Reflections
No source of energy or electricity is ‘environmentally friendly’. They all affect our environment, and it is a question of choosing a range of options with manageable consequences. However, climate change appears to be by far the most serious threat which the world faces in the early years of the twenty-first century. In order to control climate change, it may be necessary to accept the alternative environmental challenges offered by very low carbon sources such as nuclear power and renewables.

Quick Links
Environmental effects of energy sources
The greenhouse effect
UK emissions of major greenhouse gases, 2000
Deforestation
Sources of man-made carbon dioxide
Acid rain
Other effects of burning fossil fuels and wood
Renewables
Nuclear
Nuclear waste
Natural comparisons
Other effects of the use of nuclear energy
Public attitudes to nuclear energy

Energy in the Energy and environment
‘Sustainable development’ has been a much discussed idea ever since it was first described in the 1980s. It stresses two important requirements of policy in fields such as energy, industry, transport, economics and so on – ‘development’ and ‘sustainability’.

There are many ways of defining sustainable development, but one of the most widely used is ‘a form of development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. In other words, the people of today, especially in less developed countries, must be allowed economic growth to improve the quality of their lives, but this growth must be achieved in such a way that the world’s resources and environment are not depleted or damaged to the extent that the next generation’s prospects are limited.

There are more than 6 billion people in the world today. If we are all going to live long and healthy lives, we must protect ourselves from the indifference of nature: from natural disasters, an unpredictable climate, disease and the other threats that the world offers. We need to provide ourselves with food, clean water and healthcare, and among other things all this requires enormous amounts of energy. We cannot expect to be able to fulfil these needs without causing major environmental effects of one sort or another. The key must surely be to balance these environmental effects so that no one of them gets out of control, rather than falling for the very seductive, but very dangerous, myth that we can live without having a significant impact on our world.

Things are complicated by the fact that it is very difficult to compare environmental effects. How do we compare damage to trees from acid rain with visual intrusion or damage to bird life from windfarms? How do we compare the damage caused by tidal power barrages to local bird and fish life with the effects of climate change? How do we compare the effects of low-level emissions of radioactive materials with the damage done by oil slicks?

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Environmental effects of energy sources
In the early days of the Industrial Revolution it was assumed that the environment could be used as a giant dustbin for any kind of waste and pollution. However, the industrialised countries soon recognised that industrial pollution and human waste could overwhelm local ecological systems, and so attempts were made to deal with local environmental effects by transporting the pollution over longer distances – ‘dilution is the solution to pollution’, as it was sometimes put.

We now recognise that this, too, is generally wrong. It is widely accepted now that the effects of burning fossils fuels are having profound effects on the global climate. A new way of thinking is needed, in which we recognise that every country in the world has a responsibility for the global environment as well as its own. At the same time, poorer countries must be allowed to improve their lives, and so the onus falls on the rich world to control its impact on the environment before dictating to less well off countries.

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The greenhouse effect
The greenhouse effect is a natural process which traps some of the sun’s heat and helps keep the planet warm – just like the glass of a greenhouse, hence the name. Without the greenhouse effect, the earth would be too cold for us to survive – from that point of view it is a perfectly natural and beneficial thing.

The effect is due to the presence of gases in the atmosphere which allow sunlight through. The sunlight hits the surface and warms the surface up. The surface now gives off energy in the form of infra-red radiation, which in the absence of an atmosphere would simply escape to space, allowing the earth to cool down again. However, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere do not let all of this infra-red out, so the earth warms up. The natural greenhouse effect is dominated by two gases – water vapour and carbon dioxide.

Before the Industrial Revolution the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was quite stable at about 275 parts per million (ppm) or 0.275%. However, the enormous releases of carbon dioxide from the use of fossil fuels, notably coal but more recently oil and gas, coupled with deforestation in some areas of the world, meant that by the turn of the millennium this had risen to about 370ppm.

(For scientific reasons, emissions of water vapour do not directly increase the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere in the same way. The average concentration of water vapour is determined principally by the average temperature – if too much water vapour is emitted it will simply condense out at lower temperatures.)

