Nuclear Summer?

 

 

The nuclear establishment’s relationship with the global warming movement

 

by Walt Robbins

 

February, 2009

  

 

Did the world nuclear establishment instigate the concept of global warming in order to insure its own survival and potential expansion?

 

Some may think “instigate” is too strong a word. However, the influence of the nuclear establishment on the development and perpetuation of the global warming-climate change movement during the 1980's and 90's to the present, certainly raises some serious questions about its role.

 

Prior to the  Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992 and the 1997 Kyoto assemblage, the world’s nuclear establishment was sustained by financial “life supports” from governments and was facing imminent collapse. Since the 1970's, orders for new reactors had all but dried up.   Even nuclear engineers were becoming an endangered species resulting from lack of new projects.

 

During the 1980's, the time was ripe for the nuclear establishment to escalate its efforts to  assure its survival and to expand its horizons.  Its actions suggest that its strategy was designed to achieve  a  “nuclear renaissance.” The strategy appears to have coupled the growing world demands for energy with the idea of a human-induced world-wide environmental “meltdown” caused by greenhouse gasses.  Nuclear was portrayed by its advocates as the ideal solution to this two-pronged energy and environmental threat.

 

However, it appears that the nuclear establishment had been working on this project for a much longer period of time.

 

According to former Australian National Environment Correspondent, Alan Tate, the nuclear establishment has been promoting itself as a solution to climate change for decades.

 

He points out that its representatives were in abundance during the 1988 climate change convention in Argentina.  

"They inundated the international negotiators, including with what appeared to be a number of front groups like Students for Nuclear Power,"

 

Furthermore, in the UK during the 1970's, nuclear energy interests worked with Margaret Thatcher’s government to use global warming as a way of boosting nuclear power.   

 

A UK News, March 4th, 2007, article recounts a BBC Channel 4 documentary made by Producer Martin Durkin called 'Global Warming Is Lies.’ It  depicts how the global warming research drive really began when Mrs. Thatcher gave money to scientists to prove burning coal and oil was harmful, as part of her intense effort to stimulate the growth of  

nuclear power.

 

 

 

In the U.S., the eminent scientist, Alvin Weinberg, former Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director, and others involved in the early days of nuclear energy, were promoting the idea of nuclear as the future energy source to deal with a potential CO2/global warming problem stemming from the use of carbon-based fuels.

 

But the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents damaged public confidence in nuclear technology. As well, the unsolved nuclear waste issue was becoming an albatross around the nuclear neck. Thus, global warming became the main rationale for the unpopular nuclear power facilities which were required for nuclear weapons development.

 

Additionally, to achieve its survival and expansion goals, the nuclear establishment knew it could rely on its long-standing  relationship with, and powerful influence on,  the world’s scientific community,  which it had developed in its early days; during the 1950's and early 60's.

 

As a middle management level employee in the headquarters of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission for three years in the late 1950's, I had a grandstand seat from which to witness the rapid, almost meteoric rise of the “Atoms for Peace” program and all that it entailed. The public was told that nuclear energy would be “too cheap to meter.”

 

It was an era of cost plus fixed fee contracts for  some of the largest U.S. corporations, as well as the development of lucrative “symbiotic” relationships with broad-based university science and engineering programs. Money was no object. The Eisenhower administration made sure of that. Scientific and engineering disciplines (especially physical, biological, earth, and medical sciences) benefited greatly from the bulging nuclear pocketbook augmented with its massive support from governments.  

 

By the 1980's, it had become very difficult to locate scientists or engineers in virtually any discipline anywhere in the world who would openly criticize nuclear energy. Try to find a scientist today who will lend his or her name to the "no nukes" side of the nuclear energy controversy!  A few exist but they are generally blacklisted or worse by the mainstream scientific community and governments around the world.

 

When I was a spokesperson for the Concerned Citizens of Manitoba (regarding nuclear waste issues)  in the early 80's, it was clear that you could count the number of scientific and technical critics on the fingers of your hands. The giant world nuclear establishment had become a  major source of employment, professional opportunities, and especially large financial grants for scientific exploration into climate change and global warming.  Its’ influence was indeed formidable.

 

 

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Volume One -

1980-1984-

 

Originally published in paperback as "Getting

The Shaft, The Radioactive Waste Controversy in Manitoba."

Volume Two -

update: 1984-1988-

 

The growing prospect of nuclear waste dumps on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border intensifies the controversy

Volume Three -

update:1988-1998

 

Federal Environmental Panel concludes that Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.'s permanent underground nuclear waste burial concept lacks public acceptability.

Volume Four -

update:1998-2008

 

Mixed Oxide plutonium transport and the Nuclear Waste Management Organization and

nuclear waste issue grinds on

Nuclear Waste Saga

Spring-Summer 2010