(Last updated 27 January 2024.)
Zion Lights is a British nuclear power advocate. She describes herself (immodestly) as follows: “Zion Lights is a Science Communicator who is known for her environmental advocacy work. She is founder of the climate activist group Emergency Reactor. Zion has become a world-leading speaker on clean energy and evidence-based climate action.”
Lights was sucked into pro-nuclear advocacy by narcissistic MAGA liar and climate denier Michael Shellenberger and even worked for his lunatic organisation before starting a new organisation called ‘Emergency Reactor’.
A statement by Extinction Rebellion (copied below) concludes as follows: “Zion Lights, Michael Shellenberger, the Breakthrough Institute and their associated deniers and delayers are intentionally spreading doubt about the severity of the [climate] crisis and the action needed to respond to it.”
Lights is effectively campaigning to slow the transition to low-carbon energy by promoting nuclear power, the slowest and most expensive low-carbon energy option (not to mention other problems e.g. nuclear power is the only energy source directly connected to WMD proliferation). All that can be said in Lights defence is that she may be campaigning to slow the energy transition inadvertently.
Lights has called for this Friends of the Earth (FoE) webpage to be deleted and for FoE Australia to apologise and to sack the author (Jim Green). No response from Lights to any of the substantive issues raised below. She prefers confected outrage, legal threats, and blocking people on social media and her substack such that we no longer have the option to hold her directly accountable for promulgating misinformation. For example Lights responded to one factual critique (see below) with this bullying and legal intimidation on X/Twitter: “I’m hoping that they (FoE Australia) apologise, take down the hit piece, and remove Jim from the organisation, to avoid further escalation.”
Hardly the approach of a ‘Science Communicator’!
An earlier version of the ‘scientific consensus’ section (below) was sent to Lights’ organisation ‘Emergency Reactor’ as a courtesy and the response comprised nothing other than ad hominem abuse and legal threats. Obviously FoE won’t be sending them any more courtesy emails!
If Lights or her organisation wants to respond to anything on this webpage, email the response and it will be published on this webpage, unedited. Lights has been made aware of that open-ended offer, by email and on social media.
Sections below:
- Zion Lights and her lying, climate-denying mentor Michael Shellenberger
- South Korea’s nuclear mafia
- Bulls, bears and ignorant nuclear propagandists
- Fact-checker Lights on the British nuclear power program
- Lights’ misinformation about the ‘scientific consensus’ in support of nuclear power
- A ‘Science Communicator’ tries to explain ionising radiation … and fails
- Response to a July 2023 article by Zion Lights
- Extinction Rebellion Statement on Zion Lights, Michael Shellenberger and the Breakthrough Institute
Zion Lights and her lying, climate-denying mentor Michael Shellenberger
The latest substack missive from British nuclear power advocate Zion Lights reflects the cognitive dissonance that all nuclear advocates must be experiencing. Mixed in with anger and nuttiness. In the UK, if the two Hinkley Point C reactors are ever completed (the only two reactors under construction in the UK), the cost will be at least A$44 billion per reactor and it will be at least 25 years between the announcement that new reactors will be built and grid-connection of the reactors. If we allow for the usual pattern of overruns and delays, the figures are likely to be A$50+ billion per reactor, and 30 years between announcement and grid-connection.
Since the last reactor startup in the UK (Sizewell B in 1995), 24 reactors have been permanently shut-down. If the Hinkley Point C reactors begin operating in the early- to mid-30s, it will be 35‒40 years between reactors startups in the UK, during which time there will have been 32 permanent reactor-shutdowns. Only Sizewell B is likely to be operating.
If not for the military connections (which Lights studiously ignores), Hinkley Point C would likely be abandoned and plans for more reactors would also be abandoned.
Lights was sucked into nuclear advocacy by self-confessed liar, climate denier and MAGA lunatic Michael Shellenberger. You can read more about Lights here, Shellenberger here, and you can read Extinction Rebellion’s important statement about both of them here. The Extinction Rebellion statement concludes: “Zion Lights, Michael Shellenberger, the Breakthrough Institute and their associated deniers and delayers are intentionally spreading doubt about the severity of the [climate] crisis and the action needed to respond to it.”
Presumably Lights did at least some research beforehand but still thought it a good idea to work for self-confessed liar and climate denier Shellenberger.
I mention Shellenberger because Lights’ latest substack post is nothing more than a cut-and-paste of lies and distortions that Shellenberger has been peddling for decades. Lights might at least have the decency to come up with her own lies and distortions.
That being the case, I won’t trawl through Lights’ post here. Instead, here is an article about Shellenberger which covers the same ground:
Is there a future for ‘pro-nuclear environmentalism’?
Jim Green, 30 Oct 2017, RenewEconomy
For a longer version of this article please click here.
Michael Shellenberger is visiting Australia this week. He has been a prominent environmentalist (of sorts) since he co-authored the 2004 essay, The Death of Environmentalism. These days, as the President of the California-based ‘Environmental Progress’ lobby group, he is stridently pro-nuclear, hostile towards renewable energy and hostile towards the environment movement.
Shellenberger is visiting to speak at the International Mining and Resources Conference in Melbourne. His visit was promoted by Graham Lloyd in The Australian in September. Shellenberger is “one of the world’s leading new-generation environmental thinkers” according to The Australian, and if the newspaper is any guide he is here to promote his message that wind and solar have failed, that they are doubling the cost of electricity, and that “all existing renewable technologies do is make the electricity system chaotic and provide greenwash for fossil fuels.”
Trawling through Environmental Progress literature, one of their recurring themes is the falsehood that “every time nuclear plants close they are replaced almost entirely by fossil fuels”. South Korea, for example, plans to reduce reliance on coal and nuclear under recently-elected President Moon Jae-in, and to boost reliance on gas and renewables. But Shellenberger and Environmental Progress ignore those plans and concoct their own scare-story in which coal and gas replace nuclear power, electricity prices soar, thousands die from increased air pollution, and greenhouse emissions increase.
Fake scientists and radiation quackery
Environmental Progress’ UK director John Lindberg is described as an “expert on radiation” on the lobby group’s website. In fact, he has no scientific qualifications. Likewise, a South Korean article falsely claims that Shellenberger is a scientist and that article is reposted, without correction, on the Environmental Progress website.
Shellenberger says that at a recent talk in Berlin: “Many Germans simply could not believe how few people died and will die from the Chernobyl accident (under 200) and that nobody died or will die from the meltdowns at Fukushima. How could it be that everything we were told is not only wrong, but often the opposite of the truth?”
There’s a simple reason that Germans didn’t believe Shellenberger’s claims about Chernobyl and Fukushima ‒ they are false.
