Favouring Nuclear ‘Does Not Mean Being Against Renewables’
Written by NucNet
Monday, 15 February 2010
The nuclear industry must make it clear to the public that it is possible to be in favour of nuclear energy while also supporting wind power and carbon capture and storage, a conference heard today.
Environmentalist Stephen Tindale told PIME (the conference on Public Information Materials Exchange) in Budapest that the industry has made a mistake in sending out the message that you have to support one or the other.
Mr Tindale, former head of Greenpeace UK and co-founder of the website Climate Answers (www.climateanswers.info) said the industry also needed to be more transparent about the cost of nuclear energy.
“The fact is that people distrust the industry, not the technology,” he said. “We need to be open about the full cost of nuclear, including construction, generation, decommissioning, waste and insurance.”
He said environmentalists were shifting to nuclear energy because of concern about climate change. “Nuclear is not zero carbon, but it is low,” he said. “It produces about 10 percent of the CO2 of old coal power stations.”
Mr Tindale told NucNet in an interview in October 2009 that people need to stop arguing about which is the best of the low-carbon options and accept that we need to pursue all of them, including nuclear, and pay for all of them, and that it won’t be cheap.
