CRETINS, OOPS, I said it again!

Seriously, the denialists are all over the shop with their arguments.
There is no GW.
There is,GW, but it's not our fault.
There is no energy crisis.
Addressing the energy crisis will destroy all our economies.
Renewables will never cope with peak load.
Solar is too expensive.
Nuclear is more environmentally friendly because we can utilise it more quickly.

Any one who chooses to believe that the same decision makers, that oversaw the profligate greed and corruption that brought us to our current economic position, has any agenda other than pandering to the wants of that corporate greed, raise your hands.

Now for the rest of us, well the good old US could have built enough solar power facilities to power the whole of the US, for less than they have spent on Iraq, but toppling Saddam is far more important than sustainable energy.

Now the China argument, if they do it, we should too.

You can leave your details with the mods, and be first to trial another outstanding chinese practice we should emulate.

The new mobile execution buses will be starting tomorrow, so we can keep up with their great human rights record as well, we certainly want to advance our culture along the lowest common denominator principles of developing nations.

muso wrote on Sep 28^th, 2008 at 3:33pm:


Thanks for that Muso.

So then mantra, what will the World's population need to be reduced to in order to make renewables viable?

PS how do you propose to achieve this reduction?

Here's something for the nuclear power skeptics:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4836556.ece

Mark Lynas: the green heretic persecuted for his nuclear conversion
The climate change expert Mark Lynas has been scorned by eco-colleagues for daring to speak up for atomic power


I know I should be furious. The EDF takeover of British Energy means that four nuclear power stations could now be built around the UK, the first nuclear new build in a generation. As a long-standing Green party member, one who chops his own wood, grows his own leeks, keeps chickens and puts the kids in washable nappies, antinuclear indignation should spring easily to my lips.

After all, energy is something I care about. The last time I checked my carbon budget, I came in at a fifth of the national average. I rarely fly, even when booked to address faraway audiences about my personal obsession, climate change – a subject I’ve covered in three books. Whenever the word “nuclear” comes up at my talks, a shudder runs through the room. Because everyone knows that real environmentalists loathe nuclear power. It is just evil. Full stop.

Except, well, I don’t believe that any more. Just a month ago I had a Damascene conversion: the Green case against nuclear power is based largely on myth and dogma. My tipping point came when I discovered just how much nuclear power has changed since I first set my mind against it. Prescription for the Planet, a new book by the American writer Tom Blees, opened my eyes to fourth-generation “fast-breeder” reactors, which use fuel much more efficiently than the old-style reactors, produce shorter-lived waste and can also be designed to be “walk-away safe”.

Best of all, these new reactors – prototypes of which have already been tested – can produce power by burning up existing stocks of nuclear waste. As Blees puts it: “Thus we have a prodigious supply of free fuel that is actually even better than free, for it is material that we are quite desperate to get rid of.” Who could object to that?

Just about everyone on the eco-scene, it turned out. I began to receive e-mails from friends and colleagues warning me off the topic. Did I really want to risk my entire reputation by alienating the green movement? The backlash to my first magazine article on the subject prompted my inbox to collapse, the blogs to drip with venom, the dirty looks to multiply.

A former Greenpeace campaigner posted on my website that I needed to show “a bit of humility” and “less arrogance”. On Greenpeace’s blog my views were mocked as “wishful thinking of the day”. On Radio 4’s Today programme, Green party leader Caroline Lucas accused me of having “lost the plot”. When I argued back, she accused me of “just being silly”. I was a traitor.

This was a moment I had been dreading for nearly three years, ever since I first suspected that much of what I had been brought up to believe about nuclear power – that it is, without exception, dirty, dangerous and unnecessary – was untrue. Science has moved on. The old figures just don’t stack up any more.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, nuclear is just as low-carbon a power source as wind and solar: the world’s 439 operating nuclear reactors save the planet from 2 billion extra tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, which would have been emitted had coal been used instead.

And those dangers? They’re still there but we need to discuss them truthfully. Take Chernobyl. We all know it was a disaster: the Greenpeace website states a death toll of 60,000 already and predicts another 140,000 deaths in the future. But these statistics fly in the face of mainstream science: according to the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, 28 people died in the initial phase and several thousand more have suffered from nonfatal thyroid cancer because of the accident. The UN report concludes that “there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident” – so the real death toll from the world’s worst nuclear accident is tiny. On a deaths per gigawatt-year basis, nuclear is safer than coal and oil.

