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Decades ago, he helped found Greenpeace, which fought nuclear proliferation and promoted environmental causes. But for the last several years, he has been an outspoken advocate of nuclear power as well as a critic of the environmental movement.
He now co-chairs the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a nuclear industry group, with former New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman.
Although nuclear power remains highly controversial, it's also making a comeback as concerns about global warming and electricity prices rise. Sixteen organizations are expected to file applications to build 31 new reactors in the U.S. Nuclear was a big topic at the World Economic Forum at Davos.
Moore spoke with CNET News.com's Michael Kanellos about the potential for nuclear power as well as where he thinks environmentalists went wrong.
Q: When people look at your biography and see you're a Greenpeace co-founder and now a nuclear advocate, they don't believe it. Could you give us a synopsis of your personal history on this issue?
Moore: Well, actually I did feel a little lonely in that corner for a while, but I've been joined by the likes of Stewart Brand, Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel), and (environmental author) Tim Flannery, and now we form a fairly serious phalanx of pro-nuclear environmentalists. In fact, I'm the honorary chair of the Canadian chapter of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy, which has 9,000 members worldwide.
As a co-founder of Greenpeace, even though I was a scientist, I made the same mistake in those days as all the rest of my colleagues did. We kind of lumped nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons as if all things nuclear were evil. It was an honest mistake. We were totally focused on the threat of nuclear war during the Cold War. Nuclear testing was what Greenpeace started on and we were peaceniks, and I think it's fair to say that the antinuclear-energy movement to some extent was formed out of the peace movement.
But in retrospect, I believe we failed to make an important distinction between the peaceful versus the destructive uses of a technology. There are many technologies that are very good that can be used for destructive purposes. Cars can be made into car bombs as long as you have a little bit of fertilizer and diesel oil. Machetes have killed more people than any other weapon in the last 20 years, over a million, and yet they're the most important tool for farmers in the developing world.
It wasn't until after I'd left Greenpeace and the climate change issue started coming to the forefront that I started rethinking energy policy in general and realized that I had been incorrect in my analysis of nuclear as being some kind of evil plot. The perception at the time that nuclear energy equaled nuclear weapons was to some extent based on the fact that the only exception to the separation of peaceful and military nuclear technology was when India bought a reactor from Canada and then broke their promise and used that peaceful reactor to make plutonium to make their first weapon.
Make the case for nuclear power. It emits far less greenhouse gases than coal, but there are the disposal issues.
Moore: Well, it's not only cleaner, it's almost infinitely cleaner in that it has no regulated air emissions. Coal actually releases far more radiation than nuclear plants. There is some radiation released by the nuclear industry, but it's not considered to be of any significance from a health point of view or an environmental point of view. It is cost-effective and it is proven safe. Safety and waste are the two main concerns.
Greenpeace keeps harping on the terrorist issue, but the fact is the nuclear plants in the United States were designed from the beginning to withstand a 747. They are the hardest targets in the United States from a security point of view. They are very closely watched and monitored and they are built in such a way that they are not really a very desirable target. The World Trade Center was a much more desirable target and so were many other political targets and many other industrial targets. So that isn't an issue.
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Patrick Moore,
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Well this guy has a vision so thats important now isnt it and of course there's not enough Silicon, rock, metals, plastics,sun,future carbon energy ect ect and soil to go round now is there.
The Sunnie tribes really didn't get round to working out how the new abilities of resource might fully evolve the world of africa now did they. Anyone fancy a Mcdonalds.
mycroft69
It's not just that clean civil nuclear power replaces incredibly dirty coal (mercury, radioactive ash), it's that the electric power nuclear generates can be used to further clean up the environment.
Imagine replacing all the gas water heaters and furnaces with electric. Imagine replacing gasoline with electric cars. Electrically powered consumers don't pollute - if the power comes from nuclear.
Further out, imagine mining the atmosphere for carbon instead of mining coal or pumping oil. Imagine cleaning dirty water or producing huge amounts of it from seawater. That would take HUGE amounts of power that only nuclear can produce.
All TRUE environmentalists support civil nuclear electric generation.
energy generation, and who isn't at all concerned about
genetically engineered foodstuffs. How sad.
Moore has the audacity to claim that "no one has ever been hurt"
by nuclear contamination. Incredible. The BBC reported in 2004
on the accident in Chernobyl:
"Ukraine's health ministry has estimated that 3.5 million people
have suffered some illness as a result of the contamination, and
the Ukraine Radiological Institute suggest that there were 2,500
deaths."
With regard to wave (=tidal) energy, he reckons "it is so pie-in-
the-sky that we shouldn't even think about it". Not even think
about it? How about using it?
And what about hydro-dams, that provide 60% of electricity in
New Zealand. Has he ever heard of those?
This man is not an environmentalist, he is an enemy of a clean
and safe environment. Most revealing was his last statement:
"It's really interesting, in some ways, how this whole nuclear
renaissance is causing a new alignment of interests around the
world."
