Nuclear Power

Nuclear power is too dangerous to be used as a political bargaining tool.  Wherever it has gone, conflict, distrust and misunderstanding follow. And when the on-switch is pushed, the hovering radioactive threat becomes permanent.

There is a better way: Peaceful renewable energy. It can provide energy to fuel a region, while also helping end the conventional security threats that a reliance on oil brings. Just as dependence on oil makes the world less safe through climate change and necessitated a treaty to control it called Kyoto, threats to Middle East security need a treaty, too: A Nuclear Free Middle East Treaty.

Renewable energy sources can meet people’s need for energy at an affordable price, and help protect the planet. Nuclear technology doesn’t come with a safety net, but instead with the dangers of catastrophic accidents, nuclear proliferation and very long lived deadly radioactive waste.

The safest energy system is a renewable energy system, coupled with energy efficiency and conservation. There’s a good reason that renewable energy already provides the world with more energy than nuclear; and as the price tag climbs for nuclear and the environmental threats of global warming grow, renewable energy will grow right along with them.

For nuclear power, it’s the opposite. In November 2000 at UN climate change talks in the Netherlands, the world recognised nuclear power as dirty, dangerous and unnecessary by refusing to let countries use it to meet Kyoto targets. The industry had hoped to gain acceptance under the so-called Clean Development Mechanism as a climate friendly power source, its attempts to gain a green veneer where rejected.

Another blow for nuclear power came when a UN Sustainable Development Conference refused to define nuclear a sustainable technology in April 2001.