Letters to the Editor in ATOM — 1980

Number 281, March

World Churches and nuclear power

From Dr David L Gosling, Department of Theology, The University, Hull

Sir : I appreciate that in writing for ATOM the Rev Eric Jenkins felt the need to stress the nuclear aspects of the World Council of Churches’ MIT Conference, Faith, Science, and the Future. However, in so doing I feel that he has not conveyed the main thrust of the conclusions of the Energy Group at the Conference. In addition he laboured under an unavoidable difficulty in that the report of the Energy Group has undergone several revisions and will not be published for some time. As a member of the Energy Group and at the request of the British Council of Churches’ Nuclear Energy Committee, I would like to put the Group’s conclusions into a somewhat different perspective.

The major cocnern of the energy group was not with nuclear power but with energy. We distinguished between short term, medium term and long term objectives. Short term meant a period of five to ten years for which most energy decisions have been taken already. The medium term applies to a period roughly between now and the end of the century for which decisions about to be taken will be determinative. The Group was united in the view that for the long term we believe no options should be excluded per se. This conclusion is consistent with what has been said at previous WCC Conferences (eg London 1977, Geneva 1978). In the long term the nuclear option, whether fission or fusion, must be kept open.

The accompanying table will give some idea of the manner in which the Group felt that energy needs could be met during the short, medium and long terms. The distinction between developed and developing countries is, of course, somewhat bland, but the table is intended as a useful summary of the more detailed report by the Group. The disagreement over additional nuclear power related, ultimately, only to the short and medium terms. One section of the group, the majority, felt that no additional nuclear power should be introduced until there had been considerably more participation by the public in decision–making processes, and until some of the variables mentioned beneath the table have been studied further.^NOTE

A minority within the Energy Group, as Eric Jenkins quite correctly points out, were worried about this delay and saw it as tantamount to an irrevocable blow to the nuclear industry. One of their strongest arguments against any moratorium was that such a moratorium would result in the dispersal of skilled teams of scientists and engineers and the end of recruiting new ones, thus making it difficult to develop the nuclear industry if the public debate during the moratorium period should result in the decision to do this.^NOTE The report went on to say that the majority and the minority agreed that a continued discussion of the arguments for and against a moratorium is of utmost importance and should be pursued. We have learnt much from one another and we want to continue to learn.

Putting the proposals of the Energy Group as a whole into perspective, we urged that for the short and medium terms we make a strong plea for a major shift towards the development of an effective implementation of the huge potentiality as yet untapped of the soft option. By soft option was meant a technology that is small–scale, less capital–intensive, decentralised (eg solar heating, biomass), emphasising conservation technologies (eg co–generation, passive solar heating). In the middle term the transitional use of coal is anticipated, while in the long term solar and other renewable sources will be used.

These quotations are taken from the most recent revision of the Energy Group’s report, made in the light of discussion and voting at the final plenary, and I expect that they will appear verbatim in the book based on the Conference to be published in the New Year. I hope I have made it clear that it is not adequate to talk in terms of pro–nuclear and anti–nuclear stances. The differences were much more subtle, and there was a wide consensus within the Group. Much attention was given to the possible environmental impact of coal, and it was also recognised that renewable energy sources are not without their environmental impact. Many of the arguments against over–emphasis on nuclear power were economic, and very little was said about what Eric Jenkins describes as the well–worn arguments relating to proliferation and civil liberties.

It is good to see that there is now a better understanding between churchment in Britain who are worried about what they see as an over–rapid expansion of the nuclear programme and those like the Rev Eric Jenkins who think otherwise. Mr Jenkins welcomes the condinued studies by the British Council of Churches. The differences between us are in some respects more a matter of theological approach than of anything else. Thus the Rev Jenkins is concerned about the contribution of Christians within the nuclear industry to the nuclear debate. While recognising that there are significant differences between Christians and non–Christians, many of us would prefer in practice not to make such a distinction, and to discuss moral and ethical issues equally with all those who believe that these are important. At MIT last July the World Council of Churches drew together a considerable number of churchmen together with nuclear and other experts from different countries, and the Conference’s findings represent in my view a unique and authoritative range of informed opinion.

