PRESENTATION TO THE TASKFORCE ON THE CHURCHES AND CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
by
R.G. Hart
Executive Vice-President
Atomic Energy of Canada Research Company
1983 March 24Ladies and Gentlemen I want to thank you for the invitation to meet with you today. As the son of a United Church Minister and a life-long member of the United Church of Canada I take a great deal of interest in the activities of the churches, particularly when they address matters related to science and technology.
You sent me a document that outlines the purpose and the terms of reference of the committee. It states that "the members believe that corporations - like other institutions and individuals - have the responsibility of seeing that their endeavours do not contribute to the continuation of avoidable human misery and social injustice." You'll get no argument from me on that account. Corporations have that responsibility. But the churches also have a responsibility. They have the responsibility of understanding what they're talking about before they take a position on the responsibility or irresponsibility of a Corporation. If they don't, it seems to me they could well contribute to that very human misery and social injustice they are trying to prevent.
In an article in the August/September 1982 issue of Public Opinion entitled Apocalypses Then and Now, John R. Sibler reviews some of the true and false apocalypses of history and then writes
The false apocalypse has at its heart the claim that nuclear energy, besides being unnecessary, is an intolerable threat to our health and safety. The related true apocalypse has at its heart the statement that we may so mismanage our energy resources that we will seriously degrade our environment and leave our descendents without the feedstocks for their essential chemical industries. The false apocalypse is widely listened to, and its success makes the fulfillment of the true apocalypse increasingly likely. I need hardly set forth the false apocalypse for your attention. Regretably, it is what almost every proper intellectual believes about nuclear power. Nuclear power is, among intellectuals, an automatic object of hate which everyone 'knows' without evidence or argument is bad. If we strip away the cloak of ignorance we reveal the true apocalypse: the alternatives to nuclear power are themselves dangerous, and nuclear power is much safer than its opponents make it out to be.For a few moments at the beginning of this session, I would like to deal with a few of the common "truisms" of Sibler's false apocalypse and try to "strip away the cloak of ignorance" from them.The first "truism" that I would like to deal with is "There is no safe level of radiation".
In the strict scientific sense the statement is true. In fact one of our scientists was among the first to propose that theory. However, it must be quantified to have any practical meaning. So let me try to quantify it.
Everyone on earth is exposed to natural background radiation from cosmic rays and naturally occurring radioactive elements in the rocks, soils and building materials. If you want to you can think of this as God's irradiation. This natural background generally varies from place to place by a factor of 2 but in a few places it exceeds the average by a factor of up to 10. The average level presents a health hazard equivalent to that from smoking ~10 cigarettes per year. Not a very large hazard but not zero.
Twenty years experience with Canadian nuclear power stations shows that they expose residents living closest to them to a radiation level approximately 5% of natural background. The extra health hazard from this is equivalent to that from smoking ~1/2 cigarette per year. A considerably smaller hazard than natural background and a hazard to only a very few people but still not zero. "Radioactivity leaks", that are widely reported by the media, usually represent a minute fraction of even that small hazard.
Uranium mines mean radioactive tailings piles and past practice in a few cases has lead to contaminated river systems. For example, the contamination of the Serpent River system in Northern Ontario has been widely reported. Did you know that, at its worst, the water in that system represented a hazard equivalent to that from smoking ~1 cigarette a year assuming that people drank nothing but that water. Again a small hazard relative to natural background but again not zero.
In fact the greatest radiation risk to Canadians today does not come from the nuclear industry at all; it comes from the natural radon in the air in our homes. A recent survey by the National Department of Health and Welfare shows that over 4% of the homes in Canada contain radioactive radon concentrations which represent a risk greater than that from smoking 50 cigarettes per year, the clean-up level established for man-made contamination in Port Hope. Furthermore, this hazard will increase as homes are made more energy efficient, because fewer air changes lead directly to higher radon concentrations. I have not let this level of risk stop me from making my home more energy efficient but it does put the other risks somewhat more in perspective.
Now I wouldn't be surprised if you're saying to yourselves "But that's just his view of the hazards!" "Don't scientists disagree on what the hazard from low level radiation really is?" I've used relationships defined by the International Commission on Radiological Protection and it is true that a few scientists disagree with these relationships. The evidence to support their case has been reviewed by the ICRP and rejected. However, even if I accept the view of the few, the hazard from power stations only changes from an equivalency of ~1/2 cigarette per year to 2 and that in the Serpent River system from ~1 cigarette per year to 4. In the overall picture, is the perceived disagreement all that important?
