And not just any moonbat, but the Moonbat, George Monbiot himself:
You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.
A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.
The old adage about a stopped clock may be right, but this is actually well-reasoned. Sane, even. Yes, Fukushima had about as bad a hand delt it as is possible, and yet it was never in any danger of becoming another Chernobyl. It simply couldn’t become that bad. The Greens did themselves no favors here:
Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I’m not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.
If other forms of energy production caused no damage, these impacts would weigh more heavily. But energy is like medicine: if there are no side-effects, the chances are that it doesn’t work.
I especially like that last sentence. That is very much the truth. Even a dam and water-wheel has some effect on the environment. The Greens’ precious windmills kill birds and bats in addition to not working very well unless the environmental conditions are just right. Not suitable for running the power grid of a Third World nation, let alon that of a modern industrial/post-industrial power.
Monbiot of course gives the obligatory genuflection to “renewable” energy sources, but then he follows it with some hard-nosed analysis of a kind that most Leftists are incapable of. I like his closing paragraph:
At high latitudes like ours, most small-scale ambient power production is a dead loss. Generating solar power in the UK involves a spectacular waste of scarce resources. It’s hopelessly inefficient and poorly matched to the pattern of demand. Wind power in populated areas is largely worthless. This is partly because we have built our settlements in sheltered places; partly because turbulence caused by the buildings interferes with the airflow and chews up the mechanism. Micro-hydropower might work for a farmhouse in Wales, but it’s not much use in Birmingham.
Nothing I disagree with there. What is being said may come as no surprise to the readers of this blog, but what makes this news is the source. If the anti-Nuke “Greens” have lost George Monbiot, they have lost the war. If he stays this rational on the subject, he becomes a better spokesman for our side of the issue than any we can produce. It will be interesting to see if the Left now attack him, since he has stepped off the Green-Red Reservation.
