High-profile pro-nuclear converts

From the UK; yesterday's Independent contained a report detailing a 'kind of like religious conversion' of four high profile environmentalists who now support nuclear power.

The four are:

• Stephen Tindale, former director of Greenpeace;
• Lord Chris Smith of Finsbury, the chairman of the Environment Agency;
• Mark Lynas, author of the Royal Society’s science book of the year, and
• Chris Goodall, a Green Party activist and prospective parliamentary candidate.

Tindale ran Greenpeace from 2000-2005. “It was kind of like a religious conversion. Being anti-nuclear was an essential part of being an environmentalist for a long time but now that I’m talking to a number of environmentalists about this, it’s actually quite widespread this view that nuclear power is not ideal but it’s better than climate change,” he added.

"Renewable sources of energy, such as wind, wave and solar power, are still necessary in the fight against global warming, but achieving low-carbon electricity generation is far more difficult without nuclear power", Lord Smith said.

Lynas:
“The thing that initially pushed me was seeing how long and difficult the road to going to 100 per cent renewable economy would be, and realising that if we really are serious about tackling global warming it the next decade or two then we certainly need to consider a new generation of nuclear power stations.”

“In retrospect, [anti-nuclear activism] will come to be seen as an enormous mistake for which the earth’s climate is now paying the price. To give an example, the environmentalists stopped a nuclear plant in Austria from being switched on, a colossal waste of money, and instead [Austria] built two coal plants.”

In a separate report, Goodall sums it up well. "This country’s current and past emissions are far more than our share of the world population. Unless we reduce our carbon pollution urgently, we will be in breach of our moral, as well as EU and UN, obligations." He adds, "Every option is strongly opposed: the public seems to be anti-wind, anti-coal, anti-waste-to-energy, anti-tidal-barrage, anti-fuel-duty and anti-nuclear. We can’t be anti-everything, and time is running out. Large projects take many years to construct."

Finally, Goodall concludes, "Germany provides a useful cautionary tale. Despite huge subsidies for solar panels, photovoltaics have not yet replaced one per cent of fossil fuel electricity generation. Indeed, because Germany – under pressure from well-meaning environmentalists – is phasing out nuclear power, it is inexorably turning back towards dirty coal: 30 new coal plants are planned, including four burning lignite (brown coal), the dirtiest fuel of all."

Plenty of parallels with Australia in this article. Relatively high per-capita emissions, the need to increase generation infrastructure to satisfy current and future demand, and the need for civil and objective public discussion to name a few.

Coal shipment blocked in NZ

Greenpeace acts against NZ coal exportation.

See report from Scoop.

I don't want to give any undue credibility to Greenpeace. I have never had confidence in their technical capabilities, objectivity, assessment of credible risk or the tactics they employ to pursue various ends.

However, I would like to note how the focus is shifting to action against global consumption of coal. This ongoing shift is very interesting and tends to support what some are saying about backdoor conversations ongoing within such organisations.

Will the Rainbow Warrior be delivering transpacific spent nuclear fuel shipments?... Not likely. But I do believe it is very reasonable to expect the anti-nuclear rhetoric to slowly decay away.

Emissions - An indicator of interest

Tom Tarpey in Canada forwarded a report from Globeandmail.com providing examples of the conservation paradox. Basically what it details [through numerous US examples] is the tendency of consumers to reap the benefits of efficiency improvement by buying bigger automobiles, larger homes, more AC units, etc. so that the net effect on energy consumption is nil [actually energy consumption, and emissions along with it, have continually risen].

Closer to home in Mosman - 'Australia's wealthiest suburb', Monsters and Critics reports a reluctance to give up the posh life in the name of emissions reductions.

The Wilderness Society and Greenpeace are already Rudd-bashing about Labor's [in]ability to tackle Australia's emissions dilemma [3 days into his term, whoa]. I do not give much technical credit to these organisations. Their quantification of the nuclear pro-con balance sheet for example is, to be polite, VERY misleading as well as technically wrong. However, I'll include their comments to provide a general 'feel' for domestic climate change opinions.

'Both major parties have credibility problems on climate change because of their failure to commit to the sort of deep cuts to greenhouse emissions in the next decade that are necessary to help prevent dangerous climate change,' Wilderness Society national campaign director Alex Marr said.

Greenpeace Australia climate change campaigner Steven Campbell notes that even with a target of 20 per cent, there will be no overall reduction in the amount of electricity generated by burning coal.

'If we have a renewables sector growing alongside an ever- expanding coal sector, we won't stop climate change,' Campbell said.

Interested parties should monitor total Australian emissions. Currently, just due to power production, Australia cranks out 226,000,000 US tons [204,982,000 metric tons] of CO2 per year. Per their website, CARMA plans to update the data quarterly.

Blogger NNadir on Patrick Moore & Greenpeace

I know that "Doctor" Moore is popular with the nuclear industry, but I would submit that continuously talking up the support of the "Founder of Greenpeace" for nuclear energy affords Greenpeace environmental credibility it has neither earned nor deserves. If the nuclear industry were listening to me, it wouldn't be awarding that credibility.

See the whole post here

NNadir has submitted another Diary [post] in the DailyKos Blog, rich with passionate, well researched arguments in favour of increased nuclear deployment as part of the solution to many of the world's current problems.

The post above is his reply to a comment on his Diary. See the whole Diary here. Be warned, it's long and the comments are approaching 130.

NEI Comments on latest Greenpeace report.

Greenpeace has released a report on the economics of nuclear power.

David Bradish at NEI has reviewed and critiqued the report in a very thorough post that I highly recommend.

This appears to be, according to Mr. Bradish, more than what Greenpeace did prior to issuing their press release...