[Mb-civic] Going Nuclear - Patrick Moore - Washington Post Sunday Outlook

[William Swiggard]

Going Nuclear
A Green Makes the Case
<>By Patrick Moore
Washington Post Sunday Outlook
Sunday, April 16, 2006; B01

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that 
nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my 
compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first 
voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing 
of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. 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.

Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the 
United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 
percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas 
responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, 
cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while 
continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can 
do so safely.

I say that guardedly, of course, just days after Iranian President 
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had enriched uranium. 
"The nuclear technology is only for the purpose of peace and nothing 
else," he said. But there is widespread speculation that, even though 
the process is ostensibly dedicated to producing electricity, it is in 
fact a cover for building nuclear weapons.

And although I don't want to underestimate the very real dangers of 
nuclear technology in the hands of rogue states, we cannot simply ban 
every technology that is dangerous. That was the all-or-nothing 
mentality at the height of the Cold War, when anything nuclear seemed to 
spell doom for humanity and the environment. In 1979, Jane Fonda and 
Jack Lemmon produced a frisson of fear with their starring roles in "The 
China Syndrome," a fictional evocation of nuclear disaster in which a 
reactor meltdown threatens a city's survival. Less than two weeks after 
the blockbuster film opened, a reactor core meltdown at Pennsylvania's 
Three Mile Island nuclear power plant sent shivers of very real anguish 
throughout the country.

What nobody noticed at the time, though, was that Three Mile Island was 
in fact a success story: The concrete containment structure did just 
what it was designed to do -- prevent radiation from escaping into the 
environment. And although the reactor itself was crippled, there was no 
injury or death among nuclear workers or nearby residents. Three Mile 
Island was the only serious accident in the history of nuclear energy 
generation in the United States, but it was enough to scare us away from 
further developing the technology: There hasn't been a nuclear plant 
ordered up since then.

Today, there are 103 nuclear reactors quietly delivering just 20 percent 
of America's electricity. Eighty percent of the people living within 10 
miles of these plants approve of them (that's not including the nuclear 
workers). Although I don't live near a nuclear plant, I am now squarely 
in their camp.

And I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my 
mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, 
father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way 
to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the 
"Whole Earth Catalog," says the environmental movement must embrace 
nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such 
opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear 
priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and 
director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group's 
board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.

There are signs of a new willingness to listen, though, even among the 
staunchest anti-nuclear campaigners. When I attended the Kyoto climate 
meeting in Montreal last December, I spoke to a packed house on the 
question of a sustainable energy future. I argued that the only way to 
reduce fossil fuel emissions from electrical production is through an 
aggressive program of renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, 
geothermal heat pumps, wind, etc.) plus nuclear. The Greenpeace 
spokesperson was first at the mike for the question period, and I 
expected a tongue-lashing. Instead, he began by saying he agreed with 
much of what I said -- not the nuclear bit, of course, but there was a 
clear feeling that all options must be explored.

Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are 
intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload 
plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric. Natural gas, a fossil 
fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk 
building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are 
built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only 
viable substitute for coal. It's that simple.

That's not to say that there aren't real problems -- as well as various 
myths -- associated with nuclear energy. Each concern deserves careful 
consideration:

· Nuclear energy is expensive. It is in fact one of the least expensive 
energy sources. In 2004, the average cost of producing nuclear energy in 
the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable 
with coal and hydroelectric. Advances in technology will bring the cost 
down further in the future.

· Nuclear plants are not safe. Although Three Mile Island was a success 
story, the accident at Chernobyl, 20 years ago this month, was not. But 
Chernobyl was an accident waiting to happen. This early model of Soviet 
reactor had no containment vessel, was an inherently bad design and its 
operators literally blew it up. The multi-agency U.N. Chernobyl Forum 
reported last year that 56 deaths could be directly attributed to the 
accident, most of those from radiation or burns suffered while fighting 
the fire. Tragic as those deaths were, they pale in comparison to the 
more than 5,000 coal-mining deaths that occur worldwide every year. No 
one has died of a radiation-related accident in the history of the U.S. 
civilian nuclear reactor program. (And although hundreds of uranium mine 
workers did die from radiation exposure underground in the early years 
of that industry, that problem was long ago corrected.)

· Nuclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years. Within 40 
years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it 
had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it 
waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in 
the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has 
removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that 
energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment 
and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the 
nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind.

· Nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attack. The 
six-feet-thick reinforced concrete containment vessel protects the 
contents from the outside as well as the inside. And even if a jumbo jet 
did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would 
not explode. There are many types of facilities that are far more 
vulnerable, including liquid natural gas plants, chemical plants and 
numerous political targets.

· Nuclear fuel can be diverted to make nuclear weapons. This is the most 
serious issue associated with nuclear energy and the most difficult to 
address, as the example of Iran shows. But just because nuclear 
technology can be put to evil purposes is not an argument to ban its use.

Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools -- the machete -- has 
been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than 
were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. 
What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we 
banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have 
harnessed fire.

The only practical approach to the issue of nuclear weapons 
proliferation is to put it higher on the international agenda and to use 
diplomacy and, where necessary, force to prevent countries or terrorists 
from using nuclear materials for destructive ends. And new technologies 
such as the reprocessing system recently introduced in Japan (in which 
the plutonium is never separated from the uranium) can make it much more 
difficult for terrorists or rogue states to use civilian materials to 
manufacture weapons.

The 600-plus coal-fired plants emit nearly 2 billion tons of CO2annually 
-- the equivalent of the exhaust from about 300 million automobiles. In 
addition, the Clean Air Council reports that coal plants are responsible 
for 64 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 26 percent of nitrous oxides 
and 33 percent of mercury emissions. These pollutants are eroding the 
health of our environment, producing acid rain, smog, respiratory 
illness and mercury contamination.

Meanwhile, the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States 
effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions 
annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million 
automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so 
that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 
percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air 
and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible 
environmentalist should support a move in that direction.

pmoore at greenspirit.com <mailto:pmoore at greenspirit.com>

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, is chairman and chief scientist 
of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. He and Christine Todd Whitman are 
co-chairs of a new industry-funded initiative, the Clean and Safe Energy 
Coalition, which supports increased use of nuclear energy.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html
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