Two of the world’s foremost environmental thinkers, James Lovelock and George Monbiot, have highlighted the seriousness of global warming by endorsing nuclear power as the best energy option presently available if humanity is to avoid a planetary climate meltdown. Monbiot’s endorsement of nuclear power is even more striking given that it was offered in response to the initial crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi reactor.
Lovelock’s position is more easily explained. As the originator of the Gaia Theory and as a biologist and climatologist with a long history of scientific research, Lovelock sees nuclear power as the only option able to sustain our energy-hungry civilization. Because we are unlikely to willingly surrender the amenities of industrial consumerism, the logical solution for Lovelock is that we endure the environmental and financial costs of nuclear power plants.
Monbiot, like Lovelock, is also a clear-thinking rationalist and pragmatist, unswayed by the hopeful prospects of green power. While he gives top priority to renewable energy sources and conservation, he also recognizes we are moving so rapidly toward a climate catastrophe that we need a transition power that will give us time to find a survivable equilibrium with our planet’s biosphere. Curtailing the burning of carbon-emitting fossil fuels, whether this be coal, oil or natural gas, is mandatory. For Monbiot, given a choice between the disadvantages of fossil fuels or nuclear, nuclear is the better of two bad options. And, as he pointed out immediately after the March 11th earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi plant performed relatively well considering the forces of nature that assailed it.
But is this good enough for a technology that employs nuclear energies of unforgiving power and unimaginable destruction? Indeed, the unfolding events at Fukushima Daiichi may be a better example of heroic effort to manage disaster than to avert it. Design flaws were discovered after the plant had been built so the General Electric “Mark I” model needed extensive and costly renovations before it could be activated. The plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), had a history of falsifying records and feigning safety checks. The coastal plant was located within easy reach of tsunamis and the backup diesel generators that were supposed to maintain cooling water to the reactors were placed on low ground subject to flooding. Third level battery power was insufficient. Inadequate safety drills, a false sense of security and then staff exhaustion likely contributed to a diesel generator running out of fuel and an air-flow valve being incorrectly turned off, two lapses that nearly caused uncontrolled meltdown. Human error, an extreme natural disaster and bad design all converged to cause a “low-probability, high-consequence event”, the nuclear industry’s sanitized term for an unmitigated disaster.
Linda Keen, a former President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and chair of a global safety review of reactors, noted that, “In my experience, I found nuclear engineers extremely optimistic…. They’re optimistic about everything: how fast they’re going to do things, the cost, the idea of whether you are going to have an accident or not” (Globe & Mail, Mar. 16/11). This optimism seems to bathe the entire nuclear industry in a rosy glow – until Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi cast their sobering shadow on reality.
If Monbiot and Lovelock are correct in supporting the nuclear option because our civilization’s energy needs are on a collision course with our climate security, then this may justify the massive subsidies governments commit to build, insure and decommission these power plants – private investors cannot afford such costs. Tepco estimates that collecting and storing the radioactive mess at Fukushima Daiichi and dismantling four of its six reactors will take 30 years and cost $12 billion.
Old reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi vintage were designed to last about 30 years. Newer ones have a life expectancy of 40 to 60 years. So all reactors must eventually be dismantled. The US places this cost at $325 million per reactor. But actual costs usually range from two to nearly four times that amount – a small French reactor recently cost $667 million to dismantle, 20 times the original estimate. The Three Mile Island reactor, which suffered a “core fusion” event in 1979, will cost an estimated $805 million to render safe – costs can only be estimates because high radioactive levels require that nuclear reactors be dismantled in stages that can take up to a 50 years. The core of these reactors, the pressure vessel, is usually buried because no other disposal option is available. A British study estimates that $118 billion will be needed to decommission the country’s 19 functioning nuclear reactors.
Since nuclear reactors have a finite lifespan, the cost of eventually dismantling and replacing the world’s existing supply of approximately 440 – which, incidentally, provide only about 15 percent of today’s electrical energy – will be astronomical. And, given present technology, if this must be done every 40 to 60 years, then nuclear power will be a prohibitively expensive energy of the future.
Prior to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, the fear that halted the expansion of nuclear industry was beginning to abate. Now, of the 300 reactors presently being planned or built, many of these projects will undoubtedly be reviewed.
But the larger question remains. Given rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and the catastrophic effects of global climate change to both the planet’s biosphere and human civilization, what are we to do? James Lovelock, the biologist and climatologist who thinks in terms that span multiple-millennia, seems to give a nod of compassionate resignation to our human folly. George Monbiot, the humanist and problem solver who thinks about the immediacy of the moment, is trying to avert a climate catastrophe. For anyone brave enough to even ponder the subject, the options are daunting.
