By a narrow margin, after over 10 hours of debate (minus breaks), the Swedish parliament just made the decision to lift the 30 year old ban on giving permits for new nuclear reactors. While this is very uplifting, and certainly a big thaw in this deadlocked issue, it’s not over quite yet. We have an election coming…

Background

In the 1960′s, Sweden was dabbling in nuclear power, and also nuclear weapons. The Swedish government was keen on weapons from the moment they were revealed to the world, and a state governed program was started which would look closely at the possibility of getting dometically produced weapons by building a combined power and plutonium breeding reactor: R4, reactor #4.

The design was an incredibly complex one: a heavy water moderated, boiler reactor, capable of fuel changes during normal power operation. For several reasons, it was never completed:

• public opinion against nuclear weapons was great
• the US provided Sweden with enriched uranium cheap on the condition we didn’t use it for weapons, which knocked out the economic foundation for the combined power/weapons project
• Sweden pushed for, and signed, the Non-Proliferation Treaty
• the design was too complex and fraught with inherent safety weaknesses
• private investors went for light water reactors instead.

In the end R4 was finished but never loaded with fuel. They put an oil burner to run the turbines and generators with instead.

Twelve lightwater power reactors were projected and constructed.

The referendum

By the end of the 1970′s nuclear power in turn became a touchy issue. One government fell on it after they made a change in stance from negative to positive. Calls for a referendum were raised, but for the better part this was resisted and struck down.

Then the Three Mile Island accident happened. Support for nuclear power went into freefall, and all of the parliament parties agreed on a referendum. It was held in 1980.

The referendum was a very strange affair because the options you had to vote for were, in brief:

1. Stop using nuclear power, when suitable alternatives are available.
2. Stop using nuclear power, when suitable alternatives are available. Yes, that is the same option as 1. It was just a bit more detailed.
3. Stop using nuclear power in no later than 10 years.

The result was an even spread between the three options. Option 2 won by an extremely narrow margin. After that a parliament decision was made to ban permits for new nuclear power reactors; to ban the planning and/or design of new power reactors; to close all 12 power reactors no later than 2010, that is to say thirty 30 years. The point was very clear: in the year 2010, nuclear power will be dead in Sweden. Big bummer, but at least everyone knew the rules and the politicians breathed a sigh of relief in that the hot potato had been thrown away and needent be bothered with. For a while that is…

From “No!” to “Probably not”

In the 1990′s it was clear that the replacements for nuclear power in Sweden were not doing much progress. Sweden has always had a very strong production base of hydro power. But for environmental reasons there was/is also a ban on building new dams in the remaining untouched grand rivers of northern Sweden. Wind power wasn’t taking off at all. Solar is right out of the question at these latitudes. Energy savings were not happening to any great degree. And we still had a pretty large usage of oil for heating, especially with Sweden being deep frozen for several months each year.

It was strongly suggested that there would not be a replacement for the 50% of electricity production that nuclear provided.

Things took a turn for the worse when in 1997 the final date of 2010 was removed. But instead of giving a new end date this was replaced by a law that said nuclear power would be abandoned, but without fixed date. The government was also with “Dismantlement law” given the right to at drop the hatchet on any power reactor, at any time. This happened in 1999 and 2005 when the two reactors at the Barsebäck nuclear power plant were forced out of operation ahead of time.

Still however, the replacements failed to materialize.

Mid-naughties

At around 2005 it was dreadfully obvious that nuclear power would not be gone in Sweden by the year 2010. The deficit in production capability after Barsebäck’s 1 230 MW were removed from the grid was also getting noticable, especially during cold-spells in the winter.

However a problem had accumulated in that the remaing ten reactors were in dire need of service and upgrades. Originally scheduled to be run only until 2010, they had not been serviced and/or upgraded for operations after that. After all: what kind idiots on a nuclear company board would approve pouring billions of cash into the reactors when it had been clear it would be a total waste… at least for as long as there was a clear end date, and still pretty much so with the Damocles sword of the 1997 law hanging over each reactor ready to kill any investment poured into them.

But finally the order was given: about face! Not only would the reactors get a life-time extension – something they were not built for in the first place – but some of them would also get a power output upgrade. The nuclear industry now had to in less than 5-10 years do what they should have been doing the past 25-30 years.

