The Nuclear Option

Tony Blair’s finally done it, at a speech to the CBI, and come out for Nuclear power.

This does feel like some line drawn in the sand, any faith we might have had in government eventually waking up to what is really going on and acting appropriately seems to have gone out the window.

Its grassroots activism all the way now, fighting every battle as it comes along, while we do our best to change everybody’s consciousness. The media has represented the “anti-nuclear” resistance in reporting this story - largely it appears through the figure of Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth. He’s had lots of important things to say, but I feel that in these soundbite times we have to prioritise our expressed reasons against these developments.

Talking about the terrorist threat created by having more potential nuclear targets, and the hypocrisy of our position over Iran when we choose more nuclear power are points that are all well and good. But in those brief moments of reply afforded by the media, it seems to me that the anti-nuclear resistance should concentrate on destroying the pro-nuclear arguments on its own terms, I.E.:

1) That its a low carbon solution - some pithy way of highlighting the carbon emissions across the lifecycle of nuclear power generation needs to be found.

2) That it deals with problems of energy security - there is never any mention about Uranium imports, or being dependent on foreign supplies of nuclear materials & technology, or the competition for nuclear materials.

3) That its a long term solution - lets foreground global supplies of uranium and the “peak uranium” concept.

4) That its a business as usual solution - even with nuclear, a radical decrease in our energy usage is essential.

Looks like we’re going to have to fight them on the beaches, and the estuaries and anywhere else they want to build one of these tombstones.

(This was originally posted as comment to an entry over at the excellent Transition Culture)