Miller, and Man-Sung Yim
During the presentations, there was very little men-tion of the environment. I want to ask all our panelists whether they think environmental issues are security issues. What is the relationship between energy and security? Should we be thinking about environment as well? Do different energy choices have environ-mental impacts and do those environenviron-mental impacts have security consequences?
Carey King: The answer is yes. There are issues re-lating to the extraction of natural gas, environmental concerns about water contamination, and water treat-ment. We need to find ways to deal with that prop-erly. But I think it could be handled. You need to plan it and put safeguards in place—many are already in existence.
James Bartis: In the defense community, this is-sue centers primarily on the destabilization of regions abroad as a result of climate change. There is quite a change taking place. What does it mean to places like Bangladesh that aren’t stable and don’t have the resources to mitigate environmental consequences and population shifts? Another issue is that energy requirements do consume water. To the extent that water resources are diverted for energy use, especially across borders, it is a security concern. That’s primar-ily the way I see this played out.
Man-Sung Yim: Environmental issues are very important in terms of economics. People have tried to factor what they call externalities into cost. The cost of energy is more than it appears when we factor in the cost of the damage caused by, say, the release of
carbon and other toxic materials produced. People have come up with a way to characterize the impact of certain types of energy use. That impact could in-clude mainly health effects. Whenever we talk about environmental impact, we are generally talking about the effect on human health. When we talk about eco-logical impact, we are talking in terms of crop damage, materials damage, noise, air quality, acid rain, defor-estation, and then maybe global warming. If you add these other costs to the cost of electricity generation, it will change the price of fossil fuels and renewables and nuclear power.
Alex Roland: Is nuclear waste an environmental issue?
Man-Sung Yim: Yes, of course it is an environ-mental issue. There are two communities of thought here. We have a technical community responsible for nuclear waste management. This community thinks the nuclear waste problem is solved; they think we have the technology to deal with it. If you talk to the other community, the problem will never be solved.
As they see it, nuclear waste is a long-term problem.
There are perhaps 1,000 toxic products in nuclear fuel, spent fuel. The vast majority of them are short-lived.
Only 10 of the radionuclides have greater than 10 years half life—a very small number. But those few nuclides have a very long half life. Iodine 129 lasts 17 million years. So that’s going to stick around forever.
James Bartis: And it’s water soluble.
Man-Sung Yim: It could be water soluble depend-ing on the chemistry of the system. Anyway, a couple of those radionuclides eventually are going to come and get you. The way the current regulatory system is actually written, you have to demonstrate that the waste will be safely disposed of for the next 1 million
years, and that less than 100 milligrams will come from these radionuclides per year. If you take one CAT scan, you get 1,000 milligrams. If you take one X-ray, you get about 10 milligrams. Everybody in this room gets about 600 milligrams per year by just living in this country, so 100 milligrams is part of the natural background. But based on the regulatory system, you have to demonstrate that this nuclear waste disposer should not give you more than 100 milligrams per year for the next 1 million years. Indeed, for the first 10,000 years, you have to keep it to 15 milligrams. So suppose I come up with a system to dispose of the waste and try to demonstrate that these enormous multiple bar-riers work, I still have to face the challenge of predict-ing how they will behave, and be able to say that this system is going to work for the next million years!
James Bartis: The Department of Energy (DoE) was dishonest and disingenuous to the public, and this is part of the hubris of the nuclear development community.
Man-Sung Yim: Yes, actually there are a lot of challenges. There are a lot of challenges in the politi-cal area when it comes to nuclear waste. It is a very long-term problem, and you need a long-term stable policy. We don’t have that. Policy changes whenever we have a change in the administration, and our ad-ministration has a bad record and little credibility in that regard.
Alex Roland: Is it a security problem or a political problem?
Man-Sung Yim: Both.
Steven Miller: I’d like to comment on the intersec-tion of security and environment in the nuclear realm as it affects my little orbit. In a number of places, global climate change is one of the driving factors in
pursuing nuclear power, not as an adequate response to global climate change, but as one of the portfolio of responses. Particularly in Europe where there’s great environmental concern, countries like Sweden and Germany have decided to abandon nuclear power and are now reversing course. But others, like Finland, are investing more heavily in nuclear power. Insofar as you think the spread of nuclear power raises some se-curity implications, there’s a mixed pattern.
Another issue is the presence of nuclear assets in the context of conflict. We have to worry about nucle-ar facilities as tnucle-argets in wnucle-ar or civil conflict. Nuclenucle-ar technology and power plants these days are designed to be very safe; we have zillions of hours of operation with little or no significant incident. But what of a man-made Chernobyl? The human element is the weak link in all of these systems; moreover, an intentional effort outside a system to contaminate a site is possible.
During the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqis repeatedly at-tacked Osirak. It was not yet operational with fuel, so that the implications were circumscribed. It is not entirely clear whether Iraq would have behaved dif-ferently if the facility had been operating. But there is some potential for deliberate targeting of a nuclear power plant.
Of course, the proximate nightmare that creeps into our current discussion is nuclear assets in the context of significant internal instability. So imagine that Maummar Gaddafi had not given up his nuclear weapons program. What would have happened to any highly enriched uranium in Libya? Or imagine everybody’s favorite nightmare scenario, Pakistan, which contains 100 or more nuclear weapons and a pretty extensive nuclear infrastructure, along with the highest density per capita of al-Qaeda and Taliban supporters of perhaps any country.
COMPARATIVE SECURITY OF