Power corrupts; nuclear power corrupts absolutely. The industry developed as a by-product of nuclear weapons research. Its deployment was used to shield the production of weapons from public view. Though the two industries have now been forced apart, in most parts of the world the nuclear operators remain secretive, unaccountable and far too close to government.
Last week the Guardian revealed that the British government connived with corporations to play down the impact of the disaster at Fukushima. Comments from the nuclear companies, a business department official suggested, should be incorporated into ministers' briefings and government statements.
It is through such collusion that accidents happen. The latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency shows that Tepco, the firm that ran the stricken plant at Fukushima, had under-estimated the danger of tsunamis, had not planned properly for multiple plant failures and had been allowed to get away with it by a regulator that failed to review its protective measures. Nuclear operators worldwide have been repeatedly exposed as a bunch of arm-twisting, corner-cutting scumbags.
In this respect they are, of course, distinguished from the rest of the energy industry, which is run by collectives of self-abnegating monks whose only purpose is to spread a little happiness. How they ended up sharing the names and addresses of some of the nuclear companies is a mystery that defies explanation. The front-page story in Friday's Guardian quoted "former government environmental adviser" Tom Burke saying the following about the government's relationship with the nuclear companies. "They are too close to industry, concealing problems, rather than revealing and dealing with them." What the article did not tell us is that Burke currently works for Rio Tinto, one of the world's biggest coal-mining corporations. It has, of course, always refrained from colluding with governments.
All the big energy companies – whether they invest in coal, oil, gas, nuclear, wind or solar power – manipulate politicians, bully regulators and bamboozle the public. Their overweening power causes many kinds of harm; among them is the damage it has done to the case for nuclear technology. Strip away the interests and the arguments are strong.
Let's begin with safety. The best evidence for the safety and resilience of nuclear power plants can be found at Fukushima. Not at Fukushima Daiichi, the power station where the meltdowns and explosions took place, but at Fukushima Daini, the plant next door. You've never heard of it? There's a good reason for that. It was run by the same slovenly company. It was hit by the same earthquake and the same tsunami. But it survived. Like every other nuclear plant struck by the wave, it went into automatic cold shutdown. With the exception of a nuclear missile attack, it withstood the sternest of all possible tests.
What we see here is the difference between 1970s and 1980s safety features. The first Daiichi reactor was licensed in 1971. The first Daini reactor was licensed in 1982. Today's technologies are safer still. The pebble bed reactors now being tested by China, for example, shut themselves down if they begin to overheat as an inherent property of the physics they exploit. Using a plant built 40 years ago to argue against 21st-century power stations is like using the Hindenburg disaster to contend that modern air travel is unsafe.
Even the Daiichi meltdown, the same energy agency report tells us, has caused no medical harm. While the evacuation it necessitated is profoundly traumatic and disruptive, "to date no confirmed health effects have been detected in any person as a result of radiation exposure" from the accident. Compare this to the 100,000 deaths caused by air pollution from coal plants every year, and you begin to see that we've been fretting about the wrong risks.
Compare it to the damage and death that climate change will cause, and you find that our response is so disproportionate as to constitute a form of madness. It's a straightforward pay-off. Germany's promise to ditch nuclear power will produce an extra 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. In June Angela Merkel announced a possible doubling of the capacity of the coal and gas plants Germany will build in the next 10 years. Already Germany has been burning brown coal, one of the most polluting fuels on earth, to make up the shortfall. The renewable technologies which should have replaced fossil fuels will instead replace nuclear power.
This is the point at which anti-nuclear activists reach for one of four arguments. The first is that we should concentrate on reducing energy demand. Dead right we should – regardless of which technology we favour. But even with a massive cut in overall demand, getting the carbon out of transport and heating means increasing electricity supply. The Centre for Alternative Technology's radical and optimistic plan for decarbonising Britain envisages a 55% cut in energy consumption by 2030 – and a near-doubling in electricity supply. Contest this by all means, but you'll have to explain what it got wrong.
The second is that it takes 10 to 15 years to build new nuclear plants. This, they argue, is too long. It is. So is the 10 to 15 years it takes to roll out a major renewables programme. The third is that uranium supplies will run out. They will, one day. The Committee on Climate Change estimates that they're good for 50 years. Long before then, we should have switched to fourth generation technologies, which would run on the waste produced by current nuclear generators. This leads us to the fourth objection: that nuclear waste cannot be disposed of safely.
