Slashdot Mirror
Environmentalists Coming Around to Nuclear Power?
Heywood J. Blaume writes "In a Washington Post editorial Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, now says he was wrong about opposing nuclear power 30 years ago. In the article he addresses common myths about nuclear power, and puts forth the position that nuclear power is the only feasible, affordable power source that can solve today's growing environmental and energy policy issues. From the article: 'Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.'"
The logic behind using safe forms of nuclear power has been clear for a long, long time. It's nice to see some greens finally start accepting what has been obvious to some of us for 30 or 40 years. Now I'm curious how long it will be before the same people start realizing that they have been duped about global warming -- by the same people who duped us about the "coming Ice Age" and hundreds of millions of people supposedly dying of hunger from overpopulation in the '70s. The same crackpots who have been feeding us false predictions are still being given credibility today. Why people such as Lester Brown and Paul Erlich are given any credibility is beyond logic.
David
I've always said that nuclear is the way to go... while there are implications in the extreme long term as far as what you do with the wastes, there are no blaring short term problems like running out of coal and oil or spewing waste directly into the air.
I've been an environmentalist all my life; planted close to 10,000 trees, maintain habitat for the critters, that sort of thing. No small expense or effort. I consider myself to be more of an environmentalist than some bozo with a "save the (whatever)" pin that only gets angry about things and doesn't actually do anything to improve the situation.
That said, I'm puzzled at the attitude the submitter apparently has, in that he seems to be describing environmentalists, and pro-nuke-power people, as two separate groups. To me, nuke is an obvious choice. If you need no other explaination, see how the anti-nuke people resort to blatant lies and unrealistic comparisons in order to get people to _feel_ that it's bad. The pro-nuke side goes with science so people _think_ about, and _understand_ the issues.
My point, I guess, is that this isn't surprising or new, some guy who left Greenpeace when it diverted from his POV is just saying what so many other environmentalists have known for decades. I'm not sure this is news, other than that whoever this guy is, is saying it.
I seem to recall that something similar to this was brought up a few months ago here at Slashdot and several seemingly very intelligent posters made citations and pointed out that the amount of uranium we have available that can be processed will last for only a very limited timespan and that nuclear perhaps isn't the best way to go.
Of course, there's always the "we'll run out of oil by 1995" theories running around, but the arguments seemed quite compelling. I can't find them again now, but what's the real deal with this? If the whole world went nuclear, would we all be desperate for sources of uranium in fifty years' time?
It is absolutely not refutable that change is occuring. What is refuta ble is whether or not it is because of a natural cycle, or because of man-made change.
But the thing is, it does not matter what the cause is. If the cycle continues it will certainly, without a doubt, lead to the death of us as a civilization, whether we were the cause or not.
Hence the concern. It doesn't matter if we are the root cause or not, we're the only species on the planet with the capability to reduce and possibly reverse the cycle.
a) Is there any commercial insurance company which will insure a nuclear reactor? Here in Germany all reactors must be insured against meltdown, etc. Since no insurance company will write a police for a reactor, the government steps in and "insures" it. All of our reactors here are insured that way.
b) Is there a place in any western democracy (russia and china probably have less problems in that area) for finally depositing the resulting nuclear waste? A proper finaly resting place for the stuff?
Why does he scold himself? Because, as he says in the article, the techology could be a lot further along if it was allowed to develop instead of being put on the side-burner for nearly 30 years where it got little development, at least in the US markets.
From the article, I'm sure he'd agree that we need to get underway with starting to build new nuclear plants now.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Certainly we have better technology today to make safer nuclear power.
No, we don't. The technology is pretty much the same. There haven't been any new nuclear plants in the past 20 years and they really haven't updated much of the safety systems. There still isn't a long term way of dealing with the tons of radioactive waste being produced. Don't get me wrong, I think Nuclear is the way to go, but I would really like the storage system to be fixed soon.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
This is a textbook example of an ad hominem attack. If you have anything to say about his actual message, I'd be interested to hear it.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
You can sell nuclear energy to me when you can answer the question "What do we do with 48 tons of nuclear waste generated per year per plant"? Arrogant people think nuclear power is perfectly safe. Paranoid people think nuclear power will destroy the planet. Intelligent people see plant designs that are intrinsically safe, but want to know what we're going to do with the waste.
The ONLY solution the industry has right now is "bury it" (Yucca), "make it someone else's problem" (Arizona's) and "hope we're not around if it is a problem"(whoever is on the planet when Yucca breaks open, or is attacked, or a society 1,000 years from now, which can't read English, trundles into the mysterious cave and comes out with Magical Glowing Glass.)
Industry never changes. Their solutions to waste never change; it's always about hiding it or making it someone else's problem, because those are the cheapest and easiest.
We've got about 50,000 tons of nuclear waste sitting around in various stockpiles across the nation; more than any other hazardous waste, and if you want to get really scared- some of it is sitting in pools of water (because it heats itself constantly) in STEEL CONTAINERS.
