Can Environmentalists Change About Nuclear Energy?

By Roland Piquepaille

In a very interesting article appearing in the May issue of Technology Review, "Environmental Heresies," Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog writes that the environmental movement should -- and maybe will -- reverse its opinion on several controversial subjects. He says that environmentalists should be more opened and look at different eyes to issues such as population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power. Will Brand be heard -- or be anathematized by other environmentalists? Time will tell. However, you should read his arguments, even if you're not part of a so-called 'green' movement. Read more...

I don't want to summarize the whole article and here I just want to focus on nuclear energy. But before, and even I don't want to enter a debate about genetically modified crops, here is a short -- and surprising -- quote of what Brand thinks about them.

GM crops are more efficient, giving higher yield on less land with less use of pesticides and herbicides. That's why the Amish, the most technology-suspicious group in America (and the best farmers), have enthusiastically adopted GM crops.

Now, let's look at the issues of climate change and the global warming effect caused by our appetite for energy currently mostly satisfied by burning fossil fuels. Can a catastrophe be avoided? Here are some excerpts of Brand's thoughts.

First, what alternative sources of energy are available today?

Everything must be done to increase energy efficiency and decarbonize energy production. Kyoto accords, radical conservation in energy transmission and use, wind energy, solar energy, passive solar, hydroelectric energy, biomass, the whole gamut. But add them all up and it's still only a fraction of enough. Massive carbon "sequestration" (extraction) from the atmosphere, perhaps via biotech, is a widely held hope, but it's just a hope. The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere is nuclear power.

Nuclear plants are certainly atmospherically clean, but are they safe?

Nuclear certainly has problems -- accidents, waste storage, high construction costs, and the possible use of its fuel in weapons. It also has advantages besides the overwhelming one of being atmospherically clean. The industry is mature, with a half-century of experience and ever improved engineering behind it. Problematic early reactors like the ones at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl can be supplanted by new, smaller-scale, meltdown-proof reactors like the ones that use the pebble-bed design. Nuclear power plants are very high yield, with low-cost fuel.

Brand also looks at the problem of storing radioactive waste and offers an innovative solution, even if I don't see it today as being easily implemented.

The storage of radioactive waste is a surmountable problem. Many reactors now have fields of dry-storage casks nearby. Those casks are transportable. It would be prudent to move them into well-guarded centralized locations. Many nations address the waste storage problem by reprocessing their spent fuel, but that has the side effect of producing material that can be used in weapons. One solution would be a global supplier of reactor fuel, which takes back spent fuel from customers around the world for reprocessing. That's the kind of idea that can go from "Impractical!" to "Necessary!" in a season, depending on world events.

So is nuclear energy in our future? Maybe yes, maybe not.

Nuclear could go either way. It would take only one more Chernobyl-type event in Russia's older reactors (all too possible, given the poor state of oversight there) to make the nuclear taboo permanent, to the great detriment of the world's atmospheric health. Everything depends on getting new and better nuclear technology designed and built.

Finally, after reading Brand's article and/or these excerpts about nuclear energy, do you think that environmentalists will one day embrace the idea of nuclear plants? Please post your comments below.

Sources: Stewart Brand, for Technology Review, May 2005; Wikipedia website

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• Biotechnology
  
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• Nuclear