The second "truism" I would like to discuss is that "Nuclear energy is an unforgiving technology; No acts of God are allowed".
In my judgement few statements could be further from the truth.
I've shown in the adjacent figure the 20-year record of Worker Safety in the Canadian Nuclear Industry, including uranium mining and including a generous allowance for the long-term health effects of irradiation and I've compared it against the record of other Canadian industries.
Figure 1: Risk of Various Canadian Occupations You can see that the nuclear industry is one of the safest industries we have. I've used Canadian information because it's most readily available but the world-wide information is similar, including Three Mile Island which I will speak about specifically later. Do you honestly believe that in all that time there were no human errors, or no acts of God? I can assure you that there were. The record is the way it is simply because the systems are tolerant. Tolerance to upsets, whether from error or acts of God, has been specifically designed into the system. If something abnormal occurs that could lead to safety problems the system automatically shuts itself down.
Now let me say just a few words about Three Mile Island. The Three Mile Island Accident was caused by a series of errors, both in design and in operating and it certainly got a lot of sensationalist publicity. But everyone seems to have forgotten that no one was hurt. The best scientific judgement of the effects of the accident is that it will lead to less than one additional fatal cancer in a population of 300,000 people sometime over the next 40 years. The number of fatal cancers in that population over that period from other causes is expected to be about 60,000. The accident was indeed a serious accident. The reason for this minimal effect was the tolerance of nuclear systems to accidents and errors; just the thing it is accused of not having.
Perhaps the best witness I can make to the confidence I have in the safety of nuclear energy is that I worked for 30 years right next to a nuclear reactor and I raised 3 children in communities right nearby. I can assure you that my children still have the same number of arms, legs, fingers and toes as anyone else. When I transferred to Ottawa 5 years ago, I kept my house in Pinawa because I want to return there when I retire. The air is clean, the water is pure, and the environment retains its natural beauty even though a 1,000-person nuclear establishment exists right next door. I look forward to sharing some of the joys I take in that kind of environment with my grandchildren. Now I'm not callous about the safety of my family. I just believe that that is one of the safest and environmentally acceptable places I could be.
The third "truism" I'd like to deal with is "there is no known method of dealing with nuclear wastes".
A more accurate statement would be that nuclear wastes are one of the few energy wastes that can be handled properly.
Again, look at the record.
Are the nuclear wastes discharged into the air like other wastes from energy production? No, they're not. Nuclear wastes are safely stored in storage facilities at reactor sites and can continue to be stored in that way for as long as is required. This situation illustrates the fundamental difference between nuclear wastes and wastes from most other energy producing technologies and that is quantity. Nuclear wastes are produced in such small quantities per unit of energy that they can be safely stored for very long periods without posing a serious economic penalty on the product.
For the same basic reason it is possible to conceive of a number of logical methods for final disposal. It is true that we cannot yet say that we have fully proven the safety of these methods but nothing in the continuing accumulation of experimental evidence leads us to doubt that such proof will be obtained. In my view all of these methods will eventually prove to be safe solutions. But let's examine the situation with the alternatives. There, because of the quantity of the wastes produced, proper handling seems impossible.
Now let me say a few words about the hazards of the wastes. In my view they are not nearly as hazardous as you have been led to believe. You've heard the statement "there's enough plutonium in a tonne of waste to kill everyone in the world". Well, I've worked with plutonium and I ingested some and I'm still here. A key point that seldom comes out is that, while plutonium is very hazardous if taken into the lungs, it is not very hazardous if taken into the stomach and it is very difficult to get it airborne. But it's a very, very scary statement. Also , a big thing is made of the half-life of the wastes: "Those wastes remain dangerous for 100,000 years". Did you ever stop to think that the other hazardous wastes that we release into our environment all the time, like lead, arsenic and mercury, don't have a half-life at all? They stay around for ever. In fact, most of the hazardous material in nuclear wastes decays away very quickly. After about 150 years a nuclear waste repository, as we visualize it today, will contain about the same toxicity as some naturally occurring lead deposits of about the same size that we know about today, and the naturally occurring material will retain its toxicity forever. But the toxicity of the nuclear waste repository will become progressively less toxic as time goes on.
