The environmental movement “made a big mistake” opposing nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s, Greenpeace co-founder and former President Patrick Moore told attendees at an electric cooperative financing forum in Denver this past summer.
“We got a lot of things right in the early years of the environmental movement,” Moore said, as he described Greenpeace’s battles against nuclear weapons testing and toxic waste and its Save the Whales campaign. But it also made the mistake of tying its opposition to nuclear weapons with its position on nuclear energy. “If it hadn’t been for the environmental movement back then, there would be a lot less coal plants and a lot more nuclear plants in the United States and around the world today,” he said. “It was a serious error.”
Moore, who serves as chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies, a consulting firm focusing on sustainability issues, is a vocal supporter of nuclear power. “Only nuclear and hydro are low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels for baseload power production,” he said.
Nuclear power does not produce air pollution or carbon dioxide emissions during its operation. Nuclear power is also a safe technology, he said, noting that “no one has died of a radiation-related accident in the history of the U.S. program” and no one is being injured today by the 439 reactors in operation around the world. The Three Mile Island accident in 1979 actually was a “success story” for the U.S. nuclear power industry, he said, because no one was injured and “we learned a tremendous lesson” which resulted in the whole industry being restructured in terms of operating procedures and safety systems.
Moore called climate change “possibly the most complex scientific issue that has faced us,” in large part because we cannot accurately predict what will happen to the climate. But nuclear power must play a role in any realistic strategy for a low-carbon future, he said. Even though the current Congress and the Obama administration “may slow the growth of the nuclear renaissance somewhat, it is inevitable in the end because wind and solar cannot replace coal plants.”
In addition to an aggressive nuclear power program, U.S. energy policy also should encourage hydropower, geothermal, biomass, wind and solar for heating water and improved battery technology for plug-in hybrid vehicles, Moore said. Ground source heat pumps should be used in all buildings, and we need conservation and efficiency — particularly in our cars and buildings. Biotechnology is vital to enable our agricultural systems to sequester more carbon.
Moore noted that his support for many of these technologies puts him at odds with the positions of some high-profile environmental groups — whose opposition to the most realistic alternatives to fossil fuels is, ironically, “one of the greatest impediments to reducing CO
2 emissions,” he said.
Here's a link to November 2009 Featured Story on nuclear energy.Here's a link to another sidebar that discusses nuclear waste.