{"id":572350,"date":"2010-05-20T14:59:24","date_gmt":"2010-05-20T18:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthportal.org\/news\/?p=3342"},"modified":"2010-05-20T14:59:24","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T18:59:24","slug":"some-environmentalists-pitch-nuclear-energy-as-a-climate-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/572350","title":{"rendered":"Some environmentalists pitch nuclear energy as a climate solution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Climatewire:<\/a> The nuclear industry has found some environmental allies to sell it to utilities.<\/p>\n

At the Nuclear Energy Institute conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, environmentalists and progressives pitched in to dismiss lingering fears about safety. The industry, on the verge of building its first new plants in the country in 30 years thanks to federal support, also fared well in the new bill by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), which includes tax incentives, expanded regulatory risk insurance, a $54 billion loan guarantee fund and an expedited licensing process (E&E Daily<\/em><\/a>, May 13).<\/p>\n

There’s no more Three Mile Island; no one’s lost their life to nuclear,” said Progressive Policy Institute President Will Marshall. “Nuclear energy’s been decoupled from the nuclear arms race. And now we have climate change.”<\/p>\n

“There’s a cognitive dissonance in the progressive and environmental community around people’s desire to see action to slow global warming and the reality that renewable fuels are pretty far off in the future in terms of their ability to displace baseload generation now,” Marshall added.<\/p>\n

Stewart Brand, author of the 1968 counterculture classic “Whole Earth Catalog” and the new “Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto,” explained his conversion in a worldwide context.<\/p>\n

Environmentalists would much rather see China resorting to nuclear instead of coal-fired power to fill its exploding demand, he said. “Poverty is green,” he said. “The five-sixths of us who are getting out of poverty are getting out of a low-material lifestyle and using more material. Any person who wants to hold them back will be sorely disappointed.”<\/p>\n

Brand also prophesied that mainstream environmental groups would soon follow his lead. While groups like the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund “cannot suddenly say they are for nuclear because they’ll lose two-thirds of their membership, there is movement.”<\/p>\n

Brand claimed that since former Greenpeace leader Patrick Moore began working with NEI in 2007, Greenpeace itself has toned down its anti-nuclear rhetoric.<\/p>\n

“It’s not pro-nuclear, but it’s backing off of being anti-nuclear,” he said.<\/p>\n

No new nuclear possible in Calif., PG&E responds<\/h3>\n

At least one utility official urged restraint. Peter Darbee, CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric, pointed out that California has two strikes against nuclear: a law prohibiting any new plants until the construction of a permanent waste repository, and a loading order for utilities that prioritizes energy efficiency and renewables over conventional energy resources.<\/p>\n

“California is a very heterogenous environment,” he said. “Let’s move ahead with nuclear in those areas where there’s uniform support for it. Let’s begin in areas where there’s the least resistance and have a successful experience.”<\/p>\n

“If the legislation changed and we had a good track record, we’d look at nuclear, but I think that’s some years down the road,” he added. “Given the order they’ve laid out and the companies that have jumped out to take a look at nuclear, let them move ahead and demonstrate that we in America can do this and do this well.”<\/p>\n

Brand responded with a call for optimism. “Jerry Brown’s probably going to be governor again,” he said of the California Democratic gubernatorial candidate, currently the state’s attorney general. “He’s got an open mind about nuclear. Pretty soon we should be able to go to governors and say, ‘Let’s do it all. Nuclear, hydrogen, plug-ins, small and barge-mounted reactors.’”<\/p>\n

He dismissed concerns of nuclear weapons proliferation and radioactive waste disposal.<\/p>\n

Dry cask storage is “a pretty good place to keep the stuff for 50 to 100 years while we think about it, whether to reprocess it or use it in fourth-generation plants,” he said, referring to on-site, cement-encased storage. As for permanent storage, he advocated a deep-underground repository like the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the site 2,150 feet underneath the New Mexico desert that has been storing medium-level radioactive waste since 2004.<\/p>\n

“When you’re done, you pour some concrete on top of the whole mess and walk away,” he said. “Any idiot who wants to dig down 3 miles in the future is welcome to any messes they might encounter.”<\/p>\n

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Climatewire: The nuclear industry has found some environmental allies to sell it to utilities. At the Nuclear Energy Institute conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, environmentalists and progressives pitched in to dismiss lingering fears about safety. The industry, on the verge of building its first new plants in the country in 30 years thanks to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7025,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-572350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7025"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}