Needless to say this didn’t go well at all and when work started in 2009, the time tables were horrendously underestimated. The work dragged out well into the winter. In January 2010 four out of ten reactors were offline when the worst cold-spell in over ten years kicked in and we were nearing brown-outs. We made it through though… but only “thanks” to heavy imports and starting up the reserve oilfired plants.  

The great surprise

In January of 2009 however, the current center-right coalition government announed they had reached an agreement. The previously ardently opposing Center Party had been swayed and agreed to lift the ban on building new reactors. This caused a huge stir and the left wing red-green opposition parties – with the Green Party in particular – opposed this idea. Never the less the proposal was worked out. The final draft was this:

• The dismantlement law of 1997 would be removed
• Permits for new reactors, of any capacity, would again be allowed to be given
• Only replacements for old reactors will be allowed, once an old reactor is slated to be decommissioned
• The liability for reactor owners would be raised to european standards, which means 1.2 billion EUR must be guaranteed to be available immediately, and there will no upper limit to the liability in long terms, meaning company assets may be confiscated to make up for any cost above the 1.2 billion
• No government subsidies for building new reactors

The vote and the future

Today, June 17 2010, the parliament of Sweden finally accepted the proposal. It was by a very narrow margin with 174 votes against 172 and three not present (= 349 seats). The road getting there was a tough one and at one point it even looked as if up to four parliament members would go rogue and oppose the proposal, which would have felled it. In the end only two of those remained and so it was passed.

The debate that preceded the vote was a furious one and especially the Greens went on an all out attack. The spokesperson for energy policies for the Green Party – Mr. Per Bolund – didn’t hold back on the scare mongering while in the chair and promised new Chernobyls, terrorism, and all sorts of maladies if the proposal was accepted. He even went as far as to read a witness statement from a widow of one of the firefighters that died at Chernobyl. 

Needless to say I and the others from NPYP that were following the live debate were hopping mad at this kind of horrible propaganda. Refreshingly enough though they got some very nice bite-backs from the centre-right representatives. One of the best ones was this (quoted from memory so it is not perfectly quoted):

“If what you are saying is true Mr. Bolund, why are you and your red-green buddies not proposing an immediate shutdown of our reactors? If there is this immediate danger which you claim, why are you not saying you’ll shut them down immediately if you come into power, but instead gradually phasing them out? Do you even believe what you are saying, or is it just empty rethorics?”.

The propsal was accepted, but the story is not over just yet. In September this year there is the Swedish parliament election. This election assigns all seats in parliament (which is the sole legislative body) and also decides which party or parties will form the government for the upcoming 4 years. The red-green coalition has said that they will tear up the decision made today if they win this election.

We are looking at a new very exciting summer and early fall when it comes to the future of nuclear power in Sweden.

A common argument against nuclear power is this:

“We don’t actually need nuclear power, because we could potentially use other clean sources of energy”.

I am not going to argue against that particular statement, because it is true. We could potentially rid ourselves of nuclear power and have clean energy from other sources.

There are a few implications and practical matters that must be addressed though. So let’s take this kind of reasoning a few steps further. What other areas is this statement true for? What more could we potentially be without?

Do we actually need any of these?

Seat belts

We could potentially be without seat belts. Seat belts in cars restrict our movement and freedom. We wouldn’t need them if it wasn’t for accidents that happen. If we make sure no accidents happen we will not need seat belts. This is potentially possible to achieve, by training all drivers to drive safe and perfect, and restricting the maximum speed for car travel to 20 kph/15 mph.

Vaccines

We could potentially be without vaccines. Mankind obviously made it all the way to the 19th century without vaccines, so saying we need them to survive as a species obviously isn’t true. Now some people may say that getting sick is unacceptable and we need to prevent certain illnesses such as polio, measles, meningitis, and HIV/AIDS. But this need may potentially still be fulfilled by other means, such as restricting travel between administrative regions, using facemasks and condoms at all times, and to quarantine any person that can be suspected to be a carrier of an illness.

Laws

We could potentially be without laws. All we need to do is train every citizen to be a good and honest person. Since some persons go through an entire life without acting morally reprehensible it is potentially possible for all 7 billion persons of the world to do it. We don’t actually need laws, law enforcement, courts, and correctional facilities because it would be so much better if people just didn’t commit crimes.

Checks and Balances, Freedom of Speech

We could potentially do fine without checks and balances, or without freedom of speech. All we have to do is make sure that the government does everything we need without having to check up on it, or protest against it when it does something we don’t like. It would be so much better if the government was perfect to begin with.

