Barry W. Brook and Cary Bradshaw have announced their conclusions that as conservation scientists concerned with global depletion of biodiversity and the degradation of the human life-support system this entails, we support the broad conclusions drawn in the article Key role for nuclear energy in global biodiversity conservation published in Conservation Biology.
Thay argue that the full gamut of electricity-generation sources including nuclear power must be deployed to replace the burning of fossil fuels, if we are to have any chance of mitigating severe climate change. They provide strong evidence for the need to accept a substantial role for advanced nuclear power systems with complete fuel recycling as part of a range of sustainable energy technologies that also includes appropriate use of renewables, energy storage and energy efficiency. This multi-pronged strategy for sustainable energy could also be more cost-effective and spare more land for biodiversity, as well as reduce non-carbon pollution , such as aerosols, heavy metals, etc.
Given the historical antagonism towards nuclear energy amongst the environmental community, we accept that this stands as a controversial position. However, much as leading climate scientists have recently advocated the development of safe, next-generation nuclear energy systems to combat global climate change, we entreat the conservation and environmental community to weigh up the pros and cons of different energy sources using objective evidence and pragmatic trade-offs, rather than simply relying on idealistic perceptions of what is called green.
Although renewable energy sources like wind and solar will likely make increasing contributions to future energy production, these technology options face real-world problems of scalability, O and M cost, material and land use, meaning that it is too risky to rely on them as the only alternatives to fossil fuels.
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