In addition, mankind is adding new greenhouse gases that either do not occur in nature or are a very small component of the natural atmosphere – methane, nitrous oxide (N2O), CFCs and their replacements HFCs. In addition, ozone, which in the upper atmosphere forms a vital layer which protects us from harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun, acts as a greenhouse gas if it is present near ground levels. It is also a potential health hazard.

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UK emissions of major greenhouse gases, 2000
Methane is the same as natural gas, and is released when gas escapes from pipelines, as well as being produced in landfill dumps for domestic rubbish, in certain agricultural practices such as rice growing in wet paddy fields, and by some animals like cows and termites. It can also escape from old gasfields and coalmines. Nitrous oxide is produced when coal is burned for electricity, and in the manufacture of nitric acid, and low-level ozone is produced by motor cars, oil refineries and power stations using coal or gas and oil. CFCs were used in refrigerators and have been phased out because they were causing holes in the high-level ozone layer, but their replacements, known as HFCs, are also powerful greenhouse gases.

The precise implications for our climate of these emissions are uncertain, but there is growing agreement among many scientists that the effects could be extremely serious. The most obvious effect would be an increase in the average temperature of the earth – the enhanced greenhouse effect is often referred to as ‘global warming’. The turn of the millennium was characterised by some of the hottest years on record. However, the effects on individual countries could be quite variable. Some of the coldest regions of the world could benefit from an increase in temperature, while others would become too hot for their present agriculture. Paradoxically, some countries like the UK could become much cooler, if the driving force behind the Gulf Stream (which brings warm water to our shores) were to be disrupted by melting of the Arctic icecap.

The main body examining climate change is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was set up following the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio in 1992. The IPCC has estimated that global temperatures could be between 1.50C and 60C higher at the end of this century.

Such an increase could have a number of effects:

• Sea levels could rise because of expansion of the oceans, and also the possible melting of land ice in Antarctica and elsewhere.
• Vast areas of low-lying land could be flooded or damaged by salt water getting into agricultural systems.
• Water supplies could be disrupted.
• Millions of people might have to leave their homes.

General climatic changes could result in the spread of tropical diseases to areas where they are not presently encountered, major disruption to traditional farming and agriculture and the extinction of some animals and plants. Perhaps most seriously, there would be an increase in single extreme weather events such as floods, storms and hurricanes, which are difficult to protect against. The claims against insurance companies for so-called ‘natural’ weather disasters have increased dramatically in recent years, and some insurance companies will end up no longer insuring against extreme weather.

What has this to do with the energy industry? The United States Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that about 60–65% of man-made greenhouse gases are produced directly or indirectly by energy use. The IPCC, and other bodies such as the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, have argued that emissions of greenhouse gases from developed countries must be reduced by at least 60% of 1990 levels by 2050 if climate change is to remain within manageable proportions. Given the projected increases in energy demand during the period, this is an enormous challenge – by 2050 most of the world’s energy will have to be produced without greenhouse gas emissions if this is going to be achieved.

A modest start was made at the Kyoto world summit in 1997, at which most developed countries accepted commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by the period 2008–12. The USA, which although it has less than 5% of the world’s population, emits a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and was the most important country not to accept the Kyoto Protocol.

Global temperatures changed very little - only about a quarter of a degree - over the thousand years to the middle of the last century. Since then, however, temperatures have gone up by nearly 10C, and by 2100 they are likely to be between 1.5C and nearly 6C hotter than the average for most of the last millennium. Source: Alverson et al, 2002.

