Nuclear technology has become a key part of life in the twenty-first century, with nuclear reactors providing a significant share of electrical energy, and nuclear medicine technologies aiding in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Furthermore, nuclear processes assist industries in producing safer and superior products, while also playing a role in food preservation and protection against pests, as well as helping archaeologists understand the past. Since the mid-twentieth century, there has been a prevailing belief that nuclear weapons play a vital role in maintaining peace through the concept of nuclear deterrence.
Conversely, nuclear technology remains a genuine threat to humanity as a whole. Besides the risks of nuclear war, there are incidents involving nuclear reactors, such as those that occurred on Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Consequently, in this context, nuclear issues necessitate nuclear choices for various nations, including their citizens. In 2017, 58% of Swiss voters supported a government-proposed ban on nuclear power plants. A year later, Taiwanese citizens voted overwhelmingly to rescind a government policy that would have eliminated nuclear energy in the island.
In this light, authors Richard Wolfson and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, in their book “Nuclear Choices for the Twenty-First Century: A Citizen’s Guide,” aimed to provide the average citizen with a neutral perspective on nuclear technology and the surrounding issues while raising critical questions regarding differing nuclear opinions. The book addresses the nature of atoms and their nuclei, the essence of nuclear radiation, as well as analyzing the use and operation of nuclear energy, incidents, and nuclear waste. Additionally, it explores nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, the delivery systems designed to reach their targets, and the possibilities of controlling the proliferation of these weapons to other nations and terrorist groups, concluding with how to prevent nuclear war.
The Nature of Nuclear Energy:
The nature of chemical reactions differs from that of nuclear reactions. While the electrons in an atom are responsible for the energy released from chemical reactions, nuclear reactions involve the rearrangement of protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus. This variance in the nature of the reactions explains why a coal-fired power plant consumes trains of coal every week, while a few trucks of uranium can supply a nuclear power plant for an entire year. It also clarifies why a nuclear bomb can obliterate an entire city while a conventional bomb can only damage a few buildings.
It’s important to note that while protons and neutrons combine to form the nucleus, not all combinations lead to stable nuclei that stick together indefinitely. Some types of unstable nuclei inevitably decay, emitting alpha, beta, or gamma radiation. This nuclear radiation is invisible but highly active and can be readily detected using a variety of instruments. However, the high-energy particles that constitute nuclear radiation cause significant harm; they tear through biological systems, disrupt cellular functions, and damage genetic material, alongside the catastrophic effects resulting from exposure to substantial doses of radiation.
On the other hand, the beneficial uses of radiation must be considered. Naturally occurring radioactive isotopes serve as timepieces, helping us date materials from thousands to billions of years old, while nuclear radiation finds applications in agriculture to control harmful insects and pests. Its significant importance in medicine—as a means of diagnosing and treating certain diseases—highlights the many fields where nuclear radiation plays a critical role. Thus, every potential use of radiation necessitates a nuclear choice that balances negatives against positives.
Security and Safety Systems:
Most operating nuclear reactors today rely on decades-old designs, although new reactors have introduced some developments to these designs with greater efficiency, safety, and resistance to proliferation. Concerns about public and environmental safety are among the reasons for the global decline in nuclear energy. The vast inventory of radioactive materials within a nuclear reactor carries the potential for accidents that could have severe health consequences for thousands of people, as demonstrated by Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and numerous other less well-known incidents. Therefore, there is an urgent need for multiple safety systems to contain radiation even in the event of malfunctions and operator errors.
The more pressing question remains not whether nuclear energy is completely safe—it will never be entirely safe—but whether it is safe enough. In this context, the nuclear risks can be compared to other risks we face, particularly those associated with electricity generation. Nuclear energy proponents point to serious non-nuclear accidents, such as the 1984 chemical leak in Bhopal, India, which killed 2,500 and injured 200,000, or the multiple dam failures in 1975 in Henan, China, which resulted in nearly 200,000 deaths.
Furthermore, another issue relates to nuclear waste. Despite differing opinions on the threats posed by nuclear energy, there is a degree of consensus regarding the risks associated with nuclear waste. Nuclear reactors produce highly radioactive fission products, and as of 2020, approximately 65 years after the first nuclear power stations began operating, the world still lacks a long-term repository for nuclear waste. Most spent nuclear fuel is still stored at individual reactor sites, which are not permanent solutions. The United States remains unable to reach a long-term storage plan that is technically and politically acceptable, and the scenario is similar in other countries.
On another note, nuclear power plants accounted for about 10% of global electricity generation in 2020, a drop from the peak reliance on nuclear energy recorded in 1996, which reached around 18% of the world’s total electricity supply. Although actual nuclear generation has slightly increased in recent years, total electricity generation globally has risen more rapidly, reducing the nuclear share. This trend is likely to continue; it appears that the share of nuclear fission in the foreseeable future of global energy supplies will remain stable at best and may diminish. Alternatives, especially renewable solar and wind energy, have now become more economically viable than nuclear power while being more widely deployable.