Shellenberger claims that “under 200” people have died and will die from the Chernobyl disaster, but in fact the lowest of the estimates of the Chernobyl cancer death toll is the World Health Organization’s estimate of “up to 9,000 excess cancer deaths” in the most contaminated parts of the former Soviet Union. And of course there are higher estimates for the death toll across Europe.
Shellenberger claims that the Fukushima meltdowns “killed precisely no one” and that “nobody died or will die from the meltdowns at Fukushima”. An Environmental Progress report has this to say about Fukushima: “[T]he science is unequivocal: nobody has gotten sick much less died from the radiation that escaped from three meltdowns followed by three hydrogen gas explosions. And there will be no increase in cancer rates.”
In support of those assertions, Environmental Progress cites a World Health Organization report that directly contradicts the lobby group’s claims. The WHO report concluded that for people in the most contaminated areas in Fukushima Prefecture, the estimated increased risk for all solid cancers will be around 4% in females exposed as infants; a 6% increased risk of breast cancer for females exposed as infants; a 7% increased risk of leukaemia for males exposed as infants; and for thyroid cancer among females exposed as infants, an increased risk of up to 70% (from a 0.75% lifetime risk up to 1.25%).
Applying a linear no-threshold (LNT) risk factor to the estimated collective radiation dose from Fukushima fallout gives an estimated long-term cancer death toll of around 5,000 people. Nuclear lobbyists are quick to point out that LNT may overestimate risks from low dose and low dose-rate exposure ‒ but LNT may also underestimate the risks according to expert bodies such as the US National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation.
Attacking environment groups
Shellenberger reduces the complexities of environmental opposition to nuclear power to the claim that in the 1960s, an “influential group of conservationists within Sierra Club feared that cheap, abundant electricity from nuclear would result in overpopulation and resource depletion” and therefore decided to campaign against nuclear power.
If such views had any currency in the 1960s, they certainly don’t now. Yet Environmental Progress asserts that Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth (FOE) “oppose cheap and abundant energy” and Shellenberger asserts that “the FOE-Greenpeace agenda has never been to protect humankind but rather to punish us for our supposed transgressions.” And Shellenberger suggests that such views are still current by asserting that the anti-nuclear movement has a “long history of Malthusian anti-humanism aimed at preventing “overpopulation” and “overconsumption” by keeping poor countries poor.”
In an ‘investigative piece‘ ‒ titled ‘Enemies of the Earth: Unmasking the Dirty War Against Clean Energy in South Korea by Friends of the Earth (FOE) and Greenpeace’ ‒ Shellenberger lists three groups which he claims have accepted donations “from fossil fuel and renewable energy investors, as well as others who stand to benefit from killing nuclear plants”. FOE and Greenpeace don’t feature among the three groups even though the ‘investigative piece’ is aimed squarely at them.
Undeterred by his failure to present any evidence of FOE and Greenpeace accepting fossil fuel funding (they don’t), Shellenberger asserts that the donors and board members of FOE and Greenpeace “are the ones who win the government contracts to build solar and wind farms, burn dirty “renewable” biomass, and import natural gas from the United States and Russia.” Really? Where’s the evidence? There’s none in Shellenberger’s ‘investigative piece’.
In an article for a South Korean newspaper, Shellenberger states: “Should we be surprised that natural gas companies fund many of the anti-nuclear groups that spread misinformation about nuclear? The anti-nuclear group Friends of the Earth ‒ which has representatives in South Korea ‒ received its initial funding from a wealthy oil man …” He fails to note that the donation was in 1969! And he fails to substantiate his false insinuation that FOE accepts funding from natural gas companies, or his false claim that natural gas companies fund “many of the anti-nuclear groups”.
Shellenberger’s ‘investigative piece‘ falsely claims that FOE keeps its donors secret, and in support of that falsehood he cites an article that doesn’t even mention FOE. Environmental Progress falsely claims that FOE has hundreds of millions of dollars in its bank and stock accounts.
Shellenberger claims that the “greatest coup” of FOE and Greenpeace in South Korea was a “Hollywood-style anti-nuclear disaster movie” which was released last year and has been watched by millions, mostly on Netflix. But FOE and Greenpeace had nothing to do with the production of the movie!
In light of all the above falsehoods, it seems a bit rich for Shellenberger to accuse anti-nuclear groups of being “flagrantly dishonest”. For good measure, he accuses anti-nuclear groups of being “corrupt” ‒ without a shred of evidence.
Environmental Progress has an annual budget of US$1.5 million, Shellenberger claims, and he asks how Environmental Progress “can possibly succeed against the anti-nuclear Goliath with 500 times the resources.” An anti-nuclear Goliath with 500 times their budget of US$1.5 million, or US$750 million in annual expenditure on anti-nuclear campaigns? Shellenberger claims that Greenpeace has annual income of US$400 million to finance its work in 55 nations ‒ but he doesn’t note that only a small fraction of that funding is directed to anti-nuclear campaigns. FOE’s worldwide budget is US$12 million according to Environmental Progress ‒ but only a small fraction is directed to anti-nuclear campaigns.
A future for pro-nuclear environmentalism?
The nuclear power industry is having one of its worst ever years. Environmental Progress is warning about nuclear power’s “rapidly accelerating crisis” and other pro-nuclear lobbyists have noted that “the industry is on life support in the United States and other developed economies“. …
The only nuclear industry that is booming is nuclear decommissioning ‒ the World Nuclear Association anticipates US$111 billion (A$145 billion) worth of decommissioning projects to 2035.
How much longer will the nuclear lobbyists keep flogging the dead nuclear horse? Perhaps not too much longer. It’s worth keeping in mind that nuclear lobbyists ‒ especially the self-styled ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ ‒ are few in number. David Roberts summed up the situation in 2013, when Robert Stone’s ‘Pandora’s Promise‘ propaganda film was launched:
“There is no budding environmentalist movement for nukes. Ever since I started paying attention to “nuclear renaissance” stories about a decade ago, there’s always been this credulous, excitable bit about how enviros are starting to come around. The roster of enviros in this purportedly burgeoning movement: Stewart Brand, the Breakthrough Boys, and “Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore,” who has been a paid shill for industry for decades (it sounds like the Pandora folks were wise enough to leave him out). More recently George Monbiot and Mark Lynas have been added to the list.
“This handful of converts is always cited with the implication that it’s the leading edge of a vast shift, and yet … it’s always the same handful. … In the movie, Shellenberger says, “I have a sense that this is a beautiful thing … the beginning of a movement.” I fear he has once again mistaken the contents of his navel for the zeitgeist.”
South Korea’s nuclear mafia
Zion Lights’ latest substack post is a vacuous puff-piece about South Korea’s nuclear power industry. Therefore I’ve copied below links to a few Nuclear Monitor articles about South Korea’s corrupt and dangerous nuclear industry.