The UK’s target was a reduction of 12.5% in emissions from 1990 levels by the ‘compliance period’. In fact, the UK was one of a very few countries to meet the commitment it made at the Rio Convention not to emit any more carbon dioxide (the most important greenhouse gas) in 2000 than it did in 1990. This was achieved not by a major policy effort, but as a result of two developments which had nothing to do with climate change strategy. As it happens, electricity produced using natural gas produces less carbon dioxide than electricity produced using coal – and in the 1990s a lot of new gas-fired power stations were built, largely because they were cheaper. Secondly, the increasing output of UK carbon-free nuclear stations (given a boost by Sizewell B coming on line in 1995) – from 20% of UK electricity supply in 1990 to 26% in 1999 – was a result of improved operating techniques. Unless more nuclear power stations are built, both of these will essentially be ‘one-off’ greenhouse gas reduction windfalls.

One approach to persuade companies and individuals to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide would be to impose a tax on emissions of greenhouse gases – a so-called ‘carbon tax’ – and several European countries have introduced such a tax. The UK did introduce a Climate Change Levy at the beginning of the twenty-first century, although it was also applied to nuclear energy, which emits practically no greenhouse gases. Another approach is ‘tradable emission permits’ – a certain amount of carbon dioxide emission is allowed in any particular year, but companies are only allowed to emit carbon dioxide if they own a permit to do so. Permits, which act rather like wartime ration coupons, can be bought and sold in a marketplace.

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Deforestation
Developing countries clear so much forest and use so much firewood that deforestation in these countries contributes about a fifth towards world carbon dioxide emissions. Trees and soil absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and so the fewer trees there are, the less carbon dioxide the natural world can absorb. Trees are usually felled to clear land for ranching or agriculture, or to provide raw materials for the paper and rayon industries. But deforestation is also caused by the collection of firewood and submerging of forests for dams. In Africa some 300 million tonnes of wood are burned each year, obtained by clearing about 200 million hectares of trees. Deforestation leads to soil erosion, loss of animal species and local climate change, while burning the wood contributes further to the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

As most of today’s deforestation is happening in developing countries, richer nations could support those countries and help them to manage their forests in a more sustainable way. The world’s declining forests must be maintained and restored and our agricultural practices must be improved if we are to help restore nature’s balance of greenhouse gases.

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Sources of man-made carbon dioxide
All of the fossil fuels cause emissions of carbon dioxide. Coal produces most – each kWh unit of electricity generated using coal causes the release of nearly 1kg of carbon dioxide. A gas-fired power station will produce about 450g of carbon dioxide. However, methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so it does not take much by way of leaks from the natural gas network to cancel out this benefit. Nuclear power and renewables produce only a trace of carbon dioxide – around 20g – as a result of the use of fossil fuels in building and maintaining the power stations and extracting the uranium fuel.

In recent years, some attention has been paid to ways of removing the carbon dioxide from flue gases of power stations using coal or gas. A pilot project has been running in the Sleipner West gasfield off the Norway coast. Natural gas contains a certain amount of carbon dioxide, which must be separated before the gas is piped into homes and factories. At Sleipner the separated carbon dioxide is injected into saltwater deep under the seabed, rather than being released into the atmosphere. In theory, carbon dioxide could be separated from the flue emissions of a coal-fired or gas-fired power station, transported to a suitable site and injected either into a disused oilfield or gasfield, into an aquifer deep underground or under the sea or perhaps directly into the deep ocean. Though the process looks technically feasible, it would be enormously expensive using current technology, and of course it is essential to be sure that the carbon dioxide will not escape from its storage site in due course or cause unacceptable local environmental damage. However, if carbon dioxide sequestration should prove practical and economic, it could make a significant difference to the prospects for continued use of fossil fuels.

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Acid rain
Coal-fired power stations, motor cars and certain industries release gases that are acidic. The most important is sulphur dioxide, and combustion at high temperatures also creates some of the oxides of nitrogen (known as NOx). Sulphur dioxide dissolves in rain and then reacts with the air to form sulphuric acid, and the oxides of nitrogen similarly form nitric acid. These are harmful to animals and plants and make lakes acidic. They also dissolve aluminium and other poisonous metals in the earth and these, too, flow into lakes and rivers. The results for aquatic life can be devastating.

Scientists are studying forests in many regions of Europe which appear to be dying as the trees soak up acid rain in the soil. Even where trees are not being killed, their growth is being severely stunted.

