Co-Founder of Greenpeace Envisions a Nuclear Future
Nuclear power presents the ultimate catch-22 for environmentalists. It doesn't generate a lot of greenhouse gases, but it does produce long-lasting toxic waste.
No one is more familiar with this tough trade-off than Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace International turned nuclear power booster. He left Greenpeace in the 1980s over ideological differences and now is the co-chairman, along with former EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman, of the Nuclear Energy Institute's new Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.
Fossil fuels, nuclear power and hydroelectric power generate 99 percent of the electricity in the United States. Fossil fuels are dirty, and hydroelectric power is tapped out. That leaves nuclear power as a leading alternative. As electricity demand continues to increase, and with wind and solar technologies generating less than 1 percent of our country's electricity, some activists are turning to once anathema energy sources in the war on global warming.
Moore spoke with Wired News about why he thinks nuclear is the clear winner.
Wired News: We don't want to dwell on the past, but can you describe your conversion from Greenpeace co-founder to nuclear energy promoter? What changed your mind?
Patrick Moore: Going back to the early days in Greenpeace in the 1970s and 1980s, we were totally focused on nuclear war and nuclear testing in the Cold War. We failed to distinguish between the beneficial uses of the technology and the evil uses of the technology.
It became clear to me that there was a logical disconnect. The people who were most concerned about climate change were most opposed to nuclear power. Greenpeace is against fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power. Those three technologies produce over 99 percent of world energy. What kind of a path to a sustainable future is that?
WN: You take rising electricity demand as a given. Does that mean that conservationism has failed?
Moore: Not at all, it's just that the economy has grown faster than our ability to invent new energy efficiency measures. Energy efficiency has improved about 1.5 percent per year since the beginning of the industrial revolution. If you look at GDP, it has increased 150 percent from 1973 to today and energy consumption has only gone up 32 percent. That is conservation and efficiency in spades. You can't expect to have the economy growing and at the same time be able to reduce the overall amount of energy you're using.
WN: Why would you support nuclear energy over, say, coal plants with carbon capture and storage technologies?
Moore: Because those clean coal technologies are in the R&D stage. The sequestration of CO2 is a difficult process that would make coal power cost at least twice -- maybe as much as four times as much. You've got to separate the oxygen from the nitrogen at the front end. We know how to do it, but it takes a lot of energy. Then at the back end, you have to liquefy the CO2 and pump it underground.
I believe that clean coal is largely a marketing concept. I do not believe it is a description of a real technology that exists today. If Congress passed a law that all coal plants must sequester their CO2, no more coal plants would be built.
Plus, there's the liability issue of CO2 escaping from the ground after it has been put there.
WN: People, often negative to neutral on nuclear, say that nuclear plants' risk factors are much worse than coal. It seems like your counter is that a coal plant with a carbon capture and sequestration system has similar risk factors?
Moore: Yeah, but the risk is maybe even worse.
WN: Can you describe what Clean and Safe Energy Coalition is trying to do? And how you're trying to impact policy in America?
Moore: Well, we're supported through funding from the Nuclear Energy Institute, but it is not a lobbying effort. I'm not a lobbyist. What I have had a lot of experience doing is building coalitions. We're bringing people at the municipal and state levels together to help convince the American public that nuclear energy is a key technology for the future and that there should be a resurgence of this technology happening now if we want to reduce fossil fuel emissions.
WN: Nuclear energy contributes about 20 percent of total electricity produced in the United States. How high would you like to see that contribution go?
Moore: We'd like to see 50 percent by the end of the century, maybe even more. But for now, the objective should be doubling the number of nuclear plants in operation.
WN: Nuclear power is often seen as expensive. Can you talk about the economics of nuclear power in the United States these days?
Moore: It's very simple and straightforward. The capital costs of fossil fuel plants are lower. With nuclear, the operating cost is lower.
WN: Should we be exporting those technologies to developing countries?
Moore: Absolutely. We should be. Across the globe, the twin drivers of climate change and energy security are causing people to move to nuclear.
WN: Do you see nuclear energy as a bridge technology into a renewable future or do you think that nuclear energy is here to stay?
Moore: I see it as a long-term technology that will continue to be perfected. We'll learn how to recycle the fuel better and better.
WN: Outside your relationship with Greenpeace, are there environmental groups or thinkers out there that you support?
Moore: People like Stuart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, long-time environmentalist and thinker. He's solidly in favor of nuclear now. Going back to James Lovelock (founder of the Gaia teory), he was the first iconic environmental guy who said nuclear has got to be part of the solution. Jared Diamond. He's in favor of nuclear energy too.