The only solution on the table right now is Yucca; only problem is, we're just extending the parameters of "bury a hole" and "be long gone when it becomes a problem." The stuff in Yucca mountain will be around for 100,000 years. There are serious problems with making stuff last that long, making signs that people will understand even 1,000 years from now, geological changes over just a few thousand years, etc.
Please help metamoderate.
The problem is time. Radioactive material is radioactive--it decays into stable elements over time. The most radioactive elements will have decayed in less than a thousand years. Nothing is perfectly safe--crossing the street is a greater hazard to you than Yucca mountain will be to anyone. More on topic, spewing radioactive material into the air is probably a tad less safe than depositing it underground, too. And where do you think we get more stable forms of uranium in the first place? It's been in the ground all over the world for a lot longer than 100,000 years.
English is easier said than done.
What he's saying about nuclear power is not particularly notable.
The fact that a "Founder of Greenpeace" is saying it is what is news-worthy. Who he (supposedly) is is the story. So it's perfectly reasonable to point out that "Founder" is a stretch, and "longtime paid lobbyist for any well-heeled industry with eco-image problems that will cut him a check" is a much more relevant description of who he is.
What he is actually saying about nuclear power is not terribly worth discussing; it's the nuke-industry party line he's paid to spout. It's as irrationally pro-nuclear as the actual founders of Greenpeace are anti-nuclear. Neither makes a good starting point for discussion.
Seriously. Is there a cabal of fanatically anti-GW mods in action, or something?
... If press reports of the 1970s are not to be taken seriously, those of today regarding the nature and origins of climate change should also be viewed with healthy skepticism.
Let's dissect this piece by piece.
Isn't realclimate.org by the guy who fudged his analysis to generate the discredited "hockey-stick" graph of temperature predictions?
Ad hominem attack. And wrong, because realclimate is a group blog, and the author in question has nothing to do with the hockey stick. And the hockey stick isn't discredited, except in the eyes of a certain small group of people who are often accused of fudging their own maths.
Finally, its clear that there were concerns,[about a potential new ice age] perhaps quite strong, in the minds of a number of scientists of the time. And yet, the papers of the time present a clear consensus that future climate change could not be predicted with the knowledge then available.
And then the page goes on to mention that the knowledge then available was in the absence of GW. i.e. scientists were considering that the Earth would be naturally cooling, if there wasn't a GW effect.
[and present climate knowledge still does not allow reliable predictions]
This line, or sentiment, isn't present in the article at all. It's a direct fallacy of inserting words into someone else's mouth.
So are you attempting to say that: because the concern was not unanimous (it never is) and scientists believed further study was warranted (they always say that) that the concern about global cooling was not common among climate researchers?
No. The point being made by the article was that such concerns were not exhibited in peer reviewed journals. Climate change is. Popular press does not equal peer reviewed journals. Hence, a direct argument that the present situation is identical to that of 'global cooling' is false.
And before some idiot mods this post as troll (like they did earlier to another of mine), can someone please justify precisely what information the parent offers that makes it so 'informative'?
Well, the reasons given in that article are actually good reasons to go with nuclear. Reactor safety is basically a non-issue for third generation nuclear reactors (which have passive safety systems). As far as waste management goes, the thing to wait for is the fourth generation nuclear reactors which offer the possibility of burning actinides, which would significantly reduce the amount of high-level waste. It seems that when groups bring up the fact that mining of uranium ore causes environmental damage they ignore the fact that coal is also mined and that mountain-top removal has a massive environmental impact. The scale of mining required to remove coal is monstrous compared with uranium, considering that uranium has about 3.6 million times the energy density of coal (90 000 000 MJ/kg for uranium compared with 23-29 MJ/kg for coal). IMO, nuclear represents a step forward, but certainly not a permanent solution. At this point, many "greener" technologies are not suitable for use in as many locations as nuclear.
"The problem is that while technology advanced, we have not built new reactors to take advantage of it."
/ japan/wna-japan.jpg
By "We", I assume you mean the United States, since France and others have been using fast breeder reactors and fuel recycling that never results in weapons grade Plutonium at any point in the cycle, and reduces the actual long term waste to nearly nothing.
The US has held itself back over its continuing collective guilt over ending WWII by using nuclear weapons on Japan. Japan, on the other hand, has 34% of it's electical power coming form 53 reactors, of which the majority are breeder reactors (generate their own plutonium for use as fuel in themselves and other reactors), so it seems they're a heck of a lot less fearful of it than the US is (the US only gets 10% of our electrical power from reactors). http://www.cscap.nuctrans.org/Nuc_Trans/locations
-- Terry
Its outrageous that not once in Patrick Moore's article did he mention that we should be doing all we can to REDUCE the amount of electricity we use.
Who has a huge inefficient fridge? Who has a 500 watt powersupply, a fat TV, bar radiators and central heating? Who leaves their computers on when they leave work, or even when they go to bed?!
We need to stop looking for replacements for our massive appetite for power and use our brains to develop devices that are energy efficient. Nuclear power will only replace one environmental problem with another, the long term legacy of radioactive waste.
"I may bend your precious airplane, but I'll get it down." Ted Striker