…and so on.

The examples could go on. When looking at things bare and naked, we only actually need…

• air to breathe
• food to eat
• protection from the elements
• procreation

…to thrive as a species. Every other species on the planet gets by just fine on this. Everything else is not a need per se but instead “nice to have” features.

However…

These goals have not been reached. We are not there yet. And the fact that we could potentially get there one day does not diminish the fact that we are not there now, meaning we cannot ignore road accidents, crippling and killing illnesses, crime or government abuse of power.

When it comes to energy 85% - that is 17 parts in 20 – comes from polluting fossil fuels and similar dirty sources. The external costs for this in terms of loss of life, lowered quality of life, monetary costs and loss of production are not acceptable. There is next to universal consensus that particle pollution and gaseous emissions from the use of fossil fuels is a very bad thing. There is a clear and present need to cut down on or entirely eradicate the use of fossil fuels, because they are killing us, something which also cannot be ignored.

So until these needs have been fixed, I don’t know about you, but I feel rather keen on keeping my seat belt, vaccines, laws, cops, jails, this silly little thing called freedom of speech… and nuclear power.

If you want to tell me that we should not have any or all of these, I will not be satisfied by hearing you say what we potentially could have instead. I want to see you tell me what we will have instead, and back that statement it up with solid guarantees and a time table I can take to the bank. Because I’m not betting my life or health on potentially good things.

The upshot of this is that Merkel does not have to have the nuclear hostile SPD or the Green Party on her government, which in turn means that the German moratorium on nuclear power can now be reviewed and perhaps dropped.

If this happens it means that with Sweden, the UK, Italy and Germany reconcidering their stances on nuclear power and moving in favour of this form of energy, 2009 is a year of tremendous success for European nuclear friends.

How the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives used nurses to lie to the government.

Surveys and questionnaires are a simple and effective way of gauging people’s opinions. The result can then in turn be used to influence the opinions other people hold, most often to become opinions you want people to have.  And the more supposedly trustworthy the people you survey are, the greater you can expect the compliance to be.

Let me show you an example of this. This is a TV advert from 1949.

Simple enough isn’t it? If many medical doctors like this brand of cigarette, it must be really good, right? Right! Doctors can’t be wrong. Moving along…

Surveys and questionnaires that you make yourself have a nice bonus: you can make them any way you want. The advantage of this is that if you phrase the questions just right, you can get any answer you want.

Credits to Pete Abrams of Sluggy Freelance

But the example above is just a comic, right? It’s irony. They wouldn’t do like this in real life. Noone would ever dream abusing the confidence and good standing that people such as medical and healthcare professionals enjoy, right?

Right?

Wrong…

[Saskatchewan] nurses oppose reactor for isotope development

Last Updated: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 | 3:40 PM CT

Nurses in Saskatchewan say they appreciate the value of nuclear medicine but do not want the province to build a nuclear reactor so that it can start manufacturing medical isotopes.

The Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) presented its views Tuesday to Dan Perrins, who is heading the public consultation process on uranium development on behalf of the provincial government.

Rosalee Longmore, the president of SUN, presented Perrins with a study that reviewed the medical literature on nuclear reactors. The union also released the results of an email survey of its members.

According to the union, 822 nurses responded to the two questions posed. Prior to asking the questions, the survey outlined for the nurses four examples of health concerns related to nuclear reactors.

The survey found that 61.8 per cent of nurses who replied did not support the development of a nuclear power facility.

The second question asked whether nurses were concerned about the health implications of a nuclear power plant, and 89.9 per cent of respondents said they were.

(click for the rest of the article)

At first glance there’s nothing wrong with this article, nor the survey. They asked a big bunch of nurses of they are worried about nuclear power having adverse effects on people’s health and many of them said “yes”. Simple enough and nothing suspicious.

That is until you read the survey. Note the highlight above: “Prior to asking the questions, the survey outlined for the nurses four examples of health concerns related to nuclear reactors”. What were these supposed “concerns”? I quote from the survey:

The purpose of this survey is to get your professional opinion about the implications of nuclear energy on population health. Please read the following examples of evidence and answer the two questions at the end.

The survey website is 100% confidential- there is no way to track your name or your e-mail address.

1. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation found that the excess relative risk of incidence of total solid cancers after exposure to radiation is 43% for males and 81% for females. The excess relative risk of mortality from total solid cancers after exposure to radiation is 34% for males and 65% for females. Clear evidence of site specific cancers associated with doses of radiation include lung cancer, breast cancer (females), thyroid cancer, salivary gland cancer, rectal cancer (females), bone cancer (males), non melanoma skin cancer, ovarian cancer, urinary bladder cancer, kidney cancer (females) and brain cancer (males).

2. The largest study to review the effects of chronic low-dose exposure of ionizing radiation on health outcomes and mortality included 407,391 nuclear power workers that were followed for an average duration of 12.8 years. All-cause mortality within nuclear industry workers had an excess relative risk of 42% and all cancer mortality had an excess relative risk of 97%. In Canada, the excess relative risk of all cancer mortality for nuclear industry workers was 665%.

3. Many papers have been written about the nuclear power plant explosion at Chernobyl in the Ukraine. The World Health Organization predicts 4000 additional cancer deaths from the most exposed groups (emergency workers and evacuees). Significant increases in thyroid cancer in children were not only found in the Ukraine but also in Belarus, Russia, Czechoslovakia and as far as the United Kingdom (a 584% increase in Belarus). As well, increases in leukemia in children were found in contaminated areas across Europe including the Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Turkey, Greece and Germany (a 350% increase in Ukraine).

4. The only known health concern for people that live near nuclear power facilities is leukemia in children. A German study found that children below the age of 5 that live within 5 kilometers of a nuclear facility have a 119% increased risk of leukemia whereas children that live within 10 kilometers have a 33% increased risk.

After getting prepped with these “examples of evidence”, the nurses then answered the following two questions:

1) What is your professional opinion regarding the development of a nuclear power facility?

A. I support the development of a nuclear power facility.

B. I have conditional support for the development of a nuclear power facility providing all health concerns to residents, workers and children are addressed.

C. I do not support the development of a nuclear power facility.

2) Are you concerned about the health implications of a nuclear power plant?

A. Yes

B. No

And as quoted from CBC News above above, the majority to the responding nurses answered negatively about the prospect of a nuclear power facility.

I am not surprised. Had I not known much (or anything) about nuclear power, and someone had stuck that questionnaire under my nose while at the same time saying “Did you know that nuclear power gives children cancer?!”, I too would probably have answered in a negative manner. But is the evidence is right? Where did it come from? Is it correct? What did they tell the nurses about the origin of this “evidence”?

According to one of the commenters to the CBC News article, a nurse tried to get an answer to that, but got none:

When my mom received this email from the Union she asked for the references to the medical articles that deal with these issues but the reply did not contain any such articles. They are basically just 4 examples of health concerns that ‘everybody talks about’ so they must be true.

And when I looked at the statements, at least one old friend popped up: the German study on child cancers around nuclear power plants. You know… the one where the researchers themselves thought the result was odd because it went against what was known from other studies, and that they have no clue why they got their result, only that it was not radiation. We wrote about that before.

It turns out that this entire thing was a commission by the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives (Saskatchewan office) and the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses. CCPA is not exactly fond of nuclear power, which a quick search on their website reveals. As the CBC News article above mentions, in June 2009 there was a “public consultation process on uranium development on behalf of the provincial government”. In short they were asking the public what they feel about uranium development in Saskatchewan.

The CCPA and SUN set out to find a guy to dig up dirt on nuclear power. They picked Mark Lemstra, a fellow with an impressive amount of degrees (susiciously many even), and who makes a living on digging up the information you want. By outsourcing the dirt-digging, they managed to get a report which says…

There are no direct or indirect conflicts of interest to declare. This report is an independent review of the association between exposure to radiation and subsequent health outcomes. At no time was the author asked to lead the discussion of this report in one direction or another.

…and compiled these four bits of “evidence” to tilt the questionnaire. So when they went to the Government of Saskatchewan, they were able to say to them with a fairly straight face that the nurses did not like the idea of a nuclear power plant after having been presented with supposedly impartial evidence that nuclear power is bad and causes cancer.

This was of course complete bullshit because, as you have already guessed, there was nothing impartial about that report, nor the way it was used. Once you start reading through it – Exposure to Radiation and Health Outcomes – you quickly find that it is extremely negatively biased against nuclear power, and does not remain focused on radiation and health. Apart from mentioning the weak German cancer study, it goes on to make lengthy statements about for instance how nuclear power according to some report cannot save the planet from the climate crisis because it cannot be built fast enough (which is not true). Another section delves into the problems of the Olkiluoto 3 project,  which clearly has nothing to do with neither radiation nor health.

