Don’t Nuke the Climate!
Climate change and its impacts are now undeniable. Leaders from the whole world will have to reach a new climate agreement during the December 2009 Copenhagen Summit. Urgent measures must be taken to achieve a massive reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions: our future depends on it!
Under the current Kyoto Protocol, nuclear energy is rightly excluded from the possible solutions available to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the nuclear industry, in collaboration with certain countries, is pushing for this dangerous and polluting technology to be included in the next climate agreement as a “clean” technology.
This issue of the Nuclear Monitor will counter arguments used by nuclear advocates and -industry. The first article is based on ‘Four Nuclear Myths. A commentary on Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline and on similar writings’ by Amory B. Lovins, Chairman,and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute, but shortened and edited by WISE Amsterdam. The second article assesses different lifecycle studies of greenhouse gas equivalent emissions for nuclear and renewable power plants to identify a subset of the most current, original, and transparent studies.