GLOBAL WARMING IS BEING USED AS AN EXCUSE
TO PROMOTE NUCLEAR POWER

The late Dr. Roy, professor of physics emeritus, told
me that nuclear power would kill us all. Fast, through
atom bombs, or slow, through radioactive environmental
contamination. He gave us the Roy Process which is
backwards engineering of what a nuclear power plant
produces, namely plutonium 239 for atom bombs and
heat that makes steam which makes electricity. The trick
was to make you pay for your own doomsday.

Make no mistake, studies show nuclear power will not
stop global warming. Depopulating the planet will not
save it. Lying does not work anymore! You can not fool
Mother Nature forever. At some point she sends the bill
and we will pay it with our money and our lives.

Dr. Helen Caldicott's new book, "Nuclear Power Is Not
the Answer To Global Warming" contains correct
information.

Dr. Roy said science was a two edged sword. One can
use it to heal or to kill. A decision how to use science
is made, usually by who signs the pay checks.

Dennis F. Nester
Phoenix, AZ USA
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Chernobyl 20th Anniversary Pictures


NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)
WARNING! Contains Graphic Pictures! Not For the Faint of Heart!
----------------------------------------------
The church bells in the Ukraine are ringing in remembrance of Chernobyl..
Every member of Congress should watch the following film before
authorizing another nuclear power plant. Click play after the first few pictures.

http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/e...nobyl/?GT1=8019
-----------------------------------------------
ECRR Chernobyl 20 Years On - Internet Book - Free Download
http://www.euradcom.org/
-----------------------------------------------
Letter to the Editor,

The aim of nuclear power is spent fuel rods (nuclear waste) from
which weapons are made. Atom bombs, easier are dirty bombs,
so-called depleted uranium ordinance, not electricity, That is why
40 sovereign countries have nuclear power.

Dr. John Gofman says there is no safe dose of man-made ionizing
radiation. We should not add to it with new nuclear power plants.
Nuclear power is the most dangerous form of electricity. It is the
heat which makes steam that powers electric generators. Albert
Einstein once said, "Nuclear power is one hell of a way to boil
water".

Liability is paid by the tax payer under the Price/Anderson Act.
Electric rate payers subsidize nuclear power and waste disposal.
There is big money and political power in nuclear waste, in killing
people, in a toxic regime. Nuclear power pollutes the environment
and will not stop global warming according to studies.

http://members.cox.net/theroyprocess
http://nuclearwaste-theroyprocess.blogspot.com/

Dennis F. Nester
Phoenix, AZ USA
--------------------
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
Sunday, November 4, 1979
Process may kill radiation threat
By CLARENCE W. BAILEY
Copyright, 1979. The Arizona Republic

TEMPE -- An internationally recognized Arizona State University physicist disclosed Saturday that he has discovered a method for treating nuclear reac­tor and other highly dangerous radioactive wastes so they will be harmless.

The procedure was conceived by Dr. Radha R. Roy professor of nuclear physics who is the designer and former director of nuclear-physics research fa­cilities at the University of Brussels In Belgium. and at Pennsylvania State Uni­versity.

Roy said the process “very roughly can be described in part as a reversal of phenomena that occur during a nuclear fission chain reactions.

The scientist said the process is the culmination of many years research

“Theoretical analysis and mathematical calculations confirm the process is highly effective and that any level of radio activity, from weak to strong. Can be reduced to harmless state in a short period of time,” Roy said.

The thing that is so encouraging is that the method can cancel radioactivity rapidly enough for it to be of r real practical value in disposing of dangerous wastes in storage and as they are being produced, Roy said.

One treatment-plant design which Roy has devised could reduce the radioac­tivity of even the most dangerous wastes with half-lives or 15,000 to 40,000 years to a level where they would be essentially harmless in about 20 days.

A half-life is the time required for a quantity of radioactive material to lose one half of its radioactive strength.

Roy, who left his native Calcutta, India. to do advanced nuclear- physics re­search at the University of London during World War II, said all the necessary theoretical and quantum electrodynamical work on the process has been completed.

