Is Nuclear Power the Solution to Climate Change? - 2020

Nuclear Power Industry

Paul Dorfman and Staffan Qvist both want to save the climate. But one of them wants to rid the world of nuclear reactors while the other wants to build more of them. The German newspaper reporters  Bethge and von Bredow summarized in DER SPIEGEL the Dorfman-Qvist debate.

This is a rather detailed debate report but it touches on many of the relevant issues. Well worth reading reading.... especially with a German factor. 

For example, here are the exchanges at the end of the debate:

"Dorfman: The problem is that we all make different assumptions and come to different conclusions. Let’s stick to what we know, and that is that radiation is dangerous to human health. An influential study in Germany, the KiKK study, showed that clusters of leukemia cases in little children and infants were more likely to be found near nuclear plants…

Qvist: ... this study has been debunked because it did not fully assess factors other than radiation. There is just no correlation between radiation and leukemia close to nuclear plants.

Dorfman: Every radiation-protection organization in the world will tell you that there is no safe dose of radiation. And when you talk about a nuclear accident, you're not simply talking about cancers such as leukemias. You are talking about a whole raft of other things that happen way down the line, including probably genomic instability in generations to come. The complexity of the debate is mind-boggling. Why would you want to invest money in a such a highly dangerous technology? And I haven’t even started with the risks of nuclear waste.

Qvist: Civilian nuclear waste has never harmed anyone. We have stored it for 60 years in more than 30 countries and nothing happened. Highly radioactive nuclear waste is a tiny component in the vast mass of hazardous materials that we as a society produce, including toxic arsenic, mercury and lead, which last forever. And in the future, we will be able to burn nuclear waste as fuel in new types of reactors.

Dorfman: It's not that simple. We have high-level radioactive waste, intermediate and low-level waste. There is the idea that we can dig a deep hole and get rid of it. However, new research shows that the materials that the U.S. and other countries plan to use to store high-level nuclear waste will likely degrade faster than anyone previously knew.

Qvist: This is fear-mongering, I am sorry. How many people have died from civilian nuclear waste? None. It’s a solved problem. The Finnish nuclear regulatory agency has approved the plans for a repository near Olkiluoto. It is being built and will be ready soon…

Dorfman: … will it work? That’s still open to debate. We will only know in about a thousand years.

DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Dorfman, you are 64 years old, Mr. Qvist, you are 34. Do you think that our discussion is an intergenerational dispute?

Qvist: I believe so. In Sweden, for instance, you see the young generation being increasingly pro nuclear because they see it as an efficient measure against climate change. We see that once misconceptions are being fought by facts, opinions can change rapidly. In polls, only 11 percent have an anti-nuclear stance.

Dorfman: If you were to ask that question in Germany, you may well receive a very different answer. I don’t believe that it is a generational issue. Everybody's worried about climate change. The key is how we can respond to it. And therein lies the discussion.

[The winner of this debate was clearly Dr. Qvist on the basis of the number of factual responses, not just misinformation. This debate is similar throughout the world].

[Also see the whole story on the German nuclear debate (more)]