The final nail in the coffin that this was a commissioned opinon job and not at all the question of rightfully concerned nurses is perhaps when it turns out that the survey was also conducted by Lemstra. 

Not only did Mark Lemstra write the "concerns" for the CCPA and SUN, he also hosted the survey.

Apparently he gave them a package deal here, both the “evidence” to make a tilted survey, plus the survey as well. He was with the CCPA and SUN from start ’til finish and not at all some independent researcher providing impartial evidence. I’d like to see  a bank statement saying just how much Lemstra got for this little spinjob.

My perhaps favorite part of his report is the A section. It deals with how “exposure to radiation” causes death. The fact that some exposure to radiation can cause cancer or even acute radiation sickness has been known for over 60 years now. But a major factor here is the dose and during what time you got this dose. We live in constant bombardment of radiation from space; the sun; the ground; our food and even our own bodies. Small doses of radiation is a part of our lives and has been since the birth of life on this planet. So small doses matter not while big doses does.

I looked very closely at section A to find any mention of doses. There were none. So basically the entire section was as useless as if someone had written “Being exposed to water causes death”… which is true… if exposed to 5 liters of water in your lungs or if a 20 kilogram icicle falls from a roof onto your head! But that doesn’t mean I’ll quit exposing myself to water in the morning, along with some soap and shampoo.

To conclude: this is yet another one to file under the “Desperate nuclear opponents” section. The Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives and the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses join the World Wildlife Foundation and Greenpeace among those that are getting so utterly desperate in their attempts to oppose nuclear power they’ll throw everything including the kitchen sink at it.

When pressed about a specific issue where Greenpeace appeared to have exaggerated their claims, Leipold admitted they are “emotionalizing issues”, and that they do it willfully and consciously. He went on to defend this practice saying that they do not feel they gain enough sympathy for their statements if they do not “emotionalize” their messages.

We, as a pressure group, have to emotionalize issues, and we are not ashamed of emotionalizing issues.

Gerd Leipold – Executive Director of Greenpeace International, 2009

He may call it “emotionalizing”, but  that is merely a euphemism for scare-tactics, FUD and propaganda. When he calls it “emotionalizing” he is in effect green-washing the act of lying.

Greenpeace was not late to react to this and the signature “Brian” posted a blog entry lambasting BBC, saying they got it wrong about the factoid that triggered the confession. But while that blog post may be technically correct, it is insignificant because Leipold still admitted that “emotionalizing” is indeed a Greenpeace tactic.

If Greenpeace cannot argue their cases without “emotionalizing”, they are not only justifying skepticism, but rather necessitating it. This confession shows that scrutiny is long overdue. It proves it’s time we started looking at if they know what the heck they are talking about or just bilking sympathizers for money with whatever fairy stories they can come up with.

After all… we don’t exactly lack examples of  “emotionalizing” in the nuclear issue from Greenpeace…

Steel was used to kill, maim and terrorize countless millions of people from 1914 to 1919 and 1939 to 1945. It was used in rifles, in tanks, in artillery shells and hand grenades. All of it culminating with the steel birds Enola Gay and Bockscar dropping atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Steel and war are forever linked because you simply cannot wage war without steel.

The connection between war and wind power is steel. Practically every wind turbine in the world uses steel. Steel is everywhere in them: in the tower that holds up the turbine; in the gearbox; in the bolts that hold it together, just to mention a few examples. This of course means that wind power always connected with the use of weaponry and war.

Wind power is an insulting tribute to the memory of those who died in the world wars. Turning away from wind power and, in turn, weapons and war should be a true lasting legacy and memorial of those victims.

What?! Wait…

No folks, we haven’t gone completely off our rockers just yet. The arguments above are (of course) pure nonsense. Using steel for killing and using steel for producing electricity are completely unrelated. The start of this article is just to show you through irony how utterly stupid such an argument is.

Still, this is exactly the kind of argument Greenpeace calls upon in their effort to try to abolish nuclear power. The boldface sentence above is copied nearly verbatim from a Greenpeace blog article posted on August 6, 2009, the 64′th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. You can read the post here.