“There remains perhaps as much as a years work in calculating parameters and preparing data that will he needed for the engineering design of a pilot radio­active waste-treatment plant’ he said.

Roy is known internationally among scientists for his many advanced research contributions in the field of nuclear fission fragments and as the author of de­finitive graduate and post-doctoral textbooks used in universities all over the world. “During the 37 years since the first fission chain reaction there has been no progress whatever toward the development of a method of deactivating radioactive waste or even for storing it safely,” he said.

“The collections of dangerous nuclear wastes in this country alone have now reached a total of at least 75 million gallons, and it is growing daily.”

He estimated an operational nuclear waste-treatment plant could cost $40 mil­lion or more. By contrast, he noted, Congress last summer appropriated $80 million just to build more concrete storage bunkers to hold only a part of the growing accumulation of nuclear wastes.

“Since it is so very dangerous to ship strongly radioactive materials it would certainly be sensible to build a treatment plant for each reactor so radioactivity could be killed out before the waste is transported anywhere" the scientist said.

Roy said that the national danger from nuclear waste is "extremely serious" and urged the federal government to build treatment plants near established nuclear waste storage areas. Other treatment plants should be constructed to kill out the radioactivity in the wastes from the nation's weapons programs and from its educational, industrial, medical and experimental research facilities he said.

Roy warned that waste containing plutonium 239 is "critically dangerous" because of its extremely high radioactivity and also because it is the essential ingredient in an atomic bomb.

The treatment process not only will render plutonium 239 harmless in a remarkably short time, he said, but also will keep deactivated plutonium from ever being reprocessed to make an illegal atomic weapon.

Roy further warned that the United States not only is exporting nuclear energy when it sells reactor technology to foreign nations, but also is sending overseas the potential for making illegal bombs out of plutonium from reprocessed nuclear wastes.

The treatment method will guarantee to foreign countries that use nuclear fission energy that they can maintain an environment free from radioactivity, and it also could guarantee to the world that there will be no reuse of plutonium in an unauthorized weapon, he said. Careful theoretical and mathematical analysis have assured him that the nuclear waste- treatment process will function reliably and with rapidity and high efficiency, he said.

"But the existence of this promising nuclear waste-treatment procedure should not be construed in any sense to mean that nuclear fission power reactors are safe" Roy said. The contractor who built Three Mile Island's reactor-like those who built the other 71 reactors now operational in the United States -- expected that plant to function normally for 30 years in total safety without event .But the fact is that it went out of control and nearly created a meltdown which could have destroyed a large part of the human habitat of east-central Pennsylvania,'' Roy said.

---------------------

Decentralize, multifaceted energy is the solution... not another centralized, corporate based monolith. Solar, geothermal, wind, hydroelectric, and tidal energy with higher efficiency devices and a modified conservation based lifestyle will do what needs to be done to make the transition from wasteful pollution to integration and harmony with nature. Just like the moon project of the 1960... we haven't even started to develop the systems and technologies to free the planet from petroleum based energies...

Let us count the deaths:

Wood - death by axe cuts, being crushed by falling trees, houses burning down from fireplace fires, smoke inhalation, etc...
probably a few hundred thousand over the centuries.

Coal - Miners death from black lung, cave-ins at mines, pollution and acid rain, etc...
probably a few hundred thousand over the centuries.

Oil - drillers and refinery workers killed, CO2 increase in atmosphere, oil spills from tankers, etc...
probably a few tens of thousand over the century.

Nuclear - no American deaths, 10 percent of our electricity safely produced by nukes, NO RMBK (Chernobyl) reactors ever built in America, waste is MANAGABLE if we have the political will to do so.

We can either embrace nuclear and learn how to deal with its negative aspects, or we can agree to decrease the world population by about 90 percent.

Either solution will work.

OT: Jeff, who is this today ?