Avery, your most recent comment has been removed, as will any further comments on this article. This discussion is closed.
Avery, this conversation has run its course. Neither this publication nor the article upon which you are commenting are supportive of nuclear power. End of story. I don’t need to be convinced.
@Damien,
Rafe wants “a serious conversation about nukes”? Where better to hold it than in his own blog? If it matters – why wait?
You’re wrong. Monbiot’s article was never the main issue.
But if you’d like to better ‘scrutinize’ Monbiot’s latest levitations try this
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2000/mar/30/energy.nuclearindustry?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
and this
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/11/nuclear-apologists-radiation
then ponder this
http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/47141
“Much of Monbiot’s argument discussed the limitations of renewable energy. But instead of addressing serious clean energy proposals, Monbiot simply demolishes one particular argument — that current electricity supply systems can be replaced with off-grid, small-scale distributed energy.
There is certainly a role for local energy production. But no serious analyst would argue that it can completely displace centralised production. Monbiot is demolishing a straw person argument.”
Your proposals, conservation and so on, made at the TED lecture? Monbiot is unlikely to be impressed. But there it is: Damien! You’re just too Green for Monbiot!
A debate on nukes? “SAFE” nukes?
Unlikely. For reasons too long to list here, in BC a ‘safe nuke’ seems an oxymoron. Here is part of that list.
PART 1
Why nukes? Why now? Why here? Why not?
1/ Location. Is there a ‘Ring of Fire’? Is placing a nuke within it hazardous? Would such hazard not veto nukes? Regardless of hazard, we still need a nuke debate? But not about the tectonic hazard? Like Japan? Just downplay the risk and ignore public opposition?
2/ Environmental opposition to what? Time and again Rafe reveals why the neo (libs and cons) won’t stop opposing the public interest by gutting safety standards. Can such governments be trusted to oversee any issue their ideological dogma prefers to ignore? Since when?
3/ Virtually everything Rafe targets concerns politicians waiving laws and ignoring responsibilities while refusing to act – except in the financial interest of mega-corporations. Giants who, it appears, also are ideological cousins who work in a kind of revolving-door nepotism. Add routine and adamant corporate refusal to recognize any higher purpose, beyond profit: it’s an ugly picture.
PART 2
Falsus in uno: falsus in omnibus?
4/ Can tax-hungry governments (facing a global financial meltdown) be trusted? For decades hard-right pols have promoted corporate socialism, thus creating runaway price inflation with Privatization. BC Ferries? Name an industry where strong influence over what the public pays (for what it has heavily subsidized) exists. Beyond magical thinking, why imagine this will change?
5/ We need nukes while governments discard environmental laws? Hasty support for one-dimensional haywire schemes (with huge financial assistance) is good? Enbridge? Run Of The River? Witness the conflict of interest of a regulator (the DFO) applauding its no-problems-here-folks! advocacy.. of fish farms.
A poker truism: it is naïve to gamble against two brothers and their best friends. If they’re set on cheating: you won’t know. The odds of besting them – remote. If pols and corporations still could be trusted at their word; if BC wasn’t on the Ring Of Fire; if nuclear waste wasn’t toxic for thousands of years; there might be room for assent to BC nukes. It’s dubious that such room exists. Nobody underscores such logic better than Rafe’s own pages.
Avery, your alleged emails with Rafe are not of my concern. We’re discussing – or I’m discussing anyway – what this publication publishes. You clearly didn’t read the same article here that I did. I don’t interpret Ray’s citing of Monbiot and Lovelock’s positions as praise for them. I would classify this article, if anything, as opposed to nuclear – at least seriously scrutinizing it.
@ Damien Gillis,
Talk to Rafe. We have exchanged emails often and his communications have not been indifferent to nukes. We argued.
When the first Monbiot, um, inanity appeared it simply reinforced a growing impression of bias.
How? Well Damien, where are the detailed-science anti-nuke articles to balance this page’s tilt? Show us. Why would few (or none) exist?
Having emailed Rafe after the first Monbiot posting, what followed? This page, and now Mr. Grigg praising Monbiot & Lovelock! Are Monbiot and Lovelock remotely qualified to discuss nukes? Tell us.
Are arguments against promoting nukes anywhere on this site? Nope. There is one side given, and no other.
