Greenpeace Selling Anything but Nuclear

The UK Royal Society for Chemistry hosted a debate about the importance of nuclear energy in the fight against climate change. Here is a brief excerpt highlighting the arguments that Doug Parr, the Senior Scientist for Greenpeace offered. Notice how much they sound like sales pitches for some rather large industrial competitors to nuclear energy.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• nuclear
• Greenpeace
• Monbio

[atomicrod59]

@Fordi - there is no problem with using nuclear - unless you happen to want to sell large wind turbines, build natural gas plants, sell fracked natural gas, finance off shore oil wells, run supply ships to off shore wind farms, blow the tops off of mountains to extract the coal..

In other words - competitors hate nuclear and often hire folks like Doug Parr to carry their water.

[Fordi]

@zassounotsukushi

Under some appropriate constraints (such as sufficient carbon output reduction to curb anthropic climate change), anything that involves natural gas (such as the proposed alternative) isn't a useful solution.

[zassounotsukushi]

@Fordi To be fair, as I understand it they were discussing some specific proposal (which may have been hypothetical in fact), and their arguments make more sense when the proposal is understood. I think it said something like they MUST have nuclear or something, so all they had to do was show that there is theoretically a thinkable scenario where they wouldn't need it, which doesn't have much of an obligation to reality.

[etbadaboum]

@zassounotsukushi Four persons were at this debate. Two pros, two cons. Monbiot was there and made quite a good speech. Check it out.

[Fordi]

Wait, so his entire argument is that financial support for nuclear erodes financial support for renewables?

Well, as long as the nuclear support is justified by the cost/benefit analysis* pans out - for nuclear, it does quite well - I don't see the problem.

* including all factors, such as technological scalability, land cost, nuclear waste issues, proliferation risks, and accident risks, global warming, production-related fatalities, etc.

[zassounotsukushi]

1:41 isn't that George Monbiot? I've been following his blog, and I really appreciate him as respectable environmentalist. It's not just nuclear power, he's seriously realistic about all kinds of global issues that we're facing. He is WAY closer to figuring things out than anyone else I know speaking from the environmentalist perspective.

Good cut at the end btw.