Better than a smoking gun – straightforward ad against nuclear power from coal industry in AU
I have some very engaged readers. Some of you even follow up if you send something interesting and I do not get around to sharing it with all of you…
Arthur Scargill, former leaders of the UK’s National Union of Mineworkers, published a commentary on August 8, 2008 on Guardian.co.uk that qualifies as one of the clearest examples of a professional coal advocate trashing nuclear power for economic reasons.
Here is Mr. Scargill’s view of nuclear power and his reaction when a long time critic made a statement that accepted that nuclear power might not be worth fighting if it could meet a series of key tests:
Has George Monbiot sold out on his environmental credentials or is he suffering from amnesia? In his article on these pages last Tuesday he states that he has now reached the point where he no longer cares whether or not the answer to climate change is nuclear – let it happen, he says.
Has he not read the evidence presented by environmentalists such as Tony Benn and me at the Windscale, Sizewell and Hinckley Point public inquiries? Is he unaware that nuclear-power generated electricity is the most expensive form of energy – 400% more expensive than coal – or that it received £6bn in subsidies, with £70bn to be paid by taxpayers in decommissioning costs? Is he unaware that there is no known way of disposing of nuclear waste, which will contaminate the planet for thousands of years? Has he forgotten the nuclear disasters at Windscale, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl?
And here is the contrasting summary of Mr. Scargill’s view of coal power:
We are facing a monumental energy crisis, yet we live on an island with more than 1,000 years of coal reserves from which we can provide all the electricity, oil, gas and petrochemicals that people need, without causing harm to the environment. Britain – despite its massive indigenous deep-mine coal reserves – has never had an integrated energy policy based on coal and renewables, and as a consequence we are now facing the worst energy crisis in our history.
Are you convinced yet that at least some of the opposition to nuclear power comes not from “Environmentalists” but from fossil fuel promoters?
Rod Adams is Managing Partner of Nucleation Capital, a venture fund that invests in advanced nuclear, which provides affordable access to this clean energy sector to pronuclear and impact investors. Rod, a former submarine Engineer Officer and founder of Adams Atomic Engines, Inc., which was one of the earliest advanced nuclear ventures, is an atomic energy expert with small nuclear plant operating and design experience. He has engaged in technical, strategic, political, historic and financial analysis of the nuclear industry, its technology, regulation, and policies for several decades through Atomic Insights, both as its primary blogger and as host of The Atomic Show Podcast. Please click here to subscribe to the Atomic Show RSS feed. To join Rod's pronuclear network and receive his occasional newsletter, click here.
In my continuing efforts to produce a narrative about the way that the public was taught to be afraid of ionizing radiation, no matter how low the dose, I came across an interesting write up in the Rockefeller Foundation Annual Report for 1958. Here is some important temporal context. The Foundation Board of Trustees asked…
We’ve been repeatedly told that 97% of climate scientists agree that CO2 emissions from human activity are a major cause of climate change. Scientists who question that assertion are villified as “climate change deniers” and marginalized as representing a fringe point of view. They’re frequently accused of being paid by fossil fuel interests. Politicians, journalists…
Yesterday morning during my commute, I listened to the May 31 edition of Democracy Now (http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl?issue=20050531) and heard an interesting interview with Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. He made a couple of statements that seemed rather incongruous. On one hand, he described his focused efforts since his election to pass legislation banning uranium mining on…
Yesterday, I wrote a quick post that linked a recently issued UBS report’s negative views about the economic viability of merchant nuclear power plants in the US to UBS’s large portfolio of troubled loans to companies involved in various aspects of the natural gas extraction technique known as “fracing” (alternatively spelled as fracking in many…
Conventional wisdom tells us that “Environmentalists” worried about one or more of the below complaints have influenced world opinion and encouraged the current negative investment perception that surrounds new nuclear power plants: Nuclear plants are not completely safe Nuclear energy technology leads to dispersal of nuclear weapons capability Nuclear energy plants are massive and lead…
One of the themes that I continue to pursue is the fact that the established energy industry has the means, motive and opportunity needed to be a silent partner in the anti-nuclear enterprise. When I bring up this topic at nuclear industry gatherings, I am often met with either silence or vocal disagreement. Many of…