It’s one of my new year’s resolutions to be a bit greener. I don’t own a car, but I am going to try to recycle properly (especially as there is a recycling thingy just down the road), cut down on electric consumption – you know, the sort of thing that might have the middle class environmentalist crowd drooling and patting me on the back for. Hopefully I’ll save some dough, too.
As we’ve all suddenly become ecowarriors, there is still one issue that haunts progressives of all stripes: nuclear power.
For the left, it’s an absolute given; nuclear power is evil incarnate, it’s wasteful, it’s harmful to the environment, and nobody wants nuclear armageddon thankyouverymuchifitsallthesame.
But is it? One of the main arguments against nuclear is that it has a record of going wrong. And when nuclear goes wrong, it goes very very wrong. Certainly the latter is true. But the former? I’m not so sure. People remember the discharge of radioactive material into the Irish Sea from Windscale (now Sellafield) in the 1940’s and 1960’s, but surely the numerous oil spills from sinking tankers can’t be that good for the environment? Lots of people died at Chernobyl, but lots of workers also died aboard Piper Alpha in 1988. Not quite the same scale, but all forms of generating energy have risks.
Truth is, every nuclear accident seems to find its roots in cutting corners and money saving – or profit, in other words. Chernobyl happened due to attempts to ramp up production to hit productivity targets – had the technicians not been forced to overload the reactor, it may never have happened. Nine Mile? Lack of health and safety. Windscale and Calder Hall? Over-production. These all – whether state in the case of the former Soviet Union and the UK or private in the case of the USA – are due to bosses trying to make a bigger buck for their bang.
Another main argument against nuclear is; what happens to spent uranium? True, it’s difficult to safely dispose of, especially as it has a half life of hundred of years. But what do you think happens to Carbon Dioxide and Carbon particles chucked out by gas and coal? Even clean coal produces some waste – I remember from my sketchy GCSE physics lessons that every energy-producing reaction causes waste.
I don’t trust capitalism to run nuclear power – but, if the profit motive is removed, then why not? Why is there this – quite frankly irrational – knee-jerk reaction to nuclear power? What other options do we have?
Hmmm, maybe not. I’m not ideologically opposed to nuclear power. I have every confidence a socialist society could do a better job of running them, though I would favour situating them on the moon, just in case.
But there are carbon issues: the mining, refining, transportation, and storage of waste release far more carbon than carbon saved through nuclear generation. Furthermore, nuclear power is only a short to medium term “solution”: as more countries go nuclear, the scramble is on for increasingly scarce uranium stocks. Only a bold programme of investment renewable energy generation and more funds sunk into carbon capture offer a way out of the mess, IMO.
Kit said: “I don’t trust capitalism to run nuclear power – but, if the profit motive is removed, then why not? Why is there this – quite frankly irrational – knee-jerk reaction to nuclear power?”
But that seems to me to be the crux of the issue. Its not that the nuclear industry has a record of things going wrong its that capitalism has a record of cutting corners, covering up mistakes and generally looking to get away with making the production of stuff as cheap as possible, and, as you also say, when things go wrong with nuclear power they can go very very wrong indeed.
I wouldn’t have any objection to a future socialist society investigating whether nuclear power is a feasible option, but that’s a hell of a long way away from supporting the current very capitalist societies moves to building a new generation of nuclear reactors.
As for the other argument - the safe disposal of nuclear waste isn’t just “difficult” it is currently completely unknown whether we can do it or not. Spent fuel rods and other radioactive waste has a half life of many thousands of years, and we have no way of knowing whether any of our efforts to contain it will last long enough or what the consequences would be of any breaches. And again, do you want to trust the disposal of nuclear waste to Rentokil or Interserve or one of the other dodgy firms that will bid for the government contract to do it?
What are the other options? Well for one lets look at micro generation through renewable resources - using solar panels, or small windmills on commercial and residential properties that can feed any excess electricity back into the nationl grid as well as providing power for individual use.
I just want to agree withe the comments the other two commenters made, they’re what i was going to say when i clicked the comment button.
The main arguement being used to support building new nuclear power stations in North Wales (Anglesey in particular) is that the local economy is so dependent on the current nuclear power station. If that’s not a damning indictment of what capitalism has to offer workers in this area i don’t know what is
One of the other arguements for nuclear power is that it’s supposedly reliable, but wylfa keeps going down and in 2002-3ish was out for 18 months!