John De Bueger's emotional call for nuclear power ('Nuclear power opposition misconceived', ODT, 23 July)is wrong about the Greens, wrong about climate change and wrong about nuclear power and its relevance to New Zealand.
His vague accusations of Green misinformation and "dismissive fury" are not supported by any facts. We have said little on nuclear energy recently as there is no need; New Zealanders decided two decades ago that it is not appropriate here and show no sign of changing their minds. De Bueger and his ilk may wish to resurrect the debate, but the arguments against nuclear power have not changed.
While high-level nuclear waste is produced in relatively small quantities, after half a century there is still no proven safe disposal method and management will be required for hundreds of thousands of years. Medium-level waste is still very dangerous and requires disposal, but is much more voluminous.
The link with nuclear weapons has not been broken. Spent reactor fuel is transported around the world, including through the Tasman, for 'reprocessing', which can produce weapons-grade fuel. It also turns a relatively small quantity of high-level waste into 165 times as much medium-level waste. In a classic case of 'green wash', nuclear advocates call this 'recycling'.
Fissile uranium is too scarce to replace fossil fuels worldwide, let alone fuel continued energy growth. Uranium mining has health hazards for workers and the surrounding environment, which is why there is international opposition to a proposed mine in Australia's Kakadu National Park.
While the nuclear industry cites unbelievably low figures for deaths and cancers from the Chernobyl disaster, reputable studies show eight thousand clean-up workers died within five years, a 12-fold increase in thyroid cancer among women in Belarus and a marked increase in leukaemia across Europe among children who were in the womb at the time. Why do we think it couldn't happen here?
The main reason nuclear power would specifically not work in New Zealand is that nuclear plants generate single, large 'bundles' of energy. They are not subdivided into several units like our Huntly power station, where if one unit goes down the others keep operating.
New Zealand's electricity system has to be able to back up its largest unit in case it goes out of service and these reserve turbines must be already spinning at the cut-off point if blackouts are to be avoided. Nuclear shutdowns, and they happen frequently, would remove 1200 megawatts without warning, compared at a large gas station of 400MW or 250MW at one of the four Huntly units. A single nuclear plant would thus risk security of supply because the NZ system cannot provide instant back up at any reasonable cost.
Security is also now a major reason why, compared to the alternatives, nuclear power would be uneconomic in New Zealand. The consequences of a terrorist attack on a nuclear power station would be far, far worse than 9/11. So the true cost of nuclear power includes armed transport for the fuel and waste and security checks on workers. Military ports in the UK take a nuclear accident seriously enough to have neighbouring residents primed for evacuation and iodine tablets pre-distributed to schools. All this, and everyday radiation monitoring and regulation, would have to be costed against just one power station, or perhaps two in the long term, rather than spread across the number that exist in Europe or the US.
And if our nuclear ship ban is "lunacy", as De Bueger claims, why are nuclear-powered submarines banned from civilian ports in the UK or the US?
De Bueger refers to James Lovelock's promotion of nuclear power as a solution to climate change, but omits to mention that the Gaia theorist has specifically exempted New Zealand from his call because of our abundance of renewable energy sources.
The Greens agree with Lovelock that climate change is the planet's most serious environmental challenge, so much of our parliamentary work is dedicated to lowering New Zealand's greenhouse gases - our Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act and its strategy; our work on transport legislation to provide alternatives to cars; our successful three-year campaign for Government to buy back and fix the nation's rail track; our advocacy for shifting some tax off incomes and on to fossil fuels; and our promotion of energy efficiency, solar heat and wind electricity. (I suggest those who think wind turbines are "hideous" should visit a uranium mine.)
I can't say we agree on climate change with De Bueger. Both the sunspots and ice age theories are minority views among climate scientists. While the halting of the Gulf Stream and the resulting cooling of Europe and the eastern US is a horrific possibility, it is not likely to cool the whole globe. Mainstream climate scientists are still expecting an overall, but uneven, warming of the planet. The extra heat trapped by the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has to go somewhere.
No scientist is predicting sea levels will initially rise from melting ice, though that would happen long term if the huge Antarctic ice sheet melts. In the near term sea levels will rise from expansion of the oceans from gradual temperature rise, just as water anywhere expands when it warms.
Faced with the enormity of climate change, the Kyoto Protocol does seem like "trivial tinkering", but it is neither pointless nor a smokescreen. It has taken a decade of painful negotiations to reach this point, but its real purpose is as a platform for further progress. If we abandon it now, with all its agreements on how to measure emissions and share reductions, we will have to start at the beginning again.
Climate change is a serious threat and we do have to quickly cut coal and oil use. But nuclear power is not the way to do it, especially for New Zealand.