I should say something about transport. The containers for nuclear wastes have been proven to resist impacts at 80 miles per hour and any possible resulting gasoline fire. So the liklihood of any waste escaping, even in the event of any kind of an accident, is remote indeed. But even if some did escape, it's heavy; it's not easily dispersed. It would be a minor job to clean it up. In my view things like chlorine, acids, liquified natural gas and even gasoline, which are transported through your communities everyday, represent a much more serious transportation hazard. But no one seems to suggest that we abandon their use for this reason.
The fourth "truism" that I'd like to deal with is "We don't need nuclear energy; all we need is conservation; more electricity just means more electric toothbrushes and TV sets."
I'm not against either electric toothbrushes or TV sets, but that's not where most of our electricity goes. Much of it goes to industry, and without industry we would not have the wealth and employment that we need to produce health and well being. Throughout history, as man has been able to reduce manual labour with more energy-intensive machines, he has been able to garner the wealth required for better diet, cleaner water, better sewage treatment and better health care, and that process is still going on in many countries of the world. Let me make it clear that I'm not advocating a waste of energy. However, I am advocating having enough energy available at a low-enough price so that industry can flourish. The record shows that that's one of the best things we can do to alleviate human misery and social injustice.
I'd also like to mention a few of the by-products of nuclear energy that go toward alleviating human misery.
Did you know that Canadian nuclear reactors produce ~75% of the world's cobalt-60 for cancer therapy treatment? This cobalt-60 has been credited with saving 13 million person-years of life since the treatment method was developed in the 1950's. I personally know people who would not be alive today if it were not for cobalt therapy treatment.
Did you know that Canadian Nuclear Reactors produce ~65% of the world's molybdenum-99 for medical diagnosis? This radioisotope is used in many millions of medical diagnoses each year.
And did you know that cobalt-60 irradiation can be used to rpeserve food without leaving any radioactivity whatsoever behind? It could be used to reduce food spoilage which, in underdeveloped countries, now amounts to at least 25%. Up to now unfounded fear, abetted by the spread of misinformation about radioactivity, has essentially prevented its use. Can you imagine what an impact a 25% increase in food supply would have on human misery in some countries?
The fifth "truism" that I'd like to challenge is that "nuclear scientists don't care about nuclear weapons, they just want to sell their technology".
I find this kind of insulting. I do support the export of nuclear reactors and I'd like to tell you why.
First, I understand the technology. I know that other countries don't need our technology to make a nuclear weapon. Plutonium production reactors are rather simple devices relative to power reactors and there were at least 5 plutonium separation processes known to the scientific community by 1950. I'm sure there are at least 40 countries around the world that could produce weapons-grade plutonium right now , if they wanted to, without any help from us at all. Their decision is not likely to be influenced by whether or not we export nuclear power plants. It is much more likely to be influenced by their faith in the free world's will to defend their right to exist as nations.
Second, we believe our technology can contribute to the removal of economic disparity throughout the world. With nuclear energy there need not be any have or have not countries as far as energy cost is concerned. Most countries have uranium but, even if they don't, fuel costs are such a small fraction of total costs that disparities for this reason are negligible. Compare that for a moment with a dependence on oil. Many developing nations now spend most of their foreign exchange simply for oil. This is the reason why many such nations now want nuclear energy. Obviously we don't believe that nuclear energy is a panacea for the world's economic disparities. However, we do think it can help solve one of the most serious contributing problems, energy disparity. Furthermore, nuclear energy has the potential of removing these energy disparities for many centuries. Current power stations now use only 1% of the uranium put in them, and this in itself is a huge amount of energy. However, we already see ways in which they can use all the world's uranium and all the world's thorium, thus increasing fuel supplies by a factor of 400. Thus economic energy for everyone for many centuries is indeed practical via this route. I can't believe that God put such a tremendous potential on earth without intending us to use it. Can you think of a better example of turning swords into ploughshares?
I'd like to close by noting that in your recent submission to the Atomic Energy Control Board, you talk a lot about the ethics of the industry. I have to ask you what are the ethics of churches using their offices, their institutions and their publications to propagate information on nuclear energy that has been rejected as unsupportable by International Scientific Committees on Radiological Protection, by National Regulatory bodies, by National Departments of Health and Welfare, by the vast majority of the Scientific Community at large and, most importantly, by 20 years of operating experience. I find that position somewhat incredible! You tell us that you're doing this so that people will get the "other side of the story". But truth doesn't have two sides. Scientific ethics demands that the truth be determined by a competent and unbiased review of the evidence and that only the truth be published. By presenting the "side of the story" rejected by scientific ethics, the church becomes the champion of the unsupportable and the prophet of the false apocalypse.