Nuclear power regains support

TOOL AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE
Even green groups see it as ‘part of the answer.’

The Dungeness Nuclear Power Station in Britain, where the government plans to fast-track the construction of 10 plants. (Dan Kitwood/getty Images)

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

To be sure, many green groups remain opposed to nuclear energy, and some, such as Greenpeace, have refused to back U.S. climate change legislation. Groups that support the bills, such as the Sierra Club, say they are doing so because the legislation would also usher in the increased use of renewable energies like wind and solar as well as billions of dollars in investment for new technologies. They do not say they think nuclear energy is the solution in and of itself.

“Our base is as opposed to nuclear as ever,” said David Hamilton, director of the Global Warming and Energy Program for the Sierra Club in Washington. “You have to recognize that nuclear is only one small part of this.”

But Steve Cochran, director of the National Climate Campaign at the Environmental Defense Fund — a group that opposed new nuclear plants in the United States as recently as 2005 — also described a new and evolving “pragmatic” approach coming from environmental camps. “I guess you could call it ‘grudging acceptance,’ ” he said.

“If we are really serious about dealing with climate change, we are going to have to be willing to look at a range of options and not just rule things off the table,” he said. “We may not like it, but that’s the way it is.”

That position, observers say, marks a significant departure. “Because of global warming, most of the big groups have become less active on their nuclear campaign, and almost all of us are taking another look at our internal policies,” said Mike Childs, head of climate change issues for Friends of the Earth in Britain. “We’ve decided not to officially endorse it, in part because we feel the nuclear lobby is already strong enough. But we are also no longer focusing our energies on opposing it.”

Some leading environmental figures, including former vice president Al Gore, remain skeptical of nuclear’s promise, largely because of the high cost of building plants and the threat of proliferation, illustrated by Iran’s recent attempts to blur the lines between energy production and a weapons program. Other countries seeking to build their first nuclear plants would probably purchase fuel from secure market sources in Europe and the United States, rather than enrich their own. And experts remain cautious about the prospect of seeing so much nuclear fuel in global circulation.

“I’m assuming the waste and safety problems get resolved, but cost and proliferation still loom as very serious problems” with nuclear energy, Gore told The Washington Post’s editorial board this month. “I am not anti-nuclear, but the costs of the present generation of reactors is nearly prohibitive.”

Meeting tough goals

Yet for nations such as Britain — home of the world’s first commercial nuclear plant — a return to nuclear is seen as essential to the goal of meeting aggressive targets for reducing carbon emissions.

As reserves of natural gas from the North Sea dwindle, Britain also is betting on nuclear to help maintain a measure of energy independence.

After years of resisting new plants after the Chernobyl meltdown, the government did an initial about-face in 2007, calling for a list of possible sites for reactors. This month, British officials announced plans to fast-track construction of 10 plants. They will also push for more wind and solar energy, but those technologies are still seen by many to have limitations because of problems with transmission and scale, while “clean coal” plants are years from commercial viability.

As may happen in the United States, the plants in Britain are expected to go up in communities with existing nuclear complexes where support for them is already high.

Tindale, 46, publicly switched his position less than a year after leaving his job as head of Greenpeace here. But his opinion began to change earlier, he said. Rather than being vilified by environmentalists, his public shift has sparked a thoughtful debate here among opponents, supporters and those on the fence.

“Like many of us, I began to slowly realize we don’t have the luxury anymore of excluding nuclear energy,” he said. “We need all the help we can get.”