Don't believe the spurious claims of nuclear shills constantly doing down renewables, writes Mark Diesendorf. Clean, safe renewable energy technologies have the potential to supply 100% of the world's electricity needs - but the first hurdle is to refute the deliberately misleading myths designed to promote the politically powerful but ultimately doomed nuclear industry.
Most of the renewable energy technologies are commercially available, affordable and environmentally sound. The pro-nuclear and anti-RE myths disseminated by nuclear proponents and supporters of other vested interests do not stand up to examination.
Nuclear energy and renewable energy (RE) are the principal competitors for low-carbon electricity in many countries.
As RE technologies have grown in volume and investment, and become much cheaper, nuclear proponents and deniers of climate science have become deniers of RE.
The strategies and tactics of RE deniers are very similar to those of climate science deniers.
To create uncertainty about the ability of RE to power an industrial society, they bombard decision-makers and the media with negative myths about RE and positive myths about nuclear energy, attempting to turn these myths into conventional wisdom
In responding to the climate crisis, few countries have the economic resources to expand investment substantially in both nuclear and RE. This is demonstrated in 2016 by the UK government, which is offering huge long-term subsidies to nuclear while severely cutting existing short-term subsidies to RE.
This article, a sequel to one busting the myth that we need base-load power stations such as nuclear or coal, examines critically some of the other myths about nuclear energy and RE. It offers a resource for those who wish to question these myths. The myths discussed here have been drawn from comments by nuclear proponents and RE opponents in the media, articles, blogs and on-line comments....more: Renewable energy versus nuclear: dispelling the myths - The Ecologist
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