We could count endless examples like this:

We could go on and eventually dismantle our entire way of living because of the atrocities mankind has committed in the past. But everyone knows it is absolutely silly to argue like this. It is not the origin or some vague, irrelevant common denominators that decide whether something is intolerable. It is the present intent and use that decides. So how does Greenpeace make the connection between the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, and nuclear power in the year 2009 and onwards?

The entire Greenpeace article hinges on the following sentence: “Nuclear power and nuclear weapons go hand in hand – always have, always will.” The critical thinker asks: “Do they now? Why? What would nuclear power and atomic bombs have in common?”.

The answers are, in order: “no”, “no reason at all”, “nothing”. The peaceful use of nuclear fission to generate electricity for millions of people has nothing in common with using fission for war and mass destruction. Nuclear power is about as similar to nuclear weapons as is cutting bread with a knife compared to stabbing someone else in the heart with the very same blade. The connection just isn’t there.

Looking at the bottom of the Greenpeace blog entry there are three links. All three of them relate to the bombing of Hiroshima or the manufacturing of nuclear weapons. None of them even mention nuclear power. So where is the link that Greepeace say is “always” there?

It’s not. It’s missing. There is no link. This is guilt by association. The Greenpeace blog entry associating nuclear power with the atomic bombings is trying to exploit the deaths and suffering of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to try to gain points for a completely unrelated issue of opinion. Did Greenpeace take time to ask the over 200 000 still living hibakusha, “explosion-affected people” if it was alright to abuse their plight for a completely unrelated cause? We dare claim that Greenpeace didn’t do that. They just chose to shamelessly exploit these victims despite having neither permission, nor cause for it. As if getting two atomic bombs dropped on them wasn’t enough already, not only are the hibakusha, their relatives and children being discriminated against; now they also have to suffer Greenpeace swinging them around by the ankles as a bat in the debate on nuclear power.

And in the midst of this, Greenpeace speaks of “insulting” them. The irony is just staggering.

If Greenpeace cannot argue their standpoint against nuclear power without resorting to this kind of nonsense, it’s time to look close at their other arguments as well. Something tells me we’ll find a lot more holes in their reasoning…

So… here is how you prove that nuclear power is wrong and unsafe:

1. Get yourself an apple.
2. Hold it, approximately three feet above the floor.
3. Let go of it.

If the apple floats in mid air then gravity has ceased to exist and thus it is proven that the laws of nature are not constant. Since nuclear safety relies on laws of nature to be constant and unchanging, when the apple doesn’t fall, not even the most ardent proponent of nuclear power can defend the flaws in their reasoning.

So that’s how you do it. Get yourself the apple, keep it by the side of your bed. And every morning when you wake up, pick it up, let go of it… and when it doesn’t fall, that is the day we can close all nuclear power. It’s that easy.

Yes of course I’m pulling your leg. It’s a pretty safe bet to assume that tomorrow things such as gravity will remain the same as it was today, and I think you will agree with me on that. Still, in the strictest sense of logic and philosophy, this is an incorrect assumption because tomorrow everything could be different. Just because the laws of nature hasn’t changed for all perceivable time as we know it, tomorrow, they could.

Yet every day, during every moment of our lives, we assume that things such as gravity will persist. As the arch-skeptic James “The Amazing” Randi points out in his lectures: if we didn’t make that assumption we’d become catatonic and unable to function. We cannot live our lives unless we as some point cease with the doubt and allow ourselves to be convinced that some assumptions actually are valid.

Strangely enough though, the hope of a floating apple is exactly what many opponents of nuclear power seem to be clinging to. When they are saying “We don’t know for sure. We need more research”, this is equivalent to holding their breath for an apple hanging in mid air. When they are saying “Something unforeseen may happen in 100 000 years” about the spent nuclear fuel, that unforeseen thing is something we hold to be physically impossible.

Now don’t get me wrong: of course we shall always strive improve ourslves and our knowledge. Research and science will never stop. But we are already at a point in history where we know enough to keep going with nuclear power. Anyone that says differently should get an apple, and let go of it.

In July 2009, the three top ranked countries were Germany, the United Kingdom and France. As you are probably aware, Germany and the UK rely heavilly on coal (24% and 28% of total respectively) and gas (23% and 35% respectively) for their energy production while France only gets 5% from coal and 14% from gas. That is 1/5 the amount of coal and about 1/2 to 1/3 the amount of gas. France’s emissions per produced kilowatthour of electricity is 86 grams carbon dioxide, while Germany outputs 495 grams per kilowatthour and the UK a whooping 572 grams per kilowatthour.

