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-------Original Message-------
Date: 05/19/05 07:39:00
Subject: [euratom] Climate change pushes nuclear power back on the agenda
Climate change pushes nuclear power back on the agenda
LONDON: Nuclear power has surged back onto the agenda as a solution
for global warming as leaders of the world's richest nations try to
draw up a blueprint for staving off climate disaster. Nuclear may be
emission-free but environmentalists say the new trend is poorly
conceived, misguided and at worst dangerous. "Nuclear power is back
on the agenda because the industry is lobbying powerfully," said
Friends of the Earth energy specialist Roger Higman.
"But climate change is global so the solution needs to be global. If
you want to persuade someone to give up coal generation then you are
going to have to share with them the benefits of your technology," he
told Reuters. A solution is needed urgently, scientists say. They
warn that average temperatures could rise by two degrees centigrade
or more this century, melting ice caps and bringing extreme weather
events like droughts and floods. The solution, they say, is in
curbing emissions of so-called greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide,
much of which is produced by burning fossil fuels.
The Kyoto Protocol aims to do that. But it only runs to 2012, is
derided as being too weak by some and too tough by others and has
been savaged by the United States, the world's biggest polluter which
has refused to sign. Less than two months before the heads of the
Group of Eight rich industrial nations meet in Gleneagles, Scotland
to search for a solution to climate change, they are still worlds
apart. "So far all the emphasis has been on mitigation of the causes
of climate change," said Richard Tarasofsky at Britain's Royal
Institute for International Affairs think-tank.. "Adaptation to the
effects of it has only really just emerged in a serious way and has
not yet been tackled. "This is partly because it exposes how little
has actually been done on mitigation and also because the
implications of the adaptation agenda are huge and so to try to
foster clear international responses will actually be quite
difficult." As a result, and with investment in renewable energy
sources like wind languishing, nuclear power is resurgent.
US President George W Bush, whose chief climate change negotiator
says the jury is still out on the causes of climate change, has said
in recent weeks nuclear power is safe and clean and would reduce
American dependence on imported oil. British Prime Minister Tony
Blair, who heads the G8 this year and has put global warming at the
top of the agenda for the July summit, said last week climate change
could not be discussed without looking at the nuclear option. "There
can't be debate on climate change without serious consideration of
it," he told reporters.
The Chinese, who will also be at Gleneagles in Scotland along with
the leaders of South Africa, India, Brazil and Mexico, have announced
plans for a major switch from coal to nuclear power.
But apart from the problems of nuclear waste that remains deadly for
thousands of years and the true costs of the decommissioning of old
reactors, there is the issue of security. "We seem to have great
difficulty with the concept of North Korea and Iran having nuclear
power and yet the same people who are arguing that we have to take
firm action against them are equally saying we need a resurgence of
civil nuclear power," said Stephen Tindale, head of pressure group
Greenpeace.
"The idea that you can somehow insulate civil nuclear power from
nuclear weapons is just fanciful. If you look at the debate in
Brazil, those who are calling for nuclear power are essentially the
military who want the toys which go with it," he added. "It just
doesn't stack up as an argument." So the Gleneagles discussions on
global warming look like being a failure, environmentalists say. "As
soon as Bush was re-elected, we switched from seeing Gleneagles as an
opportunity to seeing it as a threat," Tindale said. "There are
reasons to be cheerful. But Gleneagles is not one of them."
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