Literally everything in Lights’ post could have been lifted from a nuclear industry promotional piece. Just one thing caught my eye: the three countries with the best record for building reactors relatively quickly are Japan, South Korea and China according to a table included in Lights’ post. Those three countries all have seriously corrupt nuclear industries. Correlation, causation, coincidence?
South Korea’s nuclear export ambitions
Nuclear corruption and the partial reform of South Korea’s nuclear mafia
South Korea’s corrupt and dangerous nuclear industry
Is South Korea’s nuclear industry a model for others to follow?
Bulls, bears and ignorant nuclear propagandists
This is a response to Zion Lights’ January 2024 article ‘Bulls and bears: a nuclear update’. Lights is a British nuclear power advocate who previously worked for self-confessed liar, climate denier and MAGA lunatic Michael Shellenberger. You can read more about Shellenberger here.
Lights’ comments below are prefaced with her initials and placed in quote marks and in bold, and my responses are prefaced with my initials (JG ‒ Jim Green). I haven’t responded to everything in Lights’ article, which you can read in full here.
ZL: “In a world-first, 22 nations signed up to triple nuclear energy generation by 2050 at COP28 in Dubai this year, which illustrates how strongly the tide has turned in favour of the technology. Should they follow through on these commitments, the world could enter a new era of energy abundance and growth.”
JG response:
* 22 countries signed up to the nuclear pledge, 170 chose not to.
* The goal of tripling nuclear power by 2050 is laughable. David Appleyard, editor of Nuclear Engineering International, did the math: “Now 2050 still sounds like a long way off, but to triple nuclear capacity in this time frame would require nuclear deployment to average 40 GW [gigawatts] a year over the next two and half decades. The cruel reality is that’s more than six times the rate that has been seen over the last decade.”
* The nuclear renaissance of the late-2000s was a bust due to the Fukushima disaster, catastrophic cost overruns with reactor projects, and nuclear power’s inability to compete economically with renewables. The latest renaissance is heading the same way, i.e. nowhere. Nuclear power went backwards last year. There was a net loss of 1.7 GW of capacity.
* There were just six reactor construction starts in 2023. Only one outside China. One!
* The number of operable power reactors is 407 to 413 depending on the definition of operability, well down from the 2002 peak of 438.
*Nuclear power’s share of global electricity generation has fallen to 9.2%, its lowest share in four decades and little more than half of its peak of 17.5% in 1996.
* Over the two decades 2004-2023, there were 102 power reactor startups and 104 closures worldwide: 49 startups in China with no closures; and a net decline of 51 reactors in the rest of the world.
* Despite the drop in the number of operable reactors, and the sharp drop in nuclear power’s share of electricity generation, nuclear capacity (GW) and generation (TWh) have remained stagnant for the past 20 years due to increased capacity factors and reactor uprates (360 GW capacity in 2003, 374 GW in 2022; 2505 TWh in 2003, 2487 TWh in 2022). Thus it is possible, as Lights states (citing the International Energy Agency ‒ IEA), that nuclear power generation will reach an all-time high globally by 2025. If that happens, and it may not, it will be a pyrrhic victory for the industry, and it will be increasingly difficult to sustain, because of the ageing of the global reactor fleet. In 1990, the mean age of the global power reactor fleet was 11.3 years. Now, it is nearly three times higher at 31.4 years. The mean age of reactors closed from 2018‒2022 was 43.5 years. The problem of ageing reactors is particularly acute in two of the three largest nuclear power generating countries: the US reactor fleet has a mean age of 42.1 years, and in France the mean age is 37.6 years.
* Due to the ageing of the reactor fleet, the IAEA anticipates the closure of 10 reactors (10 GW) per year from 2018 to 2050. Thus the industry needs an annual average of 10 reactor construction starts, and 10 reactor startups (grid connections), just to maintain its current output. Over the past decade (2014-23), construction starts have averaged 6.1 and reactor startups have averaged 6.7. Former World Nuclear Association executive Steve Kidd noted in 2016 that “the industry is essentially running to stand still.” In the coming years and decades, the industry will have to run faster just to stand still ‒ it will have to build more reactors than it has been just to replace ageing reactors facing permanent closure. Growth ‒ even marginal, incremental growth ‒ becomes increasingly difficult and Lights’ nonsense about tripling nuclear power is thus seen as the nonsense that it is.
* The International Energy Agency (IEA) has just released its ‘Renewables 2023’ report and it makes for a striking contrast with the nuclear industry’s malaise. Nuclear power suffered a net loss of 1.7 GW capacity in 2023, whereas renewable capacity additions amounted to a record 507 GW, almost 50% higher than 2022.
* Nuclear power accounts for a declining share of global electricity generation (currently 9.2%) whereas renewables have grown to 30.2%. The IEA expects renewables to reach 42% by 2028 thanks to a projected 3,700 GW of new capacity over the next five years in the IEA’s ‘main case’ (while the IEA’s ‘accelerated case’ envisages growth of 4,500 GW). To put those numbers in context, global nuclear power capacity is 372 GW. There is little to no chance of nuclear power regaining a 10% share of global electricity generation.
* Solar and wind combined have already surpassed nuclear power generation and the IEA notes that over the next five years, several other milestones will likely be achieved: in 2025, renewables surpass coal; also in 2025, wind surpasses nuclear; and in 2026, solar PV surpasses nuclear.
* An estimated 96% of newly installed, utility-scale solar PV and onshore wind capacity had lower generation costs than new coal and natural gas plants in 2023, the IEA states. (Wind and solar became cheaper than nuclear power about a decade ago and the gap continues to widen.)
ZL: “South Korea’s industrial growth is largely thanks to nuclear power. The country is the world’s fifth-largest producer of nuclear energy and is now undertaking a major export drive. After its success working with the UAE, South Korea has eyes on other nuclear-ready nations.”
JG response:
* Lights’ first comment is too idiotic to warrant a response.
* South Korea’s nuclear industry has been rocked by industry-wide corruption scandals (see here and here).
* Other than the 2009 contract to supply four reactors to the UAE (also mired in scandal), South Korea’s efforts to establish a nuclear export business have been entirely unsuccessful. The UAE project was years behind schedule and billions of dollars over-budget despite Lights’ claim to the contrary.
* South Korean utilities opted out of the Wylfa and Moorside projects in the UK (as did Japanese companies Hitachi and Toshiba) despite offers of billions of dollars of British taxpayer subsidies.
* The South Korean nuclear industry’s business model is to sacrifice safety in order to reduce costs. The CEO of French nuclear utility Areva likened Korea’s AP1400 reactor design to “a car without airbags and safety belts ” (Nucleonics Week, 22 April 2010). Ironically, French utilities are likely to skimp on safety features with the envisaged EPR2 design following the catastrophic cost blowouts with EPR reactors.