Even if we assume that we'll want to get rid of them, rather than use them as a valuable fuel, the claim that it's unsafe to put fissile materials underground is inexplicable. Isn't that where they came from? Why is it less safe to leave uranium several thousand metres below the surface, encased in lead, backfilled with bentonite and capped with concrete than it is to leave it, as nature did, scattered around the planet, just beneath the surface? And is it plausible that a future civilisation would possess the technology to extract our waste from those astonishing depths, but not to figure out that it might be harmful?
All these arguments have been obscured by the justifiable distrust bred by industry spin and collusion. There is no contradiction between favouring the machines and opposing the machinations. A new generation of nuclear power stations should be built only with unprecedented scrutiny and transparency – and the same applies to all our energy options. Corporate power? No thanks.
• A fully referenced version of this article can be found on George Monbiot's website
Comments in chronological order (Total 584 comments)
4 July 2011 7:39PM
With respect, this has been my view for years. One more generation of nuclear then surely something will be found that is better and works. Windmills and solar are a joke for the UK. I hope electricity storage can be improved as battery technology grows.
Btw £10 says Germany will not ditch nuclear by 2022. It's just not possible yet.
4 July 2011 7:40PM
*sits back, gets popcorn*
4 July 2011 7:40PM
Is this an argument for nuclear ...?
Why not push for renewables then?
4 July 2011 7:42PM
So true. Which is why I'm installing solar panels, a wind turbine, a water wheel at the bottom of my garden, buying a horse and cart, some chickens and a jersey cow, growing vegetables, and spending all my free time making candles.
The sods won't bamboozle me!
4 July 2011 7:43PM
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4 July 2011 7:43PM
OK, I'll bite.
George, 50 years doesn't sound like very long. And that 'should have' is a very big assumption.
Rather than spending that time using supplies we know will run out so quickly, why not spend those 50 years getting renewables up to the point where they can replace fossil fuels and uranium? There's a not of faith in not-yet existing technological 'fixes' with nuclear but the people who have that faith for some reason don't believe human ingenuity can solve the renewable power problems.
4 July 2011 7:45PM
Absolutely George - i'm afraid the Greens of the world, with their best intentions, have got it terribly wrong on Nuclear. It is an irony that through their protest and mud-slinging, they have been partly responsible for the cess-pit lingering over British skies - caused by the comparatively (to Nuclear) dreadful pollution pumped out by our aged Oil, Coal and Gas stations.
We have a small Wind-farm, installed at Rosyton Towers. I am generally not a huge fan of their visual impact on the landscape, but fortunately a good friend Damien Hirst offered to re-design a model or two and I am most pleased with the results. Unfortunately the general public do not have access to such resources at their desposal, so i'm afraid (yet not at all) to say that it is Nuclear's time has very much arrived.
Yours,
Sir Rosy, C.
4 July 2011 7:46PM
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4 July 2011 7:47PM
Fantastic article. Measured and makes all the right points. And no, I'm not a troll. I'm an engineer.
As Prof Dave McKay FRS says in his wonderful Sustainable Energy book, "Please don't get me wrong: I'm not trying to be pro-nuclear. I'm just pro-arithmetic."
4 July 2011 7:49PM
What about rising sea levels?
4 July 2011 7:50PM
4 July 2011 7:50PM
Power generation should never be allowed to fall into the hands of capitalists. This is one of those Commanding Heights, not just of the economy but of the environment itself, which should not be surrendered to those whose interests are to make short term profits.
And whose control of industry rewards them with wealth sufficient to corrupt society, through control of legislatures, media and judiciary, so that there can never be a sensible, honest discussion of the range of alternatives to be explored. Or the quality of the stewardship or culpability of those arrogating control.
The argument against capitalism, in the end, is that it enables the capitalist class, not only to "pay one half of the working class to shoot at the the other half", in Jay Gould's formulation, but to persuade humanity that their children's health is inconsequential in comparison with the greed of a sociopathic class.
4 July 2011 7:51PM
Sorry, got my formatting wrong...
