[NYTr] Co-Founder of Greenpeace Envisions a Nuclear Future

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

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Wired - Nov 19, 2007
http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/11/moore_qa

Co-Founder of Greenpeace Envisions a Nuclear Future

By Alexis Madrigal

Nuclear power presents the ultimate catch-22 for environmentalists. It
doesn't generate a lot of greenhouse gases, but it does produce
long-lasting toxic waste.

No one is more familiar with this tough trade-off than Dr. Patrick
Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace International turned nuclear power
booster. He left Greenpeace in the 1980s over ideological differences
and now is the co-chairman, along with former EPA administrator
Christie Todd Whitman, of the Nuclear Energy Institute's new Clean and
Safe Energy Coalition.

Fossil fuels, nuclear power and hydroelectric power generate 99 percent
of the electricity in the United States. Fossil fuels are dirty, and
hydroelectric power is tapped out. That leaves nuclear power as a
leading alternative. As electricity demand continues to increase, and
with wind and solar technologies generating less than 1 percent of our
country's electricity, some activists are turning to once anathema
energy sources in the war on global warming.

Moore spoke with Wired News about why he thinks nuclear is the clear
winner.

Wired News: We don't want to dwell on the past, but can you describe
your conversion from Greenpeace co-founder to nuclear energy promoter?
What changed your mind?

Patrick Moore: Going back to the early days in Greenpeace in the 1970s
and 1980s, we were totally focused on nuclear war and nuclear testing
in the Cold War. We failed to distinguish between the beneficial uses
of the technology and the evil uses of the technology.

It became clear to me that there was a logical disconnect. The people
who were most concerned about climate change were most opposed to
nuclear power. Greenpeace is against fossil fuel, nuclear and
hydroelectric power. Those three technologies produce over 99 percent
of world energy. What kind of a path to a sustainable future is that?

WN: You take rising electricity demand as a given. Does that mean that
conservationism has failed?

Moore: Not at all, it's just that the economy has grown faster than our
ability to invent new energy efficiency measures. Energy efficiency has
improved about 1.5 percent per year since the beginning of the
industrial revolution. If you look at GDP, it has increased 150 percent
from 1973 to today and energy consumption has only gone up 32 percent.
That is conservation and efficiency in spades. You can't expect to have
the economy growing and at the same time be able to reduce the overall
amount of energy you're using.

WN: Why would you support nuclear energy over, say, coal plants with
carbon capture and storage technologies?

Moore: Because those clean coal technologies are in the R&D stage. The
sequestration of CO2 is a difficult process that would make coal power
cost at least twice -- maybe as much as four times as much. You've got
to separate the oxygen from the nitrogen at the front end. We know how
to do it, but it takes a lot of energy. Then at the back end, you have
to liquefy the CO2 and pump it underground.

I believe that clean coal is largely a marketing concept. I do not
believe it is a description of a real technology that exists today. If
Congress passed a law that all coal plants must sequester their CO2, no
more coal plants would be built.

Plus, there's the liability issue of CO2 escaping from the ground after
it has been put there.

WN: People, often negative to neutral on nuclear, say that nuclear
plants' risk factors are much worse than coal. It seems like your
counter is that a coal plant with a carbon capture and sequestration
system has similar risk factors?

Moore: Yeah, but the risk is maybe even worse.

WN: Can you describe what Clean and Safe Energy Coalition is trying to
do? And how you're trying to impact policy in America?

Moore: Well, we're supported through funding from the Nuclear Energy
Institute, but it is not a lobbying effort. I'm not a lobbyist. What I
have had a lot of experience doing is building coalitions. We're
bringing people at the municipal and state levels together to help
convince the American public that nuclear energy is a key technology
for the future and that there should be a resurgence of this technology
happening now if we want to reduce fossil fuel emissions.

WN: Nuclear energy contributes about 20 percent of total electricity
produced in the United States. How high would you like to see that
contribution go?

Moore: We'd like to see 50 percent by the end of the century, maybe even
more. But for now, the objective should be doubling the number of
nuclear plants in operation.

WN: Nuclear power is often seen as expensive. Can you talk about the
economics of nuclear power in the United States these days?

Moore: It's very simple and straightforward. The capital costs of fossil
fuel plants are lower. With nuclear, the operating cost is lower.

WN: Should we be exporting those technologies to developing countries?

Moore: Absolutely. We should be. Across the globe, the twin drivers of
climate change and energy security are causing people to move to
nuclear.

WN: Do you see nuclear energy as a bridge technology into a renewable
future or do you think that nuclear energy is here to stay?

Moore: I see it as a long-term technology that will continue to be
perfected. We'll learn how to recycle the fuel better and better.

WN: Outside your relationship with Greenpeace, are there environmental
groups or thinkers out there that you support?

Moore: People like Stuart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog,
long-time environmentalist and thinker. He's solidly in favor of nuclear
now. Going back to James Lovelock (founder of the Gaia teory), he was
the first iconic environmental guy who said nuclear has got to be part
of the solution. Jared Diamond. He's in favor of nuclear energy too.