* Another aspect of the corrupt South Korean nuclear industry’s business model is to offer nuclear technology to countries like Saudi Arabia ‒ authoritarian states with an openly-professed interest in developing nuclear weapons and an openly-professed interest in linking the development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
ZL: “China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country. Over the past decade, China has added 37 nuclear reactors, reaching a total of 55. During that same period, America – which leads the world with 93 reactors – has added two reactors. China has plans to build at least 100 more reactors and currently has 19 under construction.”
JG response:
* Yes, China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country, which just proves how sickly the global industry is. In China, there were five reactor construction starts in 2023 and just one reactor startup.
* China’s nuclear program added only 1.2 GW capacity in 2023 while wind and solar combined added 278 GW. Michael Barnard noted in CleanTechnica that allowing for capacity factors, the nuclear additions amount to about 7 terawatt-hours (TWh) of new low-carbon generation per year, while wind and solar between them will contribute about 427 TWh annually, over 60 times more than nuclear.
* Barnard commented:
“One of the things that western nuclear proponents claim is that governments have over-regulated nuclear compared to wind and solar, and China’s regulatory regime for nuclear is clearly not the USA’s or the UK’s. They claim that fears of radiation have created massive and unfair headwinds, and China has a very different balancing act on public health and public health perceptions than the west.
“They claim that environmentalists have stopped nuclear development in the west, and while there are vastly more protests in China than most westerners realize, governmental strategic programs are much less susceptible to public hostility.
“And finally, western nuclear proponents complain that NIMBYs block nuclear expansion, and public sentiment and NIMBYism is much less powerful in China with its Confucian, much more top down governance system.
“China’s central government has a 30 year track record of building massive infrastructure programs, so it’s not like it is missing any skills there. China has a nuclear weapons program, so the alignment of commercial nuclear generation with military strategic aims is in hand too. China has a strong willingness to finance strategic infrastructure with long-running state debt, so there are no headwinds there either.
“Yet China can’t scale its nuclear program at all. It peaked in 2018 with 7 reactors with a capacity of 8.2 GW. For the five years since then then it’s been averaging 2.3 GW of new nuclear capacity, and last year only added 1.2 GW …”
ZL: “Last year India brought its indigenous reactor design online at Kakrapar Atomic Power Project. India currently has 22 operable nuclear reactors, which produce around 3% of its electricity. India has ambitious plans to build more reactors – aiming to commission a new reactor every year.”
JG response:
* India has always had “ambitious plans” to build more reactors but it has never realised those ambitious plans and probably never will. Nuff said.
ZL: “Japan has changed its mind about nuclear power. After shutting down nuclear power plants following the 2011 tsunami (which caused a power plant meltdown, which didn’t harm anybody but did turn people against the form of electricity generation), in December 2023 Japan’s nuclear power regulator lifted an operational ban imposed on Tokyo Electric Power’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, and announced that other power plants would be reopened.”
JG response:
* Of the pre-Fukushima fleet of 54 power reactors in Japan, 12 are now operable, more than 20 have been permanently closed, and the fate of the rest remains in limbo. Takeo Kikkawa, president of International University of Japan, believes that a maximum of about 20 reactors will be operable by 2030.
* The claim that the Fukushima disaster “didn’t harm anybody” is a disgusting lie for which Lights should apologise. The World Health Organization estimates that for people in the most contaminated areas in Fukushima Prefecture, the estimated increased risk for all solid cancers will be around 4% in females exposed as infants; a 6% increased risk of breast cancer for females exposed as infants; a 7% increased risk of leukaemia for males exposed as infants; and for thyroid cancer among females exposed as infants, an increased risk of up to 70% (from a 0.75% lifetime risk up to 1.25%).
* Lights’ claim that the Fukushima disaster “didn’t harm anybody” also ignores the 2000 (or more) indirect deaths.
* Lights’ claim that the Fukushima disaster “didn’t harm anybody” also assumes that no harm was inflicted on the 191,000 evacuees from the disaster. Needless to say that is a disgusting lie ‒ the suffering of Fukushima evacuees has been immense and it is ongoing.
* Lights’ claim that the Fukushima disaster “didn’t harm anybody” also ignores the harm resulting from Fukushima’s trillion-dollar hit on the Japanese economy. In a 2019 report, the Japan Center for Economic Research estimated that the total cost of the Fukushima accident, including compensation, decontamination and decommissioning, could reach ¥81 trillion (A$831 billion). Indirect costs ‒ such as replacement power for shuttered reactors, and lost tourism revenue ‒ also amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. Direct and indirect costs combined far exceed A$1 trillion (and Chernobyl was also a trillion-dollar disaster). See also Michael Barnard’s analysis, ‘Fukushima’s Final Costs Will Approach A Trillion Dollars Just For Nuclear Disaster’.
ZL: “France has long been a nuclear behemoth. In 1974, due to the oil crisis, French PM Pierre Messmer instigated a plan to build nuclear power plants en masse. There was a saying at the time: “In France, we do not have oil, but we do have ideas.” The idea was to build 52 new reactors between 1975 and 1990, with which France decarbonised its electricity grid and massively expanded their engineering and construction expertise. Now, with many of its ageing reactors in need of replacement, President Macron has announced six new reactors and begun a recruiting drive for workers to get them built – but there is currently a debate taking place regarding whether the aim should be 14 new reactors instead of six.”
JG response:
* The only current reactor construction project in France is one EPR reactor under construction at Flamanville. The current cost estimate of €19.1 billion (A$31.6 billion) is nearly six times greater than the original estimate of €3.3 billion (A$5.5 billion). (Lower cost estimates cited by EDF and others typically exclude finance costs.)
* Construction of the Flamanville EPR reactor began in Dec. 2007 and it remains incomplete over 16 years later.
* The last reactor startup in France was in the last millennium (1999).
* French President Emmanuel Macron said in a 2020 speech that without nuclear power there would be no nuclear weapons, and vice versa.
* France’s nuclear industry was in its “worst situation ever“, a former EDF director said in 2016 ‒ and the situation has worsened since then.
* Areva went technically bankrupt and was bailed out and restructured by the French government in 2017.
* EDF was lurching towards bankruptcy, with debts of €64.5 billion (A$107 billion) as of early 2023, before it was fully nationalised. In addition to its massive debts, EDF has a “colossal maintenance and investment programme to fund” as the Financial Times noted in October 2021.
* And EDF is on the hook for the dramatically escalating costs of the twin-reactor EPR plant it is building in the UK.
ZL: “The UK has announced plans to build a new large-scale nuclear power plant, which could quadruple energy supplies by 2050. The UK generates about 15% of its electricity from nuclear energy, but most of this existing capacity will be retired by the end of the decade. Électricité de France (EDF) recently announced that they are planning to expand the lifetimes of some of these reactors. As well as going big, the UK is investing in small modular reactors (SMRs) funding six companies to advance SMR technology. These are GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy International LLC, Holtec Britain Limited, EDF, NuScale Power, Rolls Royce SMR and Westinghouse Electric Company UK Limited.”