In recent years, a three-pronged attack has been launched against acid rain emissions. In most of Europe the use of coal has been declining in favour of cleaner gas and nuclear power. Where coal is being used it is possible to switch to coal with a lower sulphur content. And finally, ‘flue gas desulphurisation’ (FGD) using large scrubbers which remove sulphur dioxide from the flue gases has been fitted to some coal stations in the UK and Germany. However, FGD is expensive to install and operate, uses large amounts of limestone and produces huge quantities of slurry. It also reduces the efficiency of the power station resulting in more emissions of carbon dioxide per unit of electricity produced.

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Other effects of burning fossil fuels and wood
Every year a typical large coal-fired power station produces (in addition to about 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and 200,000 tonnes of the gases associated with acid rain) about 4,000 tonnes of fly ash containing an array of unpleasant substances, including cadmium, mercury, arsenic and uranium. The use of coal and wood for domestic heating is still important in many areas of the world, and the effects of the smoke particles that are produced can be devastating on the health of people who breathe it in. In 1952 the last of the great London smog ‘pea-soupers’ killed nearly 4,000 people in a fortnight, and was followed by the 1956 Clean Air Act which led to the widespread use of smokeless fuel in the capital, though even as late as the 1990s smogs were still occurring with estimated death tolls in the hundreds. Many countries in the world face similar problems today. In 1997 the World Health Organisation estimated that at least 1.4 million deaths, and perhaps as many as 6 million, were occurring each year as a result of air pollution. Most of these were due to indoor exposures, but up to half a million deaths were ascribed to poor air quality in cities. The WHO report points out that 3 million deaths would represent about 6% of all deaths. Major efforts are being made to improve the air quality in cities such as Beijing, Bangkok and Mexico City, and the problem is by no means restricted to the developing world.

In addition, the extraction of fossil fuels – coal mines, oil rigs and gas fields – can have significant local environmental effects that can last for many years.

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Renewables
For the last few years there has been a strong environmental lobby in favour of renewable sources of power. It is obviously attractive to have available technologies that do not contribute significantly to acid rain or climate change, or run on limited fuels which have other beneficial uses. However, as discussed in Energy, Society and the Nuclear Alternative, there are drawbacks in terms of the high costs and intermittent nature of the power output from some renewables.

Furthermore, although they are sometimes described as ‘green’ or ‘environmentally friendly’, renewable sources of energy also have their damaging impacts on the environment. For example, tidal barrages can harm river life and cause silt build-ups. The difference between high and low tide near the barrage is reduced, which can have devastating effects on sandbanks where birds feed and breed, and levels of dissolved oxygen in the river can be affected which is bad for fish.

Many giant hydroelectric schemes have had significant impacts on local environments and people, damaging landscapes and animal habitats. In hotter countries hydropower lakes, like any large stretch of water, can help to spread bilharzia, the world’s second most serious parasitic disease, as snails which carry the parasite proliferate in the waters. The earth movements required to build large dams can also cause earthquakes. (Source: International Commission on Large Dams, quoted in Bakun: High Dam High Risk, Delphi International, 1996.) The ‘Three Gorges’ scheme on the Yangtze River in China involves some 26 power-generating dams and required over 1 million people to move from their homes. The proposal was subject to armed uprisings from local people. In any case, most potential large-scale hydropower sites in the UK, as in much of the rest of Europe, have already been exploited. Smaller-scale hydropower is likely to have more of a role to play, however.

Even wind energy, despite its obvious attractions, is not entirely benign. Wind turbines can be noisy (though this problem has largely been addressed now) and visually intrusive, and can interfere with television reception, communication signals and radar. They can be disastrous for bird life, and many of the best onshore sites are in rural beauty spots. Most windfarm proposals are rejected by local planning committees. However, offshore windfarms are more acceptable in many countries, and are being developed in countries like Denmark. The UK has a significant offshore wind potential, and the government has been encouraging companies to build large collections of generators.