4 July 2011 7:51PM
Great article, and I agree with everything apart from one detail.
Naturally occurring uranium isn't very radioactive at all. It's after it has been bombarded with neutrons and accumulated all sorts of nasty fission products that it becomes hazardous.
4 July 2011 7:51PM
I think the fact that Monbiot is no lover of nuclear power simply shows just dangerous climate change will be.
I think we should take heed.
4 July 2011 7:51PM
Nuclear Power is the fig leaf of renewable energy procrastination. We just need to bite the bullet and consume far less.
4 July 2011 7:53PM
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4 July 2011 7:53PM
Nuclear energy's possible merits will not be discussed objectively until capitalism has been overthrown. Not only can the profit-motivated nuclear industry not be trusted on H & S, but governments and their finanace capital sponsors can effectivlely hold their populations to ransom, when push comes to shove - with a power industry reliant on one main source..
Alternative energies are still an essential back-up system, and keep some semblance of a society going, when global capital wants to flush countries down the toilet.
4 July 2011 7:54PM
Major reactor incidents under capitalism: Three Mile Island, Fukushima
Major reactor incidents under communism: Chernobyl
Given the severity of consequences of those incidents, I'm not seeing communism as the safe option.
4 July 2011 7:55PM
That is exactly the reason why it is too risky to support Nuclear. Our political institutions are not robust enough to resist the nuclear lobbyists scumbags
4 July 2011 7:56PM
George, another thing:
Nuclear power supporters seem to think that human beings aren't what we are. In general, we're easily corruptible, prone to accidents, and only too happy to have other people in charge of reading the fine print.
I'd wager that neither the nuclear industry nor any of the other major energy industries will ever operate under 'unprecedented scrutiny and transparency'. If that's your position - that 'A new generation of nuclear power stations should be built only with unprecedented scrutiny and transparency' then you're saying that no new generation of nuclear power stations should be built.
How does that square with your pro-nuclear position?
4 July 2011 7:56PM
or maybe is the british way ,they hear the germans are doing one thing ,they need to do the oposite.....oh good old britain,still inhabited by moronic barbarians
4 July 2011 7:56PM
Rosytoncake, I very much agree - it's one of my prime frustrations with greens.
I'm a Green Party member. I'm also proud to say that I support the use of nuclear power - alongside renewables - as a short to mid term solution. Why? Because I listen to evidence and rational arguments. Nuclear power is far cleaner than fossil fuels, it's far safer - both in getting it out of the ground, and during use, and it has long term use as fuel in later generation reactors.
I also support it because to deny funding to fission is to deny funding to fusion - the best hope we have in the longer term.
4 July 2011 7:57PM
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4 July 2011 7:58PM
I agree with George, get me the smelling salts I feel faint.
4 July 2011 7:58PM
A well-balanced article, I'd say. Ta George.
Sure we need to use less power, as you say. But to think we'll really do so is to ignore pretty much everything we know about how global society works.
It's very alarming that Germany is already burning brown coal & plans to build more coal power. And it's very canny of China to be pushing ahead with hi-tech nuclear power. If China is going to become a leading economic power (something I am unconvinced about) then this is just one of the ways in which it will be able to underpin that success.
4 July 2011 8:04PM
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4 July 2011 8:04PM
Whatever energy source industry produces will result in fowl-ups and accidents.
Asking industry to produce renewable energy is a bit like giving a child a pen-knife. It can hurt itself and do some harm to others but the damage is pretty limited.
Asking industry to run a nuclear power station is like giving a child a sub machine gun. The risk from nuclear power is so much greater!
This is a dreadful argument. We know the greatest risk doesn't come from the immediate external radiation but from the ingestion of radioactive particles, particularly alpha emitters. The effect of these are unlikely to show up for decades.
It is only three months since the accident. Should we consider Asbestos safe if people don't die within 3 months of being exposed to Asbestos? Should we consider Tobacco smoking safe if people don't die of lung cancer within three months of starting smoking?
To see the danger from ingestion of radioactive materials you only have to look back to the early days of the 20th century before the risks were known, when radium "health" drinks were popular and when women were instructed to lick their brushes to a point before painting luminous paint on watches. More recent was the case of the Russian Spy Litvinenko who died from Thallium poisoning.
