Fall 2007
The Non-Proliferation of Weapons Treaties Impact on Today’s Environment
“Nuclear energy was conceived in secrecy, born in war, and first revealed to the world in horror. No matter how much proponents try to separate the peaceful from the weapons atom, the connection is firmly embedded in the minds of the public” (Dunlap, 79). The disposal of high level toxic nuclear waste is one unavoidable consequence of the nuclear age: including peaceful “commercial” nuclear technology not just from weapons technology (Dunlap, 291). The world over has to find a solution to this “potential Achilles heel” of the nuclear industry (Kearney, 20-21). The United Nations (UN), in particular, has attempted to create some boundaries for this problem in the form of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty which is often and herein after referred to as the NPT in this paper. Originally this treaty was not created to manage waste disposal but soon after its ratification the safeguards provided by the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) for non-nuclear weapon states had its hand in many affairs, including the management of waste disposal (“Treaty”). The NPT has served its purpose for the majority of its lifetime by compelling its signers to adhere to it; however, in recent times the treaty no longer is as compelling as it once was and is creating more problems at this point and time than creating solutions to the problems involved with the nuclear age.
The NPT’s objective is to “prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament” (“Weapons”). The NPT is made up by four main proponents: “the basic treaty, the IAEA, the anti-proliferation guidelines of the East-West Nuclear Suppliers Group, and bilateral agreements and understandings between nuclear exporters and their customers” (Power, 477). The NPT provides for certain safeguards imposed by the IAEA. In addition to the safeguards that the non-nuclear weapons states had to abide by, they had to agree to not “receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear devices directly, or indirectly” (“Treaty”). In order to review the treaty’s operation and make sure that the provisions of the treaty were being realized a committee met every five years until May 11, 1995 (“Treaty”). On May 11, 1995, the committee extended the treaty indefinitely (“Weapons”). The reason that the management of nuclear waste disposal is an essential issue is because it is the by-product of the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Radioactive nuclear waste is created in a plethora of ways ranging from medicinal to the creation of nuclear weapons; however, the military still produces the majority of nuclear waste but the commercial industry is still creating the more toxic waste (Kearney, 15). This toxic waste must be disposed of in a safe and sustainable way to both the environment and the inhabitants of that environment, especially the human population (Environmental Affairs Department, 2). There are four processes that make up the management of nuclear waste for disposal. First, the creation of waste occurs and then the waste is collected and transported to the proper facilities. At these facilities the waste is treated and sometimes stored temporarily. The final process is the actual disposal of the waste (Environmental Affairs Department, 1-2).
Long-lived highly toxic wastes have created the biggest problem in disposal process because they are toxic for nearly 400,000 years and must be isolated from people and the environment for essentially forever (Kearney, 15). In 1957, the idea of burying this waste into deep geologic formations was proposed and is still to this day being carried out (McCombie, 56). The problem with this is that this process involves highly complex and generally untried technologies which in combination of working with geological formations (in itself is hazardous because geology is not a predictive science) the potential for mistakes and accidents increase (Cook, 353). In reality, the models of working with geologic formations and the field tests of the equipment may fail altogether because of the sheer length of time that the waste must be isolated, which neither the field tests nor the models can account for (Cook, 361). In a survey that was done by the United States’ Department of Energy (DOE), 29% of the 1045 people surveyed said that it was unfair to future generations if today’s generations buried nuclear wastes and we, today’s generation, had a responsibility to tomorrow’s generations (Dunlap, 104). One potential way that toxic waste can and has contaminated the environment is by having water seep into a repository and then get back into the biosphere thus polluting people’s drinking and rain water (Dunlap, 106).
The United States’ government has various waste policies that coincide with the toxicity of the material and where it came from (Kearney, 15). It also has four categories of nuclear waste: high level, transuranic, low level (separated further into classes A, B, C, and greater than C), uranium mill tailings (Makhijani, 257-261). The problematic high-leveled wastes created by the military are the responsibility of the government itself and they store them at federal facilities: Hanford, Savannah River Plant, and the National Reactor Testing Station primarily (Kearney, 15). Other states, such as France, separate and categorize their waste by radioactivity. Category A is the least radioactive, B is the middle and is a repository disposal waste, and C is the high-level waste category, some of which is also repository disposal waste. In many cases the government, ANDRA (National Agency for the Management of Radioactive Wastes), is responsible for the nuclear wastes from both civilian/commercial and military nuclear waste (Makhijani, 466-467). The United States has a larger problem than most with an excessive amount of commercial reactors in operation, 112, and that was only in 1992 (Dunlap, 6). More than a decade later the number has grown and the problem is worsening for the present and future generations.
