Fuel Fight

Patrick Moore believes in nuclear power – to the disbelief of former Greenpeace colleagues

By Erica Herrero-Martinez

February 12, 2007

In 1971, Patrick Moore set sail with 11 other men in a leaky old halibut trawler from Vancouver, British Columbia, to protest against U.S. underground nuclear-weapons testing off the west coast of Alaska-creating what would become the environmental activist group Greenpeace. He eventually became the director of Greenpeace International, and a leading voice against nuclear power.

That was then. Today, Dr. Moore sits squarely in the other camp, a leading voice in support if nuclear power. His position: Nuclear power is a non-greenhouse-gas-emitting power source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and help satisfy a growing global demand for energy.

“During my nearly 40 years as an environmentalist and student of sustainability I have only changed my position on one major issue: nuclear energy,” Dr. Moore says.

His change of heart, however, has infuriated many of his former colleagues-and is symbolic of the wider debate raging between supporters of nuclear power and its critics. The late Robert Hunter, another founding member of Greenpeace, once referred to Dr. Moore as an “eco-Judas.” Another fellow Greenpeace founder, Paul Watson, was even less restrained, calling him an “eco-whore” for switching to work for the nuclear industry.

Dr. Moore, 59 years old, shrugs off the attacks. “I am often confronted by the assertion that I am not an environmentalist because I support nuclear power…or whatever they don’t agree with,” he says. “I respond by stating that they are not in charge of giving out credentials for who is an environmentalist.”

Dr. Moore, who left Greenpeace in 1986, insists he still holds true to almost all the policies Greenpeace initially pursued: banning nuclear testing, whale killing and toxic discharge. “I left Greenpeace because my fellow directors were drifting into policies that I did not believe had any basis in logic or science,” says Dr. Moore, now chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd., a Vancouver consulting firm. One such policy, he says, was a campaign for a global ban on the use of chlorine in drinking water, he says. (Greenpeace says it has no record of a campaign to ban chlorine in drinking water.)

Greenpeace, meanwhile, continues to fight against the construction of more nuclear reactors. “There is always that risk of a catastrophic disaster,” says Mike Townsley, an antinuclear campaigner at Greenpeace in Amsterdam. “No one in the world has resolved the issue of nuclear waste.” Another objection to nuclear power, Mr. Townsley adds, is that, if it spreads, so too, will the technology for nuclear weapons.

A Change of Heart

Dr. Moore was certainly a believer in the past. In 1976, for instance, he had written as part of a Greenpeace report that aside from nuclear warheads, nuclear power plants were “the most dangerous devices man has ever created” and that their proliferation wasn’t just irresponsible but “criminal”.

So what made him change his mind? Dr. Moore traces his metamorphosis to a day trip he took seven years ago to Devon in southwest England. There he met another controversial figure, British scientist James Lovelock.

I has always been fascinated by [Lovelock’s] Gaia hypothesis [which argues that the Earth functions as a kind of superorganism]…and when I found out the supported nuclear power I was even more intrigued,” Dr. Moore says, “We spent an entire day walking, lunching, supping and into the evening discussing Gaia, climate, nuclear energy.”

“Lovelock matter-of-factly said he would greatly take a bundle of used nuclear fuel, put it in his swimming pool and use it to heat his home,” Dr. Moore recalls. “This shook my brain into realizing that nuclear waste is no more dangerous than many other chemicals. The trick is to keep it contained and limit our exposure to it.”

Dr. Lovelock is considered by other scientists and environmentalist who favor nuclear energy as the pioneer who has helped pave the way for a movement, which sees nuclear poser as a potential savior of the environment, as opposed to the dangerous poison it has traditionally been viewed as by mainstream environmentalists.

Drs. Lovelock and Moore aren’t alone in embracing nuclear power as the answer to environmental ills. French scientist Bruno Comby in 1996 set up an independent and nonprofit organization, Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy. Members include Dr. Lovelock and former antinuclear activist Simone Weiss. In the U.S., Stewart Brand, an environmentalist and author of the Whole Earth Catalog, has also voiced his support for nuclear power, while in 2004 the late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore was forced to step down from the board of Friends of the Earth after promoting the use of nuclear power in the fight against climate change.

The Environmental Case

Dr. Moore and others believe that nuclear power could help cut carbon-dioxide emissions-widely believed by scientists to cause global warming. What’s more, they say, it is a more attractive alternative to renewable energy sources, as it isn’t subject to the same fluctuations in energy productions as wind farms and solar panels.

An increasing number of politicians are also looking to the political benefits of nuclear power, as it uses uranium as a primary power, which comes from politically stable countries such as South Africa and Australia.

“I don’t want to be dependent on Russia for gas, or the Middle East,” says Dick Taverne, a member of the U.K. House of Lords. “That’s another very powerful argument for nuclear power.”

Mr. Taverne, an early supporter of the environmental groups Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth in the 1960s and 1970s, has since become disenchanted with the mainstream environmental movement. “Disillusionment set in as it became evident that they didn’t care or have much regard for evidence,” says Mr. Taverne, who in 2002 founded Sense About Science, which aims to advance public understanding of science. “Historically and fundamentally, it’s a rather antiscience movement.”

Mr. Townsley of Greenpeace disputes that. “We spend a lot of time looking at the science,” he says. We’re pro-science. But you have good and bad science. Science has the ability to be our savior or our downfall.”

Dr. Moore remains convinced that Greenpeace and other environmental groups will one day embrace nuclear power. “I do believe that environmental groups will eventually accept the logic and the science behind the need for nuclear energy, especially with regard to climate change,” he says.

He adds, “It is logically inconsistent to hold that global warming is the greatest threat to the planet and humankind and then reject one of the obvious solutions, even of it does have some downsides…I believe we can manage nuclear waste from technical perspective.”

Mr. Townsley, though, insists that while Greenpeace is open to new ideas, this is one idea that does not deserve to be embraces. “We are constantly reappraising, and we often need to make decisions between the lesser of the two evils,” he says. “But the time still hasn’t come for nuclear.”