Topicality – Exploration and Development
Interpretation and Violation: There are five main areas to ocean development –
burying nuclear waste is not one of the five
CIDA 98. The Canadian International Development Agency "CIDA's Strategy for Ocean
Management and Development." - Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada (DFATD).
Government of Canada, Nov. 1998. http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/acdi-cida/acdi-cida.nsf/eng/nat329142438-qrx Web. 30 June 2014. CS
This strategy recommends five
main areas of intervention in ocean management and development when considering ODA
a framework for sustainable ocean development, policy and law; (2)
developing knowledge bases in fisheries and marine sciences; (3) management of the uses of the ocean
and co-ordination and management of coastal zones, shipping and the environment; (4) fisheries
management and development; and (5) aquaculture/mariculture development.
initiatives: (1) establishing
Reasons to Prefer:
Limits: Limiting the topic to five manageable areas is key to education and predictability.
Allowing affirmatives that put things into the ocean exclusively explodes the topic creating
an unmanageable research burden
Ground: We lose key solvency, Kritik and counterplan ground when you do not force the
affirmative to defend econsystem management and use of ocean resources.
Voting Issue – For reasons of Education and Fairness.
1
Spending Disadvantage links
Deep sea disposal of nuclear waste is expensive and untestable
Rao 01
Professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, Radioactive waste: The
problem and its management, Current Science, http://www.iisc.ernet.in/currsci/dec252001/1534.pdf
Seabed disposal is different from sea-dumping which does not involve isolation of low-level radioactive waste within a geological strata. The
floor of deep oceans is a part of a large tectonic plate situated some 5 km below the sea surface, covered by hundreds of metres of thick
sedimentary soft clay. These regions are desert-like, supporting virtually no life. The
Seabed Burial Proposal envisages drilling
these ‘mud-flats’ to depths of the order of hundreds of metres, such bore- holes being spaced apart several hundreds of
metres. The high-level radioactive waste contained in canisters, to which we have referred to earlier, would be
lowered into these holes and stacked vertically one above the other interspersed by 20 m or more of mud pumped in. The
proposal to use basement-rock in oceans for radioactive waste disposal is met with some problems:
variability of the rock and high local permeability. Oceanic water has a mixing time of the order of a few
thousand years which does not serve as a good barrier for long-lived radionuclides.
However there are questions that remain to be answered:
Whether migration of radioactive elements through the ocean floor is at the same rate as that already measured in the laboratories? What is
the effect of nuclear heat on the deep oce- anic-clays? What is the import on the deep oceanic fauna and waters above? In case the waste
reaches the seabed-surface, will the soluble species (for example, Cs, Tc, etc.) be diluted to natural background levels? If so, at what rate?
What happens to insoluble species like plutonium? What is the likelihood of radioactivity reaching all the way to the sea surface? In problems of
accidents in the process of seabed burial leading to, say, sinking ships, to loss of canisters, etc. how does one recover the waste-load under such
scenarios? What is the likelihood that the waste is hijacked from its buried location?
Added to these technical problems are others:
International agreement to consider seabed-burial as distinct from ‘ocean-dumping’. This method
would be expensive to implement, but its cost would be an impediment to any future plutonium mining endeavour.
Deep sea disposal is expensive – $1.4 million dollars for 44 pounds of plutonium waste
Hollister and Nadis 98
Holister has a Ph. D. in marine geology and Steve Nadis is a Contributing Editor to Astronomy Magazine.
He has published articles in Nature, Science, Scientific American, New Scientist, Sky&Telescope, The
Atlantic Monthly, and other journals. He has written or contributed to more than two dozen books. A
former staff researcher for the Union of Concerned Scientists, Nadis has also been a research fellow at
MIT and a consultant to the World Resources Institute, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and
WGBH/NOVA., Burial of radioactive waste under the seabed, Scientific American,
https://www2.uvm.edu/~pbierman/classes/gradsem/2008/radwaste.pdf
On the floor of the deep oceans, poised in the middle of the larger tectonic plates lie vast mudflats that might appear, at first glance,
to constitute some of the least valuable real estate on the planet. The rocky crust underlying these “abyssal plains” is blanketed by a
sedimentary layer, hundreds of meters thick, composed of clays that resemble dark chocolate and have the consistency of peanut butter.
Bereft of plant life and sparsely populated with fauna, these regions are relatively unproductive from a biological standpoint and largely devoid
of mineral wealth.
Yet they may
prove to be of tremendous worth, offering a solution to two problems that have bedeviled humankind since the
dawn of the nuclear age: these neglected suboceanic formations might provide a permanent resting place for high-level radioactive
2
wastes and a burial ground for the radioactive materials removed from nuclear bombs. Although the disposal of
radioactive wastes and the sequestering of material from nuclear weapons pose different challenges and exigencies, the two tasks could have a
common solution: burial below the seabed.
The Clinton administration has endorsed two separate methods for ridding the nation of this dangerous legacy. Both entail significant
technical, economic and political uncertainties. One scheme calls for surplus weapons plutonium to be mixed with radioactive
wastes and molded into a special type of glass (a process called vitrification) or, perhaps, ceramic for
subsequent burial at a site yet to be chosen. The glass or ceramic would immobilize the radioactive
atoms (to prevent them from seeping into the surrounding environment) and would make deliberate
extraction of the plutonium difficult. But the matrix material does not shield against the radiation, so vitrified wastes would still
remain quite hazardous before disposal. Moving ahead with vitrification in the U.S. has required construction of a
new processing plant, situated near Aiken, S.C. Assuming this facility performs at its intended capacity,
each day it will produce just one modest cylinder of glass containing about 20 or so kilograms of
plutonium. The projected cost is $1.4 million for each of these glassy logs. And after that considerable
expense and effort, someone still has to dispose of the highly radioactive products of this elaborate
factory.
Deep sea disposal is expensive
United Nations Environment Programme 91
(Greenpeace. “The Transboundary Movement of Hazardous and Nuclear Wastes in the Wider Caribbean
Region - A Call for a Legal Instrument within the Cartagena Convention.” Edited by: Jim Puckett and
Sergio López Ayllon. CEP Technical Report No. 7. UNEP Caribbean Environment Programme, Kingston,
1991.)
One of the options that has been considered to deal with radioactive wastes is sub-seabed disposal-the implantation of wastes into the ocean floor. Member-nations of the Nuclear Page 28 The Transboundary Movement of Wastes…
Energy Agency (NEA) of the OECD have devoted resources estimated to several hundreds of millions
of dollars to research and development of the sub-seabed disposal option for high-level
radioactive wastes. This research effort has been coordinated by the NEA's so-called Seabed Working Group (SWG) formed in
1975 by the U.S.A., U.K., EEC, France, Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Federal Republic of Germany, and observers from
Belgium and Italy.
3
Politics Links
Publically unpopular - They can’t overcome the nuclear stigma – the public’s not informed enough
Marshall 5 – Prof Dept. Humanities @ Masaryk University, Peer Reviewed (Alan Marshall, 2005, “The
Social and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Waste,” Electronic Green Journal,
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2hx8b0fp)
One of the concerns that arises
from the side of the nuclear industry regarding nuclear waste management is
that the public does not fully understand the technical issues at hand. This makes it impossible for the nuclear
industry to garner full public acceptance of their plans. This perceived public deficit of knowledge gives rise to
what Alan Irwin and Brian Wynne label the public ignorance model of citizen participation. If only the public can be rescued
from their ignorance, this model suggests, they would be freed of their irrational dread associated with nuclear operations. The public
ignorance model, which advocates a form of public participation based upon education, has its roots in the presumption held by many scientists
and technologists that the reason people do not fully trust the scientifically-proven point of view is because the public don’t fully understand it.
For example, Sundqvist (2002) says: Electronic Green Journal, 1(21), Article 4 (2005) 10 There
is a widely held image, in the
rhetoric of decision makers, of lay people as uninformed, ignorant and fearful of the unknown. This image
suggests that if the level of information is raised, lay people will accept the proposals from decision makers. (p.
14) Rosa et al. (1993) echo this point with regard to the 50 years of nuclear facility siting in the United States: The nuclear subgovernment, then as now, was guided by the unshakeable belief that increased public understanding—the
knowledge fix—would translate into support for nuclear technologies. All that was required was thoughtful public relations to
convert the dull, scientific knowledge into interesting, convincing public knowledge. (p.77) Susana Hornig Priest (Hornig Priest, Bonfadelli &
Rusanen, 2003), drawing from her social studies of biotechnology, points out that any
determined effort to use public relations
to educate the public about controversial science and technology is prone to backfiring. Rosa et al. (1993, p. 315) have found that the
same thing happens when the nuclear industry starts up campaigns aimed at using the media to disseminate
information.
4
Environment Disadvantage links
The plan devastates the environment – their defense relies on models which assume non-living
systems—leaks and radiation are inevitable
Edwards 5 – President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (Dr. Gordon Edwards, 2005,
“Alternative Proposals to “Dispose” of Radioactive Wastes,”
http://www.ccnr.org/radwaste_readings.pdf)
This is a kind of "advanced dumping" option. It has often been suggested that the oceans are so vast that nuclear waste could be
safely disposed of at sea; the radioactive poisons would become so diluted and so dispersed, reaching such a low level of
concentration, that the danger would become negligible. This idea dramatizes the difference between physical sciences
and biological sciences. In a non-living environment, material that is dissolved in water spreads out uniformly in all
directions, resulting in very low concentrations at any one place. However, living organisms have the ability to seek out and
concentrate dilute materials (nutrients) into their bodies. Thus biological organisms can often reverse expectations
that are based on the study of non-living systems. This is the principle behind bio-accumulation and bio-magnification. Many radioactive
materials that enter the food chain can be reconcentrated by factors of thousands or hundreds of thousands as they
work their way up the food chain. Think of mercury concentrations in fish, or DDT concentrations in birds of prey such as eagles or falcons. Thus
we cannot predict the end result of a "dilute and disperse" approach, and no nation is pursuing this idea. It is
important to remember that there are literally hundreds of different radioactive materials in irradiated nuclear fuel, and
these materials behave exactly the same as their non-radioactive cousins. Thus radioactive iodine behaves just the same way as nonradioactive iodine -- it goes straight to the thyroid gland. Once there however, the radioactivity damages the thyroid;
it can cause thyroid disorders which impair the growth, well-being, or even the intelligence of a child, as well as causing
tumors (both cancerous and non-cancerous). Other radioactive materials mimic non-radioactive materials. Our digestive system
cannot tell the difference between potassium and cesium, so radioactive cesium is stored in our muscle
tissues when it gets into our food supply. Similarly, radioactive strontium is stored in our bones, teeth, and mother's milk,
because our body cannot tell the difference between it and non-radioactive calcium. In short, our bodies have not evolved in a way
that will allow our digestive systems to detect or reject radioactive materials in our food; the same can be said for all other living
things, as far as we can tell. Sub-seabed disposal would involve placing the wastes in containers below the seabed, so that it will take a long time (hopefully thousands of years) for the containers to disintegrate and the waste materials to be dissolved in
the ocean water. Thus it is a "dilute and disperse" option with a time delay built in. Sub-seabed disposal was
investigated extensively in the 1980's by the Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development).
Canada participated in this work, along with Japan, USA, UK, and other countries. This research was ended in the 1990s when it became clear
that there would always be intense political opposition internationally to such an option.
Burying nuclear waste in the ocean is not probable- it can lead to contamination of
ocean waters
J.M. Brewers No Year Marine Chemistry Division Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth,
Nova Scotia; “Sea Dumping of Radioactive Wastes”; Nuclear Journal of Canada; https://canteach.candu.org/Content%20Library/NJC-1-4-03.pdf
A third route of deliberate disposal being considered for future use is the emplacement of high-level
radioactive waste within, or on, the seabed. Use of this latter option currently seems unlikely and, in any event, it is
at least a decade distant. The word 'deliberate' is used here to discriminate between these activities and the incidental introduction of
radionuclides into the ocean through fallout from nuclear weapons explosions. This latter fallout has both increased the marine
concentrations of certain natural nuclides, such as tritium and radiocarbon, and introduced a variety of
predominantly artificial (fission-product and activation- product) nuclides into the marine environment. The particular
avenue of radioactive waste disposal that has been the subject of most international debate is the dumping of packaged low-level radioactive
5
waste into the deep ocean, which has been practiced since the end of the Second World War. In this paper, the history of such dumping, the
manner in which it has been regulated, and some aspects of the recent debate about its future within the London Dumping Convention are
described.
There is not enough research for the effect nuclear of nuclear waste – sea
life could be at stake if radian is released
Grossman in 2011
Elizabeth (the author of Chasing Molecules, a writer about environmental and science issues for Scientific American), Radioactivity in
the Ocean: Diluted, But Far from Harmless, Environment 360,
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/radioactivity_in_the_ocean_diluted_but_far_from_harmless/2391/
How this continuing contamination will affect marine life, or humans, is still unclear .
But scientists agree that the governments of Japan, the United States, and other nations on the Pacific Rim need to ramp up
studies of how far this contamination might spread and in what concentrations. ¶ “Given that the Fukushima nuclear power
plant is on the ocean, and with leaks and runoff directly to the ocean, the impacts on the ocean will exceed those of
Chernobyl, which was hundreds of miles from any sea,” said Ken Buesseler, senior scientist in marine
chemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “My
biggest concern is the lack of information. We still don’t know the whole range of radioactive compounds
that have been released into the ocean, nor do we know their distribution. We have a few data points from the Japanese —
all close to the coast — but to understand the full impact, including for fisheries, we need broader surveys and scientific
study of the area.”¶ Buessler and other experts say this much is clear: Both short-lived radioactive elements, such as iodine131, and longer-lived elements — such as cesium-137, with a half-life of 30 years — can be absorbed
by phytoplankton, zooplankton, kelp, and other marine life and then be transmitted
up the food chain, to fish, marine mammals, and humans. Other radioactive elements
— including plutonium, which has been detected outside the Fukushima plant — also pose a threat to marine
life. A key question is how concentrated will the radioactive contamination be.
Negative Radiation is deadly for fish and the effects increase with the size
of the fish – much like humans the horribly deadly radiation causes
cancers in fish.
