A green case for nuclear power

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 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 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 CO2 annually — 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 avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2 emissions 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.

Mr. 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. He wrote this column for the Washington Post. Author e-mail: pmoore@greenspirit.com

Yes, it is heartening that at least some greenies are capable of maturing,

According to Moore, it's Greenpeace that took a hard left turn away from what he envisioned to be what environmentalism is about. They pulled a lot of stunts in the early days to raise visibility, then he said we're established now, time to work with people for sensible progress on the environment, but the rest of Greenpeace wanted to get even more radical.

all your points seem fine except 5. government should not tell us what we can and can't drive.
you want a real energy plan? disband the EPA. nuclear power and oil and natural gas drilling/ refinery will pop up in a hurry. *BAM* no more energy problems.

We have one that is being used about 40 miles west of us and another one that is inactive about the same difference east of us. We do not have any problems with that. But, the town south of us which has all of that gas stored has an evacuation route that leads here. I do not know what the problem with Bellfontaine is. I guess that is how it is spelled. A very interesting site.

It's not that most mature people WANT pollution/environmental degradation, it's really just a matter of how you USE energy. In order to even be ABLE to clean up our world you need ENERGY to run the vacuum cleaner, yes? Where does that ENERGY come from? Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny of greenpeace's wet dreams? With clean, abundant, cheap energy, two possibilities : immature sloth of children = a hot(or cold)stinking garbage dump of a world...or mature adults = a clean, green and better world....A factoid : solid waste in the 21st century will occupy about a 14 mile x 14 mile by 100 foot high volume; SFC/RIS could turn that pile of garbage into pure isotopes/elements if one had enough ENERGY.

I am happy that this "one fry short of a happy meal" wack-head has finally realized what the rest of us knew twenty years ago.

Of course, that doesn't mean that anyone is going to build nuclear plants anytime soon. We can't even get a refinery built without 10 years of permits and a nuc plant will be worse.

...we could tell the Middle East and Venezuela we don't need their oil anymore

Add Bolivia to the list. That wacko Morales just nationalized the energy industries there and sent the army into the gas fields to take them over. Forget about Bolivia as a reliable supplier. They are going the way of their buddy in Venezuela. People say oh, no big deal, those companies in Bolivia are just British and Brazilian, but NG on the international markets is every bit as fungible as petroleum. If Morales starts mucking with the supply, get ready for some NG price spikes to go with gasoline.

Yes, it is heartening that at least some greenies are capable of maturing, that not all of them are stuck on the flat learning curve of infancy.

What you have to understand is that most "Greenies" really don't give a damn about the environment. It's simply an issue they can use and abuse to try to tear the economy down to reach their real objective --- Marxism.

If memory serves lawsuits drove the cost and unpredictability of nuke plants past the point of feasibility.

The intervenors have learned to game the system to stretch out the completion time so much that the projects become economically nonviable. They know that you can kill any capital-intensive project if you delay it long enough, because the carrying charges for construction-in-progress-but-never-operated eventually reach the point where you have no (or negative) return on investment. Then you go bankrupt and the project is either killed or taken over. That was the wacko gambit for Diablo Canyon (completed for ten years but not operated) and Seabrook.

And that goes for any capital-instensive project, not just a nuclear plant. It could be an oil refinery, or an airport, or a transmission line, or even a windmill farm like Cape Wind (and a nod to you, Kennedy scum, Teddy and Robert Jr.).

I do not know what the problem with Bellfontaine is.

It's Bellfonte and the original reactors planned for that site were stopped in mid construction back in the 1980s due to long construction delays organized by Greenpeace type outfits.

The good news is that now the site has been identified as a good spot for an advanced AP 1000 plant.

One of the reason Moore (and others that were there for GreenPeace's founding), left is that the organization stopped being about the environment when it was taken over by communists and hard-core socialists, who turned it into an anti-capitalist, rather than pro-environment organization.

Michael Chriton, who used to be a favorite author of anti-science environmentalists, when he wrote "State of Fear", which, though fiction exposed the hypocrisy of the environmental movement. Chriton footnoted the scientific sources for every statement he made in that book.

conservatives pretend that global warming doesn't exist.

Actually, most conservatives simply want actual proof that it exists, and that we are, in fact, responsible for it.

Mount Pinatubo and Mount Saint Helens spewed more polution and greehouse gasses into the air than man has since the beginning of the industrial revolution. But global warming is our fault.

Sunspots are a major contributor to atmospheric warming, and we have been through a major sunspot cycle the last decade or so. But global warming is our fault.

Undersea volcanic activity has raised average ocean temperature about one degree, which impacts atmospheric temperatures. But global warming is our fault.

Scientists say we may still be coming out of the last mini ice-age. But global warming is our fault.

Assuming global warming is true, we probably have about as much effect on global warming as you and I would have trying to warm an olympic sized swimming pool by pissing in it.

Other than that I agree with you. What you take as dismissal of global warming by most conservatives, is actually dismissal of the pseudo-science that has been used to promote it.

"all your points seem fine except 5. government should not tell us what we can and can't drive. "

I'm proposing incentives to change not mandatory regulation or punative disincentives.

The difference between a car that gets 10 mpg and one that gets 25 mpg at $3.00/gal. over 10,000 miles is the difference between 1000 gal and 400 gal or 600 gals and $1800 saved. A little gov't incentive to change and increase in awareness could result in a permanent drop in fuel demand.

What is everyone's first experience in life? Infancy = getting free food, love, diaper change, fuss and momma comes running. Marxism = socialism = liberalism = infancy = something for nothing = a violation of the first law of thermodynamics. There is no such thing as a free lunch but these greenies/liberals/marxists will not, CANNOT understand it : an honest day's work for an honest day's pay. Take a deeper look at them : what percentage of them are leeches on society, infantile types that never grew up? TAKING is their primary mission in life, whereas hard working republicans are the GIVERS that support them. America's intestines are FULL of these leeches, time to get de-wormed and DUMP them....and move on the creative solutions to all the problems facing us.

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