[Marxism] EPW Editorial

[Sukla Sen <suklasenp@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

An interlocutor on another list responds to points
made by David Walters, reposted by Sayan, as under.

Sukla

>The second argument that "all independent estimates"
make nuclear
 power to be
more expensive is an outright display of ignorance.
MOST independent
 sources
make nuclear power one of the cheapest to run and
cheaper than oil, gas
 or coal
over the lifetime of the plant (which is longest in
nuclear in any
 event). The
"expensive" argument is more the stuff of anti-nuclear
urban legend
 than any
serious studies of either current plant production or
future ones.

Hello .., you look so wonderfully confident, could you
tell us
what are the independent sources that you are refering
to?

Without waiting to read you, there are plenty of
simple and publicly
available facts, from which any citizen can -and must-
make his
opinion without depending on technicalities or
expert's opinion.

Here are some of the most well known facts. They raise
important
questions that it is better not to avoid. You can
avoid the questions,
the consequences will not avoid you.

- Why is nuclear energy develloped only by
government-run companies?

- Why do the US and British governments fail to
convince investors to
build new nuclear plants, if it is really 'the
cheapest'?

- Why all countries where civilian nuclear energy has
been develloped
have enacted laws to limit the liability of nuclear
operators? (The
debate in the French Parliament in the late 1960's was
extremely
curious: The M.P. proponent of the law argues that
'since nuclear
energy creates a situation where the risks are
extraordinary, it is
justified to make a special law to deal with this
extraordinary
situation'... and exonerate the nuclear operators from
any
responsibility beyond a given amount!). Why has
nuclear energy been
develloped only in dictatures or where democracy has
abdicated its
competence beyond the payment of a given amount of
compensation? Is
nuclear energy compatible with democracy?

- Why are the nuclear safety norms, since the early
1960's and in
every country, calculated 'keeping in view the
economic feasibility'?

- Does 'economic feasibility' take into account the
cost of health or
the cost of public opinion?

- In a democracy, who has the legitimacy to give an
answer to the
previous question? In other words, who has the
authority to strike a
balance between 'safety' and 'economic feasibility'?
The Parliament,
or government-paid experts?

- Why are the members of the nuclear establishment so
helpful to each
other when they want to hide information from the
public during and
after nuclear accidents?

- What actually means 'cheap' for nuclear energy?

For example, the cost of the single Chernobyl accident
exceeds all the
profit generated by all Russian nuclear energy since
its inception.
Nobody knows the cost of looking after the eternal
nuclear garbage for
our descendants during the next 10,000 years. Someone
said:
"Capitalism has exploited the proletariat first, then
the colonies,
and now the only people who can't defend themselves:
the future". The
proletariat was cheap, the negroes were cheap, but
nuclear energy has
achieved the ultimate cheap: Our children, their
children,
grand-children, etc. "Infinitely" cheap! (and you are
in no way
answerable). So don't hesitate to put the A.C. on, if
your baby feels
hot: it is his money that you are spending, not your.

All these basic questions were pointed out as early as
40 years ago,
first by scientists (often nuclear scientists), but
more and more by
people who have very different professions, and who
are answering
these questions in their practical life and with their
actions. It is
incredible how slowly the anti-nuclear movement has
progressed. People
are fascinated, they loose their rationality and
practical thinking
when confronted to nuclear energy. Even the law-makers
are so
fascinated that they start to discuss 'neutron' and
'fast-breeder',
instead of asking simple things like: -how much does
it cost, why
can't you take the full responsibility, why can't you
calculate the
risk, why do you need to exert this industrial
activity beyond the
purview of the common law of insurance and
responsibility?

Finally, a last question: Is nuclear energy a religion
without god,
based on faith and superstition?

It is the personal duty of any citizen to make his own
personal
opinion from the information presently and publicly
available, because
if you only listen to and believe the conclusions of
the experts, you
only deceive yourself. It is not because you have let
those who claim
to be in charge of public affairs, take decisions in
your place, that
your responsibility is diminished. The facts have a
complete disregard
for legal or administrative procedures, and
radioactivity does not
follow any legal procedure when it reach your
children's milk.

We are lucky to live, in many parts of the world, in
democracies where
much information is still legally available and where
it is still
possible to discuss about these things. But the
security requirements
of an expanding nuclear energy will make this freedom
obsolete because
too dangerous. If we don't put this freedom to good
use now, our
grand-children will have no choice, but to build a
society capable to
preserve safely our frighteningly dangerous and
eternal radioactive
shit, a society where too much information available
to too many
people will be unacceptable because too dangerous. And
this is not
even new, it was explicitly acknowledged by the
director of the French
State electricity company in a public interview in a
popular
scientific magazine, as early as 1974. But, listen
only those who want
it.

The technical problems are the same today as 40 years
ago. The story
of nuclear energy is not a technical story, but a
story of
consciousness in its fight against superstition. A
member of the
French scientific nuclear establishment recently
declared that the
main achievement of nuclear energy was the
anti-nuclear movement,
because it has given birth to "a civil society
conscious of itself".

Laurent Fournier


On 8/17/07, Rajesh Ramakrishnan <rrajesh31@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> EPW Editorial, August 11 2007

A correspondent responds:
\
-------------------------------------
The EPW editorial states clearly:

  "Yet, an enthusiasm for nuclear power and the need
at all costs to
 build a
Nuclear arsenal have both informed the domestic debate
in the country.
 The
left is right in arguing that the deal is part of a
larger web of
 relationships
"military, economic and political" which the US is
drawing India into
 and that it should therefore be rejected for the
dependency this
engagement with
the imperial power will create."

 This sums up, in fact, what is the main issue, or
should be, for
pro-people forces
in India, or anywhere for that matter. Any group that
does not start
from this issue
is going to be lost in a tangle of imperialist power
politics, which
needs to be avoided.

The authors of his editorial then state: "Nuclear
power is simply too
 risky and
dangerous for India to see it as a major source of
energy, and the
 expectations
whether in terms of its contribution to electricity
generation or to
 reducing
greenhouse gas emissions are extremely unrealistic."

This is not only inaccurate but it is flip to make
this false
assumption without at
least trying to back it up with some data or a proof,
but we don't. We
do get this:

"But the Indo-US deal will not make much of a
difference for, even if
 the
ambitious target for 2020 is achieved, nuclear will
still account for
 no more
than 8 to 10 per cent of the capacity India hopes to
have on the target
 date.
Second, all independent estimates point out that
nuclear power is more
 expensive
 than other sources of energy ? thermal, hydro and
renewable. Third,
 the new
argument that nuclear will help combat global warming
is illusory, for
 it has
been shown that for that to happen a new nuclear plant
has to come up
every week!"

This is as interesting as it is uninformed. They argue
that going from
the current 3%
of India's energy generation to 10% (it would be about
12% actually)
 "would make
 no difference". How's that? Adding 20,000 megawatts
of non-Carbon
 emitting
energy would not make a difference? Does 100 million
tons of CO2
 mitigated
by not building coal plants mean anything?  That coal
is killing people
 now
seems to have completely been taken out of the
picture.

The second argument that "all independent estimates"
make nuclear power
 to be
more expensive is an outright display of ignorance.
MOST independent
 sources
make nuclear power one of the cheapest to run and
cheaper than oil, gas
 or coal
over the lifetime of the plant (which is longest in
nuclear in any
 event). The
"expensive" argument is more the stuff of anti-nuclear
urban legend
 than any
serious studies of either current plant production or
future ones.

Lastly, the editorial writer admits that nuclear power
mitigates global
 warming
 in the self-contradictory statement that nuclear
power would if they
 could only
 build one every week! So it's no "illusionary" when
in fact what we
 have to do
is build more of them! I couldn't agree more.

If I were to criticize India's planners, I would say
the 20,000
 megawatts of new
 nuclear energy (20 nuclear power plants) over the
next 15 years or so
 is not
enough. They should be investing in 3 times or more of
that number so
 as to
phase out coal plants [which are killing people now,
causing asthma
 now, which
has no waste regulations now, which produced in India
about 140 million
 tons
of ash now, which dumps hundreds of millions of tons
of carbon into the
atmosphere now].

They need to continue and expand their research into
thorium which
 eventually
will be India's only energy savoir from the point of
view of real
 energy
 independence. They could do this by scaling back the
nuclear weapons
production.

The editorial writers instead propose "renewables".
With no plan, no
explanation,
no budget suggestions. Nada. Zip. At best, this part
of the editorial
is nothing
but liberal wishful thinking.


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