A Greenie Learns to Love Nuclear Power

George Monbiot is a pretty die-hard lefty, but the Japanese earthquake and tsunami have made him rethink nuclear power:

You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.

If other forms of energy production caused no damage, these impacts would weigh more heavily. But energy is like medicine: if there are no side-effects, the chances are that it doesn't work.

There's more at the link.

The sky is falling crowd (or perhaps a better description is the "sky is fallout crowd") immediately pounced on the problems at Fukushima as evidence that nuclear power is too dangerous to allow in the future. And yet, they managed to ignore the fact that this plant was 40 years old and about to be retired when this all happened. Don't you think there have been improvements in nuclear energy technology in the last 40 years? And even if there weren't, the old place still held up pretty well despite a pounding that should have returned that area to the stone age.

There will always be risk in energy production, but the benefits of nuclear are very obvious.  I remember touring the USS Midway, a retired aircraft carrier now berthed in San Diego.  The Midway was an oil-burning ship that had to be refueled about every three days when in sea operations.  The guide mentioned that the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was berthed across the harbor from us, was a nuke boat that only had to be refueled every 23 years.  Think about that for awhile and tell me again we can't afford the risk of using nuclear power.