Nuclear power: time for a rethink?

["F A B I O C C H I::" <eco_fabiocchi at tin.it>]

Nuclear power: time for a rethink?  
It was once the ultimate green taboo. Now, as the drawbacks of fossil fuels 
become more apparent, is it time to learn to love atomic energy? Two experts 
present the arguments
28 August 2004 
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=555917


No, thanks - Zac Goldsmith Editor of 'The Ecologist'

There is finally a consensus on the gravity of the threat we face from climate 
change, and most people agree that something urgently needs to be done to 
reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. But given the depth of our dependence, 
that's no small task. And so in panic, a number of high-profile commentators 
are calling for the widespread adoption of nuclear power. Greens, they say, 
have to choose between climate change and their old enemy - nuclear power.

But it's a manufactured choice, peddled by an industry in the final spasm of a 
struggle to survive. Fundamentally, nuclear power is a problem, not a solution. 
And it's a problem on virtually every level.

Take the issue of security. About a week before the 11 September 2001 atrocity, 
the director of the French nuclear installation giant, Cogema, was asked about 
the risks of an airborne attack on a French power plant. He answered that there 
was no risk, because "it is forbidden to fly over it at low altitude." As far 
as I know, it's also illegal to fly planes into New York buildings.

Shortly after the attacks, the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that 
an attack on a nuclear plant is "far more likely" following 11 September. "If 
the terrorist is willing to die," the director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, 
said, "that changes the security equation drastically." British Energy echoed 
those calls, and pleaded with the Government to take protective measures. 
British Nuclear Fuels meanwhile described the prospect of a fuel-laden 
commercial jet colliding with a nuclear plant as "unthinkable".

It's worth thinking about it, for an attack on Sellafield in Cumbria would be 
100 times more disastrous than the Chernobyl accident and would likely cause 
more than 2 million people to die of cancer.

But with or without terrorists, the lives of countless British people dangle in 
the hands of the technocrats each and every day. And as we know, technocrats 
make mistakes. Last year, for instance, Sellafield came close to disaster when 
explosive gases were allowed to build up in tanks that store highly-radioactive 
nuclear waste. Amazingly, the BNFL staff on duty ignored warning alarms for 
nearly three hours. Even without potential disasters, routine radioactive 
emissions ensure cancer clusters around virtually every installation. 
Sellafield, for instance, boasts a cancer cluster 10 times the national average.

Two years ago, Vice-President Dick Cheney lamented that the US government 
hadn't approved a single application for a new nuclear power plant for 20 
years. What he didn't say was that there had been no application. Nuclear power 
is a bad investment. Without massive government involvement and incalculable 
public subsidies, it simply wouldn't exist. According to The Economist, OECD 
governments poured $159bn (£89bn) into nuclear research between 1974 and 1998. 
BNFL, meanwhile, has admitted it faces a bill of £34bn to clean up waste, and 
it expects that waste to increase by a minimum of 500 per cent over the next 
decade.

On every level, nuclear is an unattractive option, unless you happen to belong 
to al-Qa'ida and want to close down an economy overnight. So for the industry 
to be granted a life-extension requires belief that it is the only solution to 
an even bigger problem - climate change.

But even there, nuclear power is a false hope. The instinctively pro-nuclear Mr 
Blair was told last year by his own energy advisors that nuclear is a "red 
herring". "You can achieve a low-carbon economy without nuclear," they told him.

And, they might have added, such a goal can be realised without smothering 
Britain in wind turbines. For one thing, such a scenario assumes demand will 
always be as high, if not higher than it is now. But demand need not grow. 
According to a recent US study, investing $5.2bn in energy conservation in the 
federal government's 500,000 buildings would lead to savings of more than $1bn 
each year, indefinitely - an enormous return by any standard. It's quite clear 
that with investments in energy conservation, energy consumption would shrink 
dramatically without the need for sacrifice of any sort.

Such a scenario also assumes that wind is the only renewable alternative. 
Currently, it does seem to be the most effective. The Cabinet Office's 
Performance and Innovation Unit has said that offshore wind alone has the 
potential to provide 10 times more electricity than is currently used. But 
equally, whole villages in Britain's West Country are on the verge of being 
powered by environmentally benign small hydro projects. Biomass is emerging as 
the answer for others. Solar power is becoming cheaper by the year, and more 
efficient.

All these alternatives exist, and with modest investment will continue to 
improve. What's more, they carry none of the security and health risks 
associated with nuclear power. Nor will the taxpayer be forced to cough up 
limitless resources to keep them going.

One way or another, the government needs to expand its pitiful renewable energy 
programme and implement a massive programme of energy conservation. And it 
needs to do so in a democratic manner. If it fails, we face the frightening 
prospect of a renewed nuclear programme, or almost as bad, dependence for 
nearly four fifths of our energy on gas imports from such countries as Algeria 
and Iran. In such a scenario, the opportunities for disruptive terrorism would 
prove too tempting by far, and Britain would find itself teetering permanently 
on the edge of blackout ... or total contamination.

