Time to renew fight against nuclear distractions (Jonathon Porritt)

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« The Standing of Sustainable Development in Government | Main | Booze and bracket-bashing – inside the real Copenhagen ‘junket’ »

Time to renew fight against nuclear distractions

It was Teddy Goldsmith’s “Memorial Celebration” on Tuesday last week.

I think everyone thought it was extraordinarily important to have a chance to think back over the life’s work of this extraordinary man. From the mid-1960s onwards, he was often the first to raise big sustainability issues, to pursue them ferociously through the pages of The Ecologist (established in 1969 and “virtualised” 40 years later in 2009), and to keep confronting people with the often uncomfortable logic of what it means to fashion genuinely sustainable lives for an ever-expanding number of human beings on an ever-shrinking planet.

Sadly, I didn’t see much of Teddy in his last few years. But he was often present in my thinking about different issues, particularly in terms of his views on population, economic growth, agriculture, GM and so on. And nowhere more powerfully than in the renewed debate about the potential role of nuclear power in a more sustainable world.

Right now, those who still feel that nuclear power has no role to play in a genuinely sustainable world are completely downcast at having to fight those same old battles all over again – this time with the added problem of a growing number of serious environmentalists who’ve thrown in their lot (holding their noses as they go) with the nuclear option.

It has to be said that there’s no enthusiasm for the fight. How could there be? And at the moment, there’s no clear sense of where the leadership is going to come from.

More than ever, we’re going to miss that utterly uncompromising, forensic focus that Teddy brought to bear on the nuclear industry – especially in terms of Windscale/Sellafield, Dounreay, Sizewell and so on.

Without Teddy, who is going to rub people’s noses in the continuing scandal of nuclear waste mismanagement, and remind people that this government promised time after time that there would be no expansion of nuclear power in this country until it had sorted out the problems of nuclear waste?

Who is going to hold to account politicians and industry leaders for whom secrecy remains the default mindset?

Who is going to expose the near-fraudulent accounting practices endemic within the nuclear industry that continue to blind people to the true economic costs and penalties involved in nuclear power?

Who is going to interrogate the philosophical and moral implications of one generation imposing on the next a set of problems and security hazards for which they themselves have absolutely no solution?

And who is going to take on those sincere but utterly misguided environmentalists who’ve “gone nuclear” over the last few years because they feel there’s no alternative?

Sustainable development activists can’t afford to be absolutist about new technology developments. When the facts change, we should indeed change our minds. Even in the Green Party (after very lively discussions with Teddy himself!), I argued that we should be open to the theoretical possibility that evolved nuclear technologies, at some point in the future, might have a contribution to make to a genuinely sustainable energy mix.

And who can tell what lies ahead in that regard. Once issues regarding cost, public subsidy, waste, decommissioning, proliferation, vulnerability to terrorism and availability of uranium have all been addressed and sorted, maybe that day will dawn.

But it hasn’t dawned yet. And there’s nothing in the latest reactor designs currently under consideration that tell me that it’s going to dawn any time soon.

As Teddy would be pointing out right now, by the time that day does dawn, it will almost certainly be too late anyway. And we will have wasted all that time and all that money fixated on our nuclear fantasies, and failing to do the obvious sustainable stuff on efficiency and renewables.

So I don’t doubt that those still opposed to the nuclear option will be drawing down on Teddy’s astonishing life work, as they reluctantly pick up their cudgels all over again.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on December 8, 2009 12:48 PM | Permalink

Comments (5)

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Posted by Pete Roche | December 9, 2009 11:13 AM

Jonathon,
Excellent article, as was your contribution on the BBC about limiting population. Free condoms for all will probably solve that one!
Keep up the good work.
David

Posted by David Pollard | December 9, 2009 8:22 PM

Dear Jonathan,
I am broadly in support of everything you have said, but there is a BUT.
We have an existing nuclear waste stockpile already in the UK that we still do not know what to do with.
This has come from, and is still coming from, only about half a dozen nuclear power stations, some of which are now being decomissioned.
Yet France, our nearest neighbour in Europe, to which we belong as a member of the EU, has around 80 of them that are fully operational and which generate something like 75% of France's electricity I understand.
So, what are the French doing with their nuclear waste?
Taking this further, what is the EU doing collectively with all of its nuclear waste?
Extrapolating, I understand that there are well over 400 nuclear reactors operating all over the world right now!
What is happening to all of the nuclear waste that has been produced in the past and is still being produced by all of these reactors??!!
Have each of the countries that they are installed in solved their waste disposal problem?
Dont we need a global, internationally agreed, solution to nuclear waste disposal?
We all live on the same planet and this stuff is dangerous wherever it is being stockpiled, reprocessed or stored underground - (safely?) or not, as the case may be!
Please note! - Some of these French power stations are much nearer to many parts of the UK than the ones in the UK are!
I cannot stomach us taking up this holier than thou attitude by saying No to any more nuclear power stations in the UK, while also presumably quite happily importing electricity from France(or anywhere else in Europe for that matter) - electricity that is being massively generated by their nuclear power stations - which are all running with all the same risks and problems that ours are presumably - in times of UK power shortages or even blackouts (which seem imminent in the UK if we dont do something big about it very soon!). This is extremely hypocritical and very illogical of us - isn't it?
It is,in truth, the case that if some countries in the world, like France, were not so nuclear powered there would be less coal or oil or gas energy to go round on this planet of ours - and more CO2 emissions to go along with that.
So, it must be said that they are doing us all a favour(?) by taking on board waste disposal and several other risks that we are declining!
If France, the EU, and the rest of the world have solved this nuclear waste problem - why dont they just tell us in the UK how to deal with it safely?
Do you mean to tell me that they havent solved this problem either??!!

If so- WHAT IN GODS NAME ARE WE DOING ON THIS PLANET!
WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE INTELLIGENT HUMAN BEINGS!!!

Isnt there an International Body under UN auspices that is supposed to be responsible for coordinating nuclear energy, hence also nuclear waste disposal?

May I ask - Why aren't they doing their job properly?

You are in position of power and influence that I am not.
Please ask these searching questions.

Yours sincerely,
Bill Dowling, Sandhurst

Posted by Bill Dowling | December 10, 2009 9:27 AM

Dear Jonathon.

I am one of three Green Councillors in Sheffield. Peter Mandelson has recently come to our city and told us that we are going to be at the centre of the UK's nuclear power manufacturing programme. No debate. Nothing. Our local MPs (including a Mr Richard Caborn who we believe is employed by the nuclear industry) are not prepared to debate the issue...

The LibDems (who now control Sheffield City Council) are against nuclear power but won't put up a fight.

How will such a development play in Forum for the Future's annual Green City audit?

Could you send quote for Sheffield Star which we use in a press release?

Many thanks.

Bernard.

Posted by Bernard Little | December 22, 2009 5:00 PM

Jonathon,
The old soldiers are still there, but they remind us: “Never fight on two fronts at once.” But we do need to fight and we need to fight on three or even four fronts: Against nuclear power per se (for some), against the process which is evidently flawed, against complacency and against the “polite dictatorship” which has all but replaced our national and local democracy. We need a champion the size of Lord Ashdown but with the energy and tenacity of 3 Para. In the meantime please look at our website:

www.savekirksanton.org.uk

Perhaps Sir Michael Pitt will recognise truth when he sees it but beware Ed Miliband's trump card.

Elena

Posted by Elena Pintada | December 28, 2009 6:04 PM

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