Why going nuclear is humanity's only hope
There are three parties when it comes to global warming. First, the hard right, which says it isn't happening, and even if it is that we can do nothing about it. Then there are the far leftish Luddites who would smash all power generation systems, allowing only wind turbines, wave power etc. Finally there are the suave centrists who know perfectly well that only nuclear can save us. This book will become their bible.
Tim Gregory is a nuclear scientist who works at Sellafield. He has a serious problem defending his conviction that nuclear is the answer: radiophobia, the terror people feel about radioactivity. Superficially, this terror seems well-founded. There have been some major nuclear power plant disasters: Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979; Chernobyl in the then Soviet Union in 1986; and Fukushima in Japan in 2011. Together they destroyed faith in nuclear as a safe generation system. The industry was stalled and still largely is.
This, argues Gregory, is madness. After Fukushima, only one death can be directly related to radiation – a man who died from lung cancer seven years later. The remaining 20,000 casualties were caused by the earthquake and the ensuing tsunami. Even the direct death count from the Chernobyl disaster only amounted to the 'low to mid thirties'. 'That's about the same number of people who die at work in the United Kingdom every three months,' writes Gregory.
In contrast, a city of one million people using coal power would suffer 22 deaths per week; using gas would result in two or three deaths per week. Globally, some 8.8 million deaths a year are caused by air pollution.
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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Going Nuclear by Tim Gregory review – a boosterish case for atomic energy
There is something biblical about the fraternal relationship between the atomic bomb and the nuclear reactor. Both involve bombarding uranium-235 atoms with neutrons to produce a chain reaction via nuclear fission. Both were made possible in the same instant, at 3.25pm on 2 December 1942, when the Manhattan Project's Enrico Fermi orchestrated the first human-made chain reaction in the squash court of the University of Chicago. 'The flame of nuclear fission brought us to the forked road of promise and peril,' writes Tim Gregory. The bomb came first, of course, but atomic dread coexisted with tremendous optimism about what President Eisenhower dubbed 'atoms for peace': the potential of controlled fission to generate limitless energy. As David Lilienthal of the US Atomic Energy Commission observed, atom-splitting thus inspired a pseudo-religious binary: 'It would either destroy us all or it would bring about the millennium.' Nuclear optimism was shattered by the 1986 Chornobyl disaster but, as the subtitle of his book advertises, Gregory is determined to bring it back. A nuclear chemist at Sellafield, where the Queen opened the world's first commercial nuclear reactor in 1956, he's a cheerleader for Team Millennium. Writing in a Promethean spirit of 'rational and daring optimism', this self-proclaimed 'nuclear environmentalist' believes nuclear energy is the only viable route to net zero by 2050. 'The nucleus could power the world securely, reliably, affordably, and – crucially – sustainably,' he declares. Gregory is an excellent popular science writer: clear as a bell and gently humorous. If you want to understand the workings of fission or radioactivity, he's your man. But he is also an evangelical pitchman whose chapters on the atom's myriad wonders can read rather like high-end sales brochures. Radiation? Not a problem! Less dangerous, in fact, than radiophobia, 'the irrational fear of radiation'. High-level nuclear waste? It can be buried in impregnable catacombs like Finland's state-of-the-art Onkalo or, better yet, recycled through breeder reactors. Gregory wants the reader to learn to stop worrying and love the reactor. Of course, there is a radioactive elephant in the room, which Gregory eventually confronts in the chapter We Need to Talk About Chernobyl. Like Three Mile Island (1979) and Fukushima (2011), the Soviet disaster caused reactor construction to crash. Europe built more reactors in the five years before Chornobyl than it has in the four decades since. The Fukushima meltdown spooked Germany into dismantling its entire nuclear programme. Whereas France, which has one-eighth of the planet's 441 active reactors, currently generates two-thirds of its electricity from nuclear, Germany produces none, cancelling out its gains from renewables and making it painfully reliant on Russian gas. Gregory argues that the construction of reactors like Hinkley Point C in Somerset runs behind schedule and over budget because we've lost the habit, even as China and South Korea streak ahead. To Gregory, all this is a tragic case of radiophobia. Only around 50 fatalities have been directly attributed to radiation from Chornobyl, while the official death tolls for Fukushima and Three Mile Island are one and zero respectively. Roll them all together and the same number of people are lost roughly every three minutes to air pollution caused by burning fossil fuels. No doubt, the kneejerk rejection of nuclear energy can be ignorant bordering on superstitious, but safety concerns demand more space and consideration. Oddly, Gregory doesn't mention Serhii Plokhy's 2022 book Atoms and Ashes, which explains how the Fukushima disaster could have been much worse if not for the courage and judgment of a few key officials. More offputtingly, he attacks renewable energy with roughly the same arguments used by rightwing critics of net zero, warning of 'energy scarcity, industrial wind-down, and food insecurity' if we choose wind and sun over good old uranium-235. But surely it is not a zero-sum game? After a while, Gregory's relentless boosterism begins to lose its persuasive power and he sounds rather like the blithely confident scientist in the first act of a disaster movie. Even though I'm personally convinced that anybody focused on the climate emergency would be foolish to dismiss nuclear out of hand, I suspect that sceptics may require an argument that sounds a little less like 'Calm down, dear.' Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World by Tim Gregory is published by Bodley Head (£25). To support the Guardian order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Independent
