Let's
talk about that Korean reactor sale to the United Arab Emirates.
The seven
Emirates gained independence from Britain in 1971. Each emirate is ruled by a hereditary royal family. Abu Dhabi acts like the senior partner,
since they have over 90% of the oil and gas wealth.
The
human rights record of this new nuclear power is near the bottom.
A crown prince was just acquitted of torturing a business associate,
despite graphic video evidence of the whole affair. When royalty can torture freely, there is no justice.
Only 25%
of the population of Abu Dhabi are citizens.
The rest are the workers who come from all over the world, mainly from
the poorest countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Ethiopia.
Many news
articles have revealed abuse of these workers, the poor unairconditioned
quarters for them, their long hours.
The workers are shipped out of Dubai, for example, each night, to
concrete bunkers. If found in the city
at night, they can be arrested. Total
apartheid. Penalties are high for
not completing their contracts.
Debtors
in the Emirates are still sent to prison.
Missed you car payments? Go to
jail.
Slavery
was only abolished in the Emirates in recent memory, and some say it continues
with unpaid servants.
The
Emirates are a two class society, with the majority having few legal
rights. That is not a stable situation
for a nuclear power. No one in the
Emirates will protest this move to nuclear.
They can't. Remember the
torture and prison part?
The
proposed plant will not be built in the Industrial City of Abu Dhabi, where
most of the power will be used.
Instead, the site is in a tiny coastal town 350 kilometers, or 217
miles, to the West, called Sila.
It is
difficult to judge by satellite photos and Google terrain maps, but it looks to
me like Sila is on a low coastal plain.
The reactor life is expected to be 60 years, but I wonder, what happens
if sea level rise is much greater than predicted by the IPCC? In what year will Sila, and the reactors, go
underwater? That is no worry for
the Emir, because the UAE, as an oil provider, does not believe in global
warming.
This is a
problem around the world, where reactors are placed close to the sea for cooling
water. Even when they are shut down,
will there be a rich civilization to remove the radioactive materials from all
these sites, as the seas rise? Now that
we know the poles are melting, and the seas will rise, no new reactors should
be placed at low elevations, like Sila in the UAE.
The
Emirates currently produce more than 30% of their electricity by burning
oil. And they have to import that as
diesel fuel, having no refinery to make it.
That's right, oil rich states in the Gulf import oil. So, these proposed reactors would reduce
greenhouse gases from the Emirates - if, and only if, we can prove the entire
process of construction, including all the cement, shipping of parts,
maintenance for 60 years, fuel production, on and on - does not produce an
equivalent or more in greenhouse gases.
Helen Caldicott has produced reasonable estimates that nuclear power, in
total, uses more greenhouse gases than it saves.
In
December 2009, just prior to the announcement of the contract, President
Barrack Obama approved the construction of nuclear power in the unstable
Middle East - in order to let American companies bid on the project. However, the U.S. didn't get much. Westinghouse Electric Company is part of the
consortium of supporting corporations, but that is majority owned by Japan's
Toshiba Group.
The
Korean press reports this as a $40 billion dollar deal, while Western
newspapers like the Wall St. Journal call it a $20 billion agreement, about 12
and a half billion British pounds. The
difference is this: the Koreans project another 20 billion dollars in service
contracts over the lifetime of the reactors.
What they
don't mention, and this is not yet clear, is who will cover the inevitable
cost over-runs. Twenty billion dollars
for four reactors is dirt cheap, compared to others around the world, all of
which have run way over budget. My
reading of the sketchy news articles so far: the Korean people will end up
paying for the cost over-runs. That's
because the Korean company, KEPCO, is state-owned.
The
President of Korea, Lee Myung-bak is a nuclear builder himself. He was chief executive of the Hyundai
Construction Company from 1977 to 1988.
During that time, he was directly involved in building 12 reactors in
Korea. They have 20 so far.
Other top
Korean corporations get a piece of the pie, like the President's former
company, Hyundai Engineering and Construction, as
well as Samsung and Doosan Heavy Industries
News
articles, and a report from the Wise Nuclear Monitor, say the nuclear fuel will
come from Korea. That means it will be
mined elsewhere, likely in Australia or Canada, shipped to Korea, and formed
into dangerous fuel rods there, before shipping again (as a terrorist target
for hi-jacking) to the Middle East.
The
Emirates announced they will buy the fuel offshore and ship it out, to allay
fears of nuclear weapons proliferation.
These are not Thorium reactors, but old-style models which use enriched
uranium, the bomb constituent, and produce plutonium, another bomb constituent.
Nowhere
have I found an announcement of who will take the Emirates' nuclear waste
back. Will the Korean people also
have the honor of storing and repacking the Emirates nuclear waste for the next
few thousand years as well? Presuming,
of course, we can maintain a civilization that long.
You've
seen film footage of Korea riots, usually involving car workers or other
unions. Now picture a single major reactor accident in South Korea. The whole country's electric grid would be
jeopardized, not to mention the irradiation of that small country. That's one of the huge undisclosed
draw-backs to nuclear power, as Helen Caldicott points out. It won't take much to shut down the
industry, possibly world-wide.
