We were wrong former nuke protester says

September 12, 2007
By Kristina Riggle

For Patrick Moore, the key to a sustainable energy future is nuclear.

Moore is a founding member of Greenpeace and began his talk Tuesday before the World Affairs Council at Aquinas College by showing pictures of himself from his activist days: with wild, frizzy hair, sitting atop a baby seal to protect it from being clubbed to death, with his compatriots in front of a Greenpeace flag.

Back then, he protested nuclear weapons testing and nuclear energy.

He broke with Greenpeace in 1986 and Tuesday addressed more than 50 people in the Donnelly Conference Center as co-chairman of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which is supported by the Nuclear Energy Institute.

He’s now unapologetic about his support of nuclear energy to provide for the world’s power needs.

As for his change from anti-nuke protester back in the 1970s, he said: “We were wrong.”

In an interview before his address, Moore said he was caught up in the anti-nuclear movement.

“I believe we made a mistake in not differentiating and distinguishing between the beneficial and destructive uses of the technology,” he said. Though in his speech, Moore questioned whether human beings are wholly responsible for global climate change — he likened consensus in the scientific community on that point as “herd mentality.” He said there are good reasons to reduce fossil fuel consumption, such as decreasing air pollution and dependence on foreign oil.

Moore discussed other renewable energy sources, lauding in particular a technology called a ground source heat pump, which draws geothermal energy from the ground, as opposed to solar panels. But he said renewable energy sources cannot do the job alone
“The correct path forward is to replace fossil fuels with a combination of renewables plus nuclear, that gives us an actual chance to make a dent in the amount of fossil fuels being consumed in the world,” he said.

He said the environmental movement itself impedes reduction of fossil fuel use by such opposing technologies as nuclear energy and hydroelectric power.
“If we would only accept the fact that nuclear energy is the key, along with other renewables, to reducing fossil fuel consumption, a lot of things would start to fall into place,” he said.

Moore asserted that nuclear energy is safe and non-polluting. The infamous Three Mile Island disaster did not injure anyone, he said. And the Chernobyl disaster was a result of the Soviets cutting corners on safety and was “an accident waiting to happen.” But even Chernobyl had only 60 deaths directly attributable to the disaster, Moore said, citing a United Nations report.

Moore said a study of 54,000 nuclear workers showed they have a lower incidence of cancer and disease than the general population. Nuclear weapon proliferation is a concern, but Moore said we should not ban all nuclear technology because it can be used as a weapon. The speech, which will be broadcast by C-SPAN, was sponsored by DTE Energy.