13 The Uranium hexafluoride gas is converted to Uranium dioxide powder and pressed into pellets. They are then baked in an oil-fired furnace to form a ceramic material. The pellets are then loaded into the fuel rod - a tube made of a zirconium alloy. For every ton of Uranium in the fuel, up to 2 tons of Zirconium alloy are needed for the tubes.
14 Reactor construction requires large amounts of cement and steel, production of which releases a large amount of CO2
15 Uranium enrichment plants require CFCs for normal operation (cooling) of centrifuges
16 The reactor uses coal electricity in the US, as well as producing it.
17 Worker transport required to operate power plants
18 Recovered Plutonium and mixtures of Plutonium and Uranium oxides (MOX) are sent by road back to the fuel fabrication facility to be used in new fuel rods.
19 Plant decommissioning
20 Permanent security needs -- by land, sea and air
21 In the paper "Nuclear Power : the energy balance" by J.W. Storm van Leeuwen and P. Smith (2005) the authors calculate that with high quality ores, the CO2 produced by the full nuclear life cycle is about one third to one half of an equivalent sized gas-fired power station. For low quality ores (less than 0.02% of U3O8 per tonne of ore), the CO2 produced by the full nuclear life cycle is EQUAL TO that produced by the equivalent gas-fired power station.
Nuclear Power, Nuclear Weapons, and Political Power
Through the smoke and mirrors, we see the dance of the nukes vs. hydrocarbons, but both Sen. Inhofe and Vice President Gore are nuclear proponents. In Gore's case it goes back to his daddy, who was well-connected to hydrocarbon and nuclear capitalism.
Let's approach this another way, through the history of nuclear power. Everything was humming along nicely until the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island disasters and political defeats by popular movements in Oklahoma and The Philippines. Nuclear power expansion was brought to a standstill. Anti-nuclear power advocacy was unquestioned as a part of the environmental movement and broader social movements.
However, nuclear power is a non-negotiable requirement for America's rulers. Why? Because of the intimate union of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Military and political considerations dominate this decision, rather than pure economics. The goal is and has been to promote, develop and maintain American military hegemony, global "full spectrum dominance", historically tied to nuclear weapons since the Manhattan Project of the early 1940s. So it doesn't matter that nuclear power makes no sense from any other point of view: health, safety, potential and actual disaster, economics. It is locked in.
A strategy was developed. The first step was patience. Radical promotion of nuclear power immediately after the problems mentioned above would have been self-defeating.
Multi-pronged approach for 25-30 years:
Using scientific public relations, find ways to sanitize nukes and ways to keep bad news far from the public eye, muddy the waters on the clear-cut and multi-generational proof of increased morbidity and mortality from nukes, etc.[22] [23] [24] [25] [26]
