Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ject these days. Very few environmentalists actively favour nuclear power.
James Lovelock, who put forward the “Gaia hypothesis”, is an important
exception. He is now an outright advocate of a large-scale programme for
nuclear power, because of the sheer amount of low-carbon energy it can
contribute in the fight against climate change. Other environmentalists
accept that nuclear power's contribution to low-carbon energy is begin-
ning to neutralize nuclear power's economic and safety handicaps. George
Monbiot, perhaps the most prominent environmental polemicist writing
today, falls into this category of reluctant converts to nuclear power, provid-
ed that it can be proven that the resulting waste can be safety disposed of.
One organization, Greenpeace, remains viscerally opposed to nuclear
power. This is not in the least surprising, given the organization's ori-
gins in campaigning against nuclear weapon tests and the sinking of its
ship
Rainbow Warrior
.
(In 1985, French secret
service agents sank the
Rainbow Warrior
in the
harbour of Auckland,
New Zealand, resulting
in the death by drown-
ing of a photographer,
in order to prevent
the vessel sailing on
to obstruct a French
nuclear-weapons test
in the south Pacific).
However, not all of
those who work or have
worked at Greenpeace
believe that outright
opposition to nuclear
power is an article of
faith. Stephen Tindale,
a former Labour gov-
ernment environmen-
tal adviser, was head of
Greenpeace UK for six
years. But after resign-
ing from that post, he
came out in favour of
The damaged and no-longer functional Unit A at
the nuclear power plant of Gundremmingen. Unit
A was the site of the first fatal accident in a nuclear
power plant and, subsequently, of a major accident
resulting in the unit's total loss, the only to date in a
nuclear power plant in Germany.
