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The Return of Nuclear Power |
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By Haider Rizvi*
Faced with the volatility of the world petroleum market, the wealthiest countries, with the United States in the lead, are turning their gaze to nuclear energy.
NEW YORK - In spite of the years of apocalyptic warnings and campaigns by environmental groups, nuclear energy is not on the wane, but quite the opposite, as proved by a recent meeting of Energy Ministers from the world's eight most industrialized nations.
The energy officials reaffirmed the importance of atomic power as an alternative when the world is faced with continued instability in oil prices and a constant increase in demand for energy.
Meeting May 6 and 7 in the U.S. city of Detroit, the ministers of the Group of Eight (G-8) - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States - said that nuclear energy can help solve the problems of economic growth, energy security and environmental protection - as long as security and safe management of waste is guaranteed.
The G-8 nations consume about 40 million barrels of petroleum oil a day, and it is estimated that within 20 years their energy demand will grow 33 percent.
The most enthusiastic of the participants in the Detroit meeting was the host, Spencer Abraham. The U.S. Energy Secretary describes nuclear power as an environmentally harmless source of energy. "It does not pose the risk of emissions," he said, in reference to the intensive use of fossil fuels, which produces greenhouse gases that cause climate change.
Abraham announced that the administration of President George W. Bush is studying the creation of a national "nuclear fusion" plan and supports the project known as ITER, an experimental thermonuclear reactor. The endeavor involves Canada, Japan, Russia and Europe in researching the power of the atom for pacific purposes.
The G-8 countries produce and consume 72 percent of the world's nuclear energy. Currently 20 percent of U.S. electricity is produced by nuclear power plants, while in Germany and Japan the percentage reaches 30 percent, and in France a whopping 80 percent.
For some environmentalists, the meeting in Detroit was "a waste of time." Such was the opinion of Steven Guilbeault, spokesman for Greenpeace International. He stressed that dependence on nuclear energy is no solution to the problems posed by the excessive use of fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal.
Greenpeace and other environmentalist groups say nuclear energy poses serious risks to human health and the environment.
The 1986 nuclear plant accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine, contaminated at least 20 countries, releasing over 300 times more radiation than the atomic bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
But that was not the only major incident. In 1957 the Windscale reactor in Britain burned out of control, and in 1979 the reactor at the U.S. Three Mile Island plant was very close to total meltdown.
Because the risks of nuclear energy are well known, the environmental groups charge that the G-8 meeting was nothing but an attempt on part of the Bush administration to pursue its anti-environmental policies - what they describe as dictates from the energy companies who invested millions of dollars in the president's electoral campaign.
A number of key officials in the Bush administration, including Vice-President Dick Cheney, served as executives in numerous energy industries before joining the government, and that several energy corporations, including Enron, played a crucial role in shaping Washington's national energy policy, according to reports in the U.S. media.
A study released last month by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), a U.S.-based independent think tank, says the United States is in violation of the United Nations Convention on Global Climate Change, which binds rich countries to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The Bush administration withdrew the United States from the negotiations for enacting the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that establishes country-specific targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by the industrialized North.
"The Bush administration's alternative plan to reduce greenhouse gas 'intensity' does not even come close to complying with the UN Convention on Climate Change," says Arjun Makhijani, director of the IEER and co-author of the study.
Makhijani and his colleagues are also critical of "U.S. disregard" for its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
"The January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review makes a mockery of U.S. commitments under the NPT," says John Boroughs, executive director of Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy.
"The disclosure of a variety of options for using nuclear weapons, including by preemptive attack against non-nuclear weapon states, are contrary to commitments to a diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policy made less than two years ago," added Boroughs.
But environmentalists are divided on the issue of nuclear energy.
James Lovelock, one of the pioneers of the environmental movement in industrialized nations, supports the use of nuclear energy.
"Nuclear power plants are not bombs," he said, adding that the "near-pathological" level of safety concerns is not justified.
While admitting that nuclear power is "potentially harmful" to people, Lovelock believes its danger to the planet is "negligible."
"The dangers of continuing to burn fossil fuels as our main energy source are far greater and threaten not just individuals, but civilization itself… Much of the First World (industrialized countries) behaves like an addicted smoker: we are so used to burning fossil fuels for our needs that we ignore their insidious long-term dangers," said the environmentalist.
* Haider Rizvi is an IPS correspondent.
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