The majority of nuclear waste from the commercial sector is in the form of spent fuel rods which are then stored in a repository (Dunlap, 5). You would believe that this is fool proof but in the United States nearly every facility (governmentally run or not) has confirmed at one point or another that their groundwater had been contaminated with the nuclear radiation or the hazardous chemical associated with nuclear fission (Makhijani, 102-104). By the year 2035, there will be about 85,000 metric tons of spent nuclear waste waiting to be disposed of and that is a detrimental waste accident just waiting to happen (Dunlap,65).
Health and environmental problems also depend on what the procedures and polices of a given state are and whether or not those procedures were actually abided by (Makhijani, 28). In general environmentalists and engineers differ on what they perceive the risks of nuclear waste disposal to be (Dunlap, 107). One thing that they can come together on is that they are both equally frustrated in the way that the environmental risks from nuclear wastes are being managed (Dunlap, 84). These toxic wastes threaten the health of the population when they are exposed to toxic waste and radiation for long amounts of time (Peck, 81).
There are three types of radiation: alpha, beta, and gamma, each increasing in intensity. Alpha radiation does not penetrate keratin; beta radiation does not penetrate a heavy layer of clothing. Gamma radiation on the other hand penetrates most things that we would think to wear to protect ourselves. Another misfortune is that gamma radiation generally accompanies alpha or beta radiation thus making anyone susceptible to the health hazards of radiation (Makhijani, 66-67).
Unfortunately accidents occur, leaks happen, and people suffer the consequences. In the United States several nuclear fission sites were shut down completely because of nuclear waste containment and management problems (Kearney, 26). Various communities have reported toxic waste problems which are the results of the accidents that spawn from the inadequate management and disposal of these toxic wastes (Peck, 81).
Other accidents occur, which the NPT can not help nor control. Some examples of these accidents are: Chelyabinsk-65 also know as the Chernobyl incident whose result was the contamination of 15,0002km of land, the evacuation of over 10,000 people and the creation of the most contaminated body of water to date, Lake Karachay which has the lethal dose of radiation in just forty-five minutes of exposure (Makhijani, 588); when the French freighter, Mont Louis, sank while containing 375 tons of Uranium in 30 containers in the English Channel which had the lucky result of being completely recovered (without leaks) in six weeks time (Makhijani, 44); the radiation release in Goiania, Brazil, where 249 people suffered radiation poisoning and where four of them died; or the Three Mile Island incident in the United States (Dunlap, 218). Accidents such as these have all seriously disrupted the states and the surrounding cities that they occurred in. The general population sees these events as the consequences of losing control of the nuclear technological process which in turn creates an animosity toward nuclear power, production, and especially waste and its associated radiation (Peck, 83).
Obviously, many states have nuclear technology now. The NPT allows “the benefits of peaceful applications of nuclear technology, including technological by products…[to] be available for peaceful purposed to all Parties of the Treaty” (“Treaty”). This means that even the non-nuclear parties that sign the treaty can have commercial nuclear technology. The problem with this is that in some of these “non-nuclear” states, nuclear power production is essential to their energy strategy but they do not have sufficient funds or technology to have effective nuclear waste management (McCombie, 56). Some believe that these countries that are producing waste will look to states such as the United States, France, Sweden, and Canada for guidance on the management of nuclear waste (Dunlap, 7).
The outlook for the nuclear waste problem looks dim because there is no short term solution and there are no “fool proof" or trustworthy processes in which nuclear toxic wastes can be disposed of (Dunlap, 82). In another survey done by the DOE, 32% of the people said that the fact that the technology of waste disposal was not proven made them worrisome (Dunlap, 103). The DOE has tried in vain to find an effective and proven way to manage and dispose of nuclear toxic waste (Makhijani, 257-261).