One would imagine that this should give France a great advantage over Germany and the UK and easily beat them at the top. Right?

Wrong!

The WWF ranks both Germany and the UK higher than France. Why? Because the WWF changed the figures. In the climate scorecard for France, we find the following footnote:

 1 WWF does not consider nuclear power to be a viable policy option. The indicators “emissions per capita”, “emissions per GDP” and “CO2 per kWh electricity” for all countries have therefore been adjusted as if the generation of electricity from nuclear power had produced 350 g CO2/kWh (emission factor for natural gas). Without the adjustment, the original indicators for France would have been much lower, e.g. 86 g CO2/kWh.

There it is, in plain writing. They changed the numbers, simply because they don’t like nuclear power, thus down-ranking France despite being the lowest emitter of carbon dioxide by far of the G8 countries. They cheated on the scorecard by tweaking the numbers.

And it’s not some small tweak either. From 86 grams to 362 grams… that is upping the numbers to 400% of their actual value! What is their reasoning for this? “[The] WWF does not consider nuclear power to be a viable policy option”. In short: they don’t like it. So they quadrupled the number, just like that.

The WWF also ranked Sweden, there boosting of the numbers even more. For Sweden they change the number from 47 grams per kilowatthour to 212 grams. That is 450% of its original value.

UPDATE: At the Energy From Thorium forum, a person got in touch with Allianz Insurance and asked them what was the meaning of this obvious manipulation of number. The reply was this:

Re measurement in the report: We received criticism last year for not acknowledging the fact that some countries (i.e. France) have lower CO2 emissions thanks to nuclear power. But neither WWF nor Allianz wants to encourage nuclear power as the power source for the future. The fact that there is no solution for ultimate storage is a particular concern. And we think that this world needs a different strategy for its energy needs (renewables, efficiency) – which also leads to different investments in grids and other infrastructure.

They don’t want to “encourage” the use of nuclear power. But why would anyone be enouraged? Because it is environmentally friendly of course! And here I foolishly assumed that WWF was in it for the environment… but apparently not, because they don’t want people to be “enouraged” by the fact that nuclear power has extremely low emissions. So they changed that number outright.

Not only that but they are dead wrong when they say there are no viable solutions. KBS-3 is in the final stages of development. The work to grant the method environmental approval starts next year.

This is quite simply outtrageous. It is neither scientific, nor honest. This kind of smearing and badmouthing of nuclear power is what made us start this website, because even though one would hope that this is simply an isolated incident, it is not. This kind of deception is taking place constantly. The only thing unique about this particular case is the gall they have in admitting that they actually did it.

How are we meant to trust bodies like WWF when they do this sort of thing? Had this kind of behaviour taken place at a nuclear plant, their permit would have been rescinded and the people in charge would most likely be facing criminal charges for falsifying information! But the WWF gets away with it. Why? Why should they be allowed to cheat on the numbers just to make them fit the policy, rather than fitting the policy after the numbers? Science gets ripped to shreds because the truth is too unpalatable for the nuclear opponents to swallow. What gave them the right to do so? 

And maybe the most important question of all: how is the climate, the environment and the population of this planet benefiting by bodies like the WWF lying to us? What gave them the right to defend their policy first rather than the environment? What becomes better from this?

If we do not allow uranium to be mined in Sweden, we cannot have nuclear power since it would be immoral to let people in other nations take the devastating environmental impact of the uranium mining.

This argument is flawed in many ways, which will take some time to get to the bottom with, so let me first summarize where the argument goes wrong:

1. Unlike what is being hinted, we do not have a ban against mining uranium in Sweden.
2. Uranium mining does not have a higher environmental impact other mining other minerals.
3. We import other produce, products and commodities to Sweden as well, most of which like uranium are not locally produced.

First I should say that this argument is not actually used against nuclear power per se but rather being thrown in the face of proponents of nuclear power trying to mark them as hypocrites. This is a type of ad hominem attack, that is to say you’re not attacking a person’s arguments but instead the person itself in order to try to win the debate by default. This is, of course, a very dishonest and cheap way of doing debate.

Anyway… on to the flawed reasoning behind the argument.