Zac Goldsmith is editor of 'The Ecologist' magazine, www.theecologist.org 

Yes, please - James Lovelock Creator of the 'Gaia' theory

Ispent my childhood in the English countryside over 70 years ago where we lived 
a simple life without telephones or electricity. Horses were still a normal 
source of power and we hardly imagined radio and television.

One thing I remember well was how superstitious we all were. Men and women who 
in other ways were intelligent, fearfully avoided places said to be haunted. 
They would suffer inconvenience rather than travel on Fridays that were the 
13th day of the month.

Their irrational fears fed on ignorance and were quite common. I cannot help 
thinking that they persist, but now these fears are about the products of 
science. This is particularly true of nuclear power plants that seem to stir 
the dread that in the past was felt about a moonlit graveyard thought to be 
infested with werewolves and vampires.

The fear of nuclear energy is understandable through its association in the 
mind with the horrors of nuclear warfare, but it is unjustified; nuclear power 
plants are not bombs. They are, in fact, built solidly enough to withstand even 
a direct hit by a plane in a terrorist attack, according to industry experts.

What at first was a proper concern for safety has become a near-pathological 
anxiety. Much of the blame for this goes to the news media, the television and 
film industries, and fiction writers. All these have used the fear of things 
nuclear as a reliable prop to sell their wares. They, and the political 
disinformers who sought to discredit the nuclear industry as potential enemies, 
have been so successful at frightening the public that it is now impossible in 
many nations to propose a new nuclear power plant.

No source of power is entirely safe, even windmills are not free of fatal 
accidents, but compared to nuclear power, the dangers of continuing to burn 
fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) as our main energy source are far greater and 
they threaten not just individuals but civilisation itself. Much of the First 
World behaves like an addicted smoker: we are so used to burning fossil fuels 
for our needs that we ignore their long-term risks.

Polluting the air with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has no 
immediate consequences, but continued pollution leads to climate changes whose 
effects are only apparent when it is almost too late for a cure. Carbon dioxide 
poisons the environment just as salt can poison us. No harm comes from a modest 
intake, but a daily diet with too much salt can cause a lethal quantity to 
accumulate in the body.

Although nothing we do will destroy life on Earth, we could change the 
environment to a point where civilisation is threatened. Sometime in this or 
the next century we may see this happen because of climate change and a rise in 
the level of the sea. If we go on burning fossil fuel at the present rate it is 
probable that all of the cities of the world now at sea level will be flooded.

Try to imagine the social consequences of hundreds of millions of homeless 
refugees seeking dry land on which to live. In the turmoil, they may look back 
and wonder how humans could have been so foolish as to bring so much misery 
upon themselves by the thoughtless burning of carbon fuels. They may then 
reflect regretfully that they could have avoided their miseries by the safe use 
of nuclear energy.

Nuclear power, although potentially harmful to people, is a negligible danger 
to the planet. Natural ecosystems can stand levels of continuous radiation that 
would be intolerable in a city. The land around Chernobyl was evacuated because 
its high radiation intensity made it unsafe for people, but this radioactive 
land is now rich in wildlife, much more so than neighbouring areas.

Even scientists seem to forget our planet's radioactive history. When a star 
ends as a supernova, the nuclear explosive material, which includes uranium and 
plutonium, together with large amounts of iron and other burnt-out elements, 
scatters in space, as does the dust cloud of a hydrogen bomb test.

Perhaps the strangest thing about the Earth is that it formed from lumps of 
fall-out from a star-sized nuclear bomb. This is why, even today, the Earth's 
crust has enough uranium left to reconstitute the original event on a minute 
scale.

There is no other credible explanation for the great quantity of unstable 
elements still present. The most primitive and old-fashioned Geiger counter 
will indicate that we stand on the fall-out of a vast ancient nuclear 
explosion. Within our bodies, half a million atoms, rendered unstable in that 
event, still erupt every minute, releasing a tiny fraction of the energy stored 
from that fierce fire of long ago.

Life began nearly four billion years ago under conditions of radioactivity far 
more intense than those that trouble the minds of certain present-day 
environmentalists. Moreover, the air had neither oxygen nor ozone so that the 
fierce unfiltered ultra-violet radiation of the sun irradiated the surface of 
the Earth. We need to keep in mind the thought that these fierce energies 
flooded the very womb of life.

At least in the short term, alternative sources of energy remain wildly 
uneconomical. A recent report by the Royal Academy of Engineering showed that 
the nuclear option was the second cheapest means of generating electricity, at 
2.3p per kilowatt hour, after gas at 2.2p (gas prices have since shot up), 
while wind power costs more than 5p per kWH.

I hope that it is not too late for the world to emulate France and make nuclear 
power our principal source of energy. At present we have no other viable 
alternative.

'Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy' by Bruno Comby, with a preface by James 
Lovelock (TNR Editions) is available from www.ecolo.org