MarkPawelek

The left are confused. They have a 1001 reasons to oppose nuclear power, or so they claim. Here are some of the left's arguments. 1) Nuclear power is not sustainable, 2) it's a centralized source, unlike wind which is decentralized, 3) it's not safe, 4) it make dangerous waste which is not safe for tens of thousands of years, 5) its uneconomic, 6) it's part of a military industrial complex, 7) it makes massive amounts of greenhouse gases, 8) blah...

I could go on but I think you get my point. If you really support or oppose something, there is generally ONE fundamental reason why. Not 1001 reasons. In other words: some factors are so important to us that they override everything else. I support nuclear power because I think it can lead to cheap, safe, plentiful energy which modern civilizations find essential.

When you talk about how the anti-nuclear power movement began, you don't mention the Club of Rome. Why not? I regard them as crucial: 1968 : Club of Rome, 1969 : Friends of the Earth, 1970 : NRDC; Because they persuaded rich people to fund these new self-styled "environmental" groups like FotE. Groups who apparently did not care much for conservation and a life in the wilds, which, I get the impression, had been what "conservation" was about before it became "environmentalism".

Nuclear power does not have long-term waste issues. It has a well-funded conspiracy of green groups hyping a non-problem into a pseudo-problem. A conspiracy consistently funded over many decades by by non-tax paying foundations, some with AUM of $6bn. I find it tragic that greens are happy to see solar panels with cadmium telluride plastered on any and every roof with no plan for disposal, recycling, nor decommissioning. Yet they are obsessed with tiny amounts of radioactive waste. Compared to other industrial processes, the amounts are tiny.

All of that funding brushed under the carpet by a liberal media, spellbound by the words "environmentalist". As if environmentalists were primarily concerned with protecting the environment. They are not. If they were they'd be like the Sierra Club of the 1960s : supporters of nuclear power.

The article above gives a good explanation for takeover of environmentalism by the anti-nuclear movement. We can't attribute all antinuclear power sentiment to greens and their propaganda.

1) Nuclear power was banned in Austria in 1978 (for 20 years). We can't trace the influence of FotE. The Austrian movement, like the German harked back to specific Germanic green ideas originating in the later half of the 19th century Volkisch movement. 2) Non-proliferation concerns began among politicos. Neo-Cons, Not Carter, Killed Nuclear Energy http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2006/3312neocons_v_nuclear.html 3) Big-Carbon. The US coal industry lobbied to create the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 1974. It was given a safety first mandate with no requirement to consider cost-benefit. Over much of its time it made a fetish out of reducing ever smaller (and harmless) radiation emissions ever smaller. After 1974, new NPP applications all but vanished. The NRC approved about 4 new NPP application in its first 30 years (or maybe none). However many it was too few.

Finally, where did Friends of the Earth get its money from? Why was it able to convince every other green organization to side with it? Donald Gibson has something to say about that in "Ecology, Ideology, and Power". After the Club of Rome (1968) made it virtuous for rich people to favour anti-growth and rents, we saw a host of funds and foundations give ever more money to these so-called environmentalists. Today it's a flood of money, with Putin's Russia piling in too!

You give too much weight to FotE. I see David Brower and FotE as an effect of a change in the mentality of capitalists. Certainly important within environmentalism. Yet follow the money is a better guide to finding the baddies.

Military grade plutonium is not made by reprocessing spent fuel from power reactors. Special low burnup reactors are used to make it, because it must be as free from other plutonium isotopes (Pu-238, Pu-240, ...) as possible. UK did have dual purpose (civilian/military) reactors: the Magnox series, but these have been the only ones. The last was decommissioned last winter. WNA have a plutonium page explaining the difference: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/fuel-recycling/plutonium.aspx

I'm not saying there's no possible crossover. The military also use submarines and aircraft carriers powered by nuclear reactors. Much smaller reactors but still, essentially, the same kind of thing as power reactors. So there is an incentive to keep one's civilian nuclear industry because the same companies can make both kinds of reactor. This is the limit of crossover. Reprocessed plutonium making bombs is just an myth put about by anti-nukes.