A debate between George Monbiot and nuclear opponent Helen Caldicott on nuclear power on DemocracyNow this morning.
http://www.democracynow.org/ doug swanson Keith Addison wrote: > http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima > > Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power > > Japan's disaster would weigh more heavily if there were less harmful > alternatives. Atomic power is part of the mix > > GEORGE MONBIOT Mar 22 2011 > > You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have > changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how > they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am > no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology. > > A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a > monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, > knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and > melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and > corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a > lethal dose of radiation. > > Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive > pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by > xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile > Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was > one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation > workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly > linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th > of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. > I am proposing perspective. > > If other forms of energy production caused no damage, these impacts > would weigh more heavily. But energy is like medicine: if there are > no side-effects, the chances are that it doesn't work. > > Like most greens, I favour a major expansion of renewables. I can > also sympathise with the complaints of their opponents. It's not just > the onshore windfarms that bother people, but also the new grid > connections (pylons and power lines). As the proportion of renewable > electricity on the grid rises, more pumped storage will be needed to > keep the lights on. That means reservoirs on mountains: they aren't > popular, either. > > The impacts and costs of renewables rise with the proportion of power > they supply, as the need for storage and redundancy increases. It may > well be the case (I have yet to see a comparative study) that up to a > certain grid penetration -- 50% or 70%, perhaps? -- renewables have > smaller carbon impacts than nuclear, while beyond that point, nuclear > has smaller impacts than renewables. > > Like others, I have called for renewable power to be used both to > replace the electricity produced by fossil fuel and to expand the > total supply, displacing the oil used for transport and the gas used > for heating fuel. Are we also to demand that it replaces current > nuclear capacity? The more work we expect renewables to do, the > greater the impact on the landscape will be, and the tougher the task > of public persuasion. > > Nuclear safer than coal > > But expanding the grid to connect people and industry to rich, > distant sources of ambient energy is also rejected by most of the > greens who complained about the blog post I wrote last week in which > I argued that nuclear remains safer than coal. What they want, they > tell me, is something quite different: we should power down and > produce our energy locally. Some have even called for the abandonment > of the grid. Their bucolic vision sounds lovely, until you read the > small print. > > At high latitudes like ours, most small-scale ambient power > production is a dead loss. Generating solar power in the UK involves > a spectacular waste of scarce resources. It's hopelessly inefficient > and poorly matched to the pattern of demand. Wind power in populated > areas is largely worthless. This is partly because we have built our > settlements in sheltered places; partly because turbulence caused by > the buildings interferes with the airflow and chews up the mechanism. > Micro-hydropower might work for a farmhouse in Wales, but it's not > much use in Birmingham. > > And how do we drive our textile mills, brick kilns, blast furnaces > and electric railways -- not to mention advanced industrial > processes? Rooftop solar panels? The moment you consider the demands > of the whole economy is the moment at which you fall out of love with > local energy production. A national (or, better still, international) > grid is the essential prerequisite for a largely renewable energy > supply. > > Some greens go even further: why waste renewable resources by turning > them into electricity? Why not use them to provide energy directly? > To answer this question, look at what happened in Britain before the > industrial revolution. > > The damming and weiring of British rivers for watermills was > small-scale, renewable, picturesque and devastating. By blocking the > rivers and silting up the spawning beds, they helped bring to an end > the gigantic runs of migratory fish that were once among our great > natural spectacles and which fed much of Britain -- wiping out > sturgeon, lampreys and shad, as well as most sea trout and salmon. > > Traction was intimately linked with starvation. The more land that > was set aside for feeding draft animals for industry and transport, > the less was available for feeding humans. It was the 17th-century > equivalent of today's biofuels crisis. The same applied to heating > fuel. As EA Wrigley points out in his book Energy and the English > Industrial Revolution, the 11m tonnes of coal mined in England in > 1800 produced as much energy as 4,45-million hectares of woodland > (one third of the land surface) would have generated. > > Before coal became widely available, wood was used not just for > heating homes but also for industrial processes: if half the land > surface of Britain had been covered with woodland, Wrigley shows, we > could have made 1,25-million tonnes of bar iron a year (a fraction of > current consumption) and nothing else. Even with a much lower > population than today's, manufactured goods in the land-based economy > were the preserve of the elite. Deep green energy production -- > decentralised, based on the products of the land -- is far more > damaging to humanity than nuclear meltdown. > > But the energy source to which most economies will revert if they > shut down their nuclear plants is not wood, water, wind or sun, but > fossil fuel. On every measure (climate change, mining impact, local > pollution, industrial injury and death, even radioactive discharges) > coal is 100 times worse than nuclear power. Thanks to the expansion > of shale gas production, the impacts of natural gas are catching up > fast. > > Yes, I still loathe the liars who run the nuclear industry. Yes, I > would prefer to see the entire sector shut down, if there were > harmless alternatives. But there are no ideal solutions. Every energy > technology carries a cost; so does the absence of energy > technologies. Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the > harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet > has been small. The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause > of nuclear power. - guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2011 > > _______________________________________________ > Biofuel mailing list > Biofuel@sustainablelists.org > http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel > > Biofuel at Journey to Forever: > http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html > > Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): > http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ > > -- Bad politicians give the other percent a bad reputation * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Contentment comes not from having more, but from wanting less. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * All generalizations are false. 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