Grossman in 2011
Elizabeth (the author of Chasing Molecules, a writer about environmental and science issues for Scientific American), Radioactivity in
the Ocean: Diluted, But Far from Harmless, Environment 360,
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/radioactivity_in_the_ocean_diluted_but_far_from_harmless/2391/
How the radioactive materials released from the Fukushima plants will behave in the ocean will depend on their chemical
properties and reactivity, explained Ted Poston, a ecotoxicologist with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a U.S.
government facility in Richland, Washington. If the radionuclides are in soluble form, they will behave differently than if they
are absorbed into particles, said Poston. Soluble iodine, for example, will disperse rather rapidly. But if a radionuclide reacts
with other molecules or gets deposited on existing particulates — bits of minerals, for example — they can be suspended in
the water or, if larger, may drop to the sea floor. ¶ “If particulates in the water column are very small they will move with the
current,” he explained. “If bigger or denser, they can settle in sediment.” ¶ If iodine-131, for example, is taken up
by seaweed or plankton, it can be transferred to fish, which are in turn eaten by
larger fish, as has been seen in the Irish Sea. Fish can also take in radionuclides in
the water through their gills, and radionuclides can be ingested by mollusks . But Edward
Lazo, deputy division head for radiation protection at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said,
“This is not a fully developed science and there are lots of uncertainties.” ¶ Radioactive iodine is taken up by
the thyroid in humans and marine mammals — or in the case of fish, thyroid tissue —
and is also readily absorbed by seaweed and kelp. Cesium acts like potassium and is
taken up by muscle. Cesium would tend to stay in solution and can eventually end up
in marine sediment where, because of its long half life, it will persist for years.
Because marine organisms use potassium they can also take up cesium. “Cesium behaves
like potassium, so would end up in all marine life,” said Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and
Environmental Research in Maryland. “It certainly will have an effect.”¶ Tom Hei, professor of environmental sciences and
vice-chairman of radiation oncology at Columbia University, explained that the mechanisms that determine how an animal
takes in radiation are the same for fish as How the radiation accumulates depends on the degree of exposure and half-life of
6
the element. they are for humans. Once in the body — whether
inhaled or absorbed through gills or
other organs — radiation can make its way into the bloodstream, lungs, and bony
structures, potentially causing death, cancer, or genetic damage. Larger animals tend
to be more sensitive to radiation than smaller ones. Yet small fish, mollusks and crustaceans, as well
as plankton and phytoplankton, can absorb radiation, said Poston. How the radiation accumulates depends on the degree of
exposure — dose and duration — and the half-life of the element, said Hei.¶ Depending on its chemical form and by what
organisms it is taken up, radiation can also concentrate when it moves through the food chain . A 1999 study found
that seals and porpoises in the Irish Sea concentrated radioactive cesium by a factor of
300 relative to its concentration in seawater, and a factor of 3 to 4 compared to the
fish they ate.¶ So far, the Japanese government and TEPCO have provided only limited data on marine contamination
from the Fukushima plant. Given the emergency situation, independent monitoring along the coast is difficult, said Jan
Beránek, director of Greenpeace International’s nuclear energy project. On April 5, the Japanese government set its first
standards for allowable levels of radioactive material in seafood. A number of countries have banned seafood imports from
Japan. The U.S. has barred food imports from the prefectures closest to Fukushima and the Food and Drug Administration
says it is closely monitoring imported food products, including seafood, for radiation contamination. ¶ MORE FROM YALE
e360
Treaties make dumping illegal -
Kozakiewicz 14
Patrick Kozakiewicz, January 27, 2014, Reporter of the CBRNe Portal, The disposal of
nuclear waste into the world’s oceans, Headline Threats, http://www.cbrneportal.com/thedisposal-of-nuclear-waste-into-the-worlds-oceans/
It wasn’t until 1993 that nuclear and radioactive ocean disposal had been fully banned and
ratified by international treaties. (London Convention, Basel Convention, MARPOL). Beyond
technical and political considerations, the London Convention places prohibitions on
disposing of radioactive materials at sea and does not make a distinction between wastes
dumped directly into the water and waste that is buried underneath the ocean’s floor. It also
does not exclude dumping radioactive waste through pipelines, which companies in Europe
are actually doing. Some claim that populations of humans located near these pipelines are
10 times more likely to die of cancers. While others state the risks are insignificant.
Negative - Environmentally harmful and illegal based on international law
Kozakiewicz 14
Patrick Kozakiewicz, January 27, 2014, Reporter of the CBRNe Portal, The disposal of
nuclear waste into the world’s oceans, Headline Threats, http://www.cbrneportal.com/thedisposal-of-nuclear-waste-into-the-worlds-oceans/
It seems that the general consensus is that storing radioactive waste in the ocean is harmful
to the organisms that inhabit the ocean and to humans as well due to radiation and in
addition it is a rather expensive process. Poor insulation of the containers, leaks, volcanic
activity, tectonic plate movement, limited locations, and several other factors prove that
storing radioactive waste in the oceans has a potential of becoming a catastrophe. Yet for
7
some, it is more practical than alternatives such as storing it on land or launching rockets off
towards the sun.
Nevertheless, many argue that ocean-based approaches to the disposal of nuclear waste
have significant advantages. First, disposing waste at the bottom of the ocean is hard for
terrorists, rebels, or criminals to steal for use in radiological weapons or in nuclear bombs.
The world’s oceans also have a vastly greater dilutive capacity than any single land site in
the event of unintended leaks.
In the US for example, Federal officials have long maintained that, despite some leakage
from containers, there isn’t evidence of damage to the wider ocean environment or threats
to public health. The Wall Street Journal review of decades of federal and other records has
found many unanswered questions and evidence which proves otherwise. It is also well
documented by the scientific community, that even lose doses of radioactive exposer can
increase the rates of cancers. However, more specifically, endocrine disruptor in form of
radioactivity can cause cancer in the same manner, as it can cure cancer.
The 1993 Treaty remains in force up until 2018, after which the sub-seabed disposal option
can be revisited, creating new opportunities for nuclear waste disposal and a more
potentially radioactively ocean. Companies are already writing up plans to convince the
public and governments about the importance and safety of ocean-floor disposals.
Back then, and even now, many believed the ocean is fair game when it comes to
radioactive waste. Especially since the impact of radioactivity on human health was largely
underestimated. Fortunately the case is not the same today. While radioactive and nuclear
waste is no longer disposed from ships into the oceans, great risks still remain.
Treaties make dumping illegal Kozakiewicz 14
Patrick Kozakiewicz, January 27, 2014, Reporter of the CBRNe Portal, The disposal of
nuclear waste into the world’s oceans, Headline Threats, http://www.cbrneportal.com/thedisposal-of-nuclear-waste-into-the-worlds-oceans/
It wasn’t until 1993 that nuclear and radioactive ocean disposal had been fully banned and
ratified by international treaties. (London Convention, Basel Convention, MARPOL). Beyond
technical and political considerations, the London Convention places prohibitions on
disposing of radioactive materials at sea and does not make a distinction between wastes
dumped directly into the water and waste that is buried underneath the ocean’s floor. It also
does not exclude dumping radioactive waste through pipelines, which companies in Europe
are actually doing. Some claim that populations of humans located near these pipelines are
10 times more likely to die of cancers. While others state the risks are insignificant.
8
There is not enough research for the effect nuclear of nuclear waste – sea
life could be at stake if radian is released
Grossman in 2011
Elizabeth (the author of Chasing Molecules, a writer about environmental and science issues for Scientific American), Radioactivity in
the Ocean: Diluted, But Far from Harmless, Environment 360,
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/radioactivity_in_the_ocean_diluted_but_far_from_harmless/2391/
How this continuing contamination will affect marine life, or humans, is still unclear .
But scientists agree that the governments of Japan, the United States, and other nations on the Pacific Rim need to ramp up
studies of how far this contamination might spread and in what concentrations. ¶ “Given that the Fukushima nuclear power
plant is on the ocean, and with leaks and runoff directly to the ocean, the impacts on the ocean will exceed those of
Chernobyl, which was hundreds of miles from any sea,” said Ken Buesseler, senior scientist in marine
chemistry at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. “My
biggest concern is the lack of information. We still don’t know the whole range of radioactive compounds
that have been released into the ocean, nor do we know their distribution. We have a few data points from the Japanese —
all close to the coast — but to understand the full impact, including for fisheries, we need broader surveys and scientific
study of the area.”¶ Buessler and other experts say this much is clear: Both short-lived radioactive elements, such as iodine131, and longer-lived elements — such as cesium-137, with a half-life of 30 years — can be absorbed
by phytoplankton, zooplankton, kelp, and other marine life and then be transmitted
up the food chain, to fish, marine mammals, and humans. Other radioactive elements
— including plutonium, which has been detected outside the Fukushima plant — also pose a threat to marine
life. A key question is how concentrated will the radioactive contamination be.
No risk of contamination-EPA standards ensure.
Environmental Protection Agency in 2012
“Plutonium” EPA.Gov http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/radionuclides/plutonium.html
EPA sets health-based limits on radiation in air, soil, and water. Federal government agencies are
required to meet EPA standards the same as commercial industries. Using its authority under the Safe Drinking Water
Act, EPA limits the amount of radiation in community water systems by establishing maximum
contaminant levels. Maximum Contaminant Levels limit the amount of activity from alpha emitters, like plutonium, to 15 picocuries per
liter. EPA also protects people against exposure from soil and ground water from sites that have been
contaminated with plutonium. We set criteria that soil and ground water from the sites must meet
before releasing the sites for public use.
9
Capitalism Links
Nuclear energy relies on capitalist institutional structures—turns the case
Lorenzini, 11/27/13—a retired PacifiCorp executive and former general manager of contract operations
at DOE’s nuclear defense facilities (Paul, "A Second Look at Nuclear Power", Issues in Science and
Technology, issues.org/21-3/lorenzini/
Ideological blinders
This deeply
felt philosophical position could help explain the harsh rhetoric. It is “ modern technology with
its ruthlessness toward nature ,” as University of California, Los Angeles, historian Lynn White characterized it in a 1967 essay. The
prominent psychologist Abraham Maslow attacked science
as a “dead end” that had become a “threat and a
danger to mankind.” E. F. Schumacher complained in his influential 1973 critique of modern society, Small is Beautiful, that
humans are “dominated by technology,” and called technology a “force that is out of control … [It] tends to
develop its own laws and principles, and these are very different from human nature.” The troubling consequence of these
declarations has been a tendency to trivialize the enormous benefits in public health, material prosperity, and
lengthened lifespan that science and technology have made possible. As a result, these ideologies have too often become
barriers to developing and using the technologies humans really need. A particularly revealing aspect of this has been the
singular intensity with which environmentalists have opposed nuclear power, knowing full well it would
mean a wider use of coal with its known environmental and human health disadvantages. Why would nuclear
power receive such intense scrutiny since coal too supports industrial growth? A partial explanation for the difference in
treatment is that coal combustion is a comfortingly familiar technology, whereas nuclear power symbolizes as
nothing else the new
world of technological advancement. But nuclear power touches an
even deeper
ideological chord: mistrust of modern institutions. Nuclear power depends on functioning public
institutions to ensure plant safety and to protect the public from radiation hazards . The political left ,
where environmental lobbies are most comfortable, doesn’t trust these institutions . More basically,
they mistrust the values of modern Western society that these institutions embody, particularly their
capitalist economics and their reliance on science and technology. This philosophical predisposition
against technology explains, at least to some extent, why virtually the entire environmental lobby would have
opposed nuclear power when the overwhelming proportion of scientists was on the other side of the
issue. Many people today remain skeptical about nuclear power, even though recent polls show that as many as 73 percent of college
graduates favor nuclear power, as do 65 percent of the general population. Much of the skepticism about nuclear power has been influenced
by a relatively small activist environmental lobby that is motivated as much by ideology as by concerns with the technology itself. These
ideological differences make it difficult, if not impossible, to find a common ground and work collaboratively to use technologies such as
nuclear power to their full advantage. Rather than seeing nuclear power as a beneficial technology with problems we could solve together,
they view it as anathema and oppose it without regard to its benefits. As one example, the legal system of reviews
intended to protect the public became for them a vehicle for blocking nuclear power. As a result, by the 1980s the process had become so
cumbersome that it took more than 15 years for most nuclear projects to be completed. That economic burden was too much to handle, so no
new U.S. nuclear plants have been ordered since the 1970s.
10
Space Counterplan
Text: The United States federal government should substantially increase its nuclear waste disposal
development beyond the Earth’s mesosphere.
Sub seabed disposal is nowhere near far and fast enough—space waste disposal is feasible and
doesn’t affect the environment
Simberg 2 – aerospace engineer and consultant in space commercialization, space tourism, and Internet
security (Rand Simberg, 2/28/2, “Nuclear Waste Should Be Stored on the
Moon,”http://www.foxnews.com/story/2002/02/28/nuclear-waste-should-be-stored-on-moon/)/
Unfortunately, nuclear
energy and nuclear waste are not issues amenable to decisions based on sound
science — people tend to get too emotional about things that they don't understand. There aren't any simple solutions to this
policy problem. Nuclear energy is potentially the most environmentally benign source available in the near term (though the federal policy on it has been idiotic
since the inception of the industry, making it much more hazardous and expensive than it need be, by mandating intrinsically bad plant designs). But waste
disposal is probably the most pressing problem, and it's one that's independent of plant design. And even if we were to renounce
nuclear power today (with the attendant economic and environmental damage as we either destroy local economies from energy shortages, or increase production
from much dirtier coal plants which produce the evil CO2, and actually put out more radiation than properly-operating nukes), we still have tens of thousands of
tons of waste sitting in unsafe conditions at existing plants. Every
criticism of Yucca Mountain applies in spades to the available
alternative — continuing to accumulate it at the plants in a wide range of conditions, few of them good. If Nevada wants to fight this
decision, they'll have to do more than simply naysay it and declare that, after over two decades and billions of dollars, it needs more study. They have to offer a
viable alternative. And any alternative should consider the following: one
generation's waste is another's commodity. Before the
of the features of the
Yucca Mountain solution is that the waste will be available to us in the future when we may find it useful, and any alternative
should ideally have that feature as well. But on the bright side, another feature (well, actually, it's a bug) of the Yucca Mountain plan is that it
invention of the internal combustion engine, gasoline was a waste byproduct of cracking oil for other purposes. Thus, one
will cost billions of dollars and take several years to implement. This effectively lowers the evaluation bar for competing concepts — they don't have to be either
cheap or fast, as long as they're better. Those of you who read my ravings regularly probably know where I'm going with this. Many eons ago, when I was an
undergraduate, I took a course in aerospace systems design. The class project was to come up with a
way to dispose of nuclear waste — in
space. While it was (of course) a brilliant study, it has also been more recently analyzed by people who both knew what they were doing and got paid for it. It
turns out to be (at least technically — politics are another matter) a non-ridiculous idea. These are the basic options: —
dropping it into good ol' Sol, which is really really expensive, and puts it totally out of the reach of our smarter
descendants; — lofting it out of Sol's system completely, which is cheaper than putting it in the Sun, but still expensive, and practically
if not theoretically out of reach of future recyclers; — a long-term orbit, which is accessible, but long term can't be
guaranteed to be long-enough term; and finally, — on some planetary surface, most likely the Moon because it's
the most convenient. Lunar storage sounds like a winner to me. There's no ecology to mess up there, the
existing natural radiation environment will put that particular grade of nuclear waste to shame when it comes to particle
dispensing, and we can retrieve it any time we want, while making it hard (at least right now) for terrorists to get their
hands on it. So, great storage location. Now, how do we get it there? Aye, there's the rub. The two problems, of course, are cost and safety. It turns out that
both are tractable, as long as one doesn't use Shuttle, or any existing launcher, as a paradigm for the achievable. The key to both reducing cost
and increasing reliability is high flight rate of reusable systems — what I call space transports. Fortunately, like space tourism,
hazardous waste disposal may be a large enough market to allow such a system to be developed. A thousand
tons is a thousand flights of a vehicle with a one-ton payload. And there are many thousands of tons of nuclear waste in storage.