Jeffmoskin,
WW I & II technologies, chemical and man-made radiation, killed billions of people this century and it goes world wide. There is plenty of
information on the Internet. Cancer rates are 1 in 2 now, I heard it used to be 1 in 50, a new born baby has some 200 chemicals in it's
blood stream plus radiation and will add to their body burden.
---------------------------------------
"I am become Death,
the shatterer of worlds."
The line of Hindu scripture that flashed through Oppenheimer's mind at the moment "gadget," the first test bomb exploded above the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945.

Bhagavad-Gita Chapter 11
The Vision of the Universal Form
Lord Krishna is beseeched by Arjuna to reveal His universal form showing all of existence.

Lord Krishna said: I am terrible time the destroyer of all beings in all worlds, engaged to destroy all beings in this world; of those heroic soldiers presently situated in the opposing army, even without you none will be spared. Bhagavad-Gita 11:32

Radioactive Contamination in America
-------------
Mina Hamolton
Iraq's alleged nuclear threat sinks into the dustbin of history. Americans can stop worrying about atomic perils? Wrong.
Americans are at risk from American-as-apple-pie, Stars-and-Stripes, and made-in-USA, WMDs.

A just-released study, Danger Lurks Beneath: The Threat to Major Water Supplies from US Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Plants, details the danger. Written by Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, a high energy, nuclear physicist, who has been studying nuclear hazards for 28 years and published by the public interest group, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, this book will curl your hair.

Danger Lurks Beneath shows EVEN IF THE US NUCLEAR ARSENAL IS NEVER USED a deadly plague has been released upon the land and water. Though most of the 13 nuclear weapons factories are currently shutdown (a situation President Bush would love to change), the contamination is spreading.

The process of manufacturing nuclear bombs is not dramatic. Unlike an actual nuclear exchange no humans are burned to a crisp, no cities are pulverized. But the ingredients for a nuclear bomb must be mined, sheared, heated, melted, liquefied, transformed into gas, spun, fashioned into metal, nuked, chopped up, put through chemical baths, extracted - all the while unleashing a host of poisons.

The hazard isn't just to the citizens living nearby to the factories. The poisons threaten us all.

Imagine the distance between Boston and New York. It's a five-hour, pedal-to-the-metal highway jaunt. It's also the alarming distance toxins have migrated away from the Hanford nuclear weapons factory in Washington.

Mussels and oysters found on the Washington coast are contaminated with radioactive poisons that flowed down to the coast from Hanford, 200 miles upstream. This is one of many devastating findings in Danger Lurks Beneath.

How can we take in the enormity of what's happened and is still happening?

We learn that four major rivers and many minor rivers are already contaminated or at risk. The Columbia River in Washington, the Snake River in Idaho, the Tuscaloosa River in Georgia, the Rio Grande in New Mexico, the Great Miami River and Ohio Rivers in Ohio.

How do we wrap our minds around four major rivers at risk? What does it mean for people who swim, fish or drink from those rivers? What about people picnicking alongside those rivers? Are the grasses along the banks safe? Is the sediment toxic?

The risk is not a hypothetical, let's-worry-in-ten-years matter. At the Fernald nuclear weapons factory in Ohio the plant managers deliberately poured - via a buried pipeline -tons of uranium into the Great Miami River. Yes, TONS. And this is a river that flows into the Ohio River from which many municipalities draw drinking water.

Ohio communities are not the only ones whose water supplies are threatened. One water reservoir has already had to be shutdown, the Great Western reservoir in the suburbs of Denver. It's contaminated by runoff from the Rocky Flats factory. Now a second nearby water reservoir, Standley Lake, is also polluted by radioactivity.

The information in Danger Lurks Beneath is so shocking we want to comfort ourselves, assure ourselves, Hey we don't live there or near there. Problem: The toxins are seeping into the food chain in sinister ways. For example, ever eat farm-fed trout? That delicious, fresh trout staring up from your plate was probably grown in water drawn from the Snake River aquifer in Idaho. The nearby Idaho nuclear weapons factory is polluting the aquifer.

For the first time in 2000, plutonium was detected in two locations in this aquifer. A host of other nasty chemicals and radionuclides had already been found in this vital water source.

