Consultant Dan
27 April 2011
Best information on nuclear power, after Fukushima
The Fukushima nuclear disaster has shocked the world. We were told that nuclear power was safe and now we are seeing that this was a lie.
Hopefully people will now be inspired to research and debunk the other big lies about nuclear power: that it is cheap and a good solution to climate change.
Even the Economist is questioning whether Fukushima will end the nuclear era. The Guardian’s John Vidal agrees.
If you want to be well informed, I recommend you read the work of Mycle Schneider and Anthony Froggart. They are two of the world’s authorities on the reality behind nuclear industry spin.
Start with this report commissioned by the German Federal Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation and Reactor Safety. The report uses Schneider’s own databases to show that
- nuclear corporations, national regulatory bodies and the international regulator (IEAE) are largely untrustworthy
- the nuclear fleet and workforce are aging and contracting, not growing
- industrial capacity and skills put limits on the potential of the industry to be pump-primed into a rapid growth period
You should then look at a paper by Mark Cooper, called ‘The Economics of nuclear reactors: Reneaissance or relapse?’, from the Institute for Energy and the Environment, Vermont Law School.
Cooper argues that the nuclear ‘renaissance’ was never likely to come about, because nuclear power is too expensive, even without taking into consideration the big ‘externalities’: high level waste, weapons proliferation, terrorism and natural disasters.
If you still need any convincing, you must buy the latest update of Mycle Schneider’s state of the nuclear industry series, from the good people at the Worldwatch Institute. Here is a free draft version.
Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. To get a sense of the expensive, dangerous, remediation work still going on at the site, have a look at this sideshow from MIT.
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