BBC WORLD TV, 'HARDTALK'
9 July 2001
Sarah Montague
Interviewing
John B Ritch
SM: Welcome to Hardtalk. I am Sarah Montague. What happens when the world's fossil fuels are used up? My guest today thinks there is only one sensible alternative: nuclear power. It's been out of favour ever since Chernobyl. Now, though, we talk about an energy crisis and fear of global warming; and the United States seem to believe that nuclear power may be the answer.
John Ritch, welcome to Hardtalk.
JBR: I am happy to be here.
SM: Is there such a thing as a safe nuclear power station?
JBR: It started that way. What is the rarity in our experience in the twentieth century, as we head into the twenty-first century, is an unsafe nuclear power plant. The world has had 10,000 reactor years of experience with nuclear power plants, and it has experienced one accident at Chernobyl. A tragedy indeed, but it does not tell you how to think about nuclear power for the twenty-first century.
SM: The trouble is, it has told most of the public how to think because when you think of a name of a nuclear power station you name Chernobyl. Because it might have been an accident , but what an accident!
JBR: Chernobyl was a tragedy in three respects: There were a number of people killed, but a much smaller number than most people think. This accident has been studied assiduously by the World Health Organisation and by a special UN body called the Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. And you, I think, and many other people, would be surprised to know that the findings are that the total number of people who died at Chernobyl is fewer than 40. This includes the consequences from the accident.
SM: Are you selectively quoting that, aren't you, because although 31 died as a direct result of the accident, is it not believed that there are thousands of cancer-related deaths, or dead, as a result of radiation?
JBR: It is widely believed that that is true, but not by the scientists. The radiation specialists who have studied it , they believe that the death toll is what I just said, and what you agree. And they also believe that there were 1800 thyroid cancer cases that resulted from the accident , but those resulted in only two, or three, or four deaths. It is a matter of the statistics that you used , the rest were treated. It was a treatable disease, and they were treated , in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
SM: Though, whether there was death as a result of the radiation, the impact was staggering?
JBR: It certainly was.
SM: and will be for generations to come! That's the problem with it, isn't it?
JBR: The impact was staggering (and this was the second effect) in terms of the psychological consequences for people in the affected regions: Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, indeed throughout Europe. But the greatest aspect of the tragedy , the one that is least appreciated , is that it has distorted public policy and public discussion of nuclear power as a very important option for twenty-first century energy production.
SM: So you think it's a bad PR job?
JBR: It's not a matter of PR. It's a matter of putting that terrible accident into perspective. The coal industry has over a thousand deaths per year that generally go unreported. With Chernobyl, the number remains in the thirties and yet this remains an obsession with people around the world.
SM: But the coal industry doesn't have accidents where sites are contaminated, for not just years, but thousands of years to come.
JBR: Well, you are placing me in a position of trying to defend and downplay Chernobyl. I cannot do that. It was a tragedy, to be sure. But with 10,000 reactor years of experience we have had only that accident. And at a nuclear power plant of a kind , designed by the Soviet Union in another time , that would never be built again.
SM: As far as the type of power station that would be built now in this day, you would have no problem living next door to one?
JBR: That's correct. And no one should. There are many people in the world who live next door to a nuclear power plant and are happy to do so because of the employment it provides and the clean energy source it affords their nations.
SM: Arguably , the problem isn't with new stations. It's with the fact that, for example, there are fifteen power stations , as I understand it , across the former Soviet Union that are like Chernobyl. It has to be dealt with one way or the other.
JBR: That's right.
SM: And those countries can't afford to.
JBR: Those reactors have all been visited with American and British and other European money and expertise, and are now thought to be operating safely. It will still be good to phase them out as soon as possible, so that all reactors are of the Western design. But right now those reactors are functioning and thought to be safe.
SM: There is a problem though with public opinion, because even in countries that were arguably converts , for example, Belgium or Germany , they both decided to ban new nuclear power stations. They just couldn't politically get it past parliament.
JBR: Well, Belgium produces some 60% of its electricity from nuclear. Germany produces some 30% of its electricity through nuclear, and if I were able to place a bet with you , one that we could check on in about twenty years , I believe you would find that those statistics have not gone down. I don't think the German decision to phase out nuclear power will outlast the unusual coalition that produced it.