JG response:
* The first sentence doesn’t make any sense.
* Yes, a number of ageing reactors have already been closed and others will follow in the coming years. Nuclear power accounted for over 20% of electricity production in the UK in the early 2000s and now it has fallen to below 15%.
* The last reactor startup in the UK was in the last millennium (Sizewell B in 1995).
* The only reactor construction project is the twin-reactor EPR plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset. In the late 2000s, the estimated construction cost for one EPR reactor in the UK was £2 billion. The current cost estimate for two EPR reactors under construction at Hinkley Point is as much as £46 billion (A$89 billion) or £23 billion (A$44.5 billion) per reactor. That’s 11.5 times higher than the estimate in the late 2000s! This is an example of the Golden Rule of Nuclear Economics: Add a Zero to Nuclear Industry Estimates.
* EDF said Hinkley Point would be complete by 2017 but construction didn’t begin until 2018. If the reactors are ever completed, it won’t be until the 2030s.
* The UK National Audit Office estimates that taxpayer subsidies for Hinkley Point ‒ primarily in the form of a guaranteed payment of £92.50 / MWh (2012 prices), indexed for inflation, for 35 years ‒ could amount to £30 billion (A$58 billion).
* The UK has no SMRs and it is doubtful if any will ever be built despite the hype.
ZL: “The US has also changed its mind. Recent federal and state policies have recently provided support for nuclear power. In 2022, President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) created a tax credit for all existing reactors, designed to top off power plant revenues without overpaying. On a regional level, several states have chosen to keep their nuclear plants online. Congress also passed two pieces of legislation to help keep power plants running. Together, these policies have saved several reactors from closing and will keep America’s existing nuclear fleet online for another decade. The federal policies also include funding to build the next generation of SMRs. These include Bill Gates’s TerraPower, which received $80 million in federal funding from the US Department of Energy (DOE) in 2020 to support the development of its Natrium nuclear reactor, and NuScale Power Corporation, an American company that is developing SMRs, with HQ in Oregon.”
JG response:
* In the US, the only current reactor construction project is the Vogtle project in Georgia (two AP1000 reactors, of which one is complete). The latest cost estimate of $34 billion is more than double the estimate when construction began – $14-15.5 billion.
* The V.C. Summer project in South Carolina (two AP1000 reactors) was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of around $9 billion. US nuclear giant Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy shortly after the abandonment of the South Carolina project, and its parent company Toshiba only survived by selling off its most profitable assets.
* In 2006, Westinghouse said it could build an AP1000 reactor for as little as $1.4 billion, 12 times lower than the current estimate for Vogtle. Another example of the Golden Rule of Nuclear Economics: Add a Zero to Nuclear Industry Estimates.
* The US nuclear industry is riddled with corruption.
* No SMRs have been built in the US (unless you count small reactors built decades ago ‒ and shut down decades ago). The biggest SMR news in 2023 was NuScale Power’s decision to abandon its flagship project in Idaho despite securing astronomical subsidies amounting to around US$4 billion (A$6.1 billion) from the US government. NuScale has recently sacked 154 employees and will likely go bankrupt. NuScale executives sold stock while the stock price was still high, and a class action is likely to hasten NuScale’s bankruptcy. The stock price is now less than one-fifth of its Aug. 2022 peak.
* NuScale’s most recent cost estimates were through the roof: US$9.3 billion (A$14.1 billion) for a 462 MW plant comprising six 77 MW reactors. That equates to US$20,100 (A$30,600) per kilowatt and a levelised cost of US$89 (A$135) per MWh. Without the Inflation Reduction Act subsidy of $30/MWh, the figure would be US$129 (A$196) per MWh. To put that in perspective, the Minerals Council of Australia states that SMRs won’t find a market in Australia unless they can produce power at a cost of A$60-80 / MWh.
* Lights mentions NuScale and helpfully informs us that it is headquartered in Oregon … but doesn’t think any of the above information worth noting!
* The pro-nuclear Breakthrough Institute noted in a November 2023 article that efforts to commercialise a new generation of ‘advanced’ nuclear reactors “are simply not on track” and it warned nuclear advocates not to “whistle past this graveyard”. It wrote:
“The NuScale announcement follows several other setbacks for advanced reactors. Last month, X-Energy, another promising SMR company, announced that it was canceling plans to go public. This week, it was forced to lay off about 100 staff.
“In early 2022, Oklo’s first license application was summarily rejected by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before the agency had even commenced a technical review of Oklo’s Aurora reactor.
“Meanwhile, forthcoming new cost estimates from TerraPower and XEnergy as part of the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Deployment Program are likely to reveal substantially higher cost estimates for the deployment of those new reactor technologies as well.”
ZL: “Sweden has jumped on the nuclear bandwagon. In 1980, Sweden voted to get rid of nuclear power, but now the country aims to build two new nuclear reactors by 2035. The plan is to have 10 new reactors by 2045, some of which may be SMRs.”
JG response:
* There is no nuclear bandwagon outside of Lights’ imagination.
* It is unlikely that any new reactors will be built in Sweden. Estimates from the state-owned Swedish energy company Vattenfall show that levelised costs will be twice as expensive as previously assumed and about three times more expensive than wind power. The estimates apply both to conventional reactors and SMRs.
ZL: “Canada has made major announcements for new large nuclear builds, SMRs and medical isotopes.”
JG response:
* Announcements are cheap, reactor construction projects are not. Talk of new reactors in Canada has been going on for many, many years without a single reactor construction start.
* No reactors are under construction in Canada and none have come online since the last millennium (Darlington-4 in 1993 ‒ five years behind schedule and billions over-budget).
* Reactor lifespan extension projects have been subject to delays and cost blowouts.
* In May 2000, Canada’s AECL completed construction of two MAPLE reactors for medical isotope production, but they never operated due to technical problems with safety significance. (As discussed elsewhere, Lights doesn’t know what nuclear medicine is.)
* Canada has no SMRs and it is doubtful if any will ever be built despite the hype.
Fact-checker Lights on the British nuclear power program
This is a response to Zion Lights’ July 2023 article titled:
Fact check: A brief history of energy politics in the UK: Who is really to blame for stalling the nuclear revival?
Lights states: “Due to years of political inaction, effective protests, over-regulation, and a lack of skilled workers, nuclear builds in the UK are slow and unambitious. … Who’s to blame? Activist groups, short-term thinking, and weak leadership. Anyone who has had the power to build a strong clean energy program, and has failed to do so.”
Political inaction? Successive governments have thrown billions at the nuclear industry, but industry has rejected those offers of taxpayer funds with the exception of EDF / Hinkley Point. (Lights only mentions Hinkley Point in passing, in a list of proposed nuclear power projects.)