And the tonnage will only increase if it's further processed for safe handling and storage (such as vitrification, in which it is encased in glass). Preliminary
estimates indicate that it can in fact be done economically in the context of the current nuclear industry
operating costs; the major issue is safety. This issue has been addressed as well, and it's something that Nevada (a state
that also offers high potential as a home for rocket racing and the space tourism industry) should take seriously as a possible alternative to terrestrial storage. It
might allow them to make the lemon that they've been stuck with into the lemonade of a whole new 21st-century industry.
11
12
Space Counterplan Extensions
Sea disposal impractical-both law and fear of widespread damage prevent
7th International Symposium on Launcher Technology in 07
Iranzo-Greus, Gogdet, Ramusat, Slyunyayev
(Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics MIT, ESA, ESA, Ukraine Academician International
Academy of Astronautics Secretary of International Program Committee “NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL IN
SPACE: A LONG TERM SOLUTION”
http://elib.dlr.de/48760/1/RobMoonMission2016_O_08_BO_TITEL.pdf)
Sea-based options for disposal are: burial beneath a stable abyssal plain, burial in a subduction zone that
would slowly carry the waste downward into the Earth’s mantle and burial beneath a remote natural or human-made
island. These approaches are currently not being seriously considered because of the legal barrier of the Law of
Sea and because in North America and Europe sea-based burial has become taboo from fear that such a
repository could leak and cause widespread damage.
Space disposal cheaper—initial unaffordability only reason we didn’t start decades
ago
7th International Symposium on Launcher Technology in 07
Iranzo-Greus, Gogdet, Ramusat, Slyunyayev
(Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics MIT, ESA, ESA, Ukraine Academician International
Academy of Astronautics Secretary of International Program Committee “NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL IN
SPACE: A LONG TERM SOLUTION”
http://elib.dlr.de/48760/1/RobMoonMission2016_O_08_BO_TITEL.pdf)
The cost of highly reliable burial sites and the cost to support an accurate continuous monitoring of these
depositaries to protect them for hundreds of years will probably exceed the cost which is necessary to
remove the radioactive waste away from the Earth biosphere using launchers. This is why, since long ago,
the disposal of processed nuclear waste in space, especially the longest-life and most toxic isotopes, was considered as
a promising, practical and economically viable option in order to maintain a clean Earth for the next generations. NASA
and DOE have intensively studied the space disposal of hazardous waste in the 70’s and 80’s. As an example, NASA designed payload
containers that would survive a worst-case accident for application on the Space Shuttle. Past studies have never
succeeded mainly due to the difficulty to demonstrate the overall safety associated with all phases of launching and
operation - normal, emergency, abort and accident - of such a system and the affordability of the system, knowing
that only unsound and costly space transportation systems could be proposed. However, the launching techniques proposed
to make such a system acceptable at the horizon 2020 need to be carefully revisited taking into consideration the
launchers available as well as the new developments and possible breakthroughs foreseen with the future launchers. The
space-disposal option must be cost effective and must feature, if any, a cost increase limited to a few percent per kW-h to the customer.
13
Space disposal economic and safe-too many risks with earthly disposal
7th International Symposium on Launcher Technology in 07
Iranzo-Greus, Gogdet, Ramusat, Slyunyayev
(Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics MIT, ESA, ESA, Ukraine Academician International
Academy of Astronautics Secretary of International Program Committee “NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL IN
SPACE: A LONG TERM SOLUTION”
http://elib.dlr.de/48760/1/RobMoonMission2016_O_08_BO_TITEL.pdf)
Monitoring and security for thousands of years is difficult to demonstrate since our « modern world » is
only centuries old and the potential danger is neither visible nor immediate. The closest possible example is seawall maintenance: done correctly since 1277 in the Netherlands, budget cuts and delays in New Orleans. Long term nuclear waste
monitoring will have a cost without providing revenue. • Container integrity has not been proven with
respect to earthquakes, tectonic dislocation and material corrosion (risks of soil and aquifers
contamination). • New risks are appearing, such as terrorism. SPACE DISPOSAL SOLUTION Space disposal could therefore
become today a viable alternative. Even if the new world situation today could make this possible, the idea was suggested several decades ago.
Past studies Reference [R5] in 1978 showed one of the first ideas. Their proposal was based on the following principles: • Shuttle launch based
on the development hypothesis, namely that the Shuttle would perform more than 50 flights per year for a cost of a few tens of M$ per flight. •
Given the launcher’s mass constraint only high activity long half-life non-reusable elements are concerned for economical (high kilo-in-orbit
price) and ecological reasons (several tens of tons of toxic propellants used by the Shuttle for one ton in Earth orbit). • HLW mass can be
reduced by a factor of 40 after separation of unused uranium and cladding (75 tons/year in 1997). • The waste-to-container mass ratio must be
maximized, while assuring radiation shielding, thermal control, reentry and impact protection. The ratio proposed was 15% in this study (this
leads to a launch mass of 500 tons per year for the yearly production plus 10 000 tons for the already stocked waste). • The orbits retained for
the disposal were: High Earth Orbit (55000 km, LEO+4000 © Copyright by ASTRIUM, YUZHNOYE and ESA 4 7th International Symposium on
Launcher Technology Nuclear Waste Disposal in Space: A Long Term Solution m/s), Lunar Soft Landing (LEO+6053 m/s), Solar Orbit (0,86 UA,
LEO+4450 m/s) and Solar System Escape (LEO+8750 m/s). Another paper was presented ([R4]) in 1999 proposing an alternative to the Shuttle
launcher. The
main conclusions of this paper were the following: • The huge amount of spent fuel rods (77 100 tons by 2020 for US
civilian reactors) justifies the development of a reliable and low recurring cost launching system (10 000 tons
launched per year). • Ground launch systems are proposed as alternatives: laser and microwave propulsion, electromagnetic rail-guns. These
system offer low payload masses but quick turn around times. • The simplest orbit was considered, namely solar system escape and was
assured by a continuous thrust by laser. • An alternative orbit proposed was a solar orbit inside Venus which would guarantee HLW retrieval by
future generations if this was considered valuable. A paper presented in 1980 the status of the ongoing studies ([R1]): • The waste generation
hypothesis commonly accepted were that a 1000MWh nuclear power plant produces 1,2 tons of HLW per year, which meant that 420 tons
were produced worldwide with the 1997 production of 353 GWh. • There was an ESA Call For Tender on June, 13th 1980 ([R2]). • It was also
commonly accepted that no nuclear power plant expansion could occur without a HLW long term solution. • High earth orbits were seen as an
economical and promising way but all alternatives (into the Sun, outside the solar system, on the Moon or others planets) had to be
investigated. Orbit DV Orbit Orbital boosts Plus Minus Rank Orbital stability High Earth Orbit 4000 55000km 2 Easily rescued & recovered,
lowest DV uncertain, public controversy, non-permanent 5 disposal Lunar Orbit 4250 21700km 5 Possible rescue & recovery, low DV Orbital
stability uncertain, complex flight profile 4 Possible rescue & Potential lunar Lunar Soft Landing 6050 Lunar backside 5 recovery, permanent
disposal on celestial body, no orbital stability problem contamination, public & scientific controversy, complex flight profile 2 Permanent Solar
Orbit 4450 0,85 AU 2 disposal, excellent orbital stability (> 106 years) High subsystem lifetime, difficult rescue 1 Permanent Solar System Escape
8750 -1 disposal, high public acceptance, operationally simple High DV, difficult rescue, non recoverable 3 Sun impact 24000 -1 Permanent
disposal, operationally Very high DV, small fraction of waste returns to 6 simple Earth Table 1 – Possible waste disposal options in space (cf
[R3]) Waste container and reliability One
of the critical aspects of the feasibility of the nuclear waste disposal in
space is safety in case of launcher failure.
Space disposal is the key alternative to solve the nuclear waste problem—it’s cheap,
efficient, safe, feasible—technology exists now
Coopersmith, 8/22/5—associate professor of history at Texas A&M University, specializes in the history
of technology and the history of Russia (Jonathan, The Space Review, “Nuclear waste in space?”
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/437/1)
14
Neither the space shuttle nor conventional rockets are up to this task. Not only are they expensive, but they lack the desired
reliability and safety as insurance rates demonstrate. Instead, we need to develop a new generation of launch systems where
the launcher remains on the ground so the spacecraft is almost all payload, not propellant. As well as being more
efficient, ground-launched systems are inherently safer than rockets because the capsules will not carry liquid fuels, eliminating
the in-flight danger of an explosion. Nor will the capsules have the pumps and other mechanical equipment of rockets, further reducing the chances of something
going wrong. We
need to develop a new generation of launch systems where the launcher remains on the
ground so the spacecraft is almost all payload, not propellant. How would disposal of nuclear wastes in space actually work? In
the simplest approach, a ground-based laser system will launch capsules directly out of the solar system. In a more
complicated scheme, the laser system will place the capsules into a nuclear-safe orbit, at least 1,100 kilometers above the earth, so that they could not reenter for
several hundred years at a minimum. Next, a space tug will attach the capsules to a solar sail for movement to their final destination orbiting around the sun, far, far
from earth. The underlying
concept is simple: the launcher accelerates the capsule to escape velocity. Like a gun,
only the bullet heads toward the target, not the entire gun. Unlike a shuttle or rocket, ground systems are designed for quick
reuse. To continue the analogy, the gun is reloaded and fired again. These systems would send tens or hundreds of kilograms
instead of tons into orbit per launch. Of the three possible technologies—laser, microwave, and electromagnetic railguns—
laser propulsion is the most promising for the next decade. In laser propulsion, a laser beam from the ground
hits the bottom of the capsule. The resultant heat compresses and explodes the air or solid fuel there,
providing lift and guidance. Although sounding like science fiction, the concept is more than just an elegant idea. In October 2000, a 10-kilowatt laser
at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico boosted a two-ounce (50 gram) lightcraft over 60 meters vertically. These numbers seem small, but prove the
underlying feasibility of the concept. American research, currently at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York with previous work at the Department of Energy’s
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, has been funded at low levels by the United States Air Force, NASA, and FINDS, a space development group.
The United States does not have a monopoly in the field. The four International Symposiums on Beamed
Energy Propulsion have attracted researchers from Germany, France, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and other countries. The
long-term benefit of a ground-based system will be much greater if it can ultimately handle people as
well as plutonium. Dartmouth physics professor Arthur R. Kantrowitz, who first proposed laser propulsion in 1972, considers the concept
even more promising today due to more efficient lasers and adaptive optics, the technology used by
astronomers to improve their viewing and the Air Force for its airborne anti-ballistic missile laser. Where should the nuclear
waste ultimately go? Sending the capsules out of the solar system is the simplest option because the
laser can directly launch the capsule on its way. Both Ivan Bekey, the former director of NASA’s of Advanced Programs in the Office of
Spaceflight, and Dr. Jordin T. Kare, the former technical director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization’s Laser Propulsion Program, which ran from 198790, emphasized
solar escape is the most reliable choice because less could go wrong.
15
Dry Cask Counterplan
Text: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should designate a centralized dry cask
storage site as the sole candidate for spent nuclear fuel disposal.
Consent-based land storage solves the case and their DAs
Audgette 5/20 – staff writer @ Brattleboro Reformer Magazine (Bob Audgette, 5/20/14, “Spent nuclear
fuel may stay on site long after Vermont Yankee shuts down,”
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/ci_25798437/spent-nuclear-fuel-may-stay-site-long-after)y
Nuclear Regulatory Commission released last year a revised waste confidence rule that stated
impacts would be small if spent fuel had to be stored at nuclear sites "indefinitely.” Ernest Moniz, the secretary of the U.S.
In fact, the
Department of Energy, was in Vermont last week. During a phone interview with the Reformer, Moniz said his department is focused on developing a way to take care of the nation's nuclear
waste. However, noted Moniz, DOE needs the go-ahead from Congress. Senate Bill 1240, which has been in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee since 2013, would establish a new
organization to manage nuclear waste, provide a consensual process for siting nuclear waste facilities and ensure adequate funding for managing nuclear waste. "The legislation has been
the Department
of Energy entered into contracts with the operators of the nation's nuclear power plants and agreed to take possession of all
nuclear waste produced as a result of their operations. The plan was to move the waste to a centralized storage facility for long-term disposal, and after a siting process, Yucca Mountain
crafted and is totally consistent with administration policy," said Moniz. "We certainly hope to see it marked up in committee and hopefully passed." In 1983,
in Nevada was chosen. But after $9 billion was invested in the project, the Obama administration pulled the plug due to local opposition, environmental concerns and pressure from Harry
Despite all the money spent on Yucca Mountain, said Moniz, it's not a viable project. "It
certainly did not follow the consent-based process." In January of 2012, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, of which Moniz
was a member, released a report concluding a repository needed to be established as quickly as possible, but not without
local input. Currently, all the waste produced by the power plants is being stored onsite in either spent nuclear fuel pools or dry casks. In late August 2013, Entergy announced it
Reid, the Senate majority leader and democrat from Nevada.
would be closing Yankee at the end of 2014 because it was no longer financially viable due to the fact that natural gas has driven down the costs of producing electricity. Late last week,
Entergy announced that it would soon be asking for permission to construct an additional dry cask storage facility at Yankee. The pad will be used for the placement of 100-ton dry casks, which
will each contain up to 25 tons of spent nuclear fuel once it has cooled down enough to be removed from the fuel pool located inside the plant's reactor building. The first storage pad at
Vermont Yankee was constructed in 2006 and now holds 13 dry casks, with room for 23 more. Each cask contains 68 fuel assemblies, meaning there are now 884 assemblies in dry cask
storage. There are another 2,627 spent fuel assemblies in the pool in the reactor building and another 368 assemblies currently in the reactor vessel. The proposed new pad will be similar in
size and storage capacity to the one already on site.