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Nuclear
Nuclear power stations do not emit the gases associated with acid rain and the enhanced greenhouse effect (except in trivial amounts during power station construction and fuel extraction and manufacture). Around the turn of the millennium the use of nuclear power stations in the UK was saving 50 to 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year, assuming that they would be replaced by coal and gas in equal amounts. This represented about 10% of UK total greenhouse gas emissions.

However, nuclear energy does need to manage its wastes safely, and to dispose of them in such a way as to avoid impacts on people or the environment. Radioactive waste arises from a variety of activities including medicine, agriculture and industry, as well as from nuclear energy.

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Nuclear waste
All waste can have an effect on the environment if it is released, and much industrial waste is unpleasant or dangerous. Even domestic waste tips are a haven for rats and diseases, and many give off methane gas which add to climate change and may be explosive in high concentrations.

Industrial wastes contain chemicals and asbestos, some of which will remain toxic for ever.

Uranium is an extremely concentrated form of energy, a very efficient fuel. In a modern nuclear power station, one tonne of uranium produces as much electricity as about 20,000 tonnes of coal. The amounts of waste being produced are therefore very small by industrial standards. Modern nuclear power stations are much more efficient than the earliest examples. Proportionally speaking, the volume of radioactive waste needing to be managed will not increase very much whether or not there is a future programme of nuclear power stations. Less than 15,000m3 of radioactive waste is produced by the UK nuclear industry every year from power stations, reprocessing plants, enrichment, fuel fabrication and other facilities. This can be compared with 40,000,000m3 of industrial waste and another 40,000,000m3 of domestic rubbish. Within the industrial waste are some 5,000,000m3 of potentially deadly toxic wastes.

This being said, some nuclear waste is extremely dangerous and will need very careful handling. Radioactive waste can vary enormously in the amount of radiation it is giving out so it is categorised into low-level, intermediate-level and high-level waste. A nuclear power station produces around 100m3 of solid radioactive waste each year (about the volume of a lorry) and more than 90% of this is low-level waste.

Low-level waste (LLW) This includes solids and liquids, like used protective clothing or air filters, which might be contaminated with traces of radioactive materials. It also arises because of use of radioactive materials in industry, medicine, and so on. Granite, Brazil nuts, fertilisers and coffee beans naturally contain as much radioactivity as a lot of low-level waste. About 10,000m3 of low-level solid waste is produced each year in the UK, about the size of a four-bedroomed family home. Most low-level waste is solidified, compacted and disposed of in metal containers at a site at Drigg, near Sellafield in Cumbria. This has been operating since the 1960s without attracting much public interest.

Intermediate-level waste (ILW) This consists of solid and liquid materials from nuclear power stations (for example, the metal cans in which the fuel was contained in the reactor), fuel reprocessing and defence establishments. Less than 4,000m3 of intermediate-level waste is produced every year in the UK, much of it from the reprocessing operation at Sellafield rather than from the operating power stations.

High-level waste (HLW) This is the concentrated waste that is produced when nuclear fuel is reprocessed, and is made up of the ‘fission products’ and heavy metals contained in the spent nuclear fuel. Since the 1950s when nuclear energy was first introduced to this country, the industry has produced a total of about 1,500m3 of high-level waste. High-level waste has been stored as a thick liquid, but it is being progressively ‘vitrified’. This involves turning it into a stable glass form, reducing its volume by two thirds and aiding its safe storage. Each year the UK nuclear industry produces an amount of high-level waste equivalent in volume to a taxi. Unlike fossil fuel waste, which is released into the atmosphere and ground without much concern for long-term effects, nuclear waste is carefully managed and contained. Most governments in countries which have nuclear power programmes have expressed a preference to dispose of radioactive waste underground, rather than continued storage on or near the surface. The main arguments for deep geological disposal include: dealing with the waste issue in this generation rather than passing it on to our children requirement for a single site (or a very small number) rather than several surface sites, allowing redundant nuclear sites to be returned to other uses lower worker doses greater protection against accidental or deliberate damage. The last argument gained considerable force after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, which raised fears that a radioactive waste store could become a target. However, it is one thing having a policy, quite another carrying it out. The UK has seen a series of false starts in attempts to identify a site for a waste repository – at Billingham in 1985, at four sites around the country in 1987, at Sellafield in 1997 (where it was proposed to build an underground rock laboratory). In each case, public protests, coupled with a failure to make a ‘watertight’ safety case, prevented progress. Other countries have done rather better. In Finland a site at the nuclear power station at Olkiluoto has been identified for final waste disposal, with full involvement of local communities. Considerable progress has also been made in the USA and Sweden. There is no fundamental reason why waste should not be disposed of safely, but first lessons have to be learnt about relations with local communities.