So far, Israel
has been very quiet about this expansion of nuclear power by one of it's Arab
neighbours. The UAE has co-operated
with the United States militarily, and in 2008 stopped an alleged arms ship
going from North Korea to Iran. But UAE
is also one of the central hubs for shipping goods to Iran. There have been allegations that UAE was
also a distribution point for black-market technology headed for Iran's nuclear
program. As always, proliferation of
nuclear weapons follows closely any expansion of supposed civil nuclear power.
Israel's
almost all-pervasive silence about this deal does not mean approval. If politics shift in the UAE, or leaks
occur, can we expect these new reactors to be bombed before opening, as
the Israeli's did in Iraq, and in Syria?
It
gets scarier. According to the Korean press, the UAE will
also get Korean expertise in missiles, crowd control and other items necessary
to maintain a modern nuclear police state.
Here is a quote from a web site called "Pakistani
Defense:
Korea
promised to transfer technology for its unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to the
United Arab Emirates (UAE), following its successful bid to build four nuclear
reactors in the Middle East nation, a government source said Thursday. Defense
Minister Kim Tae-young made the commitment during his visit to the UAE in
November to discuss bilateral defense issues as well as to support the landmark
$20 billion deal, the source told The Korea Times.
Kim also
offered to provide key arms technologies related to the homegrown Hyunmoo
ballistic and cruise missiles to the UAE as part of efforts to expand defense
cooperation between the two countries, he said on condition of anonymity.
Technology on an electromagnetic pulse bomb (EMP) is among the key items for
cooperation promised by Korea, said the source. "
end
quote.
Cruise missiles
and atomic materials to a nuclear dictatorship in the Middle East. What could go wrong?
I'm Alex
Smith for Radio Ecoshock. And if that's
the "green" nuclear star shining for us all, count me out.
Since
that Pakistani Defense web link no longer runs clearly to the article I quote,
here is the full text I downloaded:
South Korea to Transfer UAV, Missile Technologies to UAE
Korea promised to transfer technology for its unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), following its successful bid to build four
nuclear reactors in the Middle East nation, a government source said Thursday.
Defense Minister Kim Tae-young made the commitment during his visit to the UAE
in November to discuss bilateral defense issues as well as to support the
landmark $20 billion deal, the source told The Korea Times.
Kim also offered to provide key arms technologies related to the homegrown
Hyunmoo ballistic and cruise missiles to the UAE as part of efforts to expand
defense cooperation between the two countries, he said on condition of
anonymity.Technology on an electromagnetic pulse bomb (EMP) is among the key
items for cooperation promised by Korea, said the source.
The state-funded Agency for Defense Development (ADD) has been pushing to
develop the bomb capable of neutralizing an enemy's command-and-control,
communications and defense radar systems.EMPs can severely disrupt electronic
equipment, which is susceptible to damage by transient power surges. An EMP
attack is generated by a very short, intense energy pulse or high-altitude
nuclear blast.
The agency plans to complete the development by 2014. "The UAE asked Korea
to provide such key arms technologies as part of the package deal for the
reactor contract," the source said. "Korea's positive response to the
request played an important role in sealing the deal."
Speculation has been growing after the agreement that there could have been
some behind-the-scene promises to satisfy the UAE needs. At that time, Seoul's
defense ministry declined to elaborate, only saying the two sides exchanged
views on ways to expand bilateral defense cooperation programs. As for the UAV,
Korea will offer the technology on the Night Intruder-300, also known as
RQ-101, built by Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), according to the source.
KAI built the RQ-101 corps-level battlefield-reconnaissance UAV between 2001
and 2004. The Korean Army bought five sets of RQ-101s, with each set including
six aircraft, a launcher and a ground-control station. KAI is also discussing
the sale of the RQ-101 to Libya.The RQ-101 has a service ceiling of 4.5 kilometers
and a cruise speed of 120 to 150 kilometers per hour. The 215-kilogram aircraft
has a service radius of 200 kilometers and can operate for up to six hours in
the air.
The UAV is capable of multipurpose operations to perform missions like wide area
surveillance, reconnaissance, target acquisition, bombing guidance, battlefield
supervision and checking target break-down. It is also possible to transfer
real-time images, especially in unfavorable environments during day and night.
Some observers say, however, potential exports of the RQ-101 to either the UAE
or Libya could cause a political or diplomatic row between South Korea and
Israel given the ground-control station for the UAV was developed with
technical assistance from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).
IAI offered the technology when it sold its Searcher II UAVs to South
Korea.Referred missile technologies are related to those for the
300-kilometer-range Hyunmoo-II ballistic missile and the 1,000-kilometer-range
Hyunmoo-III surface-to-surface cruise missile developed by the ADD and LIG
Nex1.
The Hyunmoo-III missiles have been operational with the Army since last year.
The Hyunmoo-III can hit targets with a margin of error of plus or minus five
meters aided by a Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) system.
ASIAN DEFENCE: South Korea to Transfer UAV, Missile
Technologies to UAE