The World’s Largest Coalition of Nontheists and Nontheist Communities!

Debate: Is Nuclear Energy Worth the Risks?

Ben and I hosted this debate last night at our local Ethical Society (a humanist unchurch). I learned so much about nuclear energy. I may be leaning on the pro side now, based on what was presented. What do you think?

Scott Bond is a registered professional engineer with twenty seven years of experience in the nuclear power industry. He has a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Missouri, Rolla and is currently employed with Ameren Missouri at the Callaway Nuclear Power Plant. Ed Smith is the "no-CWIP" Coordinator with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment.

View more notes and info in the video descriptions:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA58B8C31CEA87AED

Tags: Ameren, Ed Smith, Ethical Society, Missouri, RPD, Responsible Public Debate, Scott Bond, St Louis, debate, energy, More…environmentalism, nuclear

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on March 16, 2012 at 2:27pm

In my view nuclear energy isn't worth the risks, at least not with current political/cultural/economic conditions. It's just too dangerous. Had Japan gone entirely for wind/solar/tide power their catastrophe couldn't have happened. It's not just tsunami, river flooding, and earthquake hazards. It's not just the ease of terrorist attack. There's also economic pressure, to minimize capital investment in safety, to cut corners because it's cheaper, to buy political favor in order to guarantee public funding, to generate phony public support, to lie to the public for the bottom line -profit this quarter.

In Japan "on June 26, ... the government held a televised public hearing on ... whether the reactor in Saga Prefecture should ...be reactivated. On company orders, employees of Kyushu Electric Power and its subsidiaries sent in e-mails pretending to be citizens urging restarting of the reactor. According to an independent commission, the source of those orders was the governor himself."[The Fukushima Resistance, p 8, The Nation, March 26, 2012]

According to Eric Ozawa, a new generation of resistors to nuclear energy has emerged in Japan, "drawing inspiration from the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street".

"The common basis for the movementss," said Yuko Tonohira, co-founder of Todos Somos Japón, "is that we've all agreed that the time of a wealthy few profiting from the sacrifice of many has to be over. In the case of Japan, the presence of nuclear power plants is the exact illustration of that unequal system.... With or without the accident, nuclear power is built upon the sacrifice of human lives for the profit of the few." [emphasis mine][The Fukushima Resistance, p 8, The Nation, March 26, 2012]

It's unwise to use a high risk technology which requires great expertise when low risk technologies that don't require great expertise can do the job. When a wind turbine fails, it falls over and maybe kills a cow. You can easily rebuild. When a nuclear reactor fails it makes a section of your country permanently uninhabitable, and damages the DNA of populations. Even if it takes a thousand wind turbines to replace one nuclear power plant, their combined long term risk is negligible in comparison.