4 July 2011 8:04PM
I like Monbiot because he's not just willing to bulls**** us for his ideological beliefs. There is a massive difference between what you hope to happen and what will actually happen. To put it plainly, it's nuclear power plants or blackouts.
Most people are too busy trying to earn a living.
Power generation should never be concentrated in any two few people's hands whether they be capitalists or not. Whether or not you like it, It has been the competition that existed in the market between energy producers 'capitalists' since the industrial revolution that gave us the remarkable technology we have today.
4 July 2011 8:05PM
Fossil fuels will last us a few decades and are far too polluting.
uranium will last us around 100 years.
There is 4 times as much Thorium on the earth.
Fusion uses heavywater and only requires very small amounts, would last us for thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years. And that's only what is on the earth, it is abundant on the Moon as well as other planetary bodies.
4 July 2011 8:06PM
@monbiot
The Fukushima were between 37 and 40 years old, but by 2018 48 of EdF's NPPs will be 30+ years while 4 of them will be more than 40 years old. The French want to upgrade them and already several in the US have had extensions granted allow them to work for 60 years. If age condemns then there will not be too many left running.
The new build is claimed to run for 60 years from 2020 or so, so if the uranium is to run out by 2060, what happens to them in 2080? The spent fuel ponds will hve to be kept cooled and filtered until the end of the century, or like at Fukushima they will dry out, catch fire and possibly explode, while covering the surroundings with fall-out. Where will the electricity come from then to maintain them safe?
The depleted uranium is useless unless processed and enrichment tails have to be re-enriched with massive SWU. So failed Sellafield would have to be massively expanded for very little - just enough would be gained for 3 NPPs (See NDA report)
Meanwhile EdF in France is in terminal decline as it struggles to keep its ageing fleet going with failing revenues.
Why does it all look different to some people?
4 July 2011 8:08PM
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4 July 2011 8:09PM
fair play to you george, i've always had a lot of respect for people who can change their minds about big, contentious subjects.
That said, i'm not convinced. The economics just don't make sense when you factor in de-commisioning, and say what you like about oil companies and privatised utilities, theres something spectacularly bent and corrupt about the nuclear lobby ("allegedly").
4 July 2011 8:15PM
Nuclear power is OK, provided that::
1. we remember, that, like the banks, it is too big to fail, and the operators know this, so we must not become totally reliant on it.
2. we are aware that we as taxpayers might have to foot the bill in case of a financial failure by an operator.
3. after the incident in Japan a separate and sufficient source of non nuclear electric power is maintained which can easily be transmitted to the nuclear plant if required.
4 July 2011 8:16PM
Last week the Guardian revealed that the British government connived with corporations to play down the impact of the disaster at Fukushima. Comments from the nuclear companies, a business department official suggested, should be incorporated into ministers' briefings and government statements.
_______________________________________________
Will you be apologising to all those you smeared with the "conspiracy theorist" epithet in the early days then, George?
An open letter of apology to Dr Caldicott would be a good starting point.
4 July 2011 8:20PM
Absolutely George - i'm afraid the Greens of the world, with their best intentions, have got it terribly wrong on Nuclear
The Greens are all closet socialists who, having failed to convince us of their economic arguments (to the point where we all piss ourselves laughing), are now busy working on us through eco arguments.
The truth is, most of the UK electorate would rather fry than ever elect a hare brained socialist like Caroline Lucas.
4 July 2011 8:23PM
Not only can the profit-motivated nuclear industry not be trusted on H & S,
By the same argument, do you refuse to ever use the airlines or privatised trains.
4 July 2011 8:24PM
In other words, you're not a supporter of nuclear.
Get real folks, the primary motive of our current systems is profit. This comes before safety and transparency. Nuclear simply should not be built within this framework.
4 July 2011 8:26PM
Hey Rosy
I wouldn't let that bastard near a dust pan and brush.
4 July 2011 8:27PM
A rational and sensible, well-argued article. George, you're in trouble with the watermelons on this one.
