Nuclear is Part of Climate Change Solution, Even Greensters Say So

There has long been an unhappy relationship, a profoundly distrustful and adversarial relationship, between environmental advocacy groups and advocates of nuclear energy. Places, events, with names like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have been as much the fear-mongering rallying cries of environmentalists as failures in the implementation or management of nuclear energy technology. But that was before climate change, or global warming, if you will. And, as this Washington Post article makes clear, as the climate and times are changing, so are the views of many environmentalists.

LONDON -- Nuclear power -- long considered environmentally hazardous -- is emerging as perhaps the world's most unlikely weapon against climate change, with the backing of even some green activists who once campaigned against it.

It has been 13 years since the last new nuclear power plant opened in the United States. But around the world, nations under pressure to reduce the production of climate-warming gases are turning to low-emission nuclear energy as never before. The Obama administration and leading Democrats, in an effort to win greater support for climate change legislation, are eyeing federal tax incentives and loan guarantees to fund a new crop of nuclear power plants across the United States that could eventually help drive down carbon emissions.

From China to Brazil, 53 plants are now under construction worldwide, with Poland, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia seeking to build their first reactors, according to global watchdog groups and industry associations. The number of plants being built is double the total of just five years ago.

Rather than deride the emphasis on nuclear power, some environmentalists are embracing it. Stephen Tindale typifies the shift. When a brigade of Greenpeace activists stormed a nuclear power plant on the shores of the North Sea a few years ago, scrawling "danger" on its reactor, Tindale was their commander... "It really is a question about the greater evil -- nuclear waste or climate change," Tindale said. "But there is no contest anymore. Climate change is the bigger threat, and nuclear is part of the answer."

--"Nuclear Power Regains Support," by By Anthony Faiola, Washington Post (11.24.09)

Still, there are significant issues to address and problems to overcome. Nuclear proliferation remains a troubling issue, of course, but observers are now paying as much attention to the increasing cost of constructing nuclear power plants. The WP:

Some leading environmental figures, including former vice president Al Gore, remain skeptical of nuclear's promise, largely because of the high cost of building plants and the threat of proliferation, illustrated by Iran's recent attempts to blur the lines between energy production and a weapons program..."I'm assuming the waste and safety problems get resolved, but cost and proliferation still loom as very serious problems" with nuclear energy, Gore told The Washington Post's editorial board this month. "I am not anti-nuclear, but the costs of the present generation of reactors is nearly prohibitive."

...

Two next-generation plants under construction in Finland and France are billions of dollars over budget and seriously behind schedule, raising longer-term questions about the feasibility of new plants without major government support. Costs may be so high that energy companies find financing hard to secure even with government backing.

But there are technological upsides:

[E]xperts also point to a host of improvements in nuclear technology since the Chernobyl accident and the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979. Most notable is an 80 percent drop in industrial accidents at the world's 436 nuclear plants since the late 1980s, according to the World Association of Nuclear Operators.

And regardless of the positives and negatives, long-time nuclear energy opponents are now listening with open minds to proposals that offer a role for nuclear energy as part of a larger mosaic of energy solutions. Some old issues, as we have noted, have not disappeared or been solved, but there is more confidence that they can be managed, if not solved--if cost and proliferation can be reasonably, workably contained. The WP:

So far at least, the start of what many are calling "a new nuclear age" is unfolding with only muted opposition -- nothing like the protests and plant invasions that helped define the green movement in the United States and Europe during the 1960s and 1970s. As opposition recedes, even nations that had long vowed never to build another nuclear plant -- such as Sweden, Belgium and Italy --have recently done an about-face as they see the benefits of a nearly zero-emission energy overriding the dangers of radioactive waste disposal and nuclear proliferation.

In the United States, leading environmental groups have backed climate change bills moving through Congress that envision new American nuclear plants. An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House, for instance, shows nuclear energy generation more than doubling in the United States by 2050 if the legislation is made law. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing applications for 22 new nuclear plants from coast to coast.

To be sure, many green groups remain opposed to nuclear energy, and some, such as Greenpeace, have refused to back U.S. climate change legislation. Groups that support the bills, such as the Sierra Club, say they are doing so because the legislation would also usher in the increased use of renewable energies like wind and solar as well as billions of dollars in investment for new technologies. They do not say they think nuclear energy is the solution in and of itself.

"Our base is as opposed to nuclear as ever," said David Hamilton, director of the Global Warming and Energy Program for the Sierra Club in Washington. "You have to recognize that nuclear is only one small part of this."

But Steve Cochran, director of the National Climate Campaign at the Environmental Defense Fund -- a group that opposed new nuclear plants in the United States as recently as 2005 -- also described a new and evolving "pragmatic" approach coming from environmental camps. "I guess you could call it 'grudging acceptance,' " he said. "If we are really serious about dealing with climate change, we are going to have to be willing to look at a range of options and not just rule things off the table," he said. "We may not like it, but that's the way it is."

Pragmatism more broadly embraced is a welcome sign. So is broader acceptance--even "grudging acceptance"--of more complicated realities and practical, collaborative approaches. These are the conditions that usher in more comprehensive solutions--solutions more competently and wisely examined, more unselfishly and apolitically supported and implemented. These are the necessary signs and conditions for success in solving big problems. And climate change is a big problem to solve.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/23/AR2009112303966.html