28 April - Sweden. Around thirty of Greenpeace activists shut down the main headquarters of Vattenfall, Europe's fifth-largest electricity producer. The activists demand the responsible minister announces at the company's AGM that the company must abandon its investment in coal and nuclear for investment in renewable energy.
© Johanna Hanno / Greenpeace
Nuclear power is not the solution to the climate crisis. Despite the nuclear industry’s claims that it is clean, reliable and cheap, one look at the record shows nuclear energy is the opposite: dirty, dangerous and so expensive it robs green energy of the critical funding it needs to grow. Still, industry perpetuates the myth that nuclear energy will save our planet. This could not be further from the truth, and the proof dates back to the beginning of the nuclear age.
It was July 1945, when the U.S. tested the first nuclear bomb in Alamogordo, New Mexico. In 1953, President Dwight David Eisenhower launched his Atoms for Peace program at the United Nations, ushering in a wave of atomic optimism. Bombs led to reactors and reactors led to a radical (and dangerous) rethinking of how to power the globe.
What wasn’t clear in those early years was the true cost of going nuclear: the victims of Chernobyl, millions of tons of radioactive waste and billions of dollars of taxpayer money diverted from ready to deploy green energy sources.
The world woke up to the harsh realities of the nuclear age in November 2000, when it recognized nuclear power as a dirty, dangerous and unnecessary technology by refusing to give it greenhouse gas credits during the UN climate change talks in The Hague. Nuclear power was dealt a further blow when a UN sustainable development conference refused to label nuclear a sustainable technology in April 2001.
That brings us to today: the so-called nuclear renaissance of the 21st century dead on arrival, with industry and politicians — particularly in Canada — working hard to spin a lethal technology with a radioactive legacy into the silver-bullet solution to the climate crisis. The first job has been to undermine green energy.
The nuclear industry receives legislative breaks and has been granted billions in direct and hidden subsidies over the past 50 years. Without these favours, nuclear energy couldn’t afford itself. Read Greenpeace’s Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act report to learn more.
Nuclear power is as dangerous and dirty as ever. The insurance industry refuses to insure nuclear plants, and the nuclear industry needs a special act of Parliament to protect it from the financial liability in case of a meltdown. Green power operators pay for insurance, so should nuclear power. More than 2.5 million people live in a danger zone around the Pickering reactors, and Greenpeace is campaigning to have them shut down.
Climate Action Against Nuclear Energy © Greenpeace / Vinai Dithajohn
Greenpeace has produced the Energy [R]evolution, a landmark report that shows how Canadians can transition to a clean energy economy that meaningfully addresses climate change without nuclear power.
We have the tools, technology and know-how to revolutionize our energy sector in a way that addresses the urgent need for action on climate change. At Greenpeace, the choice is clear: Don’t nuke green energy.