Like I said, we do not have a ban on uranium mining in Sweden. What we have is a right for municipal councils to veto uranium extraction in that municipality. We do not have a general ban on uranium mining in Sweden.  This means that unless the target of the argument has said that we should have a general ban on uranium mining in Sweden, the argument is dead in the water right there.

The second fault of the argument is to assume that uranium mining has a severe impact which causes unacceptable damage to people and the environment, and that uranium mining is worse than everything else. This too is wrong. All mining, no matter what you are extracting, can have quite a hefty impact and be very detrimental to both worker health and the surrounding environment if it is not done with care and caution. Indeed historical mining all the way up to the 70′s and 80′s have had severe problems with this.

Current mining in the early 2000′s however is different, and has all the protection and monitoring techniques needed to live up to any modern worker-, population- and environment protection standard out there. This includes uranium mining.

To illustrate by example: a Swedish miner in the LKAB iron mines in the 70′s received an accumulated yearly dose of radiation that was approximately 2000% higher than what an Australian uranium miner receives today.

It is simply just not true that we cannot do uranium mining without protecting people and the environment. We have all the tools that are needed. This still means that we have to ensure that they are used, of course, but they do exist.

The final leg of the flawed argument is the general notion that we cannot consume or use anything which we ourselves are not producing domestically, lest someone will call us hypocrites. This one is just plain stupid, because all I need to do is lift my eyes and look around me where I’m sitting to realize that not much of what I have in my room or indeed in my life, is produced domestically.

Take for instance metal, since that is produced in a nearly identical manner to uranium, which is to say: first you mine it from the ground, then you refine it. Metal is an integral part of our lives. Metal is all around us: in our computers, our furniture, appliances, jewelry, buildings, eating utensils, cars, keys, phones, power lines, wind turbines, water dams… there is metal just about everywhere.

Now I ask you, who use immense amounts of metal: are you prepared to have an iron mine in your back yard, with all the pollution and environmental hazards this implies? Are you prepared to have a steel mill as your next door neighbour with all the coal being burned in the furnaces to refine iron to steel?

You’re not? Well how can you be using all this metal then! Doesn’t that make you a hypocrite, just dumping all these environmental problems on someone else so you can sit there and read this very article on your metal-laden computer and its screen?

Of course you’re not a hypocrite. Or… maybe you are! How do you know you’re not? When was the last time you took the time to check that all the goods you’re using has been produced in a way that does not affect some other person or persons in an unacceptable manner? All this metal around you was once extracted from the ground in a mine. How do you know no-one suffered ill effects from this? How do you know that your lifestyle has not caused an environmental disaster somewhere?

With this you realize that you cannot go around and worry like that or you’d have to give up living altogether. There has to be a better way to deal with this issue than just saying no to everything that potentially caused problems when it was produced. And there is.

The ethics of importing goods, or indeed simply using goods produced by anyone other than myself, is a universal issue and it does not apply only to uranium. Uranium is not a special case and is subject to the same considerations as everything else (and then some more, since it is a controlled substance). And unsurprisingly, the Swedish nuclear companies does indeed have strict rules to abide by when it comes to seeing to that the uranium used in Swedish nuclear reactors have been produced in a sound manner that does not harm people or the environment in an unacceptable manner.

So in the end, does the argument turn those that do not want to have a uranium mine in their back yard but still want nuclear power into hypocrites? Does the argument successfully render their stance for nuclear power null and void? Must we produce uranium domestically just to have nuclear power?

No, we do not. It is a narrow-minded, simplistic and silly argument. The issue of assuring that the things which we use and consume in our lives are produced in an ethical manner is very important, and it is not being done any favours by the anti-nuclear lobby trying to dumb it down to fit their agenda. They are abusing the issue just to try to add some fuel to their waning struggle.

So don’t fall for it. Treat the issue with the respect it demands. And don’t let anyone try to abuse it just to push their point across unless it’s actually relevant.

That he dragged the Berne Convention into this I found amusing because even for a non-expert like me it didn’t take long to find that it does not bring him any closer to a winning argument, since the Berne Convention clearly allows exemptions from copyright for things like parody.

Siegfried mailed me again shortly thereafter and re-iterated that he does not agree with me. He did not say they’d go to court if I didn’t take The Smiling Atom down though.

I wrote him one last time, asking for clarification…

…but I never got a reply. So I’m assuming their lack of wanting to talk to us is also a lack of interresting in saying “We’re going to court”.

So that is the end of that I assume… for now at least.