NZ: Time is running out for blind opposition to nuclear power

It is not to be wondered at that New Zealand has distanced itself from the position of the US and Australia in the nuclear-energy debate. Our nuclear-free status probably enjoys more widespread popular support than any other single policy because it is an integral part both of our “clean and green” brand and of our identity: our declaration 20 years ago, which reverberated around the world, marked the moment when the country came of age.
We live in a different world now. The nuclear threat to the planet pales into insignificance beside the threat posed by climate change. At the Apec summit this week, the issue came into sharp focus. The leaders were under pressure to forge agreement over climate change, and US President George Bush immediately went into bat for what he calls “nucular” energy. “If you truly care about greenhouse gases … you should be supportive of nuclear power,” he said.

Among the Kiwi contingent, the suggestion was as appetising as a plutonium milkshake. Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters muttered darkly that we were not going to “abrogate our sovereignty”; Trade and Disarmament Minister Phil Goff cited “other concerns”, including waste disposal, safety issues and the creation of terrorist targets; and PM Helen Clark, who sees no role for nuclear power in the climate-change debate, dismissed it as “not something we are going to endorse”.

Such an unequivocal attitude flies in the face of shifting international and scientific opinion. Barely a year ago, Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace (which now derides him as an apostate), wrote that “nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce [greenhouse gas] emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power”. James Lovelock, the author of the Gaia hypothesis, pronounced that “only nuclear power can now halt global warming” and wrote “I entreat my friends in the [Green] movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy”

The New Zealand Herald