Backing slowly away from the reactors

By M.S.

JUDICIOUSNESS is an admirable trait, and my colleague's expression of cautious confidence in the nuclear-power industry regardless of how the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant turns out is probably the best response. Then again, shallowness and the instinct to panic have their place too. What's clear is that the severity of the disaster is likely to materially affect the attitude of a substantial portion of the public towards nuclear energy. The strongest effect may be on the fairly significant portion of the environmentalist public that had come, in recent years, to grudgingly support more nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels, with their concomitant chemical and particulate pollution and their devastating greenhouse-gas impact.

For many environmentalists, the decision over nuclear power is a close contest. On the one hand, the consequences of a truly catastrophic nuclear accident are likely to be longer-lasting than even the worst oil spills, and may be more poisonous as well. And we have no truly safe way to store nuclear waste. On the other hand, nuclear power plants are a lot safer than they used to be, and they don't emit any CO2; countries that rely heavily on nuclear power, like France and Japan, are vastly lower per capita emitters of carbon than countries like the United States and Canada. On the third hand, and this is a rather decisive issue, the insurance industry has rendered its judgment on the safety of nuclear power, and it is decisively negative. No private insurer will guarantee the potential liabilities of building and operating nuclear-power plants, leaving the industry dependent on government guarantees, effectively massive government subsidies, for its existence.

At the hearings the House Energy and Commerce Committee held today in response to the Japan disaster, these questions were politicised in unsurprising ways. Republican Ed Whitfield called for caution on issuing any new rules, because he supports the nuclear-power industry. Democrat Henry Waxman called for an industry-wide safety review and a new energy policy, because he opposes the nuclear-power industry. And Republican Fred Upton said we need to "learn from the mistakes" of the Japanese and seemed open to more restrictions on the nuclear-power industry, because...he supports the fossil-fuel industry. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu said we need "a diverse set of energy sources, including renewables like wind and solar, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear power." Not exactly controversial, but fair enough.

Meanwhile, for environmentalists who were taking a second look at nuclear energy in the context of climate change, the accident has certainly made it a less attractive option. But the tone of the opposition is pretty sober and non-apocalyptic by comparison to the "China Syndrome"-era anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s. Climate Progress's Joe Romm, not normally known for his restrained rhetoric, exemplifies the thinking pretty well: "Nuclear fails the key tests not because Japan shows nuclear power is inherently unsafe. Nuclear fails the test because it is wildly expensive, and Japan makes clear there is a good reason for that."

(Photo credit: AFP)