Daily Kos points out that Patrick Moore, who bills himself as a Greenpeace cofounder and wrote the op-ed in the _Washington Post_ about the need for nuclear energy that I linked to a couple days ago, has for years been a highly paid lobbyist for various industries and companies that have questionable environmental records. The sentiment still feels sound to me, but be wary of paid influence peddlers shilling their wares.
Aside
Interestingly, right after the op-ed came out, Greenpeace seemed to get “Greenpeace rejects Chernobyl toll” published on the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4917526.stm).
I actually reject when he says “56 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident” at Chernobyl in his op-ed. Chernobyl was terrible, but he rightly points out that such an accident would never happen with any reactor in the western world – the worst that would happen is 3-mile island which wasn’t detrimental to anything except the investors in the power plant who lost all their money. That’s one of the big reasons people don’t invest in nuclear. If something goes wrong, one looses all their money.
I also disagree with his view on nuclear waste. It’s not a kitten in 40-years time, but at the same time, it’s very easy to sequester nuclear waste in a perfectly safe manner. Coal’s waste comes in gas form which is hard to secure because of the nature of gasses and it’s in excess of 2 billion tonnes (which in gas form takes up an enormous amount of space). It’s just not very practical to sequester 2 tonnes of CO2 gas every year because gasses are hard to capture and take up a lot of space. By contrast, spent nuclear fuel rods can easily be sequestered in a small amount of space.
In the end, it will all come down to how people are comfortable. Nuclear power is 99.999% safe with 0 pollution. Of course, another Chernobyl (which realistically wouldn’t happen) would mean many easily identifiable deaths. By contrast, coal deaths aren’t easily identifiable (since CO2 goes high into the atmosphere and kills over a much longer time of many varied causes). It would be nice for the environmental community (of which I consider myself a member) to at the least put out an authoritative statement on behalf of the green movement that nuclear is far preferable to coal and other fossil fuels, then one can worry about the argument between nuclear’s practicality and wind/solar/etc.’s ideal with coal out of the picture.
I’m not going to argue with all your points, because I just don’t have the will, but your assertion that “its very easy to sequester nuclear waste in a perfectly secure manner” is just utterly and completely wrong. First find me a government that is going to be stable for 50,000+ years. Then find me an area of land that will be just as stable, can be easily secured, and is free from the incredible political pressures of NIMBY types. Next demonstrate containment vessels with similar shelf lives, so that we can be sure to keep the local water supplies safe. Next think of every possible contingency for the next 50,000 years, be they world wars, bigger and better weapons, alien invasion, whatever, and account for them. Then we’ll talk.
There are problems with nuclear power. Waste storage is probably the biggest. Its not an easy problem to solve. But that doesn’t mean the enterprise should be abandoned.
I thought it was pretty obvious:
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.
The key phrase, of course, is “industry-funded”, which is very obvious code for “biased to one degree or another.”
However, as you correctly note, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong…
Who said that stuff?