Senate Bill 1240 calls for the construction of a pilot facility for the storage of
priority waste, one or more additional storage facilities for the storage of nonpriority nuclear waste, and one or more repositories for the permanent disposal of nuclear waste. The
pilot facility would be used "to demonstrate the safe transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level
radioactive waste ... [and] to demonstrate the safe storage of spent nuclear and high-level radioactive waste ... at the one or more storage
facilities, pending the construction and operation of deep geologic disposal capacity for the permanent disposal of the spent nuclear
fuel or high-level radioactive waste." If Congress approves Senate Bill 1240, Moniz said it is hoped a pilot facility can be established early in the 2020s. He said a pilot facility should have been
part of the nation's waste storage strategy since 1983. "
We should have been pursuing consolidated storage facilities in parallel with repository
development," said Moniz. The bill also calls for the development of the Nuclear Waste Administration, taking the responsibility for moving and storing the nuclear rods and other high-level
waste out of the hands of the Department of Energy. The Nuclear Waste Administration would also be responsible for finding a geological repository. Moniz said that wherever a spent fuel
"The consent-based approach is very crucial to us," said
hosting community and the state and the federal government must be aligned if we are given Congressional
authority to pursue this work with communities that are interested. We fully expect that there will be multiple interested communities."
The process is intended to allow prospective host communities to decide whether, and on what terms they will
host a nuclear waste facility; is open to the public and allows interested persons to be heard in a meaningful way; is flexible and allows decisions to be reviewed and
repository is established, it needs to be established with the consent of the hosting community.
Moniz. "The
modified in response to new information or new technical, social, or political developments; and is based on sound science and meets public health, safety, and environmental standards. Sen.
Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said it's very important that states are involved in all decisions related to decommissioning, and not just the siting of a spent nuclear fuel storage facility. Under current
rules, public hearings can be held to take input, but in the end, the operator and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are the only entities that have any real say in how a plant is
decommissioned, said Sanders. "We need to make sure that states that are undergoing decommissioning have a real seat at the table so they can participate in the best way to decommission a
plant." Mike Twomey, Entergy's vice president for external affairs, told the Reformer he and other industry executives expect that the federal government will eventually fulfill its obligation to
we are confident that we are storing it safely within the
spent fuel pool or in dry cask storage. This has been extensively reviewed by the NRC and we are very confident that both methods provide safe storage until
remove the spent fuel from Vermont Yankee and sites around the country. "Until it does,
such a time as the federal government removes the spent fuel."
16
Dry Cask Solvency Extensions
Dry cask storage solves the case
SP 14 – Sheboygan Press (7/12/14, “Our View: Find a long-term solution to nuclear waste
storage,”http://www.sheboyganpress.com/story/opinion/2014/07/12/view-find-long-term-solutionnuke-waste-storage/12585369/)y
Dominion Resources Inc. deserves credit for listening to Town of Carlton residents concerned that it might take the full 60 years allowed by
federal law to decommission the Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant, which has not produced electricity for a year. Residents and town
officials are rightfully concerned about the negative economic impact of a shuttered nuclear plant, once so vital to the local economy, in their
midst. The company in response recently announced
plans to speed the process — by about four years — of moving spent
nuclear fuel rods from a large storage pool at the plant to more secure, long-term storage in 24 concrete
casks, each standing 18 feet tall. Company officials say the accelerated fuel storage schedule could also speed up
the plant decommissioning process. It is an expensive — and safer — proposition. The company told federal regulators it would
spend $103 million through 2016 to manage the spent fuel, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Decommissioning the plant will cost
an estimated cost of $884 million by 2073. Concrete cask storage is safer than leaving spent fuel cooling in water for many years. With spent
nuclear fuel, however, there is no panacea. Nobody feels comfortable with it in their back yard, no matter the method employed to store it
there. After years of planning, the
federal government halted efforts to open a nuclear waste disposal site at
Yucca Mountain in Nevada, and a blue ribbon commission formed by the Obama administration recommends that the nation set up several
regional sites to store used nuclear fuel. Nuclear experts are in general agreement that long-term storage of spent
nuclear fuel at a permanent site is the safest bet in the long term. That it hasn’t happened after many years of trying
speaks to the difficulty in establishing such a site, or series of sites. For now,
on-site storage in dry casks is the next best
alternative . Such storage is being used by many nuclear sites throughout the country, including Point Beach in Manitowoc County and at a
reactor in La Crosse. The snail's pace at which these things take place can be frustrating. State, federal and local agencies all play a role, and
nothing happens quickly. That is why Dominion's announcement of an intent
to speed up the waste storage process —
however minimal the impact in the grand scheme of decommissioning — is welcome. Our only wish is that
safety is not compromised anywhere in the process.
More evidence – dry cask solves
Sweet 11 – staff writer for IEEE Spectrum (Bill Sweet, 6/7/11, “Case for Accelerating Dry Cask Storage of
Spent Nuclear Fuel,” http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/case-for-accelerating-drycask-storage-of-spent-nuclear-fuel-)
A newly
released report from the International Panel on Fissile Materials contains information that implicitly bolsters
the case for moving spent fuel out of cooling ponds and into dry cask storage, both in the United States and in
most other parts of the world as well. After 9/11 it already was apparent that fuel in cooling ponds could make a tempting target for terrorists-and one much easier to hit than reactor cores. Now, in the wake of the dangerous fire in the Fukushima cooling pond,
the case for
accelerating dry cask storage is inescapable . With plans for permanent disposal of nuclear wastes stalled
just about everywhere except for Finland and Sweden, spent
fuel should be moved as fast as possible out of cooling ponds and
into dry casks. What does that mean? As the Fissile Materials report usefully explains, "In dry cask storage, spent fuel
assemblies are typically placed in steel canisters that are surrounded by a heavy shielding shell of
reinforced concrete, with the shell containing vents allowing air to flow through to the wall of the canister and cool the fuel. A typical
dry cask for Pressurized Water Reactor fuel contains about 10 tonnes of spent fuel, roughly one half of an
17
annual discharge
from a 1 GWe reactor." The large cylindrical
containers (seen in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission photo
above) generally are located close to reactor sites in the United States, but
are much "harder" than the spent fuel ponds
also typically found at the sites . Worldwide, about 90 percent of spent fuel is in vulnerable cooling ponds
and only a tenth in dry casks, according to the report. The numbers are somewhat better for the U nited S tates, where,
of roughly 64,500 tonnes of heavy metal (uranium and plutonium, basically), 15,250--almost a quarter of the total--is in dry casks.
On-site storage solves 100% of the impact – zero risk of their impacts
Lydersen 13 – reporter specializing in energy, environment, labor, public health, and immigration, staff
writer for Midwest Energy News (Kari Lydersen, 11/15/13, “In Illinois, nuclear industry sees no urgency
on waste storage,” http://www.midwestenergynews.com/2013/11/15/in-illinois-nuclear-industry-seesno-urgency-on-waste-storage/)
While nuclear
critics at the hearing described possible nightmare scenarios, nuclear plant employees provided a
polar opposite view. A Boilermakers union member extolled the quality of dry casks, and challenged anyone who questions their safety
to meet him in the parking lot after the hearing. Young power plant employees said they have no concerns residing
near and working at the reactors. They are members of a group of “nuclear enthusiasts” called North American Young Generation in Nuclear
(NAYGN). “I currently live within 50 miles of three nuclear power plants as I’m sure many of you do,” said Samantha Schussele, a reactor
engineer at the LaSalle reactor in Illinois, southwest of Chicago. “I plan to get married there, I plan to raise my family there, and I have the
utmost confidence that my family will live in a safe community enhanced by those nuclear power plants.” Chris Rosso described a
“shocking safety culture” at the Braidwood reactor in Illinois, where he is an associate project manager. He said statistics show
the industry is very safe for workers especially compared to the sector he had considered entering, construction. His co-worker
Amanda Stenson, 25, has worked at Braidwood for three and a half years as a radiation protection technical specialist and engineer. “A lot of
you guys were mentioning terrorist attacks,” she said of industry critics. “Every three years the government
comes up with a team of military individuals to break into our plant…they really try to break in…they shoot fake
weapons at each other… it’s like high-tech laser tag.” She said Braidwood has repeatedly passed this safety test,
and that she “absolutely” feels safe at work there.
18
P & T Counterplan - 1NC
Text: Spent nuclear fuel should be stored above ground following Partitioning and
Transmutation.
P&T solves by decreasing radiotoxicity levels to just hundreds of years and makes
aboveground storage safe.
Taebi 12
Intergenerational Risks of Nuclear Energy, Benham Taebi 2012
http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-94-007-1433-5_12 LMC
State of the Art in Technology: Challenge to Geological Disposal¶ As nuclear waste is perceived to be the Achilles’ heel of nuclear energy
production, serious¶ attempts have been made to further reduce its lifetime and volume. A new technology for the¶ latter purpose is that of
Partitioning and Transmutation (P&T). Remember that spent fuel in¶ an open fuel cycle contains uranium and plutonium, minor
actinides, and fission products.¶ Uranium and plutonium are separated during reprocessing in order to be reused; that is what¶ amounts to a
focuses on ‘‘eliminating’’ minor actinides, as illustrated in¶ >Fig. 12.4. P&T complements reprocessing but
does not provide an alternative solution; P&T¶ is also referred to as an extended closed fuel cycle.¶ If completely successful, P&T will, it is
expected, make the waste lifetime five to ten times¶ shorter when compared to closed fuel cycle waste.
After P&T, waste radiotoxicity can decay to¶ a nonhazardous level within the space of hundreds of years
closed fuel cycle. P&T
(i.e., 500–1000 years). This¶ estimated reduction in the waste lifetime is based on the assumption that all minor actinides ¶ are transmuted
except for curium; the
waste stream would therefore only consist of relatively¶ short-lived fission products
and curium isotopes. The latter is considered to be too hazardous¶ to be recycled at reasonable expense and without excessive risk;
curium would dominate the¶ waste lifetime. There is a dispute about what exactly the waste lifetime will be after successful¶ P&T. It goes
beyond the scope of this work to enter into such discussions. However, for the sake¶ of argument I adhere to the mentioned period, arguing
that the scientific possibility to reduce¶ the waste lifetime to a couple of hundred years urges us to revisit some intergenerational¶ arguments
relating to waste management. For the sake of clarity, the three different types of¶ waste, their constituents, and the relevant waste lifetimes
are all illustrated in >Table 12.1.¶ Some experts in the nuclear community hailed P&T in nuclear waste management but then¶ went on to reject
it for two reasons: (1) because it necessitates the building of new facilities and¶ (2) because even after successful application some materials
still remain radiotoxic (IAEA 2000;¶ NEA-OECD 1999). Even though both arguments are sound, they do not provide sufficient¶ grounds for
rejecting P&T. In this kind of reasoning P&T is wrongly presented as an alternative¶ to geological disposal. If my arguments in this chapter are
correct, it must be asserted that P&T¶ challenges
the need for final disposal underground and places the serious
alternative of¶ repositories – for long-term storage on the surface – in a new perspective. Let me start¶
supporting this claim by reevaluating the three main intergenerational arguments that underlie¶ nuclear waste management policy.In objecting
to above ground storage places, the IAEA (2003) draws attention to ‘‘some structural degradation of the packages and their contents [. . .] over
time’’, which makes further transfer of the waste to other storage facilities or geological repositories inevitable. The¶ argument is that longterm safety is therefore not well served by very long periods of time in¶ above ground storage facilities. In its recommendations in favor of
geological disposal, IAEA¶ takes long-term safety for granted. However, the long-term safety of geological disposal¶ depends on certain
considerable uncertainties, which necessitate the sanctioning of¶ a distinction between different future generations. If we now accept the
conclusion drawn in¶ the last section to the effect that this distinction lacks moral justification, we can argue that¶ it would be best to avoid
such uncertainties. Implementing P&T allows for the latter, as¶ the
period of necessary care for P&T waste amounts to a
couple of hundred years, a period¶ in which it is presumed that more reliable predictions can be made
about a canister’s status and¶ possible seepage into the environment and whether that can reach the
biosphere.¶ Likewise, security concerns will change. Security has to do with the unauthorized possession¶ or theft of radiotoxic waste for
the purposes of sabotage (e.g., dispersal) or proliferation.¶ As far as sabotage is concerned, geological disposal has obvious advantages for all
three abovementioned types of radiotoxic waste as listed in>Table 12.1: i.e., potential hazards will literally¶ and figuratively be buried at very
difficult to access depths under the ground. Hence, any¶ sabotage concerns associated with radiotoxic waste remain evidently less in the case
of¶ geological disposal.
In the case of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, however, we must¶ distinguish between the
19
three types of waste. Spent fuel has potential proliferation hazards, as¶ there is still plutonium that could be separated; spent fuel might
therefore best be disposed of¶ underground (Stoll and McCombie 2001). High-level
waste, however, has no potential
proliferation¶ threats, as the fissionable materials (uranium and plutonium) have already been largely¶ extracted10 and the
remaining waste (minor actinides and fission products) does not lend itself¶ to proliferation purposes. Similar reasoning
is applicable to P&T waste; in other words P&T¶ waste does not necessitate geological disposal from the
avoidance of proliferation point of view.¶ Equal opportunity is the third intergenerational equity consideration that underlies
policymaking¶ in nuclear waste management. Nuclear waste should always be disposed of in¶ a retrievable manner for (1) the possible future
resource value of spent fuel, (2) remedial¶ action if the repository does not operate as expected, and (3) rendering radiotoxic waste¶ harmless
with the help of new technology. By including P&T in these discussions as¶ a technological option, one can conclude that considerations about
future resource value¶ cease to be relevant, since P&T waste comprises no potential source value in view of the fact¶ that plutonium and the
remaining uranium are separated during the earlier stage of¶ reprocessing prior to P&T. However, retrievable disposal remains desirable in
conjunction¶ with the second and the third reasons above; i.e., even with P&T waste streams it might be¶ necessity to adjust repositories or to
render the waste harmless. This retrievability argument¶ does not, however, support geological disposal, since retrievability
is, in
principle, more¶ feasible in aboveground storage places.
20
AT: Nuclear Power Inevitable
Nuke power’s not inevitable – Fukushima devastated public confidence and caused restrictive overregulation
Moniz 11 – Energy Secretary of the US, American nuclear physicist (Ernest Moniz, Nov/Dec 2011, Council
on Foreign Relations Foreign Affairs Magazine, “Why We Still Need Nuclear Power,”
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136544/ernest-moniz/why-we-still-need-nuclear-power
In the years following the major accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, nuclear power fell out of
favor , and some countries applied the brakes to their nuclear programs. In the last decade, however, it began experiencing
something of a renaissance. Concerns
about climate change and air pollution, as well as growing demand for electricity, led many
governments to reconsider their aversion to nuclear power, which emits little carbon dioxide and had built up an impressive safety and reliability
record. Some countries reversed their phaseouts of nuclear power, some extended the lifetimes of existing reactors, and many developed plans for new ones.