Curiosity whetted, I searched the scientific literature for evidence to support the other great green charge levelled at nuclear power: it kills its neighbours. I sifted through piles of rigorous epidemiological studies from all over the world, searching for proof that people who live near nuclear sites are more prone to cancer and leukaemia. None of the reputable journals turned up a link.

These are just two examples of eco-myths: there are many more. If only we were allowed to discuss them without being flayed for heresy.

When I e-mailed a senior ecological scientist with my conclusions, he agreed, but only privately. “Do not cite me as promoting nuclear,” he begged. I am still shocked that people of his stature are too intimidated to speak out. The result of this fear is that the public is dangerously misinformed about nuclear power.

I have finally thought of something useful that I can do with my Green party membership card: I’ll auction it on eBay and send the money to EDF – with a suggestion that it beefs up its marketing department. Any bids?

pjb05 wrote on Oct 2^nd, 2008 at 4:49pm:


I'm not worried about speaking up for nuclear. I don't know one single environmental professional in my circle who would disagree with me.

Solar thermal is looking pretty good, but even that will not fill the gap entirely.  We need a mixture of renewable technologies.

Really Mantra? I thought he countered those so called experts rather well. Their main argument which kept cropping up was that what they really want is to curb power use and our industrialised way of life. They see nuclear power as a 'get out of jail free card'. And you accuse Lynas of hidden agendas!


Mark Lynas
September 22nd, 2008 at 03:13 PM
Theo – I’m not arguing that the waste problem can be forgotten about, but that it is pretty negligible in terms of its impacts on the environment (and people), certainly when compared with other non-renewable energy sources. With vitrification and deep disposal, the reduced amount of waste would not present much of a threat. Remember, there is radioactivity all around anyway in the ambient environment – radon gas is a good example – which our bodies have evolved to cope with. Check out the Cohen online book (ref #2) for more on that.

Plus, as I said, this is not an either/or with nuclear and renewables. I see nuclear as replacing coal and gas primarily. Ideally we’d see a 60/40 split in UK electrical power with renewables/nuclear, though how the grid is managed is pretty complicated.

In terms of powering down electricity use – this simply isn’t going to happen. It’s wishful thinking. Sorry. We’re going to see continual increases in electricity use, particularly as the transport sector is increasingly electrified (cars, trains etc). And as George Monbiot’s book shows, going for energy efficiency can peversely increase electricity use, but making it cheaper. The main thing is to have a strong cap on carbon, not energy per se.

- Dr David Lowry: It’s not good enough to say that my article is “replete with so many errors” if you can’t actually name any. Please oblige, or recant. Simply posting someone else’s tangentially-relevant article is not going to make your argument for you.

- Osbert Lancaster: I totally agree that we need to reduce pressure on ecosystems. Nuclear is probably the energy source that does this best. Fossil fuels and biofuels are worst. What we want to avoid is swapping a below-ground usustainable source with energy harvested from the ambient biosphere, further to the detriment of the remaining natural ecosystems. Renewables like wind and solar are very benign at small scales, but scale them up too far and there will again be impacts – on land use, biodiversity, water, toxics etc. I think that in terms of pure ecology nuclear is probably the most benign of all, despite the fact that there is a waste issue. Just look at the natural environment around Chernobyl, which is flourishing, because all other human impacts have stopped.

Anja – as I say in the article, nuclear on any comparable scale is safer than most other energy sources, partly because it is subject to such a stringent regulatory system. Has there been a single death in the UK attributable to having 20% nuclear electricity for the past 30 years?

Peter and Maurice – The old chestnut about how long it takes to build a nuclear power station and the urgency of climate change simply won’t wash (sorry to mix metaphors!). Are you suggesting that we won’t need any energy in 15 or 20 years? No? Then we need a long-term solution to the problem. Sure, we can peak emissions in the meantime with quicker options, but we still need energy indefinitely. Plus – if there were less challenges to nuclear from greens, it would be a lot quicker to build! The time is mostly about the planning system, not the engineering.

The 'good' reason for changing ones mind on nuclear power might be global warming and the fact that the technology has advanced, Mantra.

In the case of Chernobyl this reactor was a a type which had never been contructed in the West. It didn't have a containment vessel and the roof was actually made of flammable materials!

Also new advances include thorium reactors which don't have the same issues of weapons proliferation and radioactive waste. Pebble bed reactors have also been developed which are inherently much safer than conventional designs.