Effective protests? Community groups and environment groups have only had a marginal impact ‒ they are up against a large, established industry with bipartisan political support.
A lack of skilled workers? Well, yes, that is an issue, or at least it would be an issue if nuclear companies and utilities were actually building nuclear power plants in the UK, which they aren’t with the sole exception of the 2xEPR Hinkley Point C project.
Here are some key facts and issues that Lights completely ignores.
In the late 2000s, the estimated construction cost for one EPR reactor in the UK was £2 billion. The current cost estimate for two EPR reactors under construction at Hinkley Point ‒ the only reactor construction project in the UK ‒ is £32.7 billion (A$63.5 billion). Thus the current cost estimate is over eight times greater than the initial estimate of £2 billion per reactor.
The UK National Audit Office estimates that taxpayer subsidies for Hinkley Point ‒ primarily in the form of a guaranteed payment of £92.50 / MWh (2012 prices), indexed for inflation, for 35 years ‒ could amount to £30 billion.
Those spectacular costs and cost escalations explain much more about the new build program than political inaction, protests, or the purported lack of skilled workers. In a nutshell, nuclear new build is incredibly expensive and incredibly risky … just ask Westinghouse, which declared bankruptcy as a result of its disastrous new build projects in the USA and almost bankrupted its parent company Toshiba in the process.
The delays associated with Hinkley Point have been as shocking as the cost overruns. In 2007, EDF boasted that Britons would be using electricity from an EPR reactor at Hinkley Point to cook their Christmas turkeys in 2017 – but construction of the two reactors didn’t even begin until December 2018 and December 2019, respectively. Again, that had little or nothing to do with political inaction, protests, or the purported lack of skilled workers.
Nuclear industry lobbyist Tim Yeo said in 2017 that the UK’s nuclear power program faces “something of a crisis”. The following year, Toshiba abandoned the planned Moorside nuclear power project near Sellafield despite generous offers of government support ‒ a “crushing blow” according to Yeo. A crushing blow that had little or nothing to do with political inaction, protests, or the purported lack of skilled workers.
Then in 2019, Hitachi abandoned the planned Wylfa reactor project in Wales after the estimated cost of the twin-reactor project had risen from ¥2 trillion to ¥3 trillion (£16.5 billion). Hitachi abandoned the project despite an offer from the UK government to take a one-third equity stake in the project; to consider providing all of the required debt financing; and to consider providing a guarantee of a generous minimum payment per unit of electricity.
The UK Nuclear Free Local Authorities noted that Hitachi joined a growing list of companies and utilities backing out of the UK nuclear new-build program:
“Let’s not forget that Hitachi are not the first energy utility to come to the conclusion that new nuclear build in the UK is not a particularly viable prospect. The German utilities RWE Npower and E-on previously tried to develop the site before they sold it on Hitachi in order to protect their own vulnerable energy market share in the UK and Germany. British Gas owner Centrica pulled out of supporting Hinkley Point C, as did GDF Suez and Iberdrola at Moorside, before Toshiba almost collapsed after unwise new nuclear investments in the United States forced it to pull out of the Sellafield Moorside development just a couple of months ago.”
The UK government hopes to progress the Sizewell C project and is once again offering very generous support including taking an equity stake in the project and using a ‘regulated asset base’ model which foists financial risks onto taxpayers and could result in taxpayers paying billions for failed projects ‒ as it has in the US.
If recent experience is any guide, the government will struggle to find corporations or utilities willing to invest in Sizewell regardless of generous government support.
The same could be said for plans for SMRs (or mid-sized reactors envisaged by Rolls-Royce) ‒ it is doubtful whether private finance can be secured despite generous taxpayer subsidies.
Nuclear power is incredibly expensive, incredibly risky, and investors won’t touch it with a barge-pole.
Meanwhile, the UK government reports that renewable electricity generation reached a record share of 47.8 per cent of total generation in the first quarter of 2023, up from 5.8 per cent in the same quarter of 2010, while nuclear fell to a record low (12.5 percent) due to outages in all plants and reduced capacity (i.e. the gradual closure of the ageing reactor fleet).
Lights’ misinformation about the ‘scientific consensus’ in support of nuclear power
One of Lights’ oft-repeated claims is that there is a ‘scientific consensus’ in support of nuclear power. In the Australian context:
- Physicist Dr Ziggy Switkowski ‒ who led the Australian government’s review of nuclear power in 2006 ‒ now says that “the window for gigawatt-scale nuclear has closed” and he says that nuclear power is no longer cheaper than renewables and the levelised cost of electricity is rapidly diverging in favour of renewables.
- The Climate Council, comprising Australia’s leading climate scientists, states that nuclear power reactors “are not appropriate for Australia and probably never will be”.
- Former Australian Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, a former proponent of nuclear power, now says that nuclear power is “too slow and too expensive”.
-
Robin Batterham, another former Chief Scientist, and another former proponent of nuclear power, now says that: “To reduce renewable targets in the belief that nuclear will be deployed later at scale would create a material risk of not achieving net zero, or doing so at an excessive cost.”
There are many other scientific opponents of nuclear power in Australia. And there are 190 countries in the world so the Australian experience of disparate scientific views regarding nuclear power could be multiplied by 190.
None of that is likely to stop Lights claiming that there is a ‘scientific consensus’ in support of nuclear power.
Lights refers to a 2018 IPCC report to conclude that “the scientific consensus is that we need nuclear energy to decarbonise.” In fact, the IPCC report maps out many emissions reduction scenarios (including scenarios with nuclear reducing to zero) and its ‘analysis’ of pros and cons doesn’t go any further than scattergun dot-point arguments (including referring to studies finding an increased incidence of childhood leukaemia in populations living within five kilometres of nuclear power plants, and noting that the “continued use of nuclear power poses a constant risk of [weapons] proliferation.”) In short, Lights misrepresents the IPCC report. There are strong indications that Lights — a self-styled ‘Science Communicator’ — hasn’t even read the report: she doesn’t name it, or provide a link/reference, and she misrepresents the living daylights out of the IPCC report and doesn’t seem to have the faintest idea what the report actually says.
Update: An earlier version of the above comments was sent to Lights’ organisation ‘Emergency Reactor’ as a courtesy and the following response was received: “This enail [sic] has been reported as spam and further harassment and defamation relating to Ms Lights will be escalated with the relevant authorities.” No response to the substantive issues.
A ‘Science Communicator’ tries to explain ionising radiation … and fails
Zion Lights calls herself a ‘Science Communicator’ (capitalised). However her article on the health effects of ionising radiation is laughable.