Today, roughly 60
nuclear plants are under construction worldwide, which will add about 60,000 megawatts of generating capacity --
equivalent to a sixth of the world's current nuclear power capacity. But
the movement lost momentum
in March, when a 9.0-magnitude
earthquake and the massive tsunami it triggered devastated Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant. Three reactors
were severely damaged, suffering at least partial fuel meltdowns and releasing radiation at a level only a few
times less than Chernobyl. The
resurface. Germany
event caused widespread public doubts about the safety of nuclear power to
announced an accelerated shutdown of its nuclear reactors , with broad public support,
and Japan
made a similar declaration, perhaps with less conviction. Their decisions were made easier thanks to the fact that electricity
demand has flagged during the worldwide economic slowdown and the fact that global regulation to limit climate change seems
less imminent now than it did a decade ago. In
the U nited S tates, an already slow approach to new nuclear plants slowed
even further in the face of an unanticipated abundance of natural gas.
21
Status Quo Solves
Sea based disposal isn’t key – on shore sites work fine
WNA in 2012 – World Nuclear Association, “Radioactive Wastes – Myths and
Realities”,http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-wastes--myths-and-realities/ - MWH
The reality is that with today's spent fuel or vitrified high-level waste (HLW), extra layers of protection
come from the multi-barriers of stable ceramic material, encapsulation, and depth from the biosphere
that are designed to prevent any movement of radioactivity for thousands of years. A stable geological
formation, within which the waste will be disposed, also constitutes a highly reliable barrier. Radiation
scientists, geologists and engineers have produced detailed plans for safe underground storage of
nuclear waste and some are now operating. Geological repositories for HLW are designed to ensure that
harmful radiation would not reach the surface even with severe earthquakes or the passage of time.
Nature has also provided good examples of nuclear waste 'storage'. About two billion years ago, in what
is now Gabon in Africa, a rich natural uranium deposit produced spontaneous, large nuclear reactions
which ran for many years. Since then, despite thousands of centuries of tropical rain and subsurface
water, the long-lived radioactive 'waste' from those 'reactors' has migrated less than 10 metres.
Furthermore, deposits of uranium ore exist underground without any expression of this by release of
radionuclides at the surface (e.g. at Cigar Lake in Canada and Olympic Dam in South Australia).
Burying the nuclear waste is safe- it would take centuries for contamination to happen
J.M. Brewers No Year Marine Chemistry Division Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth,
Nova Scotia; “Sea Dumping of Radioactive Wastes”; Nuclear Journal of Canada; https://canteach.candu.org/Content%20Library/NJC-1-4-03.pdf
While the IAEA Definition and Recommendations set the limits for the amounts of material that can be dumped and impose constraints as to
the methods and locations for sea dumping, safety assessments of sea dumping operations are normally the responsibility of individual national
regulatory authorities. Safety assessments for sea dumping of radioactive wastes in the Northeastern Atlantic Ocean are carried out
multilaterally under the NEA Multilateral Consultation Mechanism [NEA, 1977] as part of the quinquennial site suitability review process. These
reviews are intended to outline the features of the site that make it acceptable for dumping under the LDC / IAEA criteria, define the nature and
composition of the wastes dumped, cover the process of optimization (both in terms of comparisons between sea dumping and other options,
and optimization specific to the sea dumping route of disposal), provide estimates of current doses and predictions of future doses resulting
from the practice, and demonstrate compliance with the provisions of the LDC (e.g., the provisions of Annex III) and the IAEA
Recommendations under the Convention. During the process of site SUitability review carried out in 1979 [NEA, 1980], it was recognized that
there existed a number of deficiencies in the information pertinent to the dumping site, which had the effect of limiting the degree to which
predictions of consequences could be made. Estimates of dose consequences of aggregate dumping were based upon the same models used as
the basis for the 1978 IAEA Definition, which, as already noted, were conservative. No attempt was made to estimate collective doses
associated with dumping because of a conviction that such estimates would be subject to extremely large (several orders of magnitude)
uncertainties. This meant (and was stated) that the ICRP principle of optimizatiun could only be applied to comparison among options, or within
the dumping option itself, on a wholly qualitative basis by individual national authorities. It was noted that it would be desirable if this
deficiency was corrected through the acquisition ofmore specific information on the consequences of dumping, and of other disposal options,
for optimization purposes. Consequently, in the conclusions of the review, it was stated that: 'There is a need to develop a site-specific model of
the transfers of radionuclides, particularly on short and medium time-scales, from the dump area to human populations. Therefore, there is
clearly a need to continue investigations presently aimed at improving our knowledge of transport processes in the NorthEast Atlantic. It is
recommended that a well defined programme planbe developed over the next 12 months within the appropriate international framework to
meet this objective.' It was further concluded that 'although the next assessment of the suitability of the present dump site will normally take
place in five years, it is recommended that a review of the scientific basis for making the assessment and of the growing body of knowledge
about radionuclide transport processes in the North-East Atlantic be undertaken before that time.' It was for these reasons that the NEA
established, in 1981, a Coordinated Research and Environmental Surveillance Program (CRESP) [NEA, 1981]. The basis of this program was,
22
predominantly, research to improve the quality of the site suitability review and safety assurance - particularly optimization - procedures.
Safety assurance procedures used for sea dumping of radioactive waste are based upon the use of
predictive models to describe the results of various scenarios for ocean disposal of radioactive wastes.
Since, in the main, the radionuclides released from previously dumped wastes are not detectable, even within the
area of the present dumpsite, heavy reliance has to be placed upon the use of models that depict the processes controlling the transport and
behaviour of analogue stable elements. In fact,
the weakest aspect of the most recent predictive models is the
reliability of representations of bio-accumulation and sediment-water partitioning processes for
radionuclides that are vitally important to an appreciation of the rates at which radionuclides are able to
enter exposure pathways for man, and the likely effects upon populations of organisms. Significant
individual exposures are many decades, perhaps centuries, distant, but the scenarios used for safety
evaluation conceive of ocean dumping and direct discharges continuing for the life of the nuclear fission
industry, currently projected to be 500 years. Early and reliable prediction of consequences is important
if the ocean's resources are to be continuously protected and the assimilative capacity of the ocean is
not be be exceeded. The process of refining both the models for, and the process of, safety assurance is not only dependent upon the
willingness of nations to be involved and to contribute to this kind of work but also on the acquisition of better understanding of the processes
of transport, behaviour, and bio-accumulation of radionuclides and their analogues in the marine environment. Oceanographic scientists and
health physicists, respectively, have played a very important role in the development of 1) oceanographic models that take account of physical,
biological, and geochemical processes in the ocean; and 2) radiological models that ensure that all important routes of humane exposure have
been identified and considered in establishing the suitability and safety of this practice. It must be remembered that the population potentially
exposed to radiation resulting from this practice is extremely widespread. Indeed, for the longer-lived nuclides, it is the group containing heavy
consumers of seafood in areas very remote from the northeast Atlantic that may be potentially the most exposed. Several non-dumping
nations, including Canada, have adopted the stance that they should participate in the assessment of such practices that have potential effects
on Widespread populations, not only to ensure that their own populations are adequately protected but also to satisfy international
obligations, such as those under the London Dumping Convention. Such involvement has had a very significant impact on the nature of
negotiations on the subject and has given these countries an enhanced reputation for objective assessment and as sources of sound scientific
advice. In the OECD / NEA forum, countries such as Canada and the United States have been very successful in stimulating substantial
improvements in the nature and quality of the safety assessment process and have been willing to contribute to the acquisition of scientific
information that is required to improve the technical aspects of these assessments.
23
No risk of contamination-EPA standards ensure.
Environmental Protection Agency in 2012
“Plutonium” EPA.Gov http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/radionuclides/plutonium.html
EPA sets health-based limits on radiation in air, soil, and water. Federal government agencies are
required to meet EPA standards the same as commercial industries. Using its authority under the Safe Drinking Water
Act, EPA limits the amount of radiation in community water systems by establishing maximum
contaminant levels. Maximum Contaminant Levels limit the amount of activity from alpha emitters, like plutonium, to 15 picocuries per
liter. EPA also protects people against exposure from soil and ground water from sites that have been
contaminated with plutonium. We set criteria that soil and ground water from the sites must meet
before releasing the sites for public use.
Interim storage is coming now – solves sufficiently
WNA 5 – World Nuclear Association (August 2013, “Safe Management of Nuclear Waste and Used
Nuclear Fuel,” http://www.world-nuclear.org/WNA/Publications/WNA-Position-Statements/SafeManagement-of-Nuclear-Waste-and-Used-Nuclear-Fuel
NUCLEAR WASTE AND USED NUCLEAR FUEL
1) Origin of Nuclear Waste and UNF. Nuclear power comes from the huge
amount of energy, stored in the atomic nucleus, which is released as heat under controlled conditions in a reactor. This energy release results
from the splitting of atoms of uranium in a process known as "fission". Uranium is one of the "radioactive" elements. Also referred to as
radionuclides or radioisotopes, these are atoms that continue to transform themselves into other elements while decaying to a stable (nonradioactive) state. Naturally occurring uranium consists of three radioisotopes: uranium-238 (99.3%), uranium-235 (0.7%) and uranium-234
(trace amounts), with the difference lying in the number of neutrons in the atomic nucleus. Of them, only U-235 is fissile, meaning able to be
split. The end products of controlled nuclear fission contain a diverse group of radioactive elements that
decay at greatly differing rates. These end products are classified either as nuclear waste or as used nuclear fuel (UNF). 2) Categories of Nuclear
Waste. Nuclear waste is categorised according to its radioactivity levels in three broad classes: low level waste (LLW), intermediate level waste
(ILW), and high level waste (HLW). Some ILW decays rapidly to become LLW; some ILW, such as parts of UNF fuel cladding removed during
reprocessing, decays slowly. Heat generation is a relevant concern only with HLW-UNF. This heat is described as the "thermal burden" in
managing and disposing of these materials. 3) Energy Value in Used Nuclear Fuel. UNF contains radioactive substances that still have a great
deal of energy potential. Some 96% of the mass of UNF can potentially be recovered and recycled for further use as nuclear fuel. 4) Role
of
Interim Storage of Reactor End Products. UNF-HLW is generally stored for several years in a pond at the power
plant or at a reprocessing plant. On-site storage or storage at an interim surface-storage facility allows for
natural radioactive decay to reduce
both the
radioactivity and the associated thermal burden of this
end product.
24
Geological Disposal Good
IAEA and NEA agree geological disposal provides the best intergenerational equity.
Taebi 12
Intergenerational Risks of Nuclear Energy, Benham Taebi 2012
http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-94-007-1433-5_12 LMC
Waste Management Policies: ‘‘a Desire for Equity’’¶ Having discussed the moral obligations that ensue from the intergenerational problem that
the¶ production of nuclear energy creates, I shall now return to the nuclear waste management¶ principles and to the overarching notion of
intergenerational equity. The long-term
concerns,¶ as outlined above, have triggered a debate on how to deal with
radiotoxic waste in an equitable¶ way. The level of acceptance 4 of risks for present generations is proposed as a reasonable¶
indication for the future. The International Atomic and Energy Agency (IAEA 1995) laid down¶ several principles of radioactive waste
management, in which concerns about the future were¶ expressed in terms of the ‘‘achievement of intergenerational
equity.’’ It was asserted that nuclear¶ waste should be managed in such a way that it ‘‘will not impose undue
burdens on future¶ generations’’ (IAEA 1995, Pr. 5). The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) reiterated those
principles¶ in a Collective Opinion, which stated that geological disposal should be preferred¶ to aboveground
storage on the basis of considerations of intergenerational equity: ‘‘our¶ responsibilities to future generations are better
discharged by a strategy of final disposal¶ [underground] than by reliance on [above ground] stores which require
surveillance, bequeath¶ long-term responsibility of care, and may in due course be neglected by future societies whose¶ structural stability
should not be presumed’’ (NEA-OECD 1995, p. 5). All
national programs¶ have already subscribed to the concept of
geological disposal as a ‘‘necessary and a feasible¶ technology’’; but some countries prefer to postpone implementation
in order to first evaluate¶ other options and alternatives (NEA-OECD 1999, p. 11).
Geological storage is safe and allows retrievability as mandated.
Taebi 12
Intergenerational Risks of Nuclear Energy, Benham Taebi 2012
http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-94-007-1433-5_12 LMC
Let us now move on to the question of how these considerations relate to the choice of final¶ disposal waste methods.
Geological
repositories are believed to ensure security which is¶ perceived as ‘‘resistance to malicious or accidental
disturbance [. . .] over very long times’’¶ better than easily accessible above ground storage facilities (NEAOECD 1999, p. 11). ‘‘[W]aste¶ stores [on the surface] are vulnerable to inadvertent or deliberate intrusion by humans if not¶ kept under close
surveillance. This places obligations on future generations’’ (IAEA 2003, p. 5).¶ The IAEA (2003, p. 7) further asserts that ‘‘[p]utting
hazardous materials underground¶ increases the security of the materials.’’¶ Equal Opportunity: Retrievable
Disposal¶ The third concern is how to act in accordance with our alleged obligations in order to minimize¶ future burdens while at the same
time not depriving people of the future of their freedom of¶ action. NEA (1999, p. 22) states that the
present generation
‘‘should not foreclose options to¶ future generations.’’ This is termed the equal opportunity principle: ‘‘[i]t is of equal worth
that¶ we guarantee coming generations the same rights to integrity, ethical freedom and responsibility ¶ that we ourselves enjoy’’ (KASAM
1988).
In other words, we should respect their freedom¶ of action – conceived of by KASAM (1999, p. 14) as a moral
25
value – by acknowledging that¶ ‘‘future generations must be free to use the waste as a resource’’; in view
of the fact that spent¶ fuel contains uranium and plutonium which have potential energy value. Two other
factors in¶ favor of creating the option to retrieve waste from disposal facilities are these: (1) to be able to¶ take remedial action if the
repository does not perform as expected and (2) to be able to render¶ radiotoxic waste harmless with new technology.¶ Retrievability, as
intended here, has
to do with repositories that will be kept open for an¶ extended period of time so that
future societies have the option to retrieve the waste. One¶ might thus argue that retrievable waste could compromise the
long-term safety of any¶ repository. However, retrievability as commonly understood in the literature implies having¶
a temporary measure based on the assumption that at a certain point a decision will be taken to¶ either
retrieve the waste (for any purpose) or to close the repository (IAEA 2000, pp. 9–10). If¶ one relates retrievability
discussions to the question of final disposal, one can argue in favor of¶ storage on the surface, as the ‘‘[r]etrieval of material is easier from
surface facilities than from¶ underground facilities, but geological
disposal can be developed in stages so that the
possibility¶ of retrieval is retained for a long time’’ (IAEA 2003, p. 7).
Geological disposal complies with intergenerational equity.