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The National
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Why nuclear power isn't the green energy solution you've been told
Instead, energy policy has become a political football with outrageous dishonesty about the real environmental consequences and financial costs of nuclear power. Nigel Farage, Tony Blair and, sadly, some Scottish political representatives are contributing to the false narratives that only building nuclear power stations will save us from future energy crises and that nuclear power is 'green' or carbon neutral. Encouraged by persistent, well-funded charm offensives by the nuclear industry, pro-nuclear narratives are repeated with vehement conviction, ignoring counter-evidence. Pro-nuclear political leaders may also be motivated by their wish to support Britain's capacity to build nuclear bombs. Even setting aside this deadly link, however, there are injustices, harms and risks that contradict the supposed attractiveness of nuclear. READ MORE: £150m renewable energy site proposed for former coal terminal The mining and milling of uranium, the main nuclear fuel, leaves contaminated water and soil, and ill health, historically often without buy-in from or benefit to local people. Hence, the many indigenous campaigns against uranium mining in Africa, Australia, Canada and the USA. The green claim ignores the carbon footprint of this mining, and the milling and construction that involves extraordinary amounts of concrete, the manufacture of which significantly contributes to climate change. Moreover, the nuclear cycle ends with various levels of radioactive nuclear waste that must be kept secure for the decades, hundreds and even thousands of years it remains hazardous to health. There are also ignored everyday harms in their operation. Nuclear plants are by the sea or rivers because their reactors are cooled by water as well as gas. When sucking up water can kill millions of living creatures. They also routinely emit small amounts of ionising radiation within supposedly 'safe' levels. However, scientists agree any additional ionising radiation causes harm in some circumstances. For example, X-rays are avoided in pregnancy because ionising radiation risks harm to the foetus. Women, girls and all infants are more susceptible to ionising radiation than adult males. Spikes of ionising radiation are produced when fuel rods are removed and cooling gas released into the atmosphere (as happens, for example, when sucked-up jellyfish force Torness to make an unplanned shut-down). Such peaks in radiation are concealed in the annual statistics but any pregnant woman or infant who happens to be locally downwind at the time is at heightened risk of harm. Then there is the downplayed risk of accidents. This may be a tiny risk, but the consequences of a Chernobyl or Fukushima-type accident are catastrophic. Similarly, war or a terrorist attack could lead to a disaster enormously more serious than the loss of electricity. READ MORE: Scottish Government scraps plans for national park in Galloway None of this is resolved with smaller and purportedly cheaper modular nuclear reactors – which create the same pollution, waste and risk. Generating electricity from renewables is a cheaper and faster way to make the necessary switch from fossil fuels than nuclear. There are political decisions regarding electricity costs, which include a government levy to pay for the infrastructure required by new renewables. Meanwhile, the large contributions the Government pays towards the costs of decommissioning nuclear power stations come from our pocket through taxes rather than our electricity bills. In the UK, the price of electricity also diverges from the cost of its generation because the Government tolerates a market system of trading, called 'marginal pricing' which sets the overall cost by the most expensive method in the mix. In the last quarter of 2024, the mix was about half renewables: wind 31%, biomass 14%, solar and hydro power 4%; about 30% from burning gas, and about 10% nuclear. Despite this balance, the wholesale cost of gas has typically set the overall price since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There are more flexible alternatives to nuclear when wind and sun are unavailable. Nuclear power plants cannot be switched off when demand for electricity drops because it takes days to safely power down a nuclear power station. Currently, when electricity generation risks exceeding demand, wind farms have to be switched off to allow nuclear power plants to keep running. All forms of energy generation involve environmental impact in their materials, construction, operation and decommissioning and some risks to human health. Nuclear power is particularly harmful, as well as historically linked to injustice and interconnected with weapons of mass destruction. Your voice and pen are needed to tell your political representatives, whatever party you support, 'nuclear power, no thanks' – go back to the evidence and seek a just energy policy for people and planet. Lynn Jamieson is chair of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