Nuclear medicine
Discussing nuclear medicine, Science Communicator Lights states: “Medical sources are the most significant human-made source of radiation, through diagnostic X-rays.” She evidently doesn’t know what nuclear medicine is (the use of radiopharmaceuticals for diagnosis, therapy or palliation) … so shouldn’t be writing about it … and shouldn’t be calling herself a ‘Science Communicator’.
Worse still, Science Communicator Lights seems to think that the beneficial uses of ionising radiation in medicine prove that low-dose radiation exposure is beneficial in general ‒ “a little radiation is good”, she states. Hopelessly and dangerously confused.
Fukushima
Science Communicator Lights states: “Radiation levels of 0.06 millisieverts a day were recorded in Fukushima city, 65km northwest of the plant, which was about 60 times higher than normal, but this amount of exposure is not harmful to human health. Sadly, due to fear of radiation, hundreds of people did die after the meltdown when they panicked during the evacuation process.”
It’s hard to believe that anyone ‒ let alone a self-styled ‘Science Communicator’ ‒ could pack so much misinformation into a few sentences. Fukushima city was well beyond the evacuation zone. Radiation doses in the vicinity of the Fukushima nuclear plant were far higher than 0.06 mSv per day. The internationally-accepted limit for public doses from anthropogenic sources is 1 mSv/yr, well below the 22 mSv/yr level at Fukushima city. Most of the 160,000 evacuees were required to evacuate. The evacuation was a deadly shambles because of the lack of emergency preparedness by TEPCO and the government. The widespread panic was a rational response to the meltdowns, fires and explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Science Communicator Lights blames residents for panicking … which is a grotesque, deeply offensive sleight for which she will never apologise.
Low-level radiation exposure
Lights repeatedly claims that low-level ionising radiation exposure is harmless and suggests that doses below 100 mSv are harmless. She states that radiation levels of 0.06 millisieverts a day (22 mSv/yr) are “not harmful to human health” and that very small doses from eating bananas or brazil nuts “don’t harm anyone”. (For more on bananas, see ‘The Banana Equivalent Dose of catastrophic nuclear accidents’.) Speaking about naturally-occurring radiation from the earth or cosmic radiation, Lights states: “None of this radiation exposure harms people in any of these places.” She states that doses from 0.08‒0.18 mSv “do not pose harm to human health”.
So Science Communicator Lights believes that low-level ionising radiation exposure is harmless. But what do actual scientists have to say about the matter?
Actually, before we get to the scientists, you might want to replicate this experiment. See if you can come up with a more accurate summary than Science Communicator Lights with a simple web-search, and see if you can do so in 60 seconds or less. This is what I came up with (and it is indeed more accurate than Science Communicator Lights). From the US EPA: “Exposure to low levels of radiation encountered in the environment does not cause immediate health effects, but is a minor contributor to our overall cancer risk. … Risks that are low for an individual could still result in unacceptable numbers of additional cancers in a large population over time. For example, in a population of one million people, an average one-percent increase in lifetime cancer risk for individuals could result in 10,000 additional cancers. The EPA sets regulatory limits and recommends emergency response guidelines well below 100 millisieverts (10 rem) to protect the U.S. population, including sensitive groups such as children, from increased cancer risks from accumulated radiation dose over a lifetime.”
A 2010 report by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation states that “the current balance of available evidence tends to favour a non-threshold response for the mutational component of radiation-associated cancer induction at low doses and low dose rates.” In other words, there is no dose below which there is no risk of radiation-induced cancer.
See here for similar statements from the Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation of the US National Academy of Sciences, the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency, peer-reviewed scientific journals, and others.
A recent testing of anti-science gibberish from the nuclear lobby involved their efforts to get the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to weaken radiation protection standards. The NRC sought wide-ranging scientific advice and said in its 2021 report:
“Convincing evidence has not yet demonstrated the existence of a threshold below which there would be no stochastic effects from exposure to low radiation doses. As such, the NRC’s view is that the LNT [linear no-threshold] model continues to provide a sound basis for a conservative radiation protection regulatory framework that protects both the public and occupational workers.”
The NRC further notes that “authoritative scientific advisory bodies” such as the National Academy of Sciences, National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, International Commission on Radiological Protection and the International Atomic Energy Agency “support the continued use of the LNT model.”
The 2021 NRC report further states:
“In addition to the findings of the national and international authoritative scientific advisory bodies, three Federal agencies provided comments on the petitions and supported the continued use of the LNT model as the basis for the NRC’s radiation protection program. The three agencies are the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services; National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services; and the Radiation Protection Division, Office of Air and Radiation, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Furthermore, the NRC’s Advisory Committee on the Medical Uses of Isotopes (ACMUI) recommends that the NRC continue to rely upon the LNT model.”
Conclusion
We should get our information about the health effects of ionising radiation from scientists, not from a self-styled ‘Science Communicator’ who wouldn’t know science if she fell over it and earns money from nuclear lobbying.
“For many years, I feared radiation more than cancer,” Lights says. Since she acknowledges holding irrational, incoherent views for many years, perhaps we’d best assume she may hold irrational, incoherent views now and for many years into the future.
Response to a July 2023 article by Zion Lights
In Australia, for the same investment, we can get three times more firmed renewable power (generation, not capacity) in one-third of the time compared to nuclear. The cost difference between nuclear and renewables is so vast that renewables are still cheaper even when transmission and storage are costed in.
Perhaps the comparison is more nuclear-friendly in the UK, but I strongly suspect renewables+storage+transmission is still cheaper given the obscene costs of Hinkley Point (over A$62 billion for two partially-built reactors).
So Lights is definitely campaigning to slow the transition to low-carbon energy in Australia, and very likely campaigning to slow the transition to low-carbon energy in the UK. All that can be said in her defence is that she may be doing so inadvertently.
Specifically in Light’s latest article:
* Lights’ claims about the IPCC supporting nuclear power are ignorant or dishonest, the IPCC maps out countless scenarios (including scenarios with nuclear reducing to zero) and its ‘analysis’ of pros and cons is generally reduced to dot-points.
* Lights’ claims about a “scientific consensus” in support of nuclear power are ignorant or dishonest, e.g. the Climate Council, comprising Australia’s leading climate scientists, states that nuclear power reactors “are not appropriate for Australia and probably never will be“.
* Ignores profound impacts of catastrophic accidents.
* Ignores the repeatedly-demonstrated connections between nuclear power and weapons (in the UK and elsewhere).
* Light’s ‘millions of lives saved’ meme is nonsense because it assumes nuclear displaces nothing other than coal. Lights fails to note that crucial assumption which is either a gross oversight or dishonest.
* Nonsense about warm water around nuclear plants providing a haven for sea-life is ignorant or dishonest, she surely knows that water intake pipes kill fish by the thousands. (And she should know something about Irish opposition to radioactive discharges from Sellafield.)
