Nuclear growth a disastrous idea

Posted

Mike Gold’s encomium to nuclear power in last week’s Riverdale Press (“Time to go nuclear”) is dangerously off the mark, exhibiting a complacency about the dangers of nuclear that has increased of late due to legitimate fears of climate change.

Homo sapiens IS in a bind – (s)he is sometimes a little concerned about the mess he has made of the planet, but would like to clean it up without changing the consumptive, maniacally growth-oriented practices that created the mess in the first place. He wants (and in many developing countries, needs) to improve his standard of living, but is hard-pressed to figure out how to do so without adding to the carbon burden threatening to destroy the planet’s life-support systems. 

The fact is, however, that solving the climate crisis is incompatible with unfettered economic growth. We’re not going to be able to have this particular cake and eat it, too.

Jeffrey Sachs, erstwhile knight of the free market and director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, has said that the capacity of renewable energy sources to replace carbon-emitting ones is so low that the only alternative is to turn to nuclear energy. “We won’t meet the carbon targets if nuclear is taken off the table,” Sachs has said.  

It’s important to note that Mr. Sachs’ vision of holding the line on climate change means holding the global level of carbon emissions at 450 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere. Achievement of the 450 ppm target, however, would not be a solution but a failure, since it would result in average global temperature increases of more than 2 degrees Celsius, a disastrous scenario for planet Earth, as a vast preponderance of scientists have agreed.

Political leaders half-heartedly look for panaceas to the climate crisis, and nuclear power keeps rising like the phoenix, with its seeming promise of limitless growth at no environmental cost. But as U.K. environmentalist and writer Jonathan Porritt has said “Nuclear power cannot possibly deliver — primarily for economic reasons. Nuclear reactors are massively expensive. They take a long time to build. And even when they’re up and running, they’re nothing like as reliable as the industry would have us believe.”

Were the world to turn exclusively to nuclear power to meet its demands for continued unlimited growth, a new plant would need to open every two weeks, an impossible feat even if it were a desirable one. And of course, though nuclear power plants themselves are not carbon-emitters, from cradle to grave, enormous amounts of carbon must be burned to build, operate, and dismantle them. And where to store the enormous amounts of waste that is radioactive for thousands of years – this conundrum still has no solution.

What every country that continues to flirt with the seeming promise of the atom must face is that the threat posed by nuclear power to the planet’s living systems is arguably as dangerous as that posed by climate change. The post-tsunami meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan are ongoing, with experts scratching their heads as to how to stop them. 

National borders fail to halt the spread of radioactivity, as the world witnessed during the Chernobyl disaster and many others. In 2014, it is time to accept, once and for all, that there is no difference between the atom divided for energy, and the atom divided for war. As the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated, if nuclear power is used extensively to fight climate change, “the security threat will be colossal.” 

 

R

enewable, clean energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal will not only ensure a safe future, they will help build a world that is smaller, more democratic, and lived increasingly at the community level, which will benefit our species, and all species.

New York State can go 100% renewable by 2050, according to studies by Dr. Mark Jacobson of Stanford University, and others. In so doing, the state will see the creation of nearly 240,000 construction jobs and nearly 108,000 operation jobs. 

Between improving energy efficiency, and transitioning to wind, water, and solar, New York’s energy demand could DROP by 36.4% — without dirty fossil fuels, without dangerous and unfeasible nuclear power, and without methane-laden, watershed-poisoning fracking. For more information, please go to www.saneenergyproject.org and www.thesolutionsproject.org

Jennifer Scarlott lives in the Bronx and is a member of the Riverdale-Kingsbridge Coalition for Climate Action

nuclear power, conservation, Jennifer Scarlott

Comments