DEAR News Of The Area,

I AM tired of the fanciful myth that nuclear power is somehow “clean” or “emissions free”, as claimed by Mr Musgrove (Letters, 30 Jan).

There is nothing “clean” or “emissions free” about the 30 tonnes of toxic highly radioactive wastes generated every year by an average 1,000MWe nuclear reactor.

This waste must be extracted every 12 to 18 months, shutting down the reactor for sjx months. There is also no proven safe site anywhere for securely storing high-level waste for a million years.

There is nothing “clean” or “emissions free” about radioactive liquid and gaseous effluent routinely discharged by nuclear plants, into the atmosphere and surrounding waterways and farmlands.

These discharges are documented by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the OECD Nuclear Energy Authority (NEA) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in its DIRATA database.

Furthermore, nuclear power is definitely not “emissions free” with respect to greenhouse gases. When you consider all the uranium mining, refining, fuel fabrication, reactor construction, plant operation, decommissioning and waste management, it is obvious greenhouse gases occur across the entire nuclear fuel chain.

Studies have shown that the net carbon emissions of nuclear power amount to at least 50gms/kWh of electricity produced, or 50,000 kgs per 1,000MWh.

Nuclear plants also need millions of litres of cooling water per hour.

I conclude that nuclear power is really just a dangerous, polluting way to boil water for a steam turbine.

And it leaves a toxic, costly legacy of forever deadly wastes, which we should not be dumping onto our children and thousands of future generations.

Regards,
Kenneth HIGGS,
Raymond Terrace.