan, resulting in a fire. The sodium
spill itself came very close to breaching Monju, a catastrophe which would have spilled
plutonium into the environment. 18 France’s Superphénix, the world’s only commercial-sized
breeder reactor, was a financial and production disaster, operating only half of the time that it
3
10 The Limits of Safety Analysis: Severe Nuclear Accident Possibilities at the PFBR. Ashwin Kumar, M.V. Ramana.
Economic & Political Weekly. October 22, 2011.
11 Compromising Safety: Design Choices and Severe Accident Possibilities in India’s Prototype Fast Breeder
Reactor. Ashwin Kumar and M.V. Ramana. Science and Global Security. 2008.
12 ibid. Nuclear Power in a Warming World, Chapter 6.
13 ibid.
14 E.E. Lewis, Nuclear power reactor safety (New York: Wiley, 1977), pp. 245–261.
15 Ibid. It’s time to give up on the breeder reactor.
16 http://amitavghosh.com/blog/?p=4857. M.V. Ramana on the Future of Nuclear Energy in India - Part 2 of 2. By
Amitav Gosh, October 22, 2012.
17 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/plans-to-build-a-nuclear-fast-reactor-at-sellafield-come-a-stepcloser-
7608840.html
18 http://wikileaks.org/wiki/The_Monju_nuclear_reactor_leak
was connected to the grid and generating less than 7% of its capacity over its abbreviated
lifetime due to multiple safety incidents and accidents.
• Fast reactor designs have a stronger coolant void effect. The larger the magnitude of the
destabilising (sic) coolant void effect (measured by the “cool-ant void coefficient” – positive
quantities implying that the reaction rate increases with the temperature of the coolant), the
more likely that an accident that begins via a heating of the coolant can spread to large parts
of the core. But fast reactors are not the only type of reactors where a positive coolant void
coefficient could play a role in an accident. Indeed, the best known event where the reactor
demonstrated such behaviour (sic) was during the 1986 Chernobyl accident. 19
• As John G. Fuller’s famous book title put it, “We Almost Lost Detroit” on October 5, 1966,
when the Enrico Fermi Unit 1 plutonium breeder reactor – initially proposed to generate
plutonium for the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal – experienced a partial core meltdown.
Incredibly, Fermi 1 suffered a sodium fire, as well as a large tritium spill, within the past several
years – more than 35 years after the reactor had been permanently shut down.
WASTE REDUCTION
• Although the IFR will produce less radioactive waste than a traditional Light Water Reactor, it
still produces waste, about 1,700 pounds of waste per year for a plant of about 1,000
megawatts. These wastes will remain dangerous for at least 200 years, still requiring a
management plan. 20
• The notion that the IFR is useful to “consume” radioactive waste is vastly overblown. In 1996,
the National Academy of Sciences published a detailed and comprehensive study, Nuclear
Wastes: Technologies for Separations and Transmutation 21 that concluded that efforts using
the IFR to “consume” radioactive waste and reduce the global inventory of transuranic
isotopes would “have high costs and marginal benefits that would take hundreds of years.” 22
COSTS
• The construction costs would be high - the costs of traditional Light Water Reactors are
already ballooning as high as $12 billion. As Princeton professor Frank von Hippel writes: “The
differences between the capital and operating costs of water and sodium-cooled reactors have
remained discouragingly large. Many experimental and demonstration breeder reactors have
been built around the world but none has been a commercial success.” 23
• “The capital costs per kilowatt of generating capacity of demonstration liquid sodium-cooled
fast reactors have typically been more than twice those of water cooled reactors of
comparable capacity.” 24
4
19 Ibid. The Limits of Safety Analysis. Kumar & Ramana.
20 http://web.archive.org/web/20071009064447/www.nuc.berkeley.edu/designs/ifr/anlw.html. An introduction to
Argonne National Laboratory’s Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) Program.
21 http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309052262. Nuclear Wastes: Technologies for Separations and
Transmutation. National Academy of Sciences. National Academy Press. 1996.
22 Ibid. It’s time to give up on the breeder reactor.
23 http://fissilematerials.org/library/rr03.pdf. Managing Spent Fuel in the United States: The Illogic of Reprocessing.
By Frank von Hippel. January 2007.
24 Ibid. It’s time to give up on the breeder reactor.
• “About $100 billion (in 2007 dollars) has been spent worldwide on breeder reactor research
and development and on demonstration breeder reactor projects. Yet none of these efforts has
produced a reactor that is economically competitive with a conventional light water reactor.” 25
THE PRACTICAL AND POLITICAL
• Integral Fast Reactors, or any kind of nuclear reactor, are not needed for — and not practical
to address — climate change. Simply doubling the world’s output of nuclear energy would only
reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by about 5%. 26
• A 2003 MIT study concluded that in order to displace a significant amount of carbon-emitting
fossil-fuel generation, another 1,000 to 1,500 new reactors would need to come on line
worldwide by 2050, more than two new reactors every month, 27 an unrealistic and
impracticable proposition. Prioritizing a reactor design that does not already exist would slow
the process even more. As Princeton physicist, M.V. Ramana observes, “even if one were to
advocate nuclear power, it would be much better to rely on the relatively more proven light
water reactors.” 28
• Reactors of any design take too long to build to address climate change in time. The urgency
of climate change necessitates the rapid deployment of renewable energy technologies that
are ready today and the use of energy efficiency measures. We do not have time to wait for a
handful of slow, expensive reactors that would barely make a dent in reducing carbon
emissions.
• Besides costing too much, and taking too long, to address the climate crisis, nuclear power still
has numerous “insurmountable risks” of its own, such as nuclear weapons proliferation risks,
the risk of catastrophic accidental radioactivity releases, and the unsolved radioactive waste
problem, not to mention radiological and toxic chemical releases to the environment at various
stages of the uranium fuel chain. 29
Beyond Nuclear, 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 400, Takoma Park, MD 20912.
Info@beyondnuclear.org. www.BeyondNuclear.org.
25 Ibid. It’s time to give up on the breeder reactor.
26 http://www.energyscience.org.au/FS03%20Nucl%20Power%20Clmt%20Chng.pdf. Nuclear power and climate
change. By Jim Green, Friends of the Earth Australia. November 2006.
27 http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/pdf/nuclearpower-summary.pdf. The Future of Nuclear Power. 2003. MIT.
28 Ibid. M.V. Ramana on the Future of Nuclear Energy in India.
29 Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change. By Brice Smith.
IEER Press and RDR Books, May 2006.
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