Waste management is a matter of a race between two forces of nature. On the one hand, the radioactive material itself becomes less radioactive every day it can be kept away from living systems. It takes about 800 years for the radioactivity of high-level waste to fall to that of the uranium ore from which the fuel was mined. Over rather longer periods its activity will eventually fall to background levels. On the other hand, there is a tendency for nature to spread material around the environment unless it is properly contained. The job of a repository designer is to make sure that material does not start to escape from the facility until its radioactivity has died away to ‘background’ levels.

By far the most likely way that material will escape from a repository too early is via movement of groundwater. A ‘multi-barrier’ approach is taken to prevent this happening.

The first barriers will be physical. Much intermediate-level waste is made up of the metal cans that held the fuel in the reactor core. Once it has been separated from the fuel itself, it is put into stainless steel barrels, which will then be filled with cement or bitumen before being placed in the concrete vaults of the repository. When the vaults are full they too will be backfilled with cement. So any groundwater which seeps towards the waste will have to eat through the concrete and cement of the vaults, the stainless steel of the barrels and the cement which directly surrounds the waste. As has been seen above, high-level waste is being turned into glass blocks, which will be stored in thick-walled stainless steel flasks and be even more resistant to being dissolved.

The next level of barrier is chemical. As water dissolves the cement in the vaults and barrels, it will become alkaline (the opposite of acidic). The materials in the waste are less soluble in alkaline conditions than they are in acid or neutral water. The facility will also have been placed in an area where the rocks are of such a type as to adsorb the waste rather than let it move with the water if it finally did escape from the repository itself.

The final level of barrier is geological. A site will be chosen where there is very little groundwater, and what there is moves slowly and predictably. There should be little evidence of past earthquakes or volcanic activity. And finally, there will be several hundred metres of rock between the waste and the outside world.

It is not clear at present whether separate sites will be developed in the UK for intermediate- and high-level wastes, or whether they will be disposed of together.

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Natural comparisons
There are a number of examples from nature which would seem to suggest that containment of radioactive materials for very long periods of time is possible.

Perhaps the most famous natural ‘analogue’ is the ‘Oklo Phenomenon’. In the early 1970s, French scientists noticed that some uranium samples from the Oklo mine in Gabon, West Africa, had an abnormally low amount of the type of uranium known as U-235, the active type used in nuclear power reactors. In normal uranium U-235 only makes up about 0.7% of the total, but some 1.7 billion years ago the proportion of U-235 was about 3% – similar to the enriched uranium used in most modern reactors. Water filtering down through crevices in the rock created the ideal conditions for a natural nuclear reaction to take place.

It is now believed that natural reactors operated intermittently in the area for a million years or more, until the U-235 became too diluted. Sixteen such ‘fossil’ reactors have been identified in the Oklo region. Once these natural reactors burned themselves out, the highly radioactive waste they generated was held in place deep under Oklo by the clays in the surrounding area. In the subsequent 1.7 billion years, the plutonium (some four tonnes of which was produced by the reactors) moved less than three metres from where it was formed, although it has now turned into stable elements.

