Published: July 7, 2007

New York Press – Clean Air? Go Nuclear!

Published: July 7, 2007

July 7, 2007
by John DeSio

Though Dr. Patrick Moore might have been a founder of Greenpeace, today he is one of their strongest critics.

Moore’s divergence from the organization is largely due to what he sees as its abandonment of reason, favoring emotional appeals over sound environmental policy to make its points. This morning at Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr.’s green forum, Moore illustrated this point using the example of nuclear power and hydroelectric dams, which burn clean yet face fierce opposition from environmentalists.

“The big problem that we face politically, this is a strange logical inconsistency that is throughout the body politic, not just in the United States but in Canada, in Europe, is that the people who are most concerned about climate change and reducing fossil fuel consumption also tend to be opposed to building big hydroelectric dams and nuclear power plants,” said Moore.

Moore noted that New York State has some of the best carbon dioxide emissions rates in the nation because it gets so much of its power either from nuclear reactors or hydroelectricity. Other states such as Texas burn coal, and are dirtier for it. “If you actually look at the facts it is the nuclear industry that reduces more [carbon dioxide] than any other technology,” said Moore.

One individual at the forum mentioned the use of solar panels to offset carbon dioxide emissions. A noble thought, said Moore, but one only the very rich can afford, noting that electricity from solar panels is at least five to ten times as expensive as buying electricity from off the power grid.

“It’s simply not cost effective,” said Moore. “The unfortunate truth is that only wealthy people can afford to put solar panels on the roof unless they have huge subsidies, which is basically your own money anyway being recycled through the government.”

Moore said energy aficionados should look at the examples set by France and Germany. France is entirely powered through nuclear and hydroelectric power and has some of the lowest CO2 emissions rates in the world. Germany has invested in wind solar energy and its closing its nuclear power plants and still thinks it can lower its emissions. Germany, said Moore, is in an impossible situation.

France’s energy policy works, said Moore, noting that the country is building even more nuclear plants. Locally, Moore noted that if the Indian Point nuclear plant in Westchester were to close it would lead to more polluted air for the metropolitan area.

Carrion said that nuclear power does not come up as a real alternative for energy consumption because politicians are afraid to really discuss the topic. “You can’t blame them,” said Carrion. “Any public policy maker who gets up there and talks about nuclear energy, you have as a backdrop some of the events that have taken place in the last 25 to 30 years that scares the beejezus out of you.” Carrion added that the general public needs to be better educated on nuclear power as a start in order to pull the discussion away from the emotional. “There are fearmongers out there who prey on this,” said the borough president.

Moore said that nuclear power is actually safer that your car, since more people are likely to die in a car crash than have ever died in nuclear accidents. “Nuclear energy has never killed anybody in the United States,” said Moore. “Three Mile Island actually didn’t even injure anyone, yet it made everybody afraid. Nothing bad happened. It is about irrational fear, because we should be much more afraid of our car than we are of nearly any other machine that exists on earth, cause it’s the likeliest thing to kill you.”

Another commenter in the room charged that though a nuclear disaster has not happened in the United States, we need only look to the example of Chernobyl and the devastating effects it had on thousands of people. Moore immediately shot back that perceptions on Chernobyl are wrong, that this United Nations report shows that only 56 deaths can be directly attributed to the Chernobyl accident. Moore further said that the amount of radiation from the accident was just slightly higher than background radiation and that there is no indication of higher rates of cancers in the Chernobyl population than any other population.

“And they’ve been studied to death,” said Moore.

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