Taebi 12
Intergenerational Risks of Nuclear Energy, Benham Taebi 2012
http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-94-007-1433-5_12 LMC
The fourth objection to surface storage (irrespective of the waste lifetime) is that it forces¶ us to rely on future societies for the possible further
treatment and final disposal of waste¶ (NEA-OECD 1995). It has been argued that near
future geological disposal complies
better with¶ intergenerational equity, as it does not involve passing on our responsibilities to our
descendants¶ and it imposes fewer safety and security burdens on the present generation. Axel Gosseries
(2008),¶ for instance, argues that from the viewpoint of intergenerational equity, the ‘‘seriousness risk¶ of malevolent use’’
calls for the early disposal of spent fuel rather than for storage.¶ The latter objection reveals an intergenerational
conflict, not one between the interests of¶ present and future generations (as has been outlined in this chapter), but rather one between ¶ the
interests of different future generations. One
can indeed defend the argument that¶ disposing of waste now
complies better with equity toward generations of the near future¶ since, instead of passing on the
responsibility of dealing with this problem, we will have taken¶ care of it ourselves. On the other hand, assuming
that geological disposal will put distant future¶ generation at a disadvantage, it would be a good intergenerational equity argument to avoid¶
such discrimination. The key question here is how can we rank the interests of people living¶ during different eras in the future. If my
arguments in the section >Policymaking and the¶ Principle of Diminishing Responsibility are sound and if it is the case that we ought not to
treat¶ distant future generation differently just because they happen to live in the more distant future,¶ then it becomes less defensible for
intergenerational equity to require us to dispose of the waste¶ in geological repositories.¶
26
AT: Leaks
Squo solves environmental damage from nuclear power plant leaks.
WNA 5 – World Nuclear Association (August 2013, “Safe Management of Nuclear Waste and Used
Nuclear Fuel,” http://www.world-nuclear.org/WNA/Publications/WNA-Position-Statements/SafeManagement-of-Nuclear-Waste-and-Used-Nuclear-Fuel
The absence of any significant environmental impact from the nuclear industry demonstrates, in practice
and on the record, the
continued success of robust and well-proven nuclear power technologies, the reality
of competent safety and environmental oversight
by national and international authorities, and
the responsible
behaviour of well-established nuclear operators. Because the nuclear industry's strong performance in safety
yields nuclear "incidents" only rarely , the media often give greater attention to even a minor nuclear
incident causing little or no harm than to the frequent and seriously harmful accidents involving fossil fuel
production or use. For example, coalmining
accidents kill thousands of people each year. Indeed, the death rate from
worldwide coalmining exceeds, in just two days, the fewer than 50 persons who died from direct radiation exposure or fallout-induced thyroid
cancer as a consequence of the world's major nuclear accident at Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986. (Reference: UNSCEAR, the UN Scientific
Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.) Oil
and gas-related accidents kill many more, while large oil spills have
had a devastating environmental effect
on sea coastlines and marine ecology. Arguably even more
significant than
these specific fossil fuel-related accidents is the enormous worldwide discharge of pollutants into the
atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion - a stream of emissions that continues to degrade human health and the global environment.
No extinction – empirics – reactors leak literally all the time
Nichols 13 – columnist @ Veterans Today (Bob Nichols, 4/6/13, “All Nuclear Reactors Leak All of he
Time,” http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/04/06/all-reactors-leak-all-the-time/)
(San Francisco) Reportedly Americans widely believe in God and lead the world in the percentage of citizens in prison and on parole. That is
actual reality from an imaginary character in a TV show. The Gallup Poll also says it is true and has been for years. Most
Americans
believe that nuke reactors are safe and quite sound, too. Wonder why they do that? Most people at one time in
their lives watched as steam escapes from a pressure cooker and accept it as real and true. A reactor is very
much the same thing . The “cooks,” called “Operators,” even take the lid off from time to time too. A nuclear reactor is just
an expensive, overly complicated way to heat water to make steam. Of course all reactors leak ! All nuclear
reactors also actually manufacture more than 1,946 dangerous and known radioactive metals, gases and aerosols. Many
isotopes, such
as radioactive hydrogen, simply cannot be contained . So, they barely even try. It is mostly just a show for the rubes.[1]
Coal plants disprove the impact – they emit way more radiation than a global meltdown
Worstall 13 – Forbes Contributor focusing on business and technology (Tim Worstall, 8/10/13, “The
Fukushima Radiation Leak Is Equal to 76 Milion Bananas,”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/08/10/the-fukushima-radiation-leak-is-equal-to-76million-bananas/)
27
Not that Greenpeace is ever going to say anything other than that nuclear power is the work of the very devil of course. And the
headlines do indeed
seem alarming: Radioactive Fukushima groundwater rises above barrier – Up to 40 trillion becquerels released into Pacific ocean so far – Storage for
radioactive water running out. Or: Tepco admitted on Friday that a cumulative 20 trillion to 40 trillion becquerels of radioactive
tritium may have leaked into the sea since the disaster. Most of us haven’t a clue what that means of course. We don’t instinctively understand what
a becquerel is in the same way that we do pound, pint or gallons, and certainly trillions of anything sounds hideous. But don’t forget that trillions of picogrammes of
dihydrogen monoxide is also the major ingredient in a glass of beer. So what we
becquerels of radiation is actually an important
number.
really want to know is whether 20 trillion
To which the answer is no, it isn’t. This is actually
around and about (perhaps a little over) the amount of radiation the plant was allowed to dump into the environment
before the disaster. Now there are indeed those who insist that any amount of radiation kills us all stone dead while we
sleep in our beds but I’m afraid that this is incorrect . We’re all exposed to radiation all the time and we all
seem to survive long enough to be killed by something else so radiation isn’t as dangerous as all that. At which point we can offer
a comparison. Something to try and give us a sense of perspective about whether 20 trillion nasties of radiation is something to get all concerned about or not. That
comparison being that the radiation leakage from Fukushima appears to be about the same as that from 76 million bananas. Which is a lot of bananas I agree, but
again we can put that into some sort of perspective. Let’s start from the beginning with the banana equivalent dose, the BED. Bananas contain potassium, some
portion of potassium is always radioactive, thus bananas contain some radioactivity. This gets into the human body as we digest the lovely fruit (OK, bananas are an
herb but still…): Since a typical banana contains about half a gram of potassium, it will have an activity of roughly 15 Bq. Excellent, we now have a unit that we can
grasp, one that the human mind can use to give a sense of proportion to these claims about radioactivity. We know that bananas are good for us on balance, thus
this amount of radioactivity isn’t all that much of a burden on us. We also have that claim of 20 trillion becquerels of radiation
having been dumped into the Pacific Ocean in the past couple of years. 20 trillion divided by two years by 365 days by 24 hours gives us an hourly rate of
1,141,552,511 becquerels per hour. Divide that by our 15 Bq per banana and we can see that the radiation spillage from Fukushima is running at 76 million bananas
per hour. Which is, as I say above, a lot of bananas. But it’s not actually that many bananas. World production of them is some 145 million tonnes a year. There’s a
thousand kilos in a tonne, say a banana is 100 grammes (sounds about right, four bananas to the pound, ten to the kilo) or 1.45 trillion bananas a year eaten around
the world. Divide again by 365 and 24 to get the hourly consumption rate and we get 165 million bananas consumed per hour. We can do this slightly differently
and say that the 1.45 trillion bananas consumed each year have those 15 Bq giving us around 22 trillion Bq each year. The Fukushima leak is 20 trillion Bq over two
years: thus our two calculations agree. The current
leak is just under half that exposure that we all get from the global
consumption of bananas. Except even that’s overstating it. For the banana consumption does indeed get into our bodies: the Fukushima
leak is getting into the Pacific Ocean where it’s obviously far less dangerous. And don’t forget that all that radiation in the bananas ends up in the oceans as well,
given that we do in fact urinate it out and no, it’s not something that the sewage treatment plants particularly keep out of the rivers. There are some who are
viewing this radiation leak very differently: Arnold Gundersen, Fairewinds Associates: [...] we are contaminating the Pacific Ocean which is extraordinarily serious.
Evgeny Sukhoi: Is there anything that can be done with that, I mean with the ocean? Gundersen: Frankly, I don’t believe so. I think we will continue to release
radioactive material into the ocean for 20 or 30 years at least. They have to pump the water out of the areas surrounding the nuclear reactor. But frankly, this water
is the most radioactive water I’ve ever experienced. I have to admit that I simply don’t agree. I’m not actually arguing that radiation is good for us but I really don’t
think that half the radiation of the world’s banana crop being diluted into the Pacific Ocean is all that much to worry about. And why
shouldn’t worry about it
all that much. The radiation that fossil fuel plants spew into the environment each year is around 0.1 EBq. That’s
ExaBecquerel, or 10 to the power of 18. Fukushima
Or, if you prefer,
we really
is pumping out 10 trillion becquerels a year at present. Or 10 TBq, or 10 of 10 to the power of 12.
one ten thousandth of the amount that the world’s coal plants are doing . Or even, given that
there are only about 2,500 coal plants in the world, Fukushima is, in this disaster, pumping out around one
quarter of the radiation that a coal plant does in normal operation . You can worry about it if you want but it’s not
something that’s likely to have any real measurable effect on anyone or anything.
28
AT: Terrorist Theft
Radioactive materials are hard to steal if still in fuel rods, Radioactivity and
dimensions prove.
Union of concerned scientists 11
Union of concerned scientists (organization of scientists for science and democracy)
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/making-nuclear-power-safer/handlingnuclear-waste/reprocessing-and-nuclear.html
In contrast, in a "once-through" nuclear fuel cycle, the spent fuel is left intact and simply stored once it is removed from the reactor, for
ultimate disposal in a repository. In this case the plutonium
remains imbedded in the highly radioactive spent fuel,
which is thus "self-protected" from theft. Since anyone within a meter of spent fuel that was less than 50
years old would receive a deadly dose in less than 30 minutes, even terrorists willing to die for their
cause would not have enough time to do anything useful.
Of course, the
size and weight of the spent fuel assemblies (typically 10 feet long, and fifteen hundred
pounds) also makes them difficult to steal. Moreover, it is straightforward to account for the number of fuel
assemblies.
We will be much safer if plutonium remains within the highly radioactive spent fuel that is eventually sealed
in a secure geologic repository than if plutonium is extracted from spent fuel, fabricated into fresh fuel, and
shipped to nuclear reactors around the country, where it would be vulnerable to diversion or theft at every stage.
29
Spent fuel can’t be turned into weapons
McGregor 1 Douglas S. McGregor, director of the Semiconductor Materials and Radiological
Technologies Laboratory at the University of Michigan, 4/23/01 [The New American, “Rethinking
Nuclear Power,” http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2001/04-232001/vo17no09_nuclear_print.htm]
• Plutonium build-up: Western nuclear power reactors are constructed and engineered in a manner that minimizes plutonium build-up, and much of the plutonium
that is produced inside the reactor is used during an ordinary fuel cycle. Moreover, it should be kept in mind that using
fissile material for reactor
fuel is a far better method of preventing nuclear proliferation than storage or burying those materials.
After the fissile material has been used as nuclear fuel, it cannot possibly be used for weapons, thereby
eliminating the possibility of use by potential terrorists.
EPA will respond to emergency- works to counter potential terrorism.
Environmental Protection Agency in 2012
“Plutonium” EPA.Gov http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/radionuclides/plutonium.html
EPA sets standards for radioactive waste storage and disposal facilities. We can't treat plutonium or other radioactive
materials to get rid of their radioactivity. We can only isolate and store them until they decay. The extremely long half-lives of some plutonium
radioisotopes make the management of spent nuclear fuel, and wastes from nuclear weapons facilities a difficult problem. One
of EPA's
responsibilities has been to develop public health and safety standards for the two major U.S. nuclear
waste storage and disposal facilities. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico stores transuranic wastes. They range from
slightly contaminated clothing to barrels of waste so radioactive that it can only be handled with remote control equipment. The proposed
Yucca Mountain repository is designed to store high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel. EPA
also responds to radiation
emergencies. Additionally, EPA helps state and local governments during emergencies that involve
radioactive materials. We provide guidance on ways to protect people from harmful exposure to
radiation. We can also monitor radiation levels in the environment and assess the threat to public
health. We also work with international radiation protection organizations to prepare for large scale
foreign emergencies such as Chernobyl. EPA also works with law enforcement agencies to develop
counter terrorism plans.
Impact is just hype - Chance of a non-state actor Acquiring a nuclear weapon one is 1
in 3.5 billion
Schneidmiller in 2009 (Chris, Experts Debate Threat of Nuclear, Biological Terrorism, 13 January 2009,
http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090113_7105.php)
WASHINGTON -- There is an "almost vanishingly small" likelihood that terrorists would ever be able to
acquire and detonate a nuclear weapon, one expert said here yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 2, 2008).
In even the most likely scenario of nuclear terrorism, there are 20 barriers between extremists and a
successful nuclear strike on a major city, said John Mueller, a political science professor at Ohio State
University.
30
The process itself is seemingly straightforward but exceedingly difficult -- buy or steal highly enriched
uranium, manufacture a weapon, take the bomb to the target site and blow it up. Meanwhile, variables
strewn across the path to an attack would increase the complexity of the effort, Mueller argued.
Terrorists would have to bribe officials in a state nuclear program to acquire the material, while avoiding
a sting by authorities or a scam by the sellers. The material itself could also turn out to be bad.
"Once the purloined material is purloined, [police are] going to be chasing after you. They are also going
to put on a high reward, extremely high reward, on getting the weapon back or getting the fissile
material back," Mueller said during a panel discussion at a two-day Cato Institute conference on
counterterrorism issues facing the incoming Obama administration.
Smuggling the material out of a country would mean relying on criminals who "are very good at
extortion" and might have to be killed to avoid a double-cross, Mueller said. The terrorists would then
have to find scientists and engineers willing to give up their normal lives to manufacture a bomb, which
would require an expensive and sophisticated machine shop.
Finally, further technological expertise would be needed to sneak the weapon across national borders to
its destination point and conduct a successful detonation, Mueller said.
Every obstacle is "difficult but not impossible" to overcome, Mueller said, putting the chance of success
at no less than one in three for each. The likelihood of successfully passing through each obstacle, in
sequence, would be roughly one in 3 1/2 billion, he said, but for argument's sake dropped it to 3 1/2
million.
Terrorists don’t have the technical know-how or resources for nuclear weapons
Umana 11 – Felipe Umana is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, from the Institute for Policy
Studies. August 17, 2011, "Loose Nukes: Real Threat?"
http://www.fpif.org/articles/loose_nukes_real_threat
Actors seeking to acquire an atomic weapon – or the capability to produce one – generally do not
have the essential training, knowledge, or materials. Nor do they generally have the necessary
resources to achieve nuclear capabilities. In fact, for non-state actors, smuggling alreadymanufactured weapons or available materialsis the only practical way to go nuclear. Terrorist
organizations like Aum Shinrikyo (now known as Aleph) and al-Qaeda are typically composed of
men with little scientific training and ersatz scientific knowledge, if any. Unless they steal blueprints,
these actors can't construct a usable fissile weapon. Moreover, it's not easy to move such sensitive
materials around. Anatoly Bulochnikov, director of the Center for Export Controls in
Moscow, contrasted nuclear materials with mundane goods: “[These items are] not potatoes, not
something you can keep anywhere.” Another hindrance is a lack of steady funds and resources. Nonstate actors simply don't have the money to purchase bomb-grade nuclear material (in 1991, a
kilogram of enriched uranium went for $700,000), the means to enrich uranium, or the storage
facilities to contain the material.
