Nuclear power is now redundant
Thank you for your editorial, “The poisoned nuclear debate” (June 3). The trouble with nuclear addicts is they appear blinkered to alternatives, preferring to live in the energy era of the past century. They resolutely refuse to acknowledge the huge, rapid and economically viable advances in renewable energy. A brilliant new solar era lies ahead.
We “greenies” know that modern developments are enabling us to get all the energy we need from renewables — the sun, wind, tides, small hydro and other sources.
We in South Africa have among the best of these resources in the world. The nuclear fraternity fails to acknowledge that renewable costs are dropping as coal and nuclear costs escalate.
Renewable energy enables the most rural of households to have electricity (off-grid), which nucleargenerated electricity, with a centralised grid, can never do. When it comes to employment, the figures from Germany are that nuclear employed 30 000 people, but renewables are already employing 400 000.
Why would anyone want to follow the nuclear route? Quite simply, because those involved and in power stand to make massive amounts of money, and that seems to include our president. The taxpayer will be saddled with the huge capital debt and will face ever-increasing electricity costs.
Why? Private equity never invests in nuclear because it is too risky. Governments commit to nuclear.
I am a realist. I am not being hysterical. I know the advantages but also the dangers of nuclear energy. I know, too, that we cannot fool nature, so we need to be honest.
We do not see this from nuclear advocates. They evade the fact that we have still not solved the problem of managing nuclear waste. They don’t include the escalating expense of decommissioning nuclear plants, which Britain and Germany now find are more than the original construction costs.
They don’t consider the serious health and environmental hazards of uranium mining. It is a myth that nuclear energy is an antidote to climate change. The generating process produces less carbon dioxide than coal, but when the mining, transport, construction and decommissioning are factored in, nuclear is neither clean nor green.
Another myth is that only coal and nuclear can provide sufficient baseload power. But energy from renewables can now be stored around the clock. It just needs the political will and to be freed from the greed of those in power.
This planet is the only one we can live on. We are totally dependent on its wellbeing. If we don’t treat the natural world fairly, we will pay the price.
Has the nuclear fraternity not noticed current global weather patterns, from drought in the Western Cape to unprecedented floods in Europe, China, the United States and Australia? Have they not noticed that the planet is hitting back because we are disrupting millions of years of evolutionary processes?
The government approved R200million to prepare for nuclear procurement and to assure the public about nuclear generation.
We wasted billions of rands on the pebble-bed modular reactor. All this could have been far better spent on skilling, equipping and working for the development of our people. — ■ One trillion rands (and counting) for the nuclear build. That’s a big prize.
So it’s hardly surprising that Kelvin Kemm, a nuclear lobbyist and the recently appointed chairperson of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, is going to give the Mail & Guardian a bit of a rev on anything that is vaguely critical of the nuclear industry.
It was Kemm who equated Greenpeace with terrorists and called for their arrest, who believes Fukushima wasn’t a disaster, and who calls anyone opposed to the nuclear pipe dream unpatriotic.
Kemm is simply trying to improve his hand in the high-stakes game. He’s not looking to debate. His tactics are simple and consistent: get noticed, colonise airtime, shout as loudly as possible about biased newspaper reporting and emotional greenies, and eventually the attention shifts to the tantrum and not the substance. Muddy the waters and the sharks are free to roam.
Every citizen or environmental organisation opposed to nuclear has taken great care to argue from facts, informed opinion and international experience.
The National Development Plan calls for a “thorough investigation on the implications of nuclear energy”. It hasn’t happened.
The closest South Africa has come to a debate is by way of the Integrated Resource Plan 2010, now seriously outdated, and the environmental impact assessment (for Nuclear-1), currently with the department of environmental affairs for its approval.
Let all voices be heard. Let us focus on the need for nuclear, on its cost, on its safety, on its sustainability as an industry, on its effect (positive and negative) on the environment and people, on the management of its waste, and on whether renewables are a better option.
We need energy options best suited to South Africa: we certainly don’t need more hot air. —