4 July 2011 8:33PM
You missed one of the most obvious objections to nuclear. There are there energy scenarios which show we can phase out fossil fuels without using nuclear power. The converse however is not true. There are no scenarios that show anything but a minor role for nuclear. The problem is that the massive scaling up of renewables requires flexibility in the grid -- flexibility that nuclear undermines. You might want to read this paper: http://boell.eu/downloads/Froggatt_Schneider_Systems_for_Change.pdf
4 July 2011 8:33PM
Quote article: 'And is it plausible that a future civilisation would possess the technology to extract our waste from those astonishing depths, but not to figure out that it might be harmful?'
I was going to suggest that Blue Peter bury one of their boxes containing a manual/ warning notice. But then I recalled a recent conversation I had with an *academic* engineer in whose opinion the energy crisis ultimately can't be solved, the human race is 'doomed' (or a word to that effect)...
This article would seem to support that view...
Quote article: '...uranium supplies will run out... The Committee on Climate Change estimates that they're good for 50 years...Long before then, we should have switched to fourth generation technologies...'
But what are these 'fourth generation technologies' & are they realistically going to meet global energy supply & demand?
4 July 2011 8:35PM
allantracy
Caroline Lucas Green MP for Brighton Pavilion.
http://www.carolinelucas.com/cl.html
Do keep up.
4 July 2011 8:38PM
George, I continue to have great respect for your sincerity, your articulacy, your intelligence, and your intellectual honesty. But you write as a man who believes there is still a chance, however small, that global warming can be prevented from becoming catastrophic. And here a few questions arise that I for one would very much like to hear you answer. In particular the following two: Do you think there is any possibility that politicians will cease to endorse consumerism and economic growth? Do you believe that even if they continue as before there is some chance? I'm not trying to be captious: I would like to know your views, and, of course, I would like to believe the chance is greater than zero.
4 July 2011 8:39PM
All this sounds very honest and credible, George, and evokes our sympathy for your very difficult position as an activist who would most certainly prefer not to touch nuclear with a bargepole but is forced to because all the alternatives either don't deliver enough power or create more harm than "modern and safe" nuclear. Our sympathy is doubled when consider that your tortured position is also a lost cause, as nuclear is now unsellable at any price.
Then suddenly, we feel no sympathy at all, because we realize that you're telling us that the same private, for-profit, revolving-door, politicians-in-their-pockets, cozy-with-regulators corporations who are running these crapped-out antique time-bomb reactors are the ones we are supposed to trust with running the modern and safe ones without cutting corners, without employing unqualified labor, or doing any other cost-cutting, profit-boosting nefarious thing that could blow up in our collective faces.
Might as well turn over all nuclear weapons to Blackwater.
The problem isn't just the technology, George, it's the political economy. If it were democratic and transparent governments that ran the nuclear show, we might be a tad more reassured. But when it's totally non-transparent, greed-driven corporations who moreover have the governments we supposedly elect in their pockets, we're fucked.
4 July 2011 8:45PM
Sorry can't get my head round this article at all, it seems confusing & contradictory.
I had better stop reading news. Some reports say there is a lot of contamination but here Monbiot says that there's none.
So in 30 years time Monbiot Junior will be writing about how the latest reactor build & operation safety is infallible compare to those built in 2015.
New improved Persil. Washes whiter than white.
Why did I buy the old stuff then?
4 July 2011 8:49PM
moredead
4 July 2011 7:56PM
or maybe is the british way ,they hear the germans are doing one thing ,they need to do the oposite.....oh good old britain,still inhabited by moronic barbarians
-----------------------
History lesson needed:
That applies to the French, not the Germans
4 July 2011 8:51PM
republicantraveller
4 July 2011 8:15PM
Nuclear power is OK, provided that::
3. after the incident in Japan a separate and sufficient source of non nuclear electric power is maintained which can easily be transmitted to the nuclear plant if required.
-------------------------------
If 3 exists, why do we need nuclear ?
4 July 2011 8:53PM
Look to Thorium
4 July 2011 8:55PM
Nuclear power plants provided 14 percent of the world's electricity production in 2009.
At the moment 30 countries consume energy from nuclear power say we expand that to 200. For nuclear to have a significant impact how long will the uranium last?
Are we all happy with the greater threat of terrorism if we expand nuclear to those other countries?
Nuclear targets have been hit 3 times over the last 5 years in Pakistan.