SM: Right. Those of view of the nuclear industry that it is sinister?
JBR: I know.
SM: Why is that?
JBR: I think it's because people have difficulty understanding radiation. Radiation is a very complicated subject. Most people think that a nuclear power plant produces substances that are unlike anything else ever produced in the history of the world. They don't sense , they don't understand , that the radiation in a nuclear power plant is identical to radiation that is all around us. We receive large radiation doses from the earth, from the air, from the cosmos. Some 90% of the radiation a human being receives comes from natural causes, and 10% comes from medical diagnosis.
SM: Come on, we talking about a different scale here, the kind of background radiation as opposed to what you are using in a nuclear power station.
JBR: No, but I am talking about what people are exposed to. The radiation in a power station is retained in the power station.
SM: One of the reasons, perhaps, or one of the number of reasons, that it's considered sinister..for example, let's take a look at how you deal with the waste: Can it be right that something that remains deadly for thousands of years is put in the ground , is put in a hole in the ground , in the hope that perhaps future generations will find a way to treat it.
JBR: Well, that is not the plan. The geological repository is based upon a very straightforward and sound concept of radiation. The radiation that comes out of a nuclear power plant in the form of spent fuel is, first, extremely small in volume. Let me give me you..
SM: Yah, but the volume is irrelevant here, isn't it. Surely the question is the potency of whatever volume it is.
JBR: It's very small in volume, which is one of the great benefits of nuclear power. What we must do is talk about comparative energy sources, because we are talking about a situation in which fossil fuel energy production is now releasing 25 billion tons per year of CO 2 into the atmosphere , 25 billion tons per year. The average American is responsible for emitting about 120 pounds of CO 2 a day. And I am not talking about Americans with digestive problems. I am talking about a function of an economy that is based on fossil fuel. Nuclear energy produces , I want to emphasise this , a very small volume of waste. Surely it is highly radioactive. Now how do you deal with a highly radioactive substance? There are ways to do this that have satisfied all the scientists who have studied it in detail.
SM: Oh, come on. Not one permanent , there is only one proposed permanent dumpsite. And that's in Nevada, and most of the Nevadans don't want it there.
JBR: Well, I think that you are incorrect in saying that. There are four nations right now that are planning nuclear waste repositories: Russia, Finland, Sweden and the United States. And there are a number of others that have them under active study, such as Japan. France has it under study as well. Britain is not very far advanced in this, because this country has a particular neuralgia about nuclear. But let me get back to the question of waste. Waste can be safely put into a geological repository. It can be vitrified, which means turned to glass; it can be packed in erosion- and impact-resistant canisters; it can then be placed many hundreds of meters underground in stable geological formations
SM: Come on, how stable ,what happens if there is an earthquake?
JBR: I was about to tell you. In a stable geological formation , with all of the defences-in-depth , if you take a worst-case analysis what you would get is a slight emission of radiation reaching the surface over time that would be negligible in comparison with natural radiation. Remember that what we are talking about is simply a concentration of the same kind of radiation to which we are all exposed all the time.
SM: A huge concentration there. This is somewhat a different genesis than when we are talking about small volumes?
JBR: It's not a "huge" concentration.
SM: We are talking about something, we are talking about something that is, and that is the problem with it, however?
JBR: The problem is that you think it's different. But it's not different.
SM: But, What I am saying is different is the scale. It's a difference of degree.
JBR: It is a highly concentrated form of radioactivity. But it can be put into a place where all the scientists who are studying it know that it will not be of danger to people.
SM: Then why are they finding it so difficult to find permanent dumpsites?
JBR: Well, you call it a dumpsite. I would call it a geological repository , a place where radiation can be stored.
SM: We are talking about the same thing.
JBR: Well, it's a highly connotative way to describe it. If it's a 'dumpsite', that implies that you are irresponsible. This has been studied in a way that the nuclear industry can handle this small amount of waste in a highly responsible manner. What is irresponsible is the perpetuation of the emission of 25 billion tons of CO 2 a year through fossil fuel.
SM: But there are many people who entirely agree with you there, but then they point to well, hold on a second, there are alternatives: There is wind power, there is solar power, there is hydroelectric power, there are clean alternatives that don't have this scary potential.
