Even supporters of nuclear energy confess: After 50 years of research and searching, there is still not a single satisfactory nuclear waste disposal site in the world. The Supreme Court of the United States has stipulated that nuclear waste disposal sites will only be approved if the operator can guarantee a safety factor of one million years. But who could do so?

I went the opposite way to Patrick Moore. In the 60’s and the years after, as chairman of the district branch of the Junge Union (Youth Branch of the CDU party) in Karlsruhe and candidate of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) for the German regional elections, I was a supporter of nuclear energy. I trusted those experts who told us: Nuclear energy is safe! Only once in ten thousand years at best, an incident could happen!
 
And then Tschernobyl happened! I finally began to investigate intensively. Already in the years before Tschernobyl, nuclear incidents had happened in Sellafield (England), in Tscheljabinsk (USSR) and in Harrisburg (USA), which according to experts should never have occurred. So: What should have happened only once in every ten thousand years, has happened once in every ten years. This is how quickly time passes according to the calculations of supporters of nuclear energy. Shouldn’t the three nuclear incidents in France alone during the past weeks or last year’s series of incidents in German nuclear power stations set supporters of nuclear energy rethinking, or even changing their views? Hasn’t the inconceivable sloppiness in the Asse “preliminary nuclear waste disposal site”  again given proof that it is nearly impossible to store nuclear waste over tens of thousands of years?
 
In Germany also, “nuclear residual risk” is a reality which can be the final straw for us each day.
 
In times of terrorism there is also the fact that certain rogue countries which support terrorism have long regarded nuclear power stations as targets. Those who ignore this ever increasing danger are living in cloud-cuckoo-land rather than in the real world. He or she cannot pursue a responsible policy. What excuses are the supporters of nuclear energy going to fob off on us after the next accident or the first terrorist attack?
 
The campaign against nuclear power has not been, and is not, unwise – as former campaign manager Moore now believes – but right and realistic. In ten years only – says Al Gore – the USA will be able to produce all their electricity with renewable energy - safely, inexpensively, without damage caused by climate change and without new nuclear power stations. Barrack Obama as well as John McCain agree with him.
 
If the u-turn with electricity is possible in the USA, why shouldn’t it be possible in Germany and Europe, too? In the early 60’s, President John F. Kennedy said: “At the end of this decade the first US American will be on the moon”. Kennedy was jeered at. But just 8 years later it came to pass. I can well imagine that in the post- Bush era the USA will go green and say goodbye to nuclear power.
 
The much-heralded  “Renaissance of nuclear power” is in fact nowhere a reality. At least not so far. The facts: In the past 8 years 6 nuclear power stations have been closed down worldwide and two new ones have been connected to the grid.
 
In the last century, France has increased its share of nuclear electricity from zero to 75 % within 16 years. If this was possible with one single energy source, why shouldn´t it then be possible with six renewable energy sources (sun, wind, bio-energy, water power, ocean energy and geothermal heat) to effect a 100% changeover to renewables within a similar time scale in the 21st century? Why is there so much faint-heartedness and doubt with technology? Our main problem in the current discussion about energy is the reckless underestimation of renewable energies and the careless overestimation of the availability the rapidly expiring fossil fuels, including uranium as fuel for nuclear power stations. The sun alone sends us every moment 15,000 times more energy than the entire population of the world consumes.
 
There is no energy problem at all, there is just a wrong energy strategy. But we can change that.
 
There is no lack of technologies – it is the political will which is lacking. Some German examples show what is possible: The cities of Kassel and Nuremberg today produce 100 % of their electricity from renewables. The East Frisians – population about 500,000 - are already producing 96 % of their electricity from renewable energy sources. The state government of Schleswig-Holstein predicts that by 2020 the state will produce more eco-electricity than the entire population of Schleswig-Holstein will be able to consume.
 
We need neither longer operating times for nuclear power stations nor new coal-fired power stations.
However: the body-politic must have more confidence in itself than today.
 
My scepticism with regard to nuclear energy grew when, after the meltdown in Tschernobyl, the boss in charge of the clearing-up operations, nuclear physicist Wladimir Tschernousenko, told me his story. For more than 20 years he had been professor of nuclear technology in Kiew and a passionate supporter of nuclear energy. Before the incident, he was also of the opinion that a meltdown  like in Tschernobyl could never happen. He had, as he put it “played down the dangers in the interests of his occupation” and added: “Today I know that everything that can possibly happen, will, at some time, happen.” The Inter City Express should have never derailed, but it did derail. The Transrapid should have never had an accident, but it had.
 
In 1986 professor  Tschernousenko was appointed head of the clearing-up operations by Michail Gorbatschow. The professor paid a high price for his belief in nuclear power and the suppression of the dangers: his life. He was contaminated by radiation in the reactor of Tschernobyl and died of cancer a couple of years later. But only 22 years after Tschernobyl, the new convert to  nuclear energy, Patrick Moore, is again playing down the dangers.
 
The international doctors’ organisation IPPNW (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) reckons that meanwhile more than 80,000 people have died, mostly in great agony of cancer as a result of contamination from Tschernobyl. My meetings with the former supporter of nuclear energy, Tschernousenko, and his eventual renouncement of nuclear power were my personal “Damascus”.
 
So far, no supporter of nuclear energy can tell us how to dispose of nuclear waste. We only know that it is radioactive for a hundred thousand years. We are bequeathing thousands of future generations our deadly waste.To me this seems just as irresponsible as getting on a plane whose captain can take off, but does not know a landing strip. Who would do that?
 
My life experience after Tschernobyl tells me that it is not a mistake to make mistakes, but that it is a big mistake not to learn from them. Today I know that the use of nuclear energy is against creation. In the nuclear age, we should perhaps be guided by an 11th commandment:
 
Thou shalt not split the atom!

Source:
Franz Alt 2008
"Die Welt" | 31.07.2008