Too right. The military-industrial complex loves nuclear
proliferation, and politicians love implementing carbon taxes
while expanding the surveillance state (nuclear power plants are
prime targets for terrorist attacks).
Renewable forms of energy are the only way forward. We need
to invest in renewables now, they are the future.
Nikola Tesla the Greatest Inventor of the last century had invented the Technologies to run cars & power stations without fuel one Century ago and these technologies might still be classified top secret immediately after his death. It is time to resurrect Nikola Tesla's life-works to produce electrical power without fuel and sharing them as it was intended by the Greatest Inventor himself.
Stanley Meyer had invented the Technology to turn Water into unlimited amount of fuel for making Unlimited Power Supply and to run cars and all internal combustion engines with HHO "on demand basis only" and so no storage of the HHO gases is required as it is safer & cheaper to store water instead, but unfortunately he was murdered. He had about more than 40 patents in this Technology. No one Car/Technology Company has pursued this technology further by buying up his technology and put them to good use to save our this planet Earth from Global Warming causing adversed climatic changes and disasters and hardship owing to unlimited and unrestrained use of Fossil Oils and Fuels, thus releasing & emitting enormous quantities of green house gases into the atmosphere. I think some company like Google should buy this Patented Technologies from Stanley Meyer's family and make this open source technology for the world to improve on and make good use of this Technology to save our world call Planet Earth.
Also those Zero Fuel Technologies invented by Nikola Tesla should be declassified and resurrected by the next President of USA to run cars and power-stations to save our Planet Earth from destruction and doom owing to unlimited and unrestrained use of Fossil Oils and Fuels for the whole of last Century. Our World the planet earth must be saved from the exploits of greed of the vested self interests of the fossil oil & fuels producers that pumped the unlimited amount of Greenhouse gases into our common atmosphere for the last century.
"As a co-founder of Greenpeace, even though I was a scientist, I made the same mistake in those days as all the rest of my colleagues did. We kind of lumped nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons as if all things nuclear were evil. It was an honest mistake. We were totally focused on the threat of nuclear war during the Cold War. Nuclear testing was what Greenpeace started on and we were peaceniks, and I think it's fair to say that the antinuclear-energy movement to some extent was formed out of the peace movement."
On one hand Moore describes himself as a scientist and on the other clearly implies his politics shaped his findings. Though he says "It was an honest mistake" and excuses himself, it isn't excusable.
Mr. Moore's eager mixing of science and politics, so widespread in the academic community, is why there is so much skepticism about global warming and other issues.
into your holes. You and the millions of unthinking antinukes
you spawned caused the world to forgo an energy source which
would have allowed us to prevent the release of a great deal of
the CO2 that has been committed to the atmosphere over the
last 30 to 40 years. Now there is a very real possibility that all
the other solutions to that problem will arrive too late, and will
cause very serious problems along the way (think biofuels).
THANKS FOR NOTHING!
The millions of dollars the nuclear power industry uses to promote their image seem to pay off. Even the politicians are using this as a ?green? argument in their presidential race.
Do we want to be at the mercy of a small group of industrial companies? Did we learn nothing from the history of the oil companies?
this site is true:
http://waterpoweredcar.com/stanmeyer.html
Stan was assassinated. It's anybody's guess who was behind the
murder. There are forces in our world that have a vested interest
in keeping cheap, clean technologies off the market.
There is some great information out there, and the bottom line is that amortized capital costs, fuel cycle costs, decomissioning costs, etc are ALREADY taken into account in the price of nuclear, and even with all that it is still competitive with coal. Granted that the recent spike in uranium prices may drive up the expense a bit in the short term, but only until new mining capacity gets up to speed, and/or reprocessing catches on. Here is some information:
http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm
http://www.virtualnucleartourist.com/basics/costs.htm
I've looked over his work. It's basically promising perpetual motion. It talks about making hydrogen and oxygen out of water, then combusting them (back into water.) Sorry, but at 100% efficiency you only get as much energy out as you put in. ICE's are more like 33% efficient, so at best you're getting 1/3 out from what you put in.
I'd recommend finding some good reading on physics and chemistry before you preach about energy con sites.
Tim Flannery (2007 Australian of the Year) stated his position two years ago:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/lets-talk-about-nuclear-power-emandem-other-energy-sources/2006/05/29/1148754933159.html
I don't think the subject of waste was sufficiently addressed. There is a decommissioned nuclear power station (Dounreay) on the northern coast of Scotland which is costing the UK £3 billion to clean up until 2030s. It has completely ruined the beach near there ? if you inhale a spec of contaminated dust you are dead. So don't get emotional ? put a cost on it ? it is expensive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dounreay
We can hope that newer plants would be cleaner, but long-term we should be doing more research into renewables.
The head of the international nuclear power association estimated a couple years ago that we will need 8,800 new nuclear plants to remediate global warming. What are the chances for even one truly ugly accident along the way - enough to scare lots of people into halting further development of nuclear plants? That's one reason there is little private investment, and mostly a lot of the GE types grabbing the free money while they can.
