Anti-Nuclear Asshattery

A certain woman came to my attention earlier today. She is called Katharine Hamnet. She is a fashion designer. And she thinks herself qualified to tell us that nuclear power is bad. We shouldn't look at the scientific evidence, oh no. Those damn scientists 'r feedin' us LIES! Clearly, a fashion designer with little to no formal scientific education (her degree was in Textiles and Fashion) is a good source of knowledge who should be taken seriously in scientific matters.

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Now, let's have a look at what Ms Hamnett has to say. Her website has a whole section devoted to her anti-nuclear stance. What immediately strikes me is the immediate use of conspiracy-nuttery in the foreword:

"Could it be because the government for over a year has been secretly working with the Americans on a replacement for Trident nuclear warheads?"

Her only citation is the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Now I'm all for the disarmament of the world's nuclear weapons, but doesn't such an organisation come across as perhaps slightly biased? In any case, as she herself points out subsequently, this would be in clear breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, something the UK is not going to do as it would risk re-igniting the Cold War.

But let's move on to her more substantial argument.

One page on her website is devoted to the Health Hazards associated with Nuclear Power. This is what she has to say:

"A major study conducted by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) into the dangers of low-energy, low-dose ionizing radiation concluded that there appears to be no safe radiation exposure level. The 750-page NAS report entitled The Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation Report VII (BEIR VII) �Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation´ found that the risk of getting cancer from radiation released into the environment by US nuclear reactors is approximately 35 per cent higher than current US Government risk estimates. The report also found that even very low doses of radiation can cause cancer and that there is no safe level or threshold of exposure. It also found a causal relationship between radiation exposure and non-cancer health effects such as heart disease and stroke. Finally, the NAS study also warned that it is possible that children born to parents who have been exposed to radiation could also be affected by those exposures."

Okay, Ms Hamnett. Let's talk about health risks. I wonder how many deaths are, on average, caused by nuclear power. It turns out that IBM Research have looked into this. Their answer is that 0.04 people die for every Terrawatt Hour of energy produced by nuclear power. If it sounds callous for me to be talking about people dying to give us energy then I apologise, but that is the case. Now let's look at other forms of energy. Guess how many deaths are caused by Hydroelectricity per Terrawatt Hour. The answer is 1.4. I don't see Ms Hamnett raging about the dangers of hydroelectricity. In fact, she actually promotes it. In any case, the cost of setting up alternative clean energy sources costs far more and is less efficient than nuclear and as I have demonstrated above, some forms of renewable energy sources are in fact more dangerous than nuclear.

And here's something interesting. 161 deaths are caused by coal power for every Terrawatt Hour produced. Statistically, coal power is over 4000 times more dangerous than nuclear.

"Ah," you might say. "But what about nuclear waste?" Katharine Hamnett, once again, has a thing or two to say about nuclear waste. But there is something wrong here. Let's go back to coal again. As it turns out, a 1978 paper published in Science shows that coal ash from power plants is actually more radioactive than nuclear waste (NOTE: that's stored and shielded waste, not waste just left lying around the countryside, which it never is).

Why is Ms Hamnett not even more strongly against coal? Why the tirades against nuclear when coal power is demonstrably more harmful? I suspect the answer lies simply in her blatant lack of scientific understanding and her inability to understand the real facts and research. Like so many others, she is all too easily swayed by spectacular displays of nuclear power going badly wrong (Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukishima etc) and so unable or unwilling to see nuclear as an acceptable alternative to fossil fuel energy.

Anyone who is against nuclear power must surely be even more strongly against coal. Otherwise, they should admit that their position is illogical and drop the issue.

Not that they ever would. It is an annoying habit amongst people that they often refuse to admit being blatantly wrong. I'll admit that this is a flaw I too possess, but I at least try to cut down on it and I would like to think that I flip positions more readily than others when shown that I am demonstrably wrong.