Case Study: Close to one million fish and 62 million fish eggs and larvae died each year when sucked into the water intake channel in Lake Ontario, which the Pickering nuclear plant uses to cool steam condensers. Fish are killed when trapped on intake screens or suffer cold water shock after leaving warmer water that is discharged into the lake. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission told Ontario Power Generation to reduce fish mortality by 80% and asked for annual public reports on fish mortality.
* Ridiculous claims about high-level nuclear waste: “spent fuel can be easily transported to another location, and even recycled”. The UK has given up on reprocessing (a polluting, multi-billion-dollar disaster) and has made near-zero progress on a deep underground repository and has wasted billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in the process. The only operating deep underground repository in the world – WIPP in the US ‒ was disastrously mismanaged and under-regulated resulting in a chemical explosion in 2014.
* The UAE project came in under budget? Either Lights is ignorant or lying. The UAE project was years behind schedule and many billions of dollars over-budget. Needless to say, Lights has nothing to say about UAE repression, proliferation and security concerns, South Korean nuclear corruption and how that effected the UAE project, or the secret and possibly illegal military side-agreement to the Korean-UAE reactor contract.
Update: Lights deleted a version of the above comments from the comments thread below her article, and failed to address any of the substantive issues.
Instead of responding to substantive issues, Lights resorted to bullying and legal intimidation, stating on X/Twitter: “I’m hoping that they (FoE Australia) apologise, take down the hit piece, and remove Jim from the organisation, to avoid further escalation.”
Extinction Rebellion Statement
Lights was sucked in to pro-nuclear advocacy by lunatic MAGA liar and climate denier Michael Shellenberger and even worked for his lunatic organisation before starting a new organisation called ‘Emergency Reactor’. Presumably she did at least some research beforehand but still thought it a good idea to work for a serial liar and climate denier. Her claims to be concerned about climate change should be treated with utmost caution. Her claims to be a ‘Science Communicator’ sit uncomfortably with her decision to work for a self-confessed liar.
Copied below is a long statement from Extinction Rebellion which concludes as follows: “Zion Lights, Michael Shellenberger, the Breakthrough Institute and their associated deniers and delayers are intentionally spreading doubt about the severity of the [climate] crisis and the action needed to respond to it.”
Extinction Rebellion Statement on Zion Lights, Michael Shellenberger and the Breakthrough Institute
September 16, 2020
extinctionrebellion.uk/2020/09/16/statement-on-zion-lights-michael-shellenberger-and-the-breakthrough-institute/
There have been a number of stories in the press in the last few weeks with criticisms about Extinction Rebellion by Zion Lights, UK director of the pro-nuclear lobby group Environmental Progress. It appears that Lights is engaged in a deliberate PR campaign to discredit Extinction Rebellion.
For any editors who might be considering platforming Lights, we would like to make you aware of some information about the organisation she works for and her employer, Michael Shellenberger.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRESS & MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER
Environmental Progress is a pro-nuclear energy lobby group. While the group itself was only established in 2016, its backers and affiliates have a long and well-documented history of denying human-caused climate change and/or attempting to delay action on the climate crisis. A quick look at groups currently promoting Zion Lights through their social media channels include climate deniers and industry lobbyists such as The Global Warming Policy Foundation and the Genetic Literacy Project (formally funded by Monsanto).*
The founder of Environmental Progress, Michael Shellenberger, has a record of spreading misinformation around climate change and using marketing techniques to distort the narrative around climate science. He has a reputation for downplaying the severity of the climate crisis and promoting aggressive economic growth and green technocapitalist solutions.
Shellenberger appeared on the Tucker Carlson Show on Fox News just last week to say that the forest fires currently raging in California are due to “more people and more electrical wires that they’ve failed to maintain because we’ve focused on other things like building renewables” and we’ve been “so focused on renewables, so focused on climate change.”
In his recent book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts us All, Shellenberger argues that there are no limits to growth and that environmental problems can be solved by everyone getting richer. The book has been widely criticised by many respected scientists both for its central premise and its misunderstanding, misinterpretation and misuse of the facts. (See here and here.)
His stance on fundamental and vitally important points of scientific consensus around the climate crisis is flat out wrong. In his essay promoting his book published in June of this year on the Environmental Progress website and The Australian – ‘On behalf of environmentalists, I apologise for the climate scare’ – he claims that “climate change is not making natural disasters worse” and that “Humans are not causing a ‘sixth mass extinction”. He also argues that “fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003,” and, “The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California.” These claims contradict reports from the IPCC and misrepresent the discussion taking place in the scientific community.
One science advisor with Environmental Progress, respected MIT climate expert Professor Kerry Emanuel, spoke publicly about being “very concerned” about the essay, and felt unsure whether he would remain involved with the organisation.
The article was published in Forbes, before being pulled offline the same day for violating its code of ethics around self-promotion.
A key tactic from the climate delayer playbook used in the essay is that of the repentant environmentalist, according to investigative journalist, Paul Thacker. After gaining credibility by aligning themselves with a section of the environmental movement, the repentant environmentalist then performs a volte face and attacks their former position.
This tactic has also been used by Zion Lights, who first overstated her role within Extinction Rebellion (she was a member of the media team, not ‘co-lead’ as stated on the Environmental Progress website) and then denounced the movement following an apparent change of heart.
BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE
Shellenberger is co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute, a lobbying group masquerading as a “think tank”. The Breakthrough Institute has “a clear history as a contrarian outlet for information on climate change [which] regularly criticises environmental groups”, according to Paul Thacker. Breakthrough has also been described as a “program for hippie-punching your way to fame and fortune.”
Shellenberger co-founded the Breakthrough Institute with Ted Nordhaus, nephew of economist, William Nordhuas. William Nordhaus features in Merchants of Doubt – Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s examination of the PR strategies used both by the tobacco and fossil fuel industries. His interventions in the 1990s helped set back essential action on climate change by decades.
Other figures associated with Shellenberger and the Breakthrough Institute include:
- Owen Paterson, one of the UK’s most prominent climate deniers who helped with the UK launch of the group’s Ecomodernist manifesto in 2015.
- Matt Ridley, coal mine owner, once hereditary Conservative Peer and famous climate delayer / ‘lukewarmist’ who spoke at the UK launch event.
6 BILLION DEATHS?
In an interview for BBC’s Hard Talk last year, one of Extinction Rebellion’s co-founders, Roger Hallam, said that “6 billion people will die” from climate breakdown. The figure was understandably questioned at the time and Zion Lights and others have used this repeatedly to try to undermine Extinction Rebellion’s credibility.
However, during his Hard Talk appearance, Roger was referring to an interview that Professor Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, printed in the Guardian. Rockström was quoted as saying that in a 4°C-warmer world, “It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that… There will be a rich minority of people who survive with modern lifestyles, no doubt, but it will be a turbulent, conflict-ridden world.” Rockström is one of the world’s leading researchