Global Warming and the Nuclear Industry

YOU can help expand it. Guests are encouraged to do so primarily by adding sections, not by editing the existing ones. More ideas, and some possible material are on the related discussion page

"Greenhouse gas emissions, if continued at the present massive scale, will yield consequences that are - quite literally - apocalyptic. ... If these predictions hold true, the combined effect would be the death of not just millions but of billions of people- and the destruction of much of civilization on all continents."

- John Ritch, director general of the World Nuclear Association, in June 2007

.

Nuclear Power has absurdly remarketed itself as 'clean' energy, on the basis that carbon dioxide is a dirty pollutant responsible for etc. etc.

However, the process of preparing fuel for nuclear power statons requires a great deal of energy, and that energy of generates carbon dioxide. Uranium fuel for nuclear reactors is mined (e.g. in Australia and Canada, Niger and Namibia and the former Soviet Union), and the ore contains only a very small fraction of uranium. (Low-grade uranium ore mined in 2006 contained only 0.01 to 0.25% uranium oxides. ¹. The mines themselves contain toxic materials and radioactive radon gas. Extracting and purifying the uranium is a dirty process, implicated both in depleting and contaminating water resources. Then the natural concentration of uranium-235, which is only 0.7%, must be increased. This enrichment process is very difficult, because uranium-235 and 238 are essentially identical chemically. The original gaseous diffusion method uses huge amounts of energy, but it is gradually being replaced by the use of large numbers of sophisticated gas centrifuges, which use only about 2.5% as much energy. After some enrichment, typically to 3–5% uranium-235, the uranium can be used to fuel reactors.