I admit that I am coming around to the thinking of some of my more conservative friends on one topic: whether or not to build new nukes.
Throughout most of my life, I've believed that nuclear power is a bad idea. One of my greatest heroes is Starhawk, who earned her activist chops protesting nuclear power plants. Sure, I've always said, nukes are cleaner than any other form of power, but what if there's an accident? And what about the waste? How can we morally create lethal waste that will last longer than any civilized society on Earth has ever lasted? What will happen a hundred or a thousand years from now when society, as it is wont (thanks, Kurgans!) to do, falls apart? What will the warlords, fake messiahs, and tawdry dictators of that era do with nuclear waste? What happens when people can't even decipher our writing or our danger symbols?
The most important factor in my change of mind has been some points made by James Lovelock, a British scientist who, wile working for NASA, developed the Gaia Hypothesis, which is basically a scientific restatement of my entire religion. Lovelock believes that nukes are our Obi Wan Kenobi -- as in, "Help me. Obi Wan. You're our only hope."
Lovelock says, on his website, that:
This answer [to global climate change and global warming] is ecologically clean and tidy and has a very bad press. It is nuclear power. "I can envisage somewhere about 2050, when the greenhouse really begins to bite, when people will start looking back and saying: whose fault was all this? And they will settle on the Greens and say: 'if those damn people hadn't stopped us building nuclear power stations we wouldn't be in this mess'. And I think it is true. The real dangers to humanity and the ecosystems of the earth from nuclear power are almost negligible. You get things like Chernobyl but what happens? Thirty-odd brave firemen died who needn't have died but its general effect on the world population is almost negligible.
"What has it done to wild life? All around Chernobyl, where people are not allowed to go because the ground is too radioactive, well, the wildlife doesn't care about radiation. It has come flooding in. It is one of the richest ecosystems in the region. And then they say: what shall we do with nuclear waste?" Lovelock has an answer for that, too. Stick it in some precious wilderness, he says. If you wanted to preserve the biodiversity of rainforest, drop pockets of nuclear waste into it to keep the developers out. The lifespans of the wild things might be shortened a bit, but the animals wouldn't know, or care. Natural selection would take care of the mutations. Life would go on.
We have to do something. Insanity is doing what we've been doing, but expecting different results.
Do I hope that some 25th Century scientist figures out how to turn nuclear waste into something either mundane or beneficial? Yes. Yes, I do. But first we have to ensure that there are 25th Century scientists.
In some ways, this conclusion reminds me of the way that I think about abortion. The problem doesn't happen with abortion. The problem happens with an unwanted pregnancy. Once there's an unwanted pregnancy, any choice that a woman makes (or is forced by society to make) will lead to some sorrow. A woman who has an abortion will, at times, be happy for her freedom and ability to make choices free of the specter of a child, but will, at least often, feel some sorrow for the child she never knew. A woman who goes ahead and has the child will, at times, be happy to be with her child, but will, at least often, feel some sorrow over the freedom and the ability to make choices that she lost. A woman who gives the child up for adoption will. at least often, be glad that she "did the best thing" for the child, but will feel some sorrow over not knowing her child or knowing how she/he is doing. Once the unwanted pregnancy occurs, there are no great choices, which is why I think it's so important to leave the decision to the person who's going to have to live with it.
Our options concerning nuclear power are similar. I wish we'd controlled and decreased our population in serious ways several generations ago. I wish that we'd spent the last thirty years working flat out slowing population growth and the demand for energy and discovering new sources of energy. But we didn't. And now, like the woman faced with three bad choices, we have to decide how to go forward. I think that one part of the answer is nukes.
Am I wrong? What do you think? If it's not nukes, then I believe that Derrick Jensen's friend may be right and the only other answer is that the only sustainable level of technology is the Stone Age. What do you believe?
3 comments:
Once we've conserved as much as possible (the cheapest, safest, best idea) we'll still need some big sources of power. Everything is on the table - it's just what you're willing to put up with in cost, beauty, etc. If no CO2 is a goal: One typical US nuclear plant = several thousand big windmills plus huge battery banks = a big chunk of land for solar panels (with batteries), etc. Few involved in the public debate have ever worked at a power plant of any kind. I work in a nuclear plant - and it's far different than most pro- or con- folks imagine. I've tried to present a painless, lay person's guide to energy production and nuclear in my novel "Rad Decision", which is available at no cost to readers at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com. (They seem to like it, judging from the comments at the homepage.) The book has also been endorsed by Stewart Brand, longtime environmentalist and founder of The Whole Earth Catalog, who, like Dr. Lovelock, is calling for a second look at nuclear energy.
It strikes me that I may have mentioned this before at this site - if so, please forgive the repetition.
it's all over but the wondering...
chris from boca
The thing that concerns me about nuclear power is that we can't be trusted to be smart about it.
The Diablo Canyon reactor is within 3 miles of a fault line. This is a case not of if but when it goes.
Yucca Mountain is also near a fault line. I think this fault line is considered inactive but wasn't Mt. St. Helens considered to be inactive before she blew? Additionally, the actual moving of the nuclear waste to the facility has inherent dangers.
I live near an abandoned nuclear facility on the superfund cleanup list.
Admittedly it is anecdotal evidence but many a hunter will tell you about the deformed deer and other wildlife they've seen in that area. Nobody eats 'em that's for sure.
But, those places are already poisoned so no use crying over spilt milk I guess.
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