31
Their Representation of terrorism is a false threat construction which leads to conflict
which results in more deaths than the original terror attack
Schneidmiller in 2009 (Chris, Experts Debate Threat of Nuclear, Biological Terrorism, 13 January 2009,
http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090113_7105.php)
Fear of an "extremely improbable event" such as nuclear terrorism produces support for a wide range of
homeland security activities, Mueller said. He argued that there has been a major and costly
overreaction to the terrorism threat -- noting that the Sept. 11 attacks helped to precipitate the invasion
of Iraq, which has led to far more deaths than the original event.
The threat of international terrorism is hyperinflated as a means of increasing biopower.
Der Derian 95 (James, Director of the Global Security Program and Research Professor of International
Studies at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, “Arms, Hostages, and the
Importance of Shredding in Earnest: Reading the National Security Culture (II),” Facts, Factoids, and the
Factotum of Terrorism, Duke University Press, JSTOR, AD: 7/28/09) FH
Why is this?
International terrorism does represent a crisis, but not in terms of body-counts or a
revolutionary threat to the states-system. On a political level, the simulacrum of terrorism, that
is, the production of a hyperreal threat of violence, anticipates a crisis of legitimation. 9 What this
means is that international terrorism is not a symptom or a cause or an effect of this systemic crisis:
it has become a spectacular, micro- cosmic simulation. International terrorism simulates a
legitimation crisis of the international order; conversely, counter-terrorism is a countersimulation, an attempt to engender a new disciplinary order which can save the dominant
legitimacy principle of international relations.10 On a representational level, the spectacle of terrorism
displace-and distracts us from-the signs of a pervading international disorder. As a result, much
of what is read and written of terrorism displays a superficiality of reasoning and a corruption
of language which effects truths about terrorism without any sense of how these truths are
produced by, and help to sustain official discourses of international relations . This was repeatedly
evidenced by the proceedings and documents of the Iran-con- tra hearings, in which our reason of state was exposed as
ideological expediency and redressed as principled policy.
The label of terrorist stifles any non-conflict solution while paving the way for statesanctioned violence.
Kapitan in 2004
Thomas, In Terrorism: The Philosophical Issues, I. Primoratz ed. Palgrave (2004): pp. 175-19.
http://www.niu.edu/phil/~kapitan/Terrorism%20in%20the%20Arab-Israeli%20conflict.pdf
The ‘terrorist’ label automatically places actions and agents outside the norms of acceptable behavior,
and consequently erases any incentive an audience might have to question the nature of their
32
10
grievances and the possible legitimacy of their demands. The rhetoric effectively stifles political
debate, repudiates calls for negotiation, and, consequently, paves the way for state-sanctioned violence.
Terrorist discourse perpetuates conflict and prevents effective solutions
Kapitan in 2003
Tomis, The ‘Terrorism of Terrorism’ In James Sterba, ed., Terrorism and International Justice (Oxford,
2003), 47-66.http://www.niu.edu/phil/~kapitan/The%20Terrorism%20of%20'Terrorism'.pdf
Language moulds thought, and thought precipitates action. The pejorative bias that infects the
current employment of ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ discourages a clear moral assessment of political
conflicts like that between Israelis and Palestinians. If these words cannot be used in a consistent
and unprejudiced manner, then they are obstacles in the path towards the resolution of such
conflicts and stimulators of further violence against civilians. Consequently, if terrorism has no place
in a civilized world, then the rhetoric of ‘terror’ has no place in the civilized discourse of today.
25
33
Reps are important - Academic debate is a unique site in which policy prescriptions
must be justified based on accurate and productive representations. The arguments
made by the affirmative cannot be divorced from the representations embedded in
those arguments.
Michaela Guerin Hackner, M.A. Candidate, April 26, 2004, “Shaping International Development Discourse: The Embeddedness of Economic
Theory and Policy Reform,” online, http://www3.georgetown.edu/grad/cct/academics/ theses/MichaelaHackner.pdf
Participants can potentially reshape the values of a consensus by redefining the language, values, and
symbols used within the discursive process (Ellingson, 1995, 108). Discursive struggles often take place
at the level of arguments, which are the building blocks of discourse. Arguments are both the means
by which speakers create and justify their diagnoses and solutions and the carriers of economic,
political, or moral goals and interests that motivate public debate (Ellingson, 1995, 108). By reordering
the institutional locus of the debate or changing the way in which ideas are articulated, members
within a discourse can potentially manipulate the collective ideation inherent in it (Ellingson, 1995,
108). As Moore and Schmitz explain, the mere operationalization of existing terms can be a way out of
the impasse of boundedness. This shift requires agents to ultimately define and identify the language
used in their conceptualizations. It provides an opening which new vocabulary might emerge (1995
34
AT: Human Health
No risk of Cancer or contamination-EPA standards ensure.
Environmental Protection Agency in 2012
“Plutonium” EPA.Gov http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/radionuclides/plutonium.html
EPA also protects people against exposure from soil and ground water from sites that have been
contaminated with plutonium. We set criteria that soil and ground water from the sites must meet before releasing the sites for public
use. Rather than limiting the concentration of plutonium itself, the criteria limit the cancer risk the sites
pose. A person's added risk of developing cancer is limited to no more than about 1-in-10,000 and if
possible to 1-in-1,000,000, or less. Under the Clean Air Act, EPA limits the dose to humans from
radionuclides to 10 millirem from emissions to air.
35
AT: Global Warming
Nuclear power production speeds up warming
Caldicott 6 (Helen, “Nuclear power is not the answer to global warming or anything else”, p.4)
What exactly is nuclear power? It is a very expensive, sophisticated, and dangerous way to boil water. Uranium fuel rods are placed in water in
a reactor core, they reach critical mass, and they produce vast quantities of heat, which boils the water. Steam is directed through pipes to turn
a turbine, which generates electricity. The scientists who were involved in the Manhattan Project creating nuclear weapons developed a way to
harness nuclear energy to generate electricity. Because their guilt was so great, they were determined to use their ghastly new invention to
help the human race. Nuclear fission harnessed “atoms for peace,” and the
nuclear PR industry proclaimed that nuclear
power would provide an endless supply of electcitiy – referred to as “sunshine units” – that would be good for
the environment and “too cheap to meter.” They were wrong. Although a nuclear power plant itself releases no
carbon dioxide, the production of nuclear electricity depends upon a vast, complex, and hidden
industrial infrastructure that is never featured by the nuclear industry in its propaganda, but that actually releases a large
amount of carbon dioxide as well as other global warming gases. One is led to believe that the nuclear reactor stands
alone, an autonomous creator of energy. In fact, the vast infrastrcutre necessary to create nuclear energy, called the
nuclear fuel cycle, is a prodigious user of fossil fuel and coal. The production of carbon dioxide (CO2) is one measurement that
indicates the amount of energy used in the production of the nuclear fuel cycle. Most of the energy used to create nuclear energy – to mine
uranium ore for fuel, to crush and mill the ore, to enrich the uranium, to create the concrete and steel for the reacotr, and to store the
thermally and radioactively hot nuclear waste – comes from the consumption of fossil fuels, that is coal or oil. When these materials are burned
to produce energy, they form CO2 (reflecting coal and oil’s origins in ancient trees and other organic carboniferous material laid down under
the earth’s crust millions of years ago). For each ton of carbon burned, 3.7 tons of CO2 gas added to the atmosphere, and thisis the source of
today’s global warming.
Nuclear power produces heat emissions which exacerbate global warming
Science Daily 9 (July 13 , Trapping Carbon Dioxide Or Switching To Nuclear Power Not Enough To Solve Global Warming Problem,
th
Experts Say, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090713085248.htm)
Attempting to tackle climate change by trapping carbon dioxide or switching to nuclear power will not solve the
problem of global warming, according to energy calculations published in the July issue of the
International Journal of Global Warming. Bo Nordell and Bruno Gervet of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Luleå
University of Technology in Sweden have calculated the total energy emissions from the start of the industrial revolution in the 1880s to the modern day . They
have worked out that using the increase in average global air temperature as a measure of global
warming is an inadequate measure of climate change. They suggest that scientists must also take into account the total energy of the
ground, ice masses and the seas if they are to model climate change accurately. The researchers have calculated that the heat energy accumulated in the
atmosphere corresponds to a mere 6.6% of global warming, while the remaining heat is stored in the ground (31.5%), melting ice (33.4%) and sea water (28.5%).
They point out that net heat emissions between the industrial revolution circa 1880 and the modern era at 2000 correspond to almost three quarters of the
accumulated heat, i.e., global warming, during that period. Their calculations suggest that most measures to combat global warming, such as reducing our reliance
on burning fossil fuels and switching to renewables like wind power and solar energy, will ultimately help in preventing catastrophic climate change in the long
term. But the same calculations also show that trapping carbon dioxide, so-called carbon dioxide sequestration, and storing it deep underground or on the sea floor
will have very little effect on global warming. "Since net
heat emissions accounts for most of the global warming there is no or
little reason for carbon dioxide sequestration," Nordell explains, "The increasing carbon dioxide emissions merely show how most net heat is produced. The
"missing" heat, 26%, is due to the greenhouse effect, natural variations in climate and/or an underestimation of net heat emissions, the researchers say. These
The researchers also point out a flaw
in the nuclear energy argument. Although nuclear power does not produce carbon dioxide emissions in
calculations are actually rather conservative, the researchers say, and the missing heat may be much less.
36
the same way as burning fossil fuels it does produce heat emissions equivalent to three times the energy
of the electricity it generates and so contributes to global warming significantly, Nordell adds.
Can’t solve warming – nuke power causes a net increase in emissions
Kivi 14 – contributer @ USAToday specializing in nuclear energy and habitat conservation (Rose Kivi,
2014, “How does Nuclear Energy Affect the Environment?” http://www.ehow.com/howdoes_4566966_nuclear-energy-affect-environment.html)//twonily
Introduction Nuclear energy has been proposed as an answer to the need for a clean energy source as opposed to
CO2-producing plants. Nuclear energy is not necessarily a clean energy source. The effects nuclear energy have
on the environment pose serious concerns that need to be considered, especially before the decision to build additional nuclear
power plants is made. Carbon Dioxide Nuclear power has been called a clean source of energy because the power plants
do not release carbon dioxide. While this is true, it is deceiving. Nuclear power plants may not emit carbon dioxide
during operation, but high amounts of carbon dioxide are emitted in activities related to building and
running
the plants. Nuclear
power plants use uranium as fuel. The process of mining uranium releases high
amounts of carbon dioxide into the environment. Carbon dioxide is also released into the environment when new nuclear
power plants are built. Finally, the transport of radioactive waste also causes carbon dioxide emissions.
Ocean Acidification claims are false.
Ridley 10 – PhD in Zoology, visiting professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (Matt, June 15, 2010,
“Threat From Ocean Acidification Greatly Exaggerated,” http://www.thegwpf.org/theobservatory/1106-matt-ridley-threat-from-ocean-acidification-greatly-exaggerated.html)//gingE
Lest my critics still accuse me of cherry-picking studies, let me refer them also to the results of Hendrikset al. (2010, Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf
Science 86:157). Far from being a cherry-picked study, this is a massive meta-analysis. The
authors observed that ‘warnings that
ocean acidification is a major threat to marine biodiversity are largely based on the analysis of predicted
changes in ocean chemical fields’ rather than empirical data . So they constructed a database of 372 studies in which
the responses of 44 different marine species to ocean acidification induced by equilibrating seawater with CO2-enriched air had been actually
measured. They found that only
a minority of studies demonstrated ‘significant responses to acidification’ and
there was no significant mean effect even in these studies. ¶ They concluded that the world's marine biota are
‘ more resistant to ocean acidification than suggested by pessimistic predictions identifying ocean
acidification as a major threat to marine biodiversity’ and that ocean acidification ‘may not be the
widespread problem conjured into the 21st century…Biological processes can provide homeostasis
against changes in pH in bulk waters of the range predicted during the 21st century.’ ¶ This important
paper alone contradicts Hoegh-Gudlberg’s assertion that ‘the vast bulk of scientific evidence shows that calcifiers…
are being heavily impacted already’. In conclusion, I rest my case. My five critics have not only failed to contradict, but have
explicitly confirmed the truth of every single one of my factual statements. We differ only in how we interpret the facts. It is hardly surprising
that my opinion is not shared by five scientists whose research grants depend on funding agencies being persuaded that there will be a severe
and rapid impact of carbon dioxide emissions on coral reefs in coming decades. I merely report accurately that the
latest empirical
and theoretical research suggests that the likely impact has been exaggerated.
37
AT: Nuclear Colonialism
38
Natives want the waste – it bolsters their economies
AP 6 (“Utah Tribe Divided Over Nuclear Waste,” 6/25/2006, Fox News,
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/06/25/utah-tribe-divided-over-nuclear-waste
sees
¶ Nuclear waste ¶
Bear wants to store 4,000 steel and concrete canisters of highly
radioactive used fuel from nuclear power plants ¶ The American Indian tribe would reap tens of millions
of dollars in rent over the next 40 years.¶ I've been shown there's no problem
it's safe,"
¶
companies signed a
lease with the tribe to put 40,000 tons of reactor waste on the reservation ¶
¶
¶
it is the way to
riches that will mean new homes, new jobs and better health care
SKULL VALLEY, Utah –
Leon Bear,
a stocky man in T-shirt and jeans, peers across the sagebrush-pocked valley where his ancestors once chased Pony Express riders and
the future for his dwindling tribe.
.
Just west
of the gun-barrel straight, two-lane road that darts through the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation,
.
"
old tribal leader insists, escorting a visitor around the reservation in a glistening new pickup truck.
. The way they plan to handle it,
the 46-year-
The truck is an example of the largess the tribe already has received from a consortium of eight electric utilities. Nine years ago, the
.
would oppose, that spells "not in my back yard" in the brightest of colors. Utah's establishment in Salt Lake City, the capital 45 miles away, is enraged.
It is the kind of deal that other tribes have rejected, that most communities
Critics, including some within the tribe, call it environmental racism at its rawest.