Risks of Nuclear Weapons:
The history of nuclear weapons began in the 1940s and has witnessed the growth of the world’s nuclear arsenal, with the number and diversity of simple fission weapons that ended World War II doubling, alongside the advent of thermonuclear weapons utilizing a complex sequence of fission and fusion.
The existence and ongoing production of nuclear weapons raise serious ethical and political questions. Nuclear weapons have devastating effects and require nuclear delivery systems. Nuclear states have strengthened their second-strike capabilities as a counter-strategy should they experience a nuclear strike, incorporating a triad of nuclear weapons deployed from land, sea, and air.
Nuclear weapons have irrevocably altered the role of military forces in international relations. A nuclear-armed state can no longer hope to win a major war; instead, its nuclear arms must work to prevent war from occurring. For some, the destructive capacity guaranteed by the world’s vast nuclear arsenals is enough to deter their use. Mutually assured destruction has maintained nuclear peace for three-quarters of a century, while others argue that a deterrence based on mutually assured destruction will inevitably fail at some point, and that significant reductions in nuclear forces leading to complete nuclear disarmament could ultimately save us in the long term.
These debates surrounding nuclear strategy have been central to political discussions since the mid-twentieth century. Although there is a growing consensus that nuclear war is unacceptable, the great dilemma remains how to make the unacceptable also improbable, particularly in our current age of global terrorism, which has heightened the risks associated with the potential use of radioactive weapons by terrorist groups, through the arming of radioactive sources as radiological weapons, capable of creating panic rather than mass casualties as true nuclear weapons do. Nonetheless, this does not diminish the economic devastation caused by the spread of contamination or the harmful psychological impact that a radiological weapon could have on the population.
Despite a decrease in the number of nuclear weapons in recent decades, thanks to arms reduction treaties between the United States and Russia, nuclear arsenals remain sufficient to destroy human civilization. The debate continues on whether it is possible to place nuclear weapons under control or if we are condemned to a future where nuclear weapons are commonplace with an increasing likelihood of use.
In reality, international controls on nuclear weapons are still possible, and some have been in place for decades. What we refer to as the nonproliferation regime is a broad international framework of treaties and organizations aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and promoting progress in arms control and disarmament. However, these controls are imperfect and influenced by changing political environments, often leading to compromises that undermine arms reduction agreements, as seen in the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement.
Thus, the most crucial determinant concerning nuclear treaties is not only the technical constraints they impose on nuclear weapons but also the international cooperation and trust they foster. The non-negligible threat of a nuclear war exterminating civilization spurs serious efforts to ban nuclear arms, where many countries concur and negotiate to prohibit weapons testing, the production of fissile materials, and even the weapons themselves. However, this requires a greater political and moral will than currently exists, particularly among nations possessing nuclear weapons, for these negotiations to bear fruit.
Future of Nuclear Energy:
In fact, even those who believe that nuclear energy is safer and cleaner than many of its alternatives are often troubled by the prospect that nuclear energy development may lead to nuclear weapons proliferation. Should the potential for weapon spread and nuclear war alter our assessment of nuclear energy or deter nations from developing “peaceful” nuclear technologies?
In reality, there is a strong relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, as both rely on the same fissile materials. However, past nuclear experiments have not seen any country attempt to convert its peaceful nuclear energy directly into nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, there is a prevailing trend that the spread of nuclear reactors worldwide, even under safeguards, raises concerns about potential weapon proliferation.
Thus, the debate regarding whether nuclear energy itself increases the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation persists, but it is essential to consider that there are many other pathways to acquiring nuclear weapons. Perhaps nuclear energy’s most significant role in proliferation relates to the trained technical staff with expertise in nuclear technology that nuclear energy experience provides to states, facilitating their future pursuit of nuclear weapons.
On another note, there is another concern regarding nuclear plants within countries: their status as enticing targets either for terrorists armed with conventional explosives or in a war between two states using only conventional arms. A single nuclear plant can release more than 30 times the radiation from the Chernobyl incident if a precise conventional bomb were to explode.
Proponents of the argument concerned about the risks of nuclear power plants use this premise to justify their stance. However, it does not necessarily follow that the proliferation of nuclear power plants will automatically increase the likelihood of a full-scale nuclear war, as alternative energy sources also carry catastrophic risks, such as significant climate disruption from the ongoing use of fossil fuels, especially coal. Therefore, would it be better to supply developing countries with nuclear power plants to reduce their reliance on coal? Or does the risk of weapons proliferation outweigh even the rapidly escalating impacts of climate change?
In conclusion, given the ongoing and growing advancements in nuclear technology, the international community must develop mechanisms that reconcile the importance of harnessing nuclear energy while also curbing the political desires of certain nations to possess nuclear weapons. Amidst continued deliberations surrounding the future of nuclear energy, a significant responsibility rests on ordinary citizens. They must learn to live safely with nuclear knowledge; this cannot be left solely to experts. Citizens need to make crucial nuclear decisions, and they must do so after a well-informed and critical analysis of the complex and challenging nuclear questions.
Source:
Richard Wolfson and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, Nuclear Choices for the Twenty-First Century: A Citizen’s Guide, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 2021.
