Right-wing, Left-wing: on the nuclear issue it doesn’t matter

The promotion of nuclear power is a right-wing thing – isn’t it?

Over the years, I’ve been following the propaganda of the climate-change denialists, among other liars and frauds. I found that the Koch brothers in America were the source of much successful barrage against the truth on our heating climate.

Alongside the fight for a sustainable, liveable planet, there’s the fight for freedom against the nuclear peril. I’ve concentrated on the latter, but find that the two are strangely embroiled.

How do you know whom to believe? Well, as with the issue of cigarettes causing cancer – I’ve always found that the genuine scientific organisations to be credible, as against the propaganda from tobacco corporations, coal, oil gas, nuclear an uranium companies – and their political lackies.

So – the promotion of nuclear power is a right-wing thing – isn’t it?

So, in my efforts for a nuclear-free world, I’ve assumed that the pro-nuclear push is a right-wing thing, like climate denial. All self-respecting activists will know of the notorious climate-denialist campaigns of the Charles and David Koch from 1980 onwards.

In 1974, the Charles Koch Foundation was set up, and later its name was changed to the CATO Institute.

The CATO Institute is largely funded by the Koch Family, (Koch Industries family foundation) and also numerous right-wing organisations and corporations. It is a gloriously right-wing organisation, and I suppose I should hate it.

So, it comes as a shock to me today, to find the most plausible, credible case against the nuclear industry – coming not from my beloved anti-nuclear movement, but in a very long article from the CATO Institute – The Next Nuclear Renaissance?

Author Steve Thomas does not denounce the nuclear industry. He just opens up the question – does it have any real hope of surviving, let alone thriving?

Thomas points out, in the later part of the article, that even for China and Russia, the countries now supposedly leading in nuclear development, the home demand is falling, and their hope is more to export nuclear technology. Meanwhile for the Western world, despite the brouhaha from policy-makers and the media about new nuclear development, it’s just not really happening. Well, it is, a bit, but with the absolute imperative of tax-payer funding.

Thomas discusses all the publicity this century, about new nuclear reactors: the actual results have been dismal. In the USA there have been the abandoned V.C. Summer project, and the A.W. Vogtle project, completed six or seven years behind schedule and at more than double the forecasted cost. There are now no proposals for additional large reactor projects in the United States.

In the UK, after years of “no government subsidy” for new nuclear, they still can’t get enough investors, even with government subsidy, and all sorts of perks about insulating the reactors from competitive wholesale electricity markets. Hinkley Point C project is estimated now at £35 billion and rising.

Thomas goes on to demolish the spin about Small Nuclear Reactors – showing that some are not even small, and all are not cheap, not so safe, not waste-free, and not happening, anyway, despite the hype.

He looks at the costs and feasibility of re-opening old closed reactors, and of life-extension of old ones still functioning:

“Life-extending a reactor by 20-40 years effectively means giving a whole new operating life to an old design that would not be considered if it were offered for a new reactor. In other words, life-extended nuclear power plants would not come close to meeting the standards required for new reactors. This raises several important safety questions.”

The author concludes that the nuclear industry is just not going to revive.

And shock – horror! – this right-wing publication concludes that other power options are needed to face “serious risks from climate change.”

In other CATO publications, they have pushed for reducing America’s nuclear arsenal, and even for the USA to deal with the Ukraine crisis by diplomacy, not weaponry.

Yeah, I know CATO’s awful on health education etc – but it’s refreshing to find a right-wing institution explaining the nuclear industry so clearly. Do we have to do this right-wing left-wing fight all the time?

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