Although the Oklo phenomenon may be the most widely known of the natural analogues, there are others which geologists believe may be more relevant in their wider implications. The Cigar Lake uranium deposit in Saskatchewan, Canada, contains the world’s richest known uranium deposits, containing an average 14% of uranium but reaching 55% in some areas. Its geology is relatively simple, lying at a depth of over 400m and occupying a lens-shaped area 2,000m long, 100m wide but only 1 to 20m deep, almost totally enclosed in a clay-rich envelope. The ore was laid down some 1.3 billion years ago, but no evidence of its existence can be found on the surface, despite the fact that most of the intervening rock is fractured and bears considerable amounts of water.

Cigar Lake is regarded as the most complete natural analogue for a repository, having been successful in containing uranium for over one billion years in conditions with many similarities to repository concepts, although lacking some of the planned barriers. Several other natural analogues in regions in which uranium is mined have been investigated and characterised, notably the 1.8 billion-year-old deposits at Alligator River at Koongarra in the Northern Territory, Australia.

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Other effects of the use of nuclear energy
In normal operation nuclear plants release minute amounts of radioactive material into the environment. Emissions do arise in the course of reprocessing, but these discharges are highly regulated and have reduced significantly in recent years as new plants and techniques have been introduced.

From time to time there are accidental leaks of radioactive material, though these tend to be tiny when compared to background levels of radiation. The mining of uranium does have local environmental effects. Full rehabilitation of the local area is normally required at the end of the mine’s life, although because uranium is a very concentrated form of energy the amounts that have to be mined are correspondingly smaller than the amount of coal mining needed to produce the same amount of electricity.

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Public attitudes to nuclear energy
Many sources of energy are subject to public controversy, and in recent years there have been public campaigns against windfarms, petrol companies and hydropower proposals. Since the 1970s, there has been a lobby which opposes nuclear energy, largely on environmental grounds – something which strikes many supporters of nuclear energy as something of a paradox.

There are three main reasons for this opposition. First, its origins in the weapons programme of the Second World War, and the ever-present menace of the nuclear arms race during the Cold War, were a powerful influence on people’s thinking, even though in most countries civil and military application of nuclear technology were clearly separated.

Second, although radiation from nuclear energy operations is not a major risk, it has all of the features that make us nervous. It is a relatively unfamiliar risk that we cannot detect through our senses (though it can be detected at extremely low levels using suitable instruments). It is not a risk we choose to run ourselves, but is perceived as being imposed upon us. And it gives the impression that a major accident could affect a very large number of people, including people in future generations. ‘Splitting the atom’ to produce vast amounts of energy can be regarded as the equivalent of ‘playing with fire’.

Third, the nuclear industry itself, in part because of the way it developed in the post-war years, has sometimes acted in a rather arrogant and secretive way. Decisions tended to be taken behind closed doors and imposed on local communities. In recent decades decision-making has changed significantly, and democracy is changing to accommodate increasing levels of influence of local people and national pressure groups over major public issues. As a result, in many Western countries a number of industries, including nuclear energy, ran into protests that made the implementation of national policy in such areas as waste management very difficult. In the last twenty years or so of the twentieth century some 21 nuclear power stations were closed or halted in advanced stages of construction for non-economic reasons in six OECD countries (Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the USA), some as a direct result of referenda. Germany, Belgium and Sweden adopted formal phase-out policies by law, and a number of countries without nuclear power plants decided by law not to build them.

There is evidence that politicians and the media tend to overestimate the degree of opposition to nuclear energy. When MPs are asked what they think of nuclear energy they split fairly evenly, as does the general population. However, if MPs are asked what they think the public thinks, they tend to overestimate opposition by huge margins.

Public concern about radiation tends to be rather ‘back of the mind’. However, when a particular proposal is made to develop a new nuclear power station, they will often come to the fore, and local protests follow. This of course is not unique to nuclear energy. A number of countries, notably Sweden and Finland, have developed new ways of consulting local neighbourhoods at a far earlier stage, inviting ‘expressions of interest’ with an understanding that the community in question could pull out at any stage. This seems to result in decisions which have far wider acceptance than those which are simply imposed by central government.