We can't allow global warming to continue - true - but what will it be like 30 years from now when we have a pile of half-finished nuclear plants, no more money for any kind of energy research, and little progress on global warming? Even if you succeed in building the 8,800 plants and the massive paranoid security infrastructure it will engender, you'll always know you gave up on small-scale alternatives when you had the chance.
Big challenges are a time for big ideas and hard work, not just collapsing and turning it all over to the Halburtons and GEs of the world.
I read your interview with CNET last pm.
I thought about the proposition of using nuclear power to boil water to drive electricity generators.
I held out my two forefingers about a quarter inch apart.
I imagined this was the useful life of a power plant, before it has to be decommissioned and replacement generation has to be built, about the same for wind/solar as for nuclear, although as technology improves, wind/solar may be able to stay on station longer, while a thermal plant ? in this case nuclear ? has expansion-contraction degradation, erosion, and contamination problems inside the containment vessel that cause it to be worn out, requiring abandonment and care forever, along with other components outside the containment vessel.
Once a wind/solar unit is worn out, if it is designed to cradle-to-cradle specifications, the materials are far more re-buildable into new equipment, as compared with a nuclear plant.
Then I spread my arms full length, and thought about whether that proportional length to the quarter-inch began to represent the length of time all the waste from nuclear, either shut-down facilities or mining or processing sites, is going to cost everybody to tend to.
Think of all the costs of the nuclear fuel cycle ? planning, engaging staff, finding office space, building a proposal, finding preliminary funding, doing detailed environmental studies, doing economic projections, projected costs of site acquisition, meeting after meeting with backers, submission of proposal to government authorities, public hearings, reading and responding to public comment, political and public relations and legal battles for years and years before a decision is made about mining a particular site, and then final arrangements made for financing based on changing market conditions and permit requirements, negotiating with landowners and/or local governments for condemnations, before massively degrading the mine site?s environment forever could begin, etc.
Then, there is a similar process that goes on with processing facilities, generating stations, fuel handling, de-commissioning, waste storage, replacement generation built somewhere else ? for longer than civilization so far.
Wind/solar has no fuel cycle.
1) No US deaths is clearly false, and
2) Three Mile Island (TMI) was NOT the worst accident in the history of the West:
a. Arco, ID killed 3, Jan 3, 1961. They were so radioactive they had to be buried in lead coffins. Here's an easy link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_National_Laboratory#Fatal_accident
b. Having Moore say "no members of the public" is disingenuous: last I checked US servicemen do not give up their citizenship when they join up. Note that the Nuclear industry is no better when they qualify it as no deaths from "commercial" nuclear operations.
c. US government estimated 3300 early fatalities, and 45,000 illnesses will result from Three Mile Island in 1981. All Moore pointed out is that you can't prove them; small consolation for those whose lives have been cut short by TMI. Even if you don?t believe it, the insurance industry does, and as a result commercial insurance is unavailable to the nuclear industry.
Nuclear Liability after Three Mile Island
William C. Wood
The Journal of Risk and Insurance, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Sep., 1981), pp. 450-464
3) Clean? ? if you don?t count the radioactive waste that doesn?t decompose, and for which there is no disposal. This is the stuff of superfund sites, so there is no honest interpretation that can make it "clean". Currently it is being held in ?temporary storage?, many times in major floodplains. No one can seriously advocating that we trade in a Carbon problem for Uranium and Plutonium. Furthermore claiming that radioactivity with a half-life of minutes with coal is worse than nuclear waste with a half-life of millenia is pure and simple disinformation.
The most important thing is...the products are already on the market. If the money is there, people will buy it. Solar makes electicity the minute you stick it up. I could have solar up and running inside of 4 weeks. So could most of us. A nuclear plant will take 10 years to come on line.
Everything we need to become energy independent and reduce carbon emmissions as well as stimulating the economy is here. Now. Let's go!
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by Sevenizm
July 18, 2008 5:05 PM PDT
- Wow.
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See all 54 Comments >>First , when I was younger I couldnt stand the taste of beer. I didnt like the smell, the look, all that froth on top... nothing. You couldnt get me to cosign for it for someone else to drink. Im older now. Beer still stinks. I can never drink the head (the foam at the top ). I still dont like the taste. But now... I will drink it . I couldnt see the forest for the trees. It wasnt suppose to taste good. It was suppose to get me drunk. I realized very early in life not to lump things together. Just about everything has its own specific purpose. Nuclear Bombs and Nuclear Power are two different things. I figured that out by the time I was eleven. I figured the beer thing out in my early twenties (bout 20 years ago). Now the have flavored beer. for people like me. People change opinions all the time. Thats why I never care what a elected official stood for more than 10 years ago. Thats my cut off for peoples agenda. more then 10 years ago and it doesn't matter to me. I drink beer now.