Not that the trout are contaminated, at least, as far as we know. But here's an indicator of how real the threat is: several years ago a trout farmer tried to sell his Idaho hatchery business to the company, W.R. Grace. He was turned down. What were W.R. Grace's reasons? They didn't want a fish farm that gets its water from a source above which nuclear waste is buried. (1)

W.R. Grace was not whistling in the dark. It's a company that knows about nuclear hazards. Back in the 1960's, Grace ran a now-defunct nuclear reprocessing factory in West Valley, NY.

Danger Lurks Beneath shows that the contamination from nuke weapons factories is widespread and it's traveling along unknown and unmapped pathways. We're fooling ourselves if we think we're safe -- anywhere.

The information is this book would be easier to swallow if there were a villain, an archenemy like Saddam to blame. But these villains are US government employees making extraordinarily dumb decisions, decisions driven by a blind dedication to so-called national security.

During four decades worth of bomb making the Atomic Energy Commission and its successor the Department of Energy adopted an out-of-sight, out-of-mind policy. Dump the waste where nobody can see it. Pump poison into aquifers, pipe it to rivers, dump it into streams, ponds and trenches, site burial grounds in swamps. And, all the while, lie about what you're doing.

This WMD threat makes Saddam's "nuclear" menace look like a cupcake. Ditto North Korea's or Iran's.

Don't expect President Bush to make jokes about this threat. No way is he going to engage in a comic routine looking under the desk in the Oval Office for by-products of the US's bomb building spree.

Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, John Kerry, the US Congress, the media and any sane member of the human species should be trumpeting the findings of this report across the land. Will they? Are they?

Are we?

(1) Perspectives of a Former Idaho Trout Farmer, www.ieer.org/sdafiles.

To obtain a copy of Danger Lurks Beneath go to www.ananuclear.org. If you don't feel up to the 270-page study, an Executive Summary is available. Also you can download individual chapters on nuclear factories nearest you or your family and friends.

Mina Hamilton is a writer based in New York City. She is a Contributing Editor to Danger Lurks Beneath: The Threat to Major Water Supplies from US Department of Energy Nuclear Weapons Plants. She can be reached at minaham@aol.com.


Atomic Age Timeline Animation:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/poifu/poifu.swf
* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *

Prince Harry, about to see active duty in Iraq.

QUOTE(jeffmoskin @ Feb 17 2007, 06:43 PM)

Prince Harry, about to see active duty in Iraq.

Thanks, I could not place the face. Charles is willing to sacrifice "the spare", huh ?

Call me crazy, but I'll bet you Harry comes home without a scratch but with a chest full of medals.

I'll start a new topic for this
Back to nukes...

NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
A Brief History of Nuclear Fission and its Opposition

Opposition to the development of nuclear power and weapons in the U.S. is the largest grassroots political movement in history. This movement has done more to shape democratic values here and around the world than any other. Every year we celebrate the Civil Rights Movement yet, you wouldn't know it that there ever was such a thing as an antinuclear movement if you only rely on TV or the corporate media for your source of news. You wouldn't know that the media has done everything in its power censor the history and scope this movement and the support it has had for the last half century with the people of this country and around the world.

Two years before the 1986 Chernobyl disaster this country was at the turning point in the push to develop nuclear power here and around the world. Forbes Magazine called the U.S. nuclear power industry the largest financial disaster in American History. The article went onto to describe some of the key economic issues that led to the "socalled collapse". In that article, Forbes claimed that it's demise had little to do with public opposition to the issue.

Here is a timeline of events, incidents and people that Forbes Magazine and the rest of the corporate media have tried to make go away. In the early days of the movement, anyone who dared question the promotion of nuclear power or weapons was immediately branded a communist or a traitor. Our work is not done until the full story is told to the people of the world and what the nuclear terrorists (US, French, UK, and Russian Governments) have done to us! Let the past not be forgotten for its ability to inspire and root ourselves in the knowledge that we have done the right thing in saying no to nuclear power and weapons.