JBR: Well, but those alternatives are far-fetched to the point of being whimsical , when you begin to analyse exactly how much contribution they could make to the needs of mankind in the twenty-first century. But let's talk about those for just a moment. My grandfather was a cowboy in old Montana. When he was born, there were a little over one billion people on the earth. When I was born in the 1940s during the Second World War, there were three billion people. Today there are six billion. When my daughter gets to be my age there will be nine or ten billion. And when my grandchildren reach maturity, there will be twelve billion. In the span of generations that I personally will know in my own family, the population of the earth will have risen from one billion to twelve billion people. Now all of those people are using energy. They are using energy in vast and increasing quantities. We will use on planet Earth in the next twenty-five years more energy than mankind has used throughout history. Think of that! Some of our great authors have written about life as a river. Mankind, if that's the metaphor, is about to hit the white water.
SM: All this just makes one think it's all the more important to invest in research to find renewable forms of energy.
JBR: Why do you call nuclear non-renewable?
SM: Well, I want to put the point to you that 159 billion dollars was spent by OECD governments , this is in today's money , into nuclear research in the last twenty years. Now if similar money, similar amounts of money
JBR: Where did you find that figure?
SM: You don't believe that figure.
JBR: It seems like an exaggerated figure.
SM: Whatever you believe that the figure is you will accept that a tremendous amount has been put into nuclear research. And if a fraction of that was put into renewable energy, if there was a will on the part of governments, then renewable energy could provide a greater percentage of our energy demand, could there not?
JBR: Well, that is what is said. And people keep saying that proposition over and over again as if all of mankind was the victim of a conspiracy against renewables. The truth is that billions and billions and billions of dollars have been spent on research into wind and solar, biomass, geothermal. These technologies are being heavily subsidised today. I do not pose nuclear as an alternative to those. I pose nuclear as one of the partnership of clean energy supplies that the world needs in the twenty-first century. Nuclear is the big kid on the block when it comes to large-scale electricity generation. It can do so cleanly, reliably, at reasonable cost, and without any safety consequences , either for the people around the reactors or the people who will live here a thousand or two thousand years from now. It is a part of the sustainable development imperative that we must pursue.
SM: And just if the US were to sign up to something like Kyoto again , which they have rejected, with the agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions , is the only way to get there, and for other countries to get there, is the only way to use nuclear?
JBR: You won't get there without using nuclear. That's the way to think of it. I don't want to pose nuclear as the sole solution. We need conservation. We need the renewables that you have come back to time again and again in this conversation. We need nuclear at the very centre of that strategy.
SM: O.K. I want to go back to the beginning of your career. And most of your professional life, in fact, you worked for Senator Fulbright who was Chair of the US Senate for Foreign Relations Committee
JBR: I began with him.
SM: You began with him. The first time, tell us about the very first time you met him because I know that was under very different circumstances then.
JBR: Oh goodness, I didn't realise that you knew about that. I had come back from Oxford, where I had been a Rhodes scholar. I was in the Army , it was in the late part of the 1960s , I was very concerned about the Vietnam War, strongly opposed to it. I was trying to decide what do, and I went to see a man that I thought of as a great leader and an American political icon , and I still look back on him that way , and put a chair up outside his door and waited until he was willing to see me.
SM: But you are a professional soldier at the time, going to see somebody who is known for his anti-Vietnam, or anti-US-involvement-in-Vietnam views. How did that go down?
JBR: Well, the Army was not..
SM: too happy, were they. Well, I know you were summoned to see the head of the Army at the time, General Westmoreland, weren't you?
JBR: I did have an encounter with him soon after as a consequence of having seen Senator Fulbright, and I told to the Army the conclusion that I had reluctantly come to. It was that I thought that I should go to jail as my way of dealing with the moral dilemma that I found myself in.
SM: What was that moral dilemma? What did you oppose US involvement in Vietnam?
JBR: Oh goodness, that's a long question.
SM: But you clearly felt very strongly about it.
JBR: I felt that the Vietnam War represented a great waste of Vietnamese lives and American lives in a cause in which the American purpose there was misguided and would never prevail , and that each day it went on was a waste of resources and lives on both sides.
