Nuclear power: challenging the Green Party 12 August 09

The UK Green Party has several canonical beliefs - and one of them is that nuclear power is bad. I asked for space to outline in the party magazine, Green World, why I thought this needed re-examining. The editorial board kindly agreed, even though it is highly unusual for articles running contrary to party policy to be published.

Us greens are well-accustomed to taking science seriously. Our view of a planet in peril – because of greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, pollution and so on – is substantially informed by scientific endeavour. Unlike climate change deniers, who cherry-pick scientific data to suit their arguments or ignore science altogether, we allow our worldview to change as information changes about the state of the planet. This, surely, is our great strength. Our politics comes from a rational assessment of the threats to the natural world and human civilisation, and our strategies and values are based on this.

On climate change, the story is clear and unequivocal. The most recent scientific meeting in Copenhagen agreed that most climate indicators – Arctic sea ice, Greenland ice loss, sea level rise and others – are changing at rates at or above the IPCC’s worst-case scenarios. Greenhouse gas emissions are above business-as-usual forecasts. At a recent meeting of marine biologists I attended in London, there was significant debate about the likely fate of the coral reefs – whether they would be functionally extinct by 2030, or a couple of decades later. The entire marine ecosystem is threatened by ocean acidification and warming.

Driven by a rising sense of desperation, many scientists are now moving into making policy suggestions too. The national science academies of the G8+5 countries (the Royal Society in the UK, the National Academy of Sciences in the US, and others) issued a statement in June which strongly argued for the “very rapid worldwide implementation of all currently available low carbon technologies”. This meant energy conservation, wind, solar, carbon capture and storage (‘clean coal’) – and nuclear power. According to the IPCC, the world’s current fleet of 436 operating nuclear reactors, which together produce 16% of global electricity, save 2.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. After hydroelectricity – which carries significant environmental costs – nuclear is our biggest source of low-carbon power.

My contention – and the contention of an increasing number of environmentalists – is that rejecting nuclear power in an age of global warming is illogical, and comes about because of an unscientific approach to risk. Certainly, all forms of power generation carry risks: big dams can collapse, and drown thousands of people. Wind turbine blades can kill birds and bats – though to nothing like the extend that anti-wind campaigners claim. Oil platforms can catch fire: the explosion on board the Piper Alpha platform in 1988 killed 167 people; a death toll arguably worse than Chernobyl. Coal has an appalling safety record – thousands die in Chinese mines every year, and in the US entire mountain tops are blown up to get at the coal underneath.

Nuclear power carries risks too – radioactive releases can potentially contaminate surrounding areas, harming people and nature. But we need a science-based approach to assessing these risks. Many people think that ‘cancer clusters’ surround nuclear installations. But epidemiologists have found no convincing evidence for this, despite repeated studies in dozens of countries. In actual fact this is hardly surprising: radioactive releases from nuclear power stations are tiny – the amount of radiation exposure we all receive in Britain due to nuclear power is less than 1% of natural background levels. (It is important to remember that we are all constantly exposed to naturally-occurring radiation, from the soil, rocks, water and sun.)

There is also the issue of nuclear waste. Nuclear power is not renewable – it depends on a once-through fissioning of uranium and plutonium. (Incidentally, geothermal power mostly derives from radioactive decay in the centre of the Earth – an entirely natural process.) Radioactive wastes are an inevitable by-product. But myths here abound: in a recent radio debate with a Friends of the Earth spokesperson, I was confronted with the argument that “if the dinosaurs had used nuclear power, we would still be dealing with the waste today” – and indeed, many people believe that nuclear waste remains dangerous for millions of years. In fact, if the unused uranium and plutonium are removed (as they should be, for recycling reasons), the radioactivity levels of the remaining waste will be back down below the levels of the original naturally-occurring uranium ore within less than a thousand years.

Nor does technology stand still: in a recent missive, the NASA climate scientist James Hansen outlined the benefits of Fourth Generation reactors. “4th generation uses almost all the energy in the uranium, thus decreasing fuel requirements by two orders of magnitude” (removing any worries about ‘peak uranium’). “Best of all,” he goes on, “4th generation reactors can ‘burn’ nuclear waste, thus turning the biggest headache into an asset”. Hansen believes that in order to keep global warming at tolerable levels, coal use must be phased out globally by 2030 – and he realises that this is an impossible challenge without nuclear power. This is especially clear when you consider that countries which are phasing out nuclear, like Germany, are instead marching back towards the dirty option of coal, despite the rapid uptake of renewables.

Another argument surrounds proliferation, and certainly controlling the spread of nuclear weapons is a major strategic challenge for humanity. But many countries with large-scale use of nuclear power, like China, India, Russia and the US, already have nuclear weapons. None of them are short of weapons-grade material. (Indeed, it is a little-known fact that one in ten American lightbulbs are kept lit by plutonium from decommissioned Soviet weapons.) Here in the UK we have a 100-tonne stockpile of plutonium, plenty to blow up the whole world if we wanted to. This actually represents a tremendous energy source, in an era of looming power shortages. And internationally, we must of course – under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty – provide civil nuclear power to countries that request it, whilst ensuring that the fuel cycle is properly controlled and inspected.

I could go on. My argument is simple: that the benefits of nuclear power, in an age when we are desperate for large-scale sources of low-carbon energy, far outweigh the risks. The Cambridge professor David MacKay has proposed that in order to decarbonise Britain entirely by 2050, we must slash energy consumption by 50%, increase renewables (mainly wind) 20-fold – and also build more than 60 new nuclear stations. Note that this is not an either-or strategy: we need every tool we have got to throw at this problem. That is why I worry that the Green Party risks marginalising itself in the energy debate – and looking outdated as a result – if it continues to rule out nuclear power without a more thorough consideration of the risks and benefits. I am not the only one saying this: a number of leading Greens (with a capital G), including George Monbiot and Chris Goodall, feel similarly. Perhaps it is time that our voices were heard – for the sake of the climate, as well as the party.