Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore: Move to nuclear power

Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, says nuclear power is the only reasonable answer to energy shortages and global warming.

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….

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….

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….

Meanwhile, the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively 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.

Time to choose. I wish there were another, more “natural” energy alternative. But with oil prices now near $70 a barrel, when it was regularly less than $30 a barrel just a few years ago, real alternatives should be springing to the fore. They aren’t.

Storage of nuclear waste seems to be the major, or at least a major problem with atomic energy. But it seems that, with nuclear power generation already well established, even doubling the number of U.S. nuclear plants would impose relatively small incremental waste-related costs and risks.

Global warming seems real. It may be a blip. It may not. But assuming it is real, it’s time to move in a big way to energy sources other than oil and coal. If not nuclear, what?

Frank Warner

Comments

[James Aach]

I think you make a good point that if there are better alternatives, they would be springing to the fore. "Better" must include the ability to produce the prodigious amounts of power the fossil and nuclear do. (This is where a lot of alternative energy falls short.)

You might find this interesting. It's a unique lay person's guide to nuclear power (a novel) endorsed by Stewart Brand, who's mentioned in the Wash Post piece by Mr. Moore. http://RadDecision.blogspot.com .

[Christopher Taylor]

I am greatly encouraged by movement on the left, especially among environmentalists toward support for Nuclear power. The thing is, I strongly believe that should any real action be taken to start building new nukes, all that movement will be forgotten and the old "no nukes" posters will be whipped out once more.

Remember: before 2002, everyone agreed Hussein had to go, that he was a monster with terrorist ties, he had WMD and was more than willing to sell them or give them to our enemies, and that he was a threat to the entire region. Then when someone decided to do something about that... the story suddenly changed.

[jj mollo]

Just to keep things confusing, Patrick Moore has been quite thoroughly discredited, or perhaps defamed, by SourceWatch. I really don't know what to make of it.

I am undecided on his motivations, but I agree with what he's saying, and I am still quite confident in James Lovelock and Steward Brand, who are sending the same message. Here's an interview with Stewart Brand where he describes his change of heart on population, urbanization, GMOs and nuclear power. I'm with him enthusiastically except for for the first one.