The Double Standards of the Anti-Nuke Enviro Crowd

The Fukushima nuclear reactor fiasco fractured the ranks of environmentalists into two camps: pro- and anti-nuclear.   The two sides had always been there but they co-existed without much rancour at all.  Now we're starting to resemble Sunni and Shiite Muslims, of course without all the bombings and beheadings.

I find the anti-nuke side hypocritical, self-righteous and astonishingly willing to lapse into the same double-standards they so indignantly ridicule on the global warming front.   There are exceptions.   My friend Jim Bobby remains ardently anti-nuke but he's concluded we've already lost the war to prevent runaway global warming anyway.  From JB's perspective, I can accept the anti-nuke stance.  To my mind I suppose he's probably right on our prospects for taming the global warming threat too but the repercussions of that defeat are so horrific that I don't think we can ever surrender that fight.  I've wrestled with this but I won't, I can't.

The Guardian's top eco-correspondent, George Monbiot, also supports the nuclear option as a bridge energy source to help wean us from fossil fuels.  He's been roundly roasted for that since the Fukushima fiasco but, today, he's fired back.  Here are a few of his points:

Double standard one: deaths and injuries

We rightly lament the horrible consequences of industrial exposure to radiation. Two workers at Fukushima have so far received radiation burns and 17 have been exposed to levels of radiation considered unsafe. This is and should be a cause for serious concern. It is also worth remembering that no one has yet received a dose of radiation that is known to be lethal as a result of the Fukushima disaster. But if we are concerned about industrial injuries, why do we say nothing about the deaths and injuries in the industry most likely to replace nuclear power?

...Chinese coal mining alone kills as many people every week as the worst nuclear power accident in history – the Chernobyl explosion – has done in 25 years.

And this is to say nothing of the far larger number of injuries that coal mining inflicts, in particular the hideous lung diseases which plague so many miners and cause long, lingering and terrible deaths. When was the last time you heard an anti-nuclear campaigner drawing attention to this daily carnage?

Double standard two: the science

We emphasise, when debating climate change, the importance of the scientific consensus, and reliance on solid, peer-reviewed studies. But as soon as we start discussing the dangers of low-level radiation, we abandon that and endorse the pseudo-scientific gibberish of a motley collection of cranks and quacks, who appear to have begun with the assumption that it must be killing thousands of people every year, and retrofitted the evidence to match it.

Such people exist in every field, especially those that are politically contentious. We should, by now, have learned to be wary of them. But it seems that the temptation, for people hoping to make the case against nuclear power, is overwhelming.

Double standard three: radioactive pollution

If low-level radiation really was the problem that some environmentalists say it is, the focus of their campaign should be coal plants, not nuclear power. As Scientific American notes:

"The fly ash emitted by a power plant – a by-product from burning coal for electricity – carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy."

This is because coal contains trace amounts of uranium and thorium, which are concentrated in the ash. Not only does this expose people living around coal plants to higher doses of radiation than people living around nuclear plants; but the regulations for disposing of fly ash are far weaker than the regulations for disposing of low-level nuclear waste. 

These are just a few excerpts from Monbiot's article.   To read more, follow the link above.   Meanwhile today's Guardian also contains a report about soaring world coal prices driven by Asian demand that stands to rapidly increase if Fukushima drives Asia away from nuclear power and more firmly into the arms of coal.