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.'"

Comments

Unfortunately

[Silent sound]

Unfortunately that's A FOUNDER of greenpeace, not greenpeace itself. Greenpeace itself will continue its crusade against nuclear power, despite the clear environmental benefits nuclear power offers over the current standard of fossil fuels. And the media will continue to present greenpeace as if it speaks for the entire environmental movement.

Greenpeace and PETA are between the two of them doing more damage to environmentalism than anyone else in the entire world except the Bush administration itself.

Not Quite

[Angst Badger]

Moore is a paid lobbyist who specializes is garnering favorable press for environmentally destructive mining and energy industries. He's not just ex-Greenpeace, he's an ex-environmentalist who parlayed his prior experience working for Greenpeace into working against it. If you are a major polluter, Moore is the go-to guy for whitewashing your corporate image.

I hate hippies

[Ucklak]

There, I've said it, I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

This type of loudmouth, foul based tripe has caused us 30 years of progression as far as our energy. What if by today we all could have small nuclear batteries to give us heat in our homes and runing our transportation?

The oil companies would have/are going to spread as much FUD about it as possible unless it's their energy but we could've had this all along if it weren't for the hippies actually helping the oil companies keep feeding us their product.

Forget peak oil, we already have peak Uranium

[GroeFaZ]

Widely unnoticed by the general public, which is all caught up in Peak Oil yes-or-no discussions, Uranium faces the very same problems as fossil fuels, but they seem to be worse.

From this article: In 2001 the European Commission said that at the current level of uranium consumption, known uranium resources would last 42 years. With military and secondary sources, this life span could be stretched to 72 years. Yet this rate of usage assumes that nuclear power continues to provide only a fraction of the worlds energy supply.

And here is the actual development of Uranium price over the last century:
http://www.uranium.info/prices/monthly.html (note that the peak around '78 about coincides with the peak of the US and Soviet nuclear arsenal during the Cold War)

And here you have, again, the development of Uranium prices over the past 4 years:http://www.cameco.com/investor_relations/ux_ history/historical_ux.php(flash required for the small graphic, but the numbers are there in plain text)

Now if not only China builds dozens of reactors, but the western industrialized world as well, nuclear (i.e. fission) energy stops looking to be very attractive in the long run. Give us fusion (hot or cold), or give us renewable energy as our main source, but don't try to balance two resources which are ultimately limited and might well be seeing their practical end within our century. Don't floor the gas pedal if you know you will have to stop eventually, either by slowing down yourself or by being slowed down by a concrete wall.

Re:It is real, look out the window

[budgenator]

Sure, maybe the hundreds of scientists are wrong. But, you know, maybe they're right too? Shouldn't an attempt be made to curtail some of this?
I got a news flash for you cupcake, We were sold out by those hundreds of scientists who were more interested in scarfing up some grant money, than they were about fixing the problem. If human activity is really causing "global warming" it's 30 - 50 years to late to do anything; Read the article the red dye #2 is bad style ecologists have destroyed the only world we have by "saving" us from the evil(tm) nuclear power and the result is we're now choking on the radioactive contamination spewed from our coal fired plant, and looking for summer vaction property in greenland

Re:what to do with 48T/yr of nuclear waste per pla

[gorbachev]

Sure.

I've got a question for you as well. Here goes:

Did you stop beating your wife yet? Yes or no.

What a fucking asshole!

[XB-70]

Patrick Moore is a fucking asshole! Reason? The fact that he did not do his due-diligence all those years ago. When you factor in the real cost to life of the various methods of the production of power, they all suck. Nuclear tends to suck less. If you want to find out why, just read all the other arguments, I'm too tired to go through all the pros and cons again, but I'm sure you'll find it there.

My issue has always been with knee-jerk reactionaries like this who really don't think the problem through. This guy has been an asshole so long that he does not realize the harm he had directly or indirectly caused to the environment by his short-sighted actions. My question is: will he take responsibility for his role in degrading our enviroment? What will he do to rectify the situation?

Regardless, I have no use for people like him and his cronies and I hope that they have a nasty bout of of some sort of lung ailment due to the pollution they're responsible for. Moreover, if it kill them, it will increase the amount of oxygen needed for the rest of us and reduce the pollution due to their methane-producing flatulence and halitosis.

But, apart from that, I have no opinion!!