Greenpeace Co-Founder Now Proponent Of Nuclear Energy

Newsweek:

Patrick Moore is a critic of the environmental movement--an unlikely one at that. He was one of the cofounders of Greenpeace, and sailed into the Aleutian Islands on the organization's inaugural mission in 1971, to protest U.S. nuclear tests taking place there. After leading the group for 15 years he left abruptly, and, in a controversial reversal, has become an outspoken advocate of some of the environmental movement's most detested causes, chief among them nuclear energy. NEWSWEEK's Fareed Zakaria spoke to Moore about his sparring with the green movement, and why he thinks nuclear power is the energy of the future. Excerpts:

ZAKARIA: At Greenpeace, you fought against nuclear energy. What changed?
MOORE: My belief, in retrospect, is that because we were so focused on the destructive aspect of nuclear technology and nuclear war, we made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons, as if all things nuclear were evil. And indeed today, Greenpeace still uses the word "evil" to describe nuclear energy. I think that's as big a mistake as if you lumped nuclear medicine in with nuclear weapons. Nuclear medicine uses radioactive isotopes to successfully treat millions of people every year, and those isotopes are all produced in nuclear reactors. That's why I left Greenpeace: I could see that my fellow directors, none of whom had any science education, were starting to deal with issues around chemicals and biology and genetics, which they had no formal training in, and they were taking the organization into what I call "pop environmentalism," which uses sensationalism, misinformation, fear tactics, etc., to deal with people on an emotional level rather than an intellectual level.

Read the whole story: Newsweek

Comments

[PermacultureMainer]

anyone bother to tell this Patrick Moore guy about Peak Uranium?

[Moxo]

Oh... he doesn't know what to do with the waste either!

[willo]

How about if we store the waste from this stuff in his back yard. Look, until we address and solve this waste issue, we are beating a dead horse. Come up with a permanent solution, and then we can talk about building more nuke plants.

[dadw5boys]

Nuclear power is good where the majority of the waste come in is in the building of one.
Stupid rules on the construction sites.
Like:
All equipment must be painted with non nuclear bearing paint.
How can a hand cart or forklift or bull dozer be a problem with the paint job.
ALL that equipment is gona away from the reactor when the fuel rods are delivered.
In fact all construction is finished that could possible be a problem when the fuel rods come.
THIS IS A REQUIREMENT MADE ON CONTRACTORS BEFORE ANY NUCLEAR MATERAIL IS EVERY BROUGHT TO THE REACTOR.
Usually SOME GOVERNORS REALTIVE is the ONLY ONE LISCENSED TO SELL the non Nuclear bearing paint. Stuid regualtions like that.
The profiteers line up for regulations to profit from the construction no matter the problems.
They control that part of the Nuclear business and I am on board too.

[CookieWrites]

There is nuclear waste sitting in drums at every nuclear plant in America. It is very dangerous but cannot be shipped across state lines because nobody wants it. Moore should visit Iceland, Sweden and the other countries who have successfully become carbon neutral in their energy usage which has also made them prosperous. For the real details visit Robert Kennedy's website. It sounds to me like Moore is cashing in by getting on the payroll of the nuclear propoponents. This is one more example of shoddy mainstream journalism on the part of Newsweek.

[S1m0n]

Pat Moore has been auctioning off the "greenpeace" section of his CV off to industry for nearly 20 years.

Over that time, he's fronted a wide array of bogus astroturf-roots pro-industry 'groups' organized by public relations companies paid by industry associations. In fact, he's spent longer doing this than he ever did being a member of greenpeace.

So it ain't news that he's now in favor of whatever they paid him to be in favor of this year.

[instagladiator]

Very interesting article. But I noticed he did not expand on the problem of waste materials except to say that it could be recycled and reduced to 10 percent waste. Not knowing anything about nuclear waste, I guess my first question would be: Is the recycling process expensive and lengthy? And does it present further waste materials?

[Sumocat]

The recycling process is actually productive and profitable. In simple terms, a normal reactor uses only a small fraction of the nuclear material available in its fuel before it becomes waste. A breeder reactor reprocesses that waste, making more of the nuclear material usable, while also producing electricity. Electricity is produced during the entire process and the reduction in waste is dramatic.

France is the pioneer of the system. They identified early on the problem of nuclear waste and designed their system to deal with the issue. Now they produce enough electricity to sell without carbon emissions and with minimal waste. The waste is no worse than ours, except they produce far less of it despite producing more electricity from nuclear that we do (and they better manage what waste they do produce).