SM: You say you we prepared to go to jail for all that. But you didn't have to.
JBR: Well, the Army in its wisdom decided after my conversation that day to send me to Korea. And so I went another route. I took my orders to Korea and proceeded there because there was nothing any longer for me to stand against.
SM: Let's go forward a few years because you then spent much of your professional life working.when you go back, when you leave the Army and work with Senator Fulbright you spend much of your career working on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. So how did you feel when the current US President, George W Bush, effectively tore up the ABM Treaty?
JBR: Well, the ABM Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the various US/Soviet and US/Russian arms agreements , are all activities and documents in which I have invested a large part of my life. When I was in Vienna for the last seven years as US Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency and other UN agencies there, our focus was on upholding a number of these agreements: The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. I think they are a part of a great fabric that has made the world much, much safer. They are no more than pieces of paper. But they are pieces of paper backed not only by the moral force of the United Nations and all of the countries that have made themselves party. They are backed also by enforcement measures that enable us to identify and respond in case of a violation.
SM: So why do you think then that President Bush came up with his plan for missile defence?
JBR: I think that missile defence, if you had to rank it in the order of human priorities right now, would not make it near the top of the list. It represents a great expenditure of money and , I think, worst of all , it represents a great diversion of the attention of the United States government and our allies , from very, very serious problems of trans-national magnitude: population, climate change, poverty, that threaten to overwhelm us now. We just can't afford to be wasting our time and our energy, and the limited intellectual resources of our leaders, on diversionary issues.
SM: But it's one thing to say that perhaps it's not efficient use of time and money. Will it work; will it make the world a safer place?
JBR: Probably not. And where I would place the emphasis is that it will make the world a less safe place because it will have diverted us from doing things that are truly threatening our security. If we can simply project along 30 years from now and we have a missile defence over Europe and the United States, I would say happily 'let us have it'. But it's not going to happen that way. We are going to waste a lot of time and energy when mankind , to use the metaphor I used before , has already hit white water on a number of issues that threaten to overwhelm us. This is an ideological issue rising up from American debates in the 70s and 80s that has no place on the international agenda right now.
SM: But hold on a second, surely that's exactly the point , that during the Cold War those pieces of paper that you referred to , this fabric , was devised for an entirely different world order, when there were two powers opposed , two main powers opposing each other. President Bush's argument now is 'we have moved on, we have got a different world, we need to be aware of that, and act for it'.
JBR: Well, what you are asking me to assess is whether or not there is a missile threat to the United States. It is possible to examine the missile programmes of certain countries in the world who are not friends of the United States, and postulate that in ten or twenty years they might be able to launch a missile that would hit the United States with a warhead of some unknown reliability with a missile of some unknown reliability. But it is inconceivable to me that a nation would ever do that. There are other ways to damage American interests without firing a missile that will have a return address on it. It is the last form of attack on the United States I expect to see , a missile fired by a small country with a return address on it.
SM: And yet, the countries that President Bush and his advisers see their threat coming from, countries like North Korea, are ones that the treaties that you spent much of your professional life devising were meant to contain them, and clearly, clearly they didn't. Those treaties didn't work. I mean, take for example the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
JBR: Well, I think the Non-Proliferation Treaty and North Korea are a great example of how the system works. North Korea signed the Treaty, hoping that would open the way to nuclear trade with other countries, which indeed it did, because that's a precondition of nuclear trade in the world. North Korea then proceeded covertly to try to violate the Treaty and build a bomb. IAEA inspectors, who were allowed into North Korea because North Korea was a signatory to the Treaty, discovered the violation. Great pressure was then brought to bear on North Korea. US-North Korean negotiations ensued in which I took part in 1993 and 1994 in Geneva, and an agreement was reached that has frozen the North Korean nuclear programme ever since , they haven't produced an ounce of nuclear material.
SM: But the chance being, given what you are saying, do you think President Bush is being dangerous in what he is doing?
JBR: I think he is not focussing yet on the most important issues. I wouldn't go so far as to call him dangerous, except to say that any time leaders are not focussing on what's important they are behaving dangerously.
SM: John Ritch, thank you very much for coming on Hardtalk.
JBR: Nice to be here.