Bear says
for the 118 members of his tribe. Only about two dozen — including children — still live on the 18,000-
acre reservation, but this project will bring many of the others back, he predicts. ¶
No internal link – new legislation ensures safety
Hing 11 (Julianne, reporter and blogger for Colorines.com, “GOP Reopens Fight Over
Nuclear Waste in Sacred Yucca Mountain,” 3/15/2011, ColorLines,
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/03/japans_nuclear_power_crisis_may_halt_yucc
a_mountain_waste.html
House Republicans introduced a bill to
permit 200 more commercial nuclear reactors in the U.S
Tucked into that bill is a
clause that revives
nuclear waste storage in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain,
A little over a week before an 8.9-magnitude earthquake ripped open a fissure in the Earth, triggered a deadly tsunami and set off a potential worldwide nuclear catastrophe,
., “enough to triple current megawatt capacity, by 2040.”
the long debate around
a move that Native American and environmental groups have been
resisting for decades.¶ Nuclear power may not produce pollution like fossil fuels, but it does produce waste that carries with it the risk of radioactive contamination. There’s no expanding nuclear power without pinning down a nuclear waste storage site, which is one of the reasons
the House bill calls on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete a review of the Yucca Mountain
site “without political interference.”¶
Native American groups have long opposed the construction of a nuclear waste storage site in Yucca Mountain, which is a sacred spiritual and religious site for local Western Shoshone
and Pauite tribes.¶ “A Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository will leak, impacting the land and people of the Great Basin sooner or later,” testified Margene Bullcreek, president of the Native Community Action Council, at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety Licensing
Board Panel Construction Authorization Board in 2010.¶ Bullcreek’s group represents local tribes that have suffered from radiation exposure after U.S. nuclear weapons testing in the area. They say storing nuclear waste in the mountain would desecrate the sacred lands, and also expose
the Department of Energy withdrew its application to pursue Yucca Mountain
¶ It was a political, not scientific, decision
It is incumbent on
the administration to come up with a disposal plan for this real problem facing our nation ¶
local residents to significant health risks.¶ In 2010
waste dump, but Republicans have not abandoned the idea.
as a site for a nuclear
“
,” said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, McClatchy reported. “
.”
Today, however, the future of the
House bill and the fate of the tenuous bipartisan coalition pushing for nuclear power expansion in the U.S. are in question as Japan battles its largest nuclear power crisis since World War I I.¶ On Tuesday, a third and the most serious explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power
plant had engineers scrambling anew to keep the core in the most damaged reactor cool enough to avoid a nuclear catastrophe. The explosion also resulted in a fire in a fourth reactor, which triggered short-term spikes in radiation in the vicinity. The explosions were not nuclear
explosions—last Friday’s earthquake and the subsequent tsunami jammed the reactors’ backup cooling systems, causing a pressure buildup that scientists suspect caused the explosion.¶ It’s a dangerous, precarious rush to contain the damage right now. Tens of thousands of people
have been evacuated from the surrounding area, and at least 22 people have been exposed to radiation. That number is expected to climb.¶ The disaster has led to widespread panic about nuclear power, even as Japanese officials and industry leaders have maintained that the health
risks are minimal. After the third explosion, Prime Minister Naoto Kan acknowledged “a very high risk” of more radiation leakage, suggesting that things would get worse before they got any better, the New York Times reported. Officials have warned residents within 20 miles to stay
indoors and stop using their air conditioning.¶ On Sunday Sen. Joseph Lieberman said that the U.S. ought to reassess plans to expand nuclear power, which President Obama has been pushing vocally.¶ “The reality is that we’re watching something unfold,” Lieberman said on “Face the
Nation.” “We don’t know where it’s going with regard to the nuclear power plants in Japan right now. I think it calls on us here in the U.S.—naturally not to stop building nuclear power plants, but to put the brakes on right now until we understand the ramifications of what’s happened in
Japan.”¶ On Monday the Obama administration said despite the crisis, it still remains committed to nuclear power as a part of its “clean energy” plan. The Obama administration did not respond to Lieberman’s call today, but maintained its line that nuclear power is a secure option for
nuclear power plants in this country operate safely and securely,”
the nuclear power industry has successfully rebranded itself as a low-cost, clean,
non-polluting alternative energy source
¶
¶ Native Americans have been at the front lines of alternative energy conversations in the country
the country.¶ “Right now we continue to believe that
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory
Jaczko said today, Politico reported.¶ In recent years
. Obama has pledged $8 billion in guaranteed loans for the construction of a nuclear power plant, the first to be built in the country in over 30 years.
Native Americans Seek
Alternatives
as
developers try to move in to reservations. In 2010 the Black Mesa Water Coalition in northern Arizona successfully defeated a coal mining operation that was set to move into Navajo and Hopi land. Last week, Denison Mines Corp, a Canadian company, obtained permits from an Arizona
state environmental agency to reopen three mines near the Grand Canyon, Indian Country Today reported. Denison still needs to get federal approval to move ahead, but the approval is especially controversial since the Department of the Interior instituted a two-year moratorium in
2009 on uranium mining exploration within a million acres of the Grand Canyon. ¶ There
are currently 104 licensed nuclear power plants in the country.
On Monday the New
York Times reported that most of them share “some or all of the risk factors that played a role at Fukushima Daiichi: locations on tsunami-prone coastlines or near earthquake faults, aging plants and backup electrical systems that rely on diesel generators and batteries that could fail in
extreme circumstances.”¶ Nonetheless, the U.S. is highly dependent on nuclear power. The U.S. gets 20 percent of its electrical output from nuclear power production—Japan gets 30 percent of its energy from nuclear power. Native American environmental groups and anti-nuclear
power activists have said that instead of pushing ahead with dangerous and hazardous energy exploration, the country ought to develop the political will to get serious about energy conservation and sustainable alternative energy sources.
39
Plants are only there if native agree – independently net-beneficial for their culture
Wolfson 2k (Hannah, Staff Writer for Mindfully.org, “Goshute Native American Tribe
Turns to Nuclear Waste,” December 2000, Mindfully.org,
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Goshute-Tribe-Nuc-Waste.htm
INDIAN RESERVATION, Utah -- Leon Bear knows the boundaries of his tribe's land by heart.¶ ¶ ``They want us
to be self-determined and they want us to be self-governed, and yet when we make these judgments, they don't like it,''¶ Bear, Goshute tribal
chairman¶ ¶ Goshute Seal¶ ¶ From the reservoir that provides water to his tiny village, Bear sweeps his arm across the parched valley, pointing
¶ SKULL VALLEY
out fences and smokestacks that ring the last remnant of his tribe's traditional lands.¶ ¶ To
the north, a magnesium plant sits on
the shore of the Great Salt Lake; to the south, the Army tests equipment for exposure to nerve gas on a stretch of desert as large as Rhode
Island. A bombing range and hazardous waste incinerator lie over the Cedar Mountains to the west; a stockpile of chemical weapons and the
incinerator that destroys them sit to the east.¶ ¶ Now the
tiny Skull Valley Band of Goshutes has agreed to turn its
reservation into one of the country's largest nuclear waste dumps.¶ ¶ Opponents, including other tribe members, say
the plan could endanger people, the wildlife of the West Desert and the region's economy.¶ ¶ But that hasn't stopped Bear from pressing
forward with the project, which he says could be the only salvation for his dying tribe.¶ ¶ ``They made that an industrial waste zone out there,''
said Bear, the Goshutes' tribal chairman and the project's main supporter. ``Nobody asked the Goshutes, 'Do you mind if we do this out here on
your traditional territory?' Nobody said, 'Hey, it could be dangerous for you guys to be out here.'''¶ ¶ ``When a neighbor does that to you, you
don't want to be like them,'' he added. ``So we gave our neighbor, the state of Utah, an opportunity to be a part of this, and the first reaction
was 'Over my dead body.'''¶ ¶ If Bear gets his way, about a
square mile of the reservation will be fenced off for nuclear
waste, and 450 acres will be covered with concrete pads. On top will sit 16-foot tall, concrete-and-steel casks filled
with radioactive rods -- as many as 4,000 of them holding 40,000 metric tons of used-up nuclear reactor fuel.¶ ¶ The fuel will
come from Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of eight power companies from California, New York, Minnesota, Wisconsin,
Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Florida and Alabama. Neither the consortium or the Goshutes will say what the deal costs.¶ ¶ The
consortium has promised to build a cultural center on the reservation to revive the tribe's fading
language and crafts, Bear says, and has pledged to give Goshutes and other tribes the first shot at about 40
jobs at the site.¶ ¶ The money is sorely needed. Most of the estimated 150 Goshutes have fled the 17,000-acre reservation.
Fewer than 30 remain, most living in a tiny cluster of run-down trailers. Jobs are virtually nonexistent.¶ ¶ It's not that the tribe hasn't
tried. At the village entrance, the last examples of one failed project -- portable toilets and showers built for the military -- sit unused.¶ ¶ Only
two real options remained: nuclear waste and gambling, an industry Mormon-dominated Utah considers nearly as toxic.¶ ¶ ``How can you
blame Leon?'' said Chip Ward, author of an environmental history of the West Desert and a project opponent.
``What's he going to
do? Grow food? No one's going to buy a tomato off this land.''¶ ¶
40
Solvency T/O - Illegal
41
Environmentally harmful and illegal based on international law
Kozakiewicz 14
Patrick Kozakiewicz, January 27, 2014, Reporter of the CBRNe Portal, The disposal of
nuclear waste into the world’s oceans, Headline Threats, http://www.cbrneportal.com/thedisposal-of-nuclear-waste-into-the-worlds-oceans/
It seems that the general consensus is that storing radioactive waste in the ocean is harmful
to the organisms that inhabit the ocean and to humans as well due to radiation and in
addition it is a rather expensive process. Poor insulation of the containers, leaks, volcanic
activity, tectonic plate movement, limited locations, and several other factors prove that
storing radioactive waste in the oceans has a potential of becoming a catastrophe. Yet for
some, it is more practical than alternatives such as storing it on land or launching rockets off
towards the sun.
Nevertheless, many argue that ocean-based approaches to the disposal of nuclear waste
have significant advantages. First, disposing waste at the bottom of the ocean is hard for
terrorists, rebels, or criminals to steal for use in radiological weapons or in nuclear bombs.
The world’s oceans also have a vastly greater dilutive capacity than any single land site in
the event of unintended leaks.
In the US for example, Federal officials have long maintained that, despite some leakage
from containers, there isn’t evidence of damage to the wider ocean environment or threats
to public health. The Wall Street Journal review of decades of federal and other records has
found many unanswered questions and evidence which proves otherwise. It is also well
documented by the scientific community, that even lose doses of radioactive exposer can
increase the rates of cancers. However, more specifically, endocrine disruptor in form of
radioactivity can cause cancer in the same manner, as it can cure cancer.
The 1993 Treaty remains in force up until 2018, after which the sub-seabed disposal option
can be revisited, creating new opportunities for nuclear waste disposal and a more
potentially radioactively ocean. Companies are already writing up plans to convince the
public and governments about the importance and safety of ocean-floor disposals.
Back then, and even now, many believed the ocean is fair game when it comes to
radioactive waste. Especially since the impact of radioactivity on human health was largely
underestimated. Fortunately the case is not the same today. While radioactive and nuclear
waste is no longer disposed from ships into the oceans, great risks still remain.
Negative - Environmentally harmful and illegal based on international law
Kozakiewicz 14
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Patrick Kozakiewicz, January 27, 2014, Reporter of the CBRNe Portal, The disposal of
nuclear waste into the world’s oceans, Headline Threats, http://www.cbrneportal.com/thedisposal-of-nuclear-waste-into-the-worlds-oceans/
It seems that the general consensus is that storing radioactive waste in the ocean is harmful
to the organisms that inhabit the ocean and to humans as well due to radiation and in
addition it is a rather expensive process. Poor insulation of the containers, leaks, volcanic
activity, tectonic plate movement, limited locations, and several other factors prove that
storing radioactive waste in the oceans has a potential of becoming a catastrophe. Yet for
some, it is more practical than alternatives such as storing it on land or launching rockets off
towards the sun.
Nevertheless, many argue that ocean-based approaches to the disposal of nuclear waste
have significant advantages. First, disposing waste at the bottom of the ocean is hard for
terrorists, rebels, or criminals to steal for use in radiological weapons or in nuclear bombs.
The world’s oceans also have a vastly greater dilutive capacity than any single land site in
the event of unintended leaks.
In the US for example, Federal officials have long maintained that, despite some leakage
from containers, there isn’t evidence of damage to the wider ocean environment or threats
to public health. The Wall Street Journal review of decades of federal and other records has
found many unanswered questions and evidence which proves otherwise. It is also well
documented by the scientific community, that even lose doses of radioactive exposer can
increase the rates of cancers. However, more specifically, endocrine disruptor in form of
radioactivity can cause cancer in the same manner, as it can cure cancer.
The 1993 Treaty remains in force up until 2018, after which the sub-seabed disposal option
can be revisited, creating new opportunities for nuclear waste disposal and a more
potentially radioactively ocean. Companies are already writing up plans to convince the
public and governments about the importance and safety of ocean-floor disposals.
Back then, and even now, many believed the ocean is fair game when it comes to
radioactive waste. Especially since the impact of radioactivity on human health was largely
underestimated. Fortunately the case is not the same today. While radioactive and nuclear
waste is no longer disposed from ships into the oceans, great risks still remain.
Sub-seabed disposal unpopular with ocean environmentalists, and prohibited by LOST
Whipple ‘10
Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-level Radioactive Waste, Chris Whipple, Ph.D.
ENVIRON International Corporation, September 10, 2010-cybercemetery.unt.edu/archive/brc/20120620234233/http://brc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/dis
posal_of_spent_nuclear_fuel_and_high_level_radioactive_waste_rev4.pdf
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Disposal in the seabed (in stable clay layers or subduction zones or faults)
The U.S. Sub-Seabed program was active in the 1970’s and 1980’s until it was stopped in 1986. The
approach was to emplace waste canisters in areas of the ocean where thick layers of mud and clays
make up the ocean floor. The design was to drop the wastes in packages designed to penetrate many
meters into the mud, or, as an alternative, to emplace the wastes by drilling holes into the mud, as is
done in offshore oil production. The idea was that the mud would close behind and around the packages
and that there would be little migration of deep pore water back into the ocean. While many people in
the technical community thought that the approach was workable and had advantages over land-based
disposal, the concept was very unpopular with most environmental groups, especially those associated
with ocean issues. The sub-seabed program’s popularity was not helped by past instances of ocean
dumping, and those opposed to the method equated sub-seabed disposal as equivalent to ocean
dumping. A variant on the approach was to dispose of wastes in ocean subduction zones (zones where
one tectonic plate moves beneath another, such that the wastes placed in sediments in the lower plate
would eventually migrate down into the earth’s mantle. Sub-seabed disposal is prohibited under the UN
Convention on Law of the Sea and the London Convention and Protocol.
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