Cofounder of Greenpeace advocates a ‘nuclear renaissance’

Articles — By forcechange on April 23, 2008 2:30 am

Fareed Zakaria, of Newsweek, had an interview with Greenpeace cofounder, turned nuclear energy cheerleader, Patrick Moore, this week.  Mr. Moore has gone from protesting nuclear weapons tests to protesting the environmental movement itself, due to their opposition to nuclear power production. 

According to Moore, the environmental movement has made a big mistake by lumping nuclear energy together with nuclear weapons.  He uses the example of the many health benefits of nuclear medicine to show that all nuclear technology is not “evil.”  His main criticisms of Greenpeace, which he has since left, are that they engage in “pop environmentalism” and communicate with people on an emotional rather than intellectual level.  Moore goes on to state that we are about to enter a “nuclear renaissance.”

While he seems to make some valid points about not grouping all nuclear technologies together as “evil” and that arguments should be made on an intellectual rather than emotional level, not everything he claims seems to make sense.  Specifically, in response to a question regarding the issue of nuclear waste, Moore responds that a lot of nuclear fuel today is reused from old Soviet warheads.  While this may be true, and would be a good thing, it doesn’t change the fact that nuclear energy production creates substantial nuclear waste that must be safely stored.  Yes, reusing old nuclear material from warheads is dealing with nuclear waste on a literal level, but he does not address what happens to the waste specifically created by nuclear power plants. 

However, what concerns us most about nuclear power, which is not addressed in the article, are the risks of human error.  Our belief is that whenever there is the opportunity for human error, given enough time, that error will occur.  There is no way that nuclear power plants, no matter how ingeniously they are designed, can be truly insulated from human error.  And even though accidents at nuclear power plants are incredibly rare, when they do occur, those accidents can be incredibly disastrous.

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