1895 Whilhelm Roentgen (Germany) discovers X-rays;

1896 Elihu Thomson (designer of X-ray tubes) claims X-rays are dangerous & calls for protection, but is ignored. By 1922, up to 100 radiologists had died from exposure;
1896 Dr. D.W. Gage reports hair loss and skin damages due to X-rays;

1924 Employees of U.S. Radium Corp. die from licking radium paint brushes while painting watch faces;

1925 The first exposure standards are set at 730 rems per year.146 times higher than standards in the 1970's;

1930's X-rays used to test for breast cancer start;

1934 Marie Curie discovers radioactive isotopes. She dies later of leukemia;

1934 Enrico Fermi discovers the concept of fission in uranium;

1939 German physcists successfully split an atom;

1940-1960 The Hanford weapons facility releases massive amounts of radioactive materials into the air for experimental purposes, Cancer rates downwind are extremely high;

1942 The ultra secretive $2 billion Manhattan Project is launched. It was dubbed "the greatest single achievement of organized humans in history."

Dec 2 The first reactor (pile) goes critical in Chicago;

1945 First nuclear device exploded near Los Alamos New Mexico;

Aug 6 U.S. drops nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Over 100,000 die;

1946 U.K. study indicates that radiologists have leukemia rates 8 times that of doctors;

July Nuclear bomb testing begins across the Pacific, initiating the 40 year experiment in using humans to determine the impacts of radiation (Bikini Island);

Oct Atomic Energy Act passed by congress initiates the Atomic Energy Commission (the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is its current descendant);

1948 Soviet Union tests its first nuclear device;
1950's United Mine Workers oppose nuclear development due to the dangers of mining uranium. Mining would be dangled in front of native americans in the southwest where most of the country's uranium was located.

1950-1963 U.S. initiates large scale atmospheric testing. Media pushes americans into nuclear faddism. Nuclear planes, cars, ships introduced with the line "power to cheap to meter", while kids learn to duck and cover at school;.

1950 (Aug) An air force bomber crashes killing Gen. Travis and 18 others in Northern California that releases radiation;

1952 (Dec) The Chalk River experimental reactor in Canada has a partial meltdown that releases millions of gallons of water into the reactor containment area;
1953 The detection of nuclear fallout in Troy New York started the campaign opposing atmospheric nuclear tests.

1953 Atoms for Peace announced, the formation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (U.N.) initiates campaigns to develop "Peaceful uses of nuclear tech";

1954 (Mar) A bomb bigger than 1,000 Hiroshima bombs is exploded, contaminating several inhabited Micronesian islands;

1955 (May) over 6,000 military personel are exposed without their knowledge to a massive nuclear blast (Operation Wigwam);

1956 The Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) and the AFL-CIO opposed the experimental Fermi breeder reactor. The government went ahead with the facility which had a partial meltdown in 1966 and covered up until 1975 when "We Almost Lost Detroit" was published.
1956 Dr. Alice Stewart clinically proves the link between cancer and low-levels of radiation; A 50% increase in childhood cancers due to fetal X-rays;

Apr Albert Schweitzer radio speech inspires Dr. Linus Pauling to recruit concerned scientists for a push to end atmospheric testing;

1957 The committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) later SANE-Freeze published an advetisement in the New York Times spurring the nationwide anti-nuclear weapons movement.
1957 Large explosion at Lake Kystym in the Ural Mt. area of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons facility releases 20 million curies. The area has been permanently quarantined off;

Sep Rocky Flats weapons facility near Denver has a fire that releases 25,618 micrograms of plutonium into the environment;

Oct The English Windscale #1 plutonium reactor catches 12 tons of uranium on fire. The fire is out of control for over 24 hours. Millions of gallons of milk were contaminated and had to be destroyed due to the radioactive releases;

1958 Barry Commoner and other forms the St. Louis Committee for
Nuclear Information;
1958 (Jan) Linus Pauling and activists collect 11,000 signatures from scientists calling for a nuclear test ban;

1958 - A Santa Rosa Press Democrat reporter discloses PG&E plan to build 4 reactors 1000 feet from the 1906 SF earthquake fault zone. A 4 year battle ensues that stops the construction of the Bodega Bay Nuclear Complex;
1959 The Federal Radiation Council is created to set radiation standards due to public pressure from continued nuclear tests; 5 rems per year for workers established;