David Gosling
31 December 1979

Nuclear power and the Groupe de Bellerive

From Paul Sieghart, 6 Gray’s Inn Square, London WC1

Sir : In your October issue you published a review by LG Brookes of a Declaration issued by the Geneva–based Groupe de Bellerive on 31 May 1979.

My colleagues on the Groupe have asked me, as the only member resident in Great Britain, to write to you on their behalf in order to correct what appears to be an important misunderstanding on Mr Brookes’ part.

Our Declaration listed a series of seven questions. In his review, Mr Brookes proposes some answers, but he also attacks the form of content of the questions themselves, using such words as loaded, rhetorical, based on false premises, broad, generalised, unsubstantiated, etc.

In so doing, Mr Brookes conveys the impression that the questions had been asked by the Groupe de Bellerive, and that his strictures are therefore also apt to characterise that entity and its members. That is in fact quite incorrect. As the Declaration itself makes perfectly plain (we sent you a copy, but regrettably you were not able to find space for it), the questions were not the Groupe’s own. They were raised by speakers critical of nuclear energy at the colloquium which the Groupe sponsored in Geneva last February. They were not answered then and there, principally because most of the representatives of the nuclear industry (including the UKAEA), although invited, chose not to attend.^NOTE That was a matter for the Groupe’s regret, and certainly not its fault. And that was why, following the colloquium, the Groupe summarised the critics’ questions, and expressed the hope that they would not be allowed to pass without reply.

We think it important that your readers should not be left with the impression, after reading Mr Brookes’ reply, that the Groupe de Bellerive has an anti–nuclear bias. You may rest assured that it has none. Individually, its members hold a variety of views on the world’s energy problems in general, and on nuclear power in particular. Some of them (myself included) place a high value on the contribution which nuclear power can make to the electricity requirements of many countries.

But what we all have in common is a dislike of polemics, emotional partisanship, and sterile confrontation. It is in the social consequences of these, more than in any particular national energy policy, that we see great dangers for free societies. Our prime concern is therefore to encourage rational and constructive discussion on this complex and multi–dimensional subject in an endeavour to clarify and illuminate, and to take no collective part ourselves in highly–charged controversies.

That was the spirit in which we issued our Declaration of 31 May 1979. We can only regret that Mr Brookes does not seem to have undersood it. Fortunately, others have : the British Nuclear Forum, for example, have told us in a reasoned and thoughtful paper that our objectives in circulating our Declaration are perfectly reasonable, and that we are entitled to ask that the case for nuclear power should be restated and brought up to date.

We hope at least that the bulk of your readers will share that view, even if Mr Brookes does not.

Paul Sieghart
31 December 1979

Mr Brookes comments :

I am glad to learn that the Groupe de Bellerive did not associate themselves with the wording of the questions which they called upon the nuclear industry to answer in their Declaration and I am very sorry if, in my attempts to offer some answers, I implied the contrary in places by referring to these questions as the Groupe’s questions. If I was a little confused, I was in the company of the journal Nature which, in reporting on the Declaration, said The Bellerive Groupe, an international body of experts… has issued a stinging critique of conventional arguments in favour of nuclear power…. However, I share the Groupe’s concern to encourage rational and constructive discussion and hope that my endeavours to meet the Groupe’s wish that the questions should not be allowed to pass without reply may be welcomed in this spirit.

Man and Atom Notes

• Once again, we see that nuclear energy is put in the position of being the only option that has to be justified. In particular the use of coal, which causes concrete and widespread harms, is accepted almost without comment. Surely it is incumbent upon those who take this position to clearly say why.
• And indeed this has been the result. The informal quasi–moratorium in the USA, and the formal pause in France, have both had the effect of crippling the nuclear industries in those countries, and it may be said with some confidence that the purpose of the pause was not (as claimed) to make time for public debate and consultation, but to make that debate irrelevant.
• This seems a weak, if not a contrived, justification. Blair, in Taming the Atom, gives a typical specimen of what happens to the hapless person from the industry who accepts such an invitation hoping to put forward his case in good faith.