"We are at the point where there is no sensible alternative to nuclear power if we are to sustain civilization."

James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia theory (Earth is a self-regulating organism)

Lovelock also wrote in his pro-nuclear article published in the Independent, Nuclear Power is the Only Green Solution:

"Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies, and the media. … Even if they were right about its dangers - and they are not - its worldwide use as our main source of energy would pose an insignificant threat compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves and sea levels rising to drown every coastal city of the world. We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilization is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear, the one safe, available energy source, now, or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet."

With Lovelock's call for building nuclear power plants to replace carbon energy as the only way to save civilisation, he clearly advocates a non-green energy solution, and contradicts his own ideas of a Gaian system, as outlined below (from a Green article: Is Nuclear Power the answer to Global Warming?:

"We must leave behind our old ways of thinking in isolated linear cause and effect modules, and learn to think in the way that nature moves, in interrelated web-like systems. The paradox is that nuclear power is an outstanding example of linear thinking. You dig out your uranium, you burn it, and you bury it..."
Main points of the Green article can be summarized as:
  • Electricity produced by Nuclear Power is not CO 2? free
  • Conventional Nuclear Power offers an insignificant contribution to world energy needs
  • Fast Breeder technology means uncontrollable nuclear weapons proliferation
  • Nuclear Power possession now implies Nuclear war later
  • Nuclear Power is not economic - and is not insured
  • Routine discharges cause cancer
  • Nuclear Power Stations are vulnerable to terrorist attack
  • The waste problem is not solved

The seemingly contradictory perspectives of nuclear energy and green Gaia taken by one of the fathers of the environmental movement raise the awareness that it is indeed civilisation that is in grave peril.

The Chinese in their rapid industrial development and search for alternative energy solutions are developing a new type of nuclear reactor, which they claim is by design inherently safe, even if all cooling is switched off: a mass-produced meltdown-proof nuclear reactor.
Read this Wired Magazine artice:
Let a Thousand Reactors Bloom

It may be that this design is a lot safer than the big nuclear power plants built all over the world so far, but it is still not green, because it is not sustainable, since it is based on "burning" uranium fuel, which is mined and processed, and is of limited availability, same as fossil fuels.

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Threads: Green Energy


Page last modified on June 10, 2005, at 05:58 PM