July A small reactor melts down in San Fernando Valley (Los Angels Basin) releasing radiation into the surrounding area;

1960 Rachel Carson expresses concern about the dumping of nuclear wastes into the Oceans, linking pesticides and nuclear power as being dangerous to the environment.
1960 Thousands turn out for a SANE rally at Madison Square Gardens
1959-1963 First anti-nuclear reactor campaign succeeds at stopping Pacific Gas and Electric's (PGE) plan to build a major reactor complex at Bodega Bay Ca. (1,000 ft from the San Andreas Fault near the epi-center of the 1906 quake);

1961 Women's Strike for Peace is formed. The group would hold rallies in over 60 cities involving 50,000 women.
1961 A B-52 bomber carrying the equivalent of 1600 Hiroshima bombs crashes in North Carolina. Five of six safety switches broke;

1961 Physicians for Social Responsibility is formed. PSR was instruental in getting president Kennedy to signing the Limited Test Ban Treaty;
Jan The SL-1 reactor explodes near Idaho Falls Id, a control rod pins a worker to the ceiling; 3 workers are buried in lead lined caskets due to heavy contamination;

Mar A B-52 Bomber with nuclear weapons aboard crashlands near Yuba City, Ca.;

1962 Ravenswood, Queens NYC stops planned nuclear station.
1963 6 year Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) radiation safety study by Dr. John Gofman and Dr. Arthur Tamplin calls for a tenfold reduction in dosage levels.
1963 Initial plans are made by PGE for the construction of the Diablo Canyon reactor. The company has plans to build over 60 reactors, including a floating reactor. Also planned is a major reactor complex near the 1989 quake epi-center;

Mar A nuclear experiment at a reactor without a containment area releases a large amount of gaseous radiation into the environment at Livermore Ca.;

Aug Edward Teller testifies against the proposed Nuclear Weapons Test Ban;
- clip-

This is dedicated to Dr. John Goffman who has spent 25 years fighting for the safety of humanity. Sources: Steven Aftergood, Anna Gyorgy, Harvey Wasserman, New England Journal of Medicine; U.S. EPA, Glen Barlow, Abalone Alliance Archives and Professor Harry Cleaver's: The rise of the antinuclear movement Rex Wyler's History of the beginnings of Greenpeace

Note: This new version of the nuclear timeline is a 2007 update from the original 1995 document. It is currently missing all major events after 1995, including the mamouth nuclear weapons movement across the country. _______________________________________________________________________
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France Can Phase Out Nuclear Power and Achieve Low Carbon Dioxide Emissions

French Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rising Despite Nuclear Power, New Study Finds

Subsidies for Plutonium and Pro-Nuclear Policies Inhibiting Secure, Low-Carbon Future

For Release on May 4, 2006
Contact: Arjun Makhijani or Annie Makhijani, 301-270-5500 - Institute for Energy and Environmental Research

http://www.ieer.org/reports/energy/france/

Takoma Park, Maryland: A new report, Low-Carbon Diet without Nukes in France, examines the feasibility of phasing out nuclear power in France while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 40 percent in the next few decades France is considered as exemplary by advocates of nuclear power, which provides almost 80 percent of French electricity generation, because the use of that energy source has been crucial to its relatively low greenhouse gas emissions. The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) report is the first to detail technologies and policies that could meet the same lifestyle and economic choices as a high-nuclear, high carbon emissions future without nuclear energy and significantly reduced carbon dioxide emissions.

"The nuclear industry has presented itself as part of the solution to global warming" said Annie Makhijani, a co-author of the report and Project Scientist at IEER. "But nuclear power creates serious long-term security issues in the form of risks of proliferation, severe nuclear accidents, and vulnerability to terrorism. It's not a desirable trade-off. The IEER analysis shows that nuclear power is not necessary even in France to achieve a low-carbon emissions future."

