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ShareAslihan Tumer, Nuclear Campaigner, Climate & Energy Unit, Greenpeace, Amsterdam says that nuclear energy will not help in combating climate change
Environmentalists presented a united face while protesting against nuclear energy in the '70s. Why, then, is opinion divided today?
Environmental movement is not divided in it is opposition against dangerous nuclear energy as the first look might suggest. There are some organisations that are claiming that nuclear energy could be a part of the solution in fight against the climate change. These organisations are not only representing a small fracture but also would not be called as environmentalists. There is important amount of organisations that are claiming to be environmentalists but largely supported by nuclear industry in discussions on nuclear energy.
What prompted this change in opinion among some environmentalists?
A small group of environmentalists has changed their opinion mostly because of the support they receive from the nuclear industry. The world opinion on the other hand has been under constant onslaught from these groups and the nuclear industry in the past years.
More recently, as the world faced the undeniable effects of climate change, the panic has pushed different people and nuclear industry successfully exploited the fears of people and present nuclear energy as a solution supported by a number of previously well known environmentalists using their earlier credentials.
Don't you think that carbon emission today is a much bigger problem than risk of disasters such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, which would seem like one-off cases?
Climate Change is a big problem and so is nuclear energy. You cannot try to solve a problem by creating another one. Besides nuclear energy cannot help us to halve our carbon emissions by 2050. Even if the whole nuclear power plants been doubled at best it offer only a 5% cut in carbon emissions long after 2020. That's far too little, far too late. In contrast the proven renewable energy technologies are available now can be constructed and brought online quickly and provide immediate cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Moreover, nuclear will not be able to deliver -- it has not solved its intrinsic problems of waste and possible accidents and/or attacks. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl might have been the most well-known accidents, but we face different levels of accidents and "near misses" every day. According to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), there have been nearly 200 meltdown "near misses" in the US alone since Chernobyl.
Nuclear reactors might have been modernised since Chernobyl accident, but there continues to be unexpected failures of technology and mistakes of operators, combined with lack of transparency and economic or political pressures.
Rapidly developing countries like India and China need energy. If they don't go the nuclear way then the option is to go for coal-based plants. Which among the two do you think is the lesser evil?
There is no lesser evil; they are both harmful to the environment in different ways. We do not need to make a decision between nuclear and coal fired power plants because we can secure our future energy demand with energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. China and India for instance are already producing nearly a quarter of the world's renewable electricity which is a very rapidly growing technology.
If we look at India specifically, Greenpeace's Energy Revolution scenario for India shows that large-scale investments in energy efficiency measures could limit the increase in energy demand to just one-third above the current level by 2050, rather than see it triple, according to business as usual scenarios. By mid-century, 60% of India's electricity could be produced from renewable sources keeping India's CO2 emissions at the level of 2010 levels.
What are the alternative energy sources - can these energy sources meet the large-scale requirements?
It is possible to access six times more renewable energy than the current global demand with using existing technologies. Greenpeace's "Energy Revolution" scenario shows a sustainable, equitable and realistic pathway to 2050. With intelligent policy and infrastructure choices now renewable energy such as wind and solar and energy efficiency could supply 50% of global energy by 2050. Renewable technologies are the fastest growing part of the energy sector, already accounting for nearly 17% of the world's energy needs compared to 6.3 % share of nuclear energy.
We need an energy revolution with energy efficiency, cleaner use of fossil fuels, renewables and state of the art de-centralised power stations at the centre. Together these solutions have the potential to deliver reliable low carbon energy quicker and cheaper. They are also safer and globally applicable, unlike nuclear.
Should nuclear power plants be awarded carbon credits as per the Kyoto Protocol?
Nuclear energy is irrelevant in terms of tackling climate change as it would only deliver a negligible amount too late. Attempts to legitimize nuclear energy within Kyoto protocol are dangerously distracting us from the real solutions that can help us to reduce our carbon emissions such as renewable energies.
Can you compare the movements of the '70s to those of today? How are things different?
Today is not the world of '70s anymore, the world has changed so the green movement has to change and adapt new realities. As we face new challenges, we have to re-evaluate our positions against any issues that are relevant. It is clear as it was thirty years ago that nuclear power was not able to solve to its intrinsic problems even there are some improvements in the reactor designs. Addition to problems such as waste and accidents nuclear energy also presents a new danger of taking away the attention from real solutions to climate change such as energy efficiency and renewable energies.
