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The Register says that for the second year in a row scientists from a variety of fields have joined together to urge the world to embrace nuclear power instead of the single minded focus on renewable energy. Last year the group included four scientists. This year it includes 66 from a far more diverse set of disciplines.
This year's letter pleads with the "green movement" to get over their objections to nuclear power, and face the facts that the "renewables only" approach cannot possibly succeed.
Their open letter reads in part:
As conservation scientists concerned with global depletion of biodiversity and the degradation of the human life-support system this entails, we, the co-signed, support ... a substantial role for advanced nuclear power systems with complete fuel recycling ...
Much as leading climate scientists have recently advocated the development of safe, next-generation nuclear energy systems to combat global climate change, we entreat the conservation and environmental community to weigh up the pros and cons of different energy sources using objective evidence and pragmatic trade-offs, rather than simply relying on idealistic perceptions of what is ‘green’.
Although renewable energy sources like wind and solar will likely make increasing contributions to future energy production, these technology options face real-world problems of scalability, cost, material and land use ... As scientists, we declare that an evidence-based approach to future energy production is an essential component of securing biodiversity’s future and cannot be ignored. It is time that conservationists make their voices heard in this policy arena.
The full letter and complete list of signatories is here. The list includes dozens of biologists, conservationists, zoologists and biodiversity scientists from the English speaking world as well as a few other countries.
Last year's letter appears appeared here but met with some dismissal, in no small part due to one of its well known signatories; the somewhat controversial James Hansen of the Hockey Stick fame.
In this years letter, the scientists were acknowledging the inconvenient truth that there is no realistic prospect at all of powering a reasonably comfortable and numerous human race using only or mostly renewable power.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 17 2014, @05:59AM
Most anti-nuclear activists are also environmentalists. So why is nuclear fuel the only resource which shouldn't be recycled?
I have a solution. Get out of the way and let humanity learn how to safely recycle nuclear fuel rods. That will solve a significant fraction of the problems with nuclear reactors.