Nuclear Power? Yes Please!
I
n the 1980s plastered on cars and on lapel
badges was the German slogan around a
smiley ‘sun’ face: ‘Atomkraft? Nein Danke’
(‘Nuclear power? No thanks’). Central to the
German Green movement – and virtually all
Green movements – is the rejection of nuclear
power as expensive, dangerous and inextricably
linked to the nuclear weapons industry. It
therefore came as a shock to many Green
activists when one of its leading theorists, James
Lovelock – the man who had coined the word
‘Gaia’ to describe the mutual dependence of all
life forms – came out in favour of nuclear power.
Lovelock argued that the threat from global
warming is now so great that ‘nuclear power is
the only green solution’ (Independent, 24 May
2004). The ‘great Earth system’ – Gaia – is, he
says, ‘trapped in a vicious circle of positive
feedback’: extra heat from any source is
amplified and its effects are more than additive.
This means that we have little time left to
act. The Kyoto Protocol, which aimed to cut
omissions, is simply a cosmetic attempt ‘to hide
the political embarrassment of global warming’.
If we had 50 years to solve the problem then it
might be possible to switch from fossil fuels to
‘renewables’ such as wind and tide power, but
realistically those sources will only make a
negligible contribution to the world’s energy
needs over the next 20 or so years. There is,
Lovelock claims, only one immediately available
source of energy which does not contribute to
global warming and that is nuclear power.
Opposition to nuclear power is based on an
‘irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction,
the Green lobbies and the media’. These fears
are, according to Lovelock, unjustified: ‘we must
stop worrying about minuscule risks from
radiation and recognize that a third of us will
die from cancer, mainly because we breathe air
laden with “that all pervasive carcinogen,
oxygen” ’.
- Is Lovelock right? (For background infor-
mation on nuclear power see the weblinks on
the Companion Website.)
© Volker Möhrke/Corbis