As mentioned earlier the NPT allowed the IAEA to install certain “safeguards” to protect the states and protect the public (“Weapons”). Spending on these safeguards such as the employment of nearly 160 inspectors to do periodic checks has exceeded any other area of spending and is an essential part of the NPT (Powers, 487). When safeguards are not met the IAEA does everything within its power to make the violating state comply. Such a case occurred rather recently in the form of North Korea. The IAEA was doing its sixth visit to North Korea when the North Korean government would not allow the inspectors to evaluate their waste sites and when the deadline set by the UN came and went, the state of North Korea was found in noncompliance with the NPT. The state’s repercussions were to be discussed by the UN Security Council; however, before North Korea could be internationally exposed or humiliated they withdrew from the NPT (Albright, 9-11). The United States, among others, are trying to convince North Korea to reconsider it’s withdraw because it could create an unstable East Asia (Albright, 11). These waste sites are vital to inspection because if a country is processing more uranium and plutonium then needed or claimed for their commercial usage then they have the potential to be a new nuclear power. Moreover, they have the potential of losing this excess uranium and plutonium which in turn would be a great health and environmental hazard.
In today’s world, some strategic communities have begun to disregard and/or dislike the policies of the NPT (Lever, 423). Some feel that there is a lack of leadership globally which is one of the reasons that the NPT is not progressing (Lever, 420). Such acts, as when the United States withdrew from the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty, encourage other states to just withdraw from other such treaties. If states were to withdraw unilaterally then the “rational control of offensive weapons systems would become nearly impossible to encourage” (McCombie, 421-422). Once the point of weapons control is not able to be regulated, there is essentially no hope for guidelines for the management of nuclear toxic waste.
There are those among academics who believe that the NPT should be either completely redrafted or trashed to allow another treaty to take its place. One such critic is Michael Wesley and his main reason is that he does not like the structure in which the NPT operates under. He believes that the NPT creates inefficiency and unfairness within the states which in turn creates a large opportunity cost (Lever, 417). In fact, some of his claims are founded by the recent failures of the committees. Some of these committees have failed largely due to the fact that the UN Group of 77 (G-77) has been dissatisfied in the way that the NPT has been affecting their interests (Power, 477). The G-77 has gone so far as accusing the NPT as “discriminatory”, “hegemonic”, and being a “monopolist” treaty. There are even states, such as Argentina, Brazil, India, and Pakistan that are publicly anti-NPT (Powers, 483). The NPT has become so controversial that the 1985 Conference was conducted only after the Soviet Union (President: Mikhail Gorbachev) and the United States (President: Ronald Reagan) agreed to not use the meeting as an opportunity to accuse one another why the worlds nuclear arms control record was unsatisfactory (Power, 478).
Others just recognize that the NPT has indeed managed to compel the signers to adhere to its provisions (more so than any other arms agreement) but they also see that the past few committee reviews, notably the 1980 committees inability to produce a statement, have not been able to agree on much but the necessity of the general acceptance or, rather, the agreement on the notions promoted by the NPT (Thee, 333; Power, 477). In addition to this there are some theories floating about in academia that provide temporary and perhaps semi-permanent fixes to the problems created by the NPT and the disposal of nuclear toxic waste. One such suggestion is to follow Sweden’s lead and use copper containers instead of steel containers because they are believed to be more durable to the “geographic formation” idea put into practice. Other suggestion has been to transmutate nuclear waste thus transforming it into other elements; the physics of which have been known since the 1960s (Dunlap, 307).
While it is important to rectify the technical and managerial problems that are associated with nuclear technology, it is just as important to clarify and rectify the political and social image associated with nuclear technology (Dunlap, 3). To accomplish this, there has been a series of suggestions, many of which include involving the public in decisions regarding the clean-up of nuclear wastes, waste management policy (including radiation standards), and anything else that would involve potential health or environmental hazards (Makhijani, 590-591). Obviously, the suggestions here would cost not only the exuberant amount of money one would imagine, but it would also cost the time of politicians and scientists to actually initiate these measures.
One may say, based on all of this, that the NPT hold political weight seeing as it has up until recently been able to maintain the level of respect from the states to allow them to adhere to the treaty; however, there has been many discrepancies among states which have nearly altogether halted the progress that is being made by having the NPT. The environmental and health risks are mounting by the day and nothing more can be accomplished until the states are able to come to an agreement which is “fair” by all accounts. Until this happens, it is my misfortune to say, there is no way that our society will be able to move forward with peaceful nuclear technologies. It seems to be virtually impossible to both create waste and not be able to manage it at the speed at which it is and has been created.
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