Climate of Opinion – Stockholm Network

Nuclear is an Environmental Necessity

As more and more countries recognise the benefits of clean nuclear energy, a nuclear
renaissance is taking place around the world In the early 1970s when I helped co-found
Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most
of my compatriots. That conviction inspired Greenpeace’s first voyage up the spectacular
rocky northwest coast of North America to protest the testing of US hydrogen bombs in
Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
After helping lead Greenpeace for 15 years, I left the movement because I could not support its
growing tendency to reject sustainable development and consensus politics in favour of
continued confrontation and ever-increasing extremism. Today I consider myself a sensible
environmentalist, promoting policies based on science and logic rather than on emotion and
misinformation.
I’ve come to realise that nuclear energy, along with a stronger focus on renewables like hydro,
wind and geothermal, is essential to providing a sustainable supply of electricity for domestic,
commercial and industrial use in the future. Furthermore, I believe nuclear energy may prove
to be the key energy source that protects our planet from the negative effects of climate
change, perhaps the biggest environment issue the world faces today.
We know climate change is strongly related to energy in the form of fossil fuels, which account
for about 85 percent of the world’s total energy consumption. Let’s examine the largest global
greenhouse gas emitter: coal. Although it provides cheap electricity, worldwide coal burning creates approximately nine billion tons of CO2 each year, mostly from power generation.
Coal-fired plants cause acid rain, smog, respiratory illness, mercury contamination, and are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
On the other hand, 441 nuclear plants operating globally avoid the release of nearly 3 billion
tonnes of CO2 emissions annually—the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 428 million cars.
If we want to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels like coal, we must choose a cost-effective
solution that’s good for the environment and provides a safe, reliable baseload supply of
electricity.
In my estimation, the most practical approach is to adopt an aggressive programme of renewable
energy plus nuclear. Baseload sources of electricity are required for the grid and the only
viable choices are hydroelectric, coal and nuclear.
Wind and solar power cannot provide baseload power due to their intermittent and unreliable
nature. Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already and its price and supply are too volatile
to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are largely built to
capacity, nuclear is by elimination the only viable large-scale, cost-effective and safe substitute for coal and natural gas.
I am not alone in my realisation that nuclear energy represents the only practical means of
reducing greenhouse-gas emissions while meeting increasing global energy demand. James
Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory and leading atmospheric scientist, believes nuclear energy is
the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole
Earth Catalogue and holistic ecology thinker, says the environmental movement must embrace
nuclear energy to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels.
Sweden has always been an enthusiastic supporter of measures to improve world environmental quality and a March 2005 poll showed that approximately 80% of Swedish residents say that limiting greenhouse gas emissions should be the top environmental priority.
The same poll indicated 83% support for maintaining or increasing nuclear power in Sweden. Sweden is embracing the nuclear renaissance and at the same time doing their part in saving the environment, by helping reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
A growing network of consumers, environmentalists, academics, labour organisations, business groups, community leaders and governments now realise the benefits of nuclear energy – it is clean, cost-effective, reliable and safe. With climate change at the top of the international agenda, we must all do our best to encourage a nuclear energy renaissance