Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan (pic: Wikipedia).
Canadian professor M V Ramana is extremely scared about climate change. But he is even more scared of a world with more nuclear plants.
His latest book, which exposes nuclear power as a false solution to the climate catastrophe, should be read with the utmost seriousness.
Nuclear power is an inherently dangerous way to produce electricity. It has led to a long list of catastrophic accidents including at Windscale in Cumbria, Chernobyl in Ukraine, and Fukushima in Japanâand many less well known ânear missâ events.
Ramana rigorously details the health costs both to human beings and the environment associated with nuclear power including the contamination of Indigenous communities from uranium mining. The institutional failure to deal with toxic pollution from nuclear waste should be enough to convince everyone to oppose nuclear.
He shows how the nuclear industry has lied about its potential and safety. Japanese corporation Tepco tried to deny links between an increase in thyroid cancer and the 2011 Fukushima disaster even though there is strong evidence that nuclear accidents cause a spike in cancer cases.
Ramana offers a forensic analysis of industry corruption.
In 2016, the construction and engineering companies Bechtel and AECOM agreed to pay just under ÂŁ100 million in fines for knowingly using substandard materials and breaching quality standards. They were also caught lobbying the United States congress to try to scale back regulation.
Nuclear power is expensive compared with wind and solar electricity. Indeed, the more a country invests in nuclear power the less it invests in renewables.
Companies view nuclear as an attractive investment if the exorbitant cost of building and operating nuclear plants and clearing up the waste can be foisted onto the public through taxes or electricity bills.
Some people, including environmentalists such as George Monbiot, say that we need nuclear power to address climate change. But Ramana says nuclear is too slow and costly to offer any contribution here. Indeed, it is an obstruction as it locks us in to existing energy distribution infrastructure.
And it is not carbon neutral. Governments label nuclear power as a renewable energy to evade any questioning of the huge emissions released in the construction, maintenance and clear-up of power plants.
Some have looked to new technologies. Small modular reactors are strongly supported by Keir Starmerâs Labour government and fast neutron reactors are promoted by billionaire Bill Gates.
But none of these are proven at any scale, and the list of radiation leaks, outages, safety and security failures during their development should deter the most ardent fan.
The same can be said for nuclear fusion. Even if there was potential for fusion as a clean and eternal source of heat, it is not possible to scale up production in time to prevent global climate chaos.
Crucially, Ramana identifies the inextricable links between nuclear power and nuclear weapons proliferation.
The material reliance on shared infrastructure, resources and workforce prove that nuclear power exists because of the drive to produce weapons.
No wonder both prime minister Keir Starmer and French president Emmanuel Macron have proclaimed the essential need for nuclear power for the development of the nuclear weapons production in recent weeks.
Unlike the nuclear apologists, Ramana damns capitalism as the cause and rationale for nuclear power.
More and more countries, mostly across the Global South are now declaring themselves nuclear free zones, opposing the militarism as well as the financial and toxic waste associated with the industry.
Climate activists and scientists have shown how existing renewable technologies can more than replace all fossil fuel use and its nuclear cousin right away. But the short term profits from nuclear shows that stopping climate collapse is outside the logic of capitalism. We need the collective power of workers to end fossil fuel dependency and fundamentally change the paradigm of energy production, supply and use.
- M V Ramana, Nuclear Is Not The Solution, is published by Verso, ÂŁ20. Buy a copy at Bookmarks
Source: Socialistworker.co.uk
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