Arnie Gunderson, is a vintage nuclear engineer, a nuclear consultant to several governments. He became VP of 3-Mile Island after the meltdown. His CV is on his site. His views on nukes can be found at
http://fairewinds.com/updates
Why post Arnie’s site address? Why not? Has Rafe? What’s at stake when an “environmentalist” doesn’t offer anti-nuke views?
I emailed Rafe this morning.
His response? “And what the hell have you done?”
Sound like Rafe?
Avery, you’re plain wrong. Rafe is not an advocate for nuclear. He wrote one piece a year ago in the Tyee suggesting we should have a serious conversation about it – far from an endorsement.
@KWD
Amazing, isn’t it? But yes, Monbiot & Lovelock’s apparently mystical conversions to “Me Tooism!” offers no solution whatsoever.
@Trailblazer
Pants still dry. But yes, there’s the “thorium-based molten salt reactor system” panacea.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html
True, China “intends” to build a network. Net construction time? Maybe 10 years. Maybe never.
Other problems? Europe is too financially damaged to afford it. The US doesn’t want it. Canada? Our pols hate regulation, we’re broke. Where does the money come from? Consider the odds.
But for more than this geezer’s unqualified opinion see
http://fairewinds.com/updates
“Closing Ranks: The NRC, the Nuclear Industry, and TEPCO are Limiting the Flow of Information “
“Discussion of High Level Radiation Releases and the Previous “Worse Case Scenario” Planned for by The Industry “
“Fukushima Accident Severity Level Raised to ‘7’”
“Discovery of Plutonium Leakage and Highly Radioactive Water”
“Nuclear Engineer Arnie Gundersen demonstrates How Fukushima’s Fuel Rods Melted and Shattered “
“Schlimbesserung” = “worsening by improvement.”
Routinely the result of dangerously inane compromises made by corporate-driven politicians to smother scientific evidence. See Fukushima.
If Knowledge Is Power is the underdog status of science an anomaly? See Tar Sands. DFO policies, and so on.
By thwarting science (those radicals!) is it not easier to impose whatever idiocy mega-corporations might want to exploit? See Fish Farms, etc.
Is it surprising that Canada’s environmental laws appear schizophrenic? While boasting that “We’ve Got The World’s Strongest Laws!” more honestly, there’s puny evidence of their enforcement, and more evidence of existing laws being degraded.
Energy needs? Mr. Mair argues, persuasively I think, that BC has no need for ‘Run-Of-The-River’ projects. Why not? There’s more than sufficient energy to meet future needs.
Yet later, abandoning his own logic, Rafe pitches nukes to save us from energy-driven oil dependency.
Yep, more nukes, poorly regulated, if at all, to be built in a quake zone, on the Ring of Fire, producing toxic waste requiring storage for thousands of years..
But.. Rafe says, Gotta Have Em!
His credibility? Flagging…
James Lovick’s logical solution … we will endure nuclear power plants “Because we are unlikely to willingly surrender the amenities of industrial consumerism” … is no solution at all. In fact its logic fails because it is constrained by the continuous-growth paradigm that wants to believe technology will continue to topple the barriers that prevent industrial consumerism and human expansion on this planet (and possibly others). It’s thinking from within the same paradigm that allowed Japan’s population to expand from 25 million to an unsustainable 125 million.
The reality is that we will endure nukes, coal, and crude derivatives until we are forced to surrender; and climate change will be only one of a host of factors that act as enforcers.
Damien Gillis opens his TED energy lecture with, “We can’t solve problems by using the same thinking which created them.”
It seems the Rafe Mair 2-Geezer Pro-Nuke Collective profoundly disagrees.
Where is the science to support their arguments? Oops! There isn’t any!
Back to Mr. Gillis. Under the heading, “To Meet Our Energy Challenges We Need” – the word ‘Nuclear’ never appears.
Under the heading, “Energy Solutions That Make Sense” Mr Gillis lists – Wind, Solar, Heat-pumps, Solar Heated Water Tanks, Geo-thermal.
Again, the word “Nuclear” never appears.
For the Geezer Collective there is one core political argument, “our civilization’s energy needs are on a collision course with our climate security.”
Therefore?
Cave. An argument as mindless, ignorant of science and invertebrate as politics gets. Forget alternative power. Trivialize or ignore pollution, industry corruption, government collusiondeceitrefusal to regulate. Just accept that Ideology is against you and then say ‘more nukes are but a sad OK.’
A balanced argument? Nope. Ideological pandering.
You want real nuclear science info – not lame nonsense?
http://www.fairewinds.com/
Judge for yourself.
Before we wet our pant over nuclear energy , give this a read.
I’m no expert but I am open to suggestions.
http://energyfromthorium.com/