<\/a><\/p>\n With the terrible human toll from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami catastrophe only now being comprehended, and the grave follow on crisis at the country’s nuclear power plants unfolding by the hour<\/a>, the anti-nuclear power crowd has already begun issuing statements such as the one Greenpeace put out saying that “nuclear power cannot ever be safe<\/a>.”<\/p>\n Predictably, reports Geoffrey Lean in the Telegraph, “battle lines<\/a>” are being drawn:<\/p>\n On Saturday, some 50,000 anti-nuclear protesters formed a 27-mile human chain from Germany’s Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant to the city of Stuttgart to protest against its government’s plans to extend the life of the country’s reactors. Green politicians in pro-nuclear France urged an end to its dependence on the atom, and Ed Markey, a leading Democratic US Congressman, called for a moratorium on building new reactors in seismically active areas.<\/p>\n But Chancellor Angela Merkel, after holding a meeting of the German cabinet on the issue, reaffirmed her confidence in the safety of nuclear power. The leader of Silvio Berlusconi’s party said that Italy would stick with plans to build new reactors. And a spokesman for US Senator Lisa Murkowski said it would be “poor form for anyone to criticise the nuclear industry, or pronounce the end of nuclear power, because of a natural disaster that has been a national tragedy for the Japanese people”.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Poor form, indeed. Now we have an example of an unseemly statement<\/a> on nuclear power at the worst possible time from a religious leader.<\/p>\n Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the Orthodox hierarch based in Istanbul, Turkey, today called for nations to stop using nuclear power and to adopt “green” energy technologies:<\/p>\n … with regard to the explosion of the nuclear reactor and the aftermath of a nuclear adversity, there is indeed a response that we are called to make. With all due respect to the science and technology of nuclear energy and for the sake of the survival of the human race, we counter-propose the safer green forms of energy, which both moderately preserve our natural resources and mindfully serve our human needs.<\/p>\n Our Creator granted us the gifts of the sun, wind, water and ocean, all of which may safely and sufficiently provide energy. Ecologically-friendly science and technology has discovered ways and means of producing sustainable forms of energy for our ecosystem. Therefore, we ask: Why do we persist in adopting such dangerous sources of energy? Are we so arrogant as to compete with and exploit nature? Yet, we know that nature invariably seeks revenge.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This is magical thinking about very practical policy questions and complex technology overlaid with a spiritual gloss.<\/span> The statement also attempts a clumsy preemption of what will be an inevitable and necessary policy review worldwide of nuclear power in the wake of the Japan disaster. But even as the dead are being pulled from the wreckage in Japan, we’re getting a finger-wagging lecture about Mother Nature seeking her revenge and the stupidity of our “dangerous” sources of power. Not for nothing is Bartholomew known as the Green Patriarch.<\/p>\n According to the Energy Information Administration<\/a>, nuclear power will generate 17 percent of U.S. electricity needs by 2035. That’s down only slightly from the current 20 percent. If we shut down nuclear power, what will we replace it with? As Louie today pointed out in his post<\/a>, the push for renewable or clean technologies has largely been driven by government incentives. Why isn’t the technology advancing more rapidly, despite the billions poured into these projects? What would be the economic consequences of shunning fossil fuels in favor of Bartholomew’s “sun, wind, water and ocean” driven technologies? (What would a tsunami do to wave power technology?). The EIA is projecting that coal will still provide 43 percent of U.S. electricity needs in 2035. Why is that?<\/p>\n\n
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