France obtains 75 to 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, making it one of the lowest carbon-emitter countries in Europe per unit of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Because of that, France is not obligated to reduce its CO2 emissions relative to 1990 under the Kyoto protocol, while other European countries have to reduce their emissions to 8 percent (collectively) below their 1990 levels sometime between 2008 and 2012.

Nuclear power has not been the solution to eliminating greenhouse gas emissions in France, however. Low-Carbon Diet without Nukes in France shows that, despite the essential elimination of the use of oil in the French electricity sector since 1973 and the reduction of coal use, greenhouse gas emissions are high and have been rising. This is because the main greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation sector as well as from the use of oil and natural gas in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors.

According to the report, the constraint is not a lack of carbon-free energy sources energies but that existing resources are devoted disproportionately to nuclear energy to the detriment of other sources. Official studies of the use of plutonium as a fuel in 20 nuclear reactors in France indicate that this aspect of nuclear power alone gets about $1 billion per year in subsidies. Yet, until the past few years total investment in wind energy in France had not even reached the annual plutonium subsidy.

"It is not possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in France significantly without large efficiency increases in the transportation sector and in residential and commercial heating," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of IEER and co-author of the report "The technologies are commercial or nearly so. But the official devotion to nuclear energy, including heavy subsidies for plutonium fuel production, has sidelined other aspects of energy policy."

IEER presents two scenarios that use official economic projections of high energy use to show that nuclear power would be phased out over a period of 30 to 40 years while setting a path to much reduced carbon dioxide emissions. The scenarios use existing technology or more advanced technology to achieve 20 percent and 40 percent CO2 reductions with a simultaneous phase out of nuclear power. It acknowledges that nuclear power must be phased out gradually rather than abruptly, because it is such a large part of France's electricity sector and because abandoning existing plants prematurely would divert resources that could be used for investments in efficiency and renewable energy sources, notably wind energy.

"There is no question that France will have to dig deeper into the advanced technology basket to produce the same percentage of reductions in carbon dioxide emissions as the United States," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani. "But the country that invests in that future can grab future technological and economic leadership on reducing greenhouse gas emissions."

"France has unfortunately chosen its technological leadership in the energy sector to be in nuclear technology," noted Annie Makhijani. "But France and the world are ignoring warning signs, like the statement of Ichiro Ozawa, the Japanese Labor Party leader, that the commercial nuclear energy sector could provide plutonium for nuclear weapons."

The French company AREVA, which is majority-owned by the French government, provides reprocessing services to Japanese utilities. Japan has a large stock of separated plutonium as a result, stored partly in Japan and partly in France.

The report notes that a low carbon, zero-nuclear-power future for France by the middle of the 21st century will involve significant technical and policy changes, including

* Regulations requiring new cars to achieve an average fuel efficiency of 100 miles per gallon by the year 2020 and improvements in efficiency of delivery vehicles and trucks.
* Improvements in heating and cooling in the residential and commercial sector that use existing technologies like co-generation and earth-source heat pumps.
* Government procurement of advanced technologies to stimulate innovation, in place of tax breaks for existing technologies.
* Abandonment of reprocessing and retirement of nuclear power plants when they reach the end of the licensed lifetime (40 to 45 years after start up).
* National policies to put wind, pumped hydro, and natural gas and, in the more advanced technology scenario, solar photovoltaic cells, at the center of the electricity sector.

The report is posted in full at on IEER’s website, http://ieer.org

En Français. This press release is also available in French.
http://www.ieer.org/reports/energy/france/lowcarbonprfr.pdf
http://www.ieer.org/reports/energy/france/...arbonsummfr.pdf

Lisa Ledwidge
Outreach Director, United States, and Editor of Science for Democratic Action
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER)
PO Box 6674 | Minneapolis, MN 55406 USA
tel. 1-612-722-9700 | fax: please call first | ieer@ieer.org | http://www.ieer.org

IEER's main office: 6935 Laurel Ave. Suite 201 | Takoma Park, MD 20912 USA | tel. 1-301-270-5500 | fax 1-301-270-3029


* See also: NucNews Links and Archives (by date) at http://nucnews.net * (Posted for educational and research purposes only, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107) *