Anti-nuclear Movement - Criticism

Criticism

Some environmentalists criticise the anti-nuclear movement for under-stating the environmental costs of fossil fuels and non-nuclear alternatives, and overstating the environmental costs of nuclear energy. Of the numerous nuclear experts who have offered their expertise in addressing controversies, Bernard Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh, is likely the most frequently cited. In his extensive writings he examines the safety issues in detail. He is best known for comparing nuclear safety to the relative safety of a wide range of other phenomena.

Anti-nuclear activists are accused of representing the risks of nuclear power in an unfair way. The War Against the Atom (Basic Books, 1982) Samuel MacCracken of Boston University argued that in 1982, 50,000 deaths per year could be attributed directly to non-nuclear power plants, if fuel production and transportation, as well as pollution, were taken into account. He argued that if non-nuclear plants were judged by the same standards as nuclear ones, each US non-nuclear power plant could be held responsible for about 100 deaths per year.

The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) is the main lobby group for companies doing nuclear work in the USA, while most countries that employ nuclear energy have a national industry group. The World Nuclear Association is the only global trade body. In seeking to counteract the arguments of nuclear opponents, it points to independent studies that quantify the costs and benefits of nuclear energy and compares them to the costs and benefits of alternatives. NEI sponsors studies of its own, but it also references studies performed for the World Health Organisation, for the International Energy Agency, and by university researchers.

Critics of the anti-nuclear movement point to independent studies that show that the capital resources required for renewable energy sources are higher than those required for nuclear power.

Some people, including former opponents of nuclear energy, criticise the movement on the basis of the claim that nuclear energy is necessary for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. These individuals include James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia hypothesis, Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace and former director of Greenpeace International, George Monbiot and Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog. Lovelock goes further to refute claims about the danger of nuclear energy and its waste products. In a January 2008 interview, Moore said that "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 realised that I had been incorrect in my analysis of nuclear as being some kind of evil plot."

Some anti-nuclear organisations have acknowledged that their positions are subject to review. Nuclear-energy opponents take the position that militant environmentalist organisations have not changed their views:

While some environmentalists, in the interests of reducing the CO₂ emissions associated with burning carbon-based fuels, have switched from anti- to pro-nuclear power in recent years, it is clear that many — if not most — of the militant environmentalist organizations remain adamantly opposed to the expansion of nuclear power. Many even propose decommissioning and dismantling the existing nuclear power electrical plants.

In April 2007, Dan Becker, Director of Global Warming for the Sierra Club, declared, "Switching from dirty coal plants to dangerous nuclear power is like giving up smoking cigarettes and taking up crack." James Lovelock, who originally proposed the Gaia hypothesis, criticizes holders of such a view: "Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media." ". . .I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy."

The German decision to phase out nuclear power after the Fukushima accident is also regarded as irrational fear driving energy policy. The switch to other forms of energy is expected to cost around $340 billion over 10 years in required investments alone (which represents over 3% of German GDP), The German shift is already increasing carbon emissions and electricity prices in Germany, and might endanger the shift away from coal power in Europe. Furthermore the expected increased demand for natural gas that Germany will require to run it's economy is causing Russia to extend the lives of its RBMK (Chernobyl-type) reactors in order to be able to sell more of its gas to Germany. Therefore the German anti-Nuclear movement is counterproductive as it is causing far reaching unintended consequences, essentially by turning off it's more advanced Nuclear reactors it is putting incentives on Russia to continue to run their older more dangerous reactors.

George Monbiot, an English writer known for his environmental and political activism, once expressed deep antipathy to the nuclear industry. He finally rejected his later neutral position regarding nuclear power in March 2011. Although he "still loathe the liars who run the nuclear industry", Monbiot now advocates its use, having been convinced of its relative safety by what he considers the limited effects of the 2011 Japan tsunami on nuclear reactors in the region. Subsequently, he has harshly condemned the anti-nuclear movement, writing that it "has misled the world about the impacts of radiation on human health ... made ungrounded in science, unsupportable when challenged and wildly wrong." He singled out Helen Caldicott for, he wrote, making unsourced and inaccurate claims, dismissing contrary evidence as part of a cover-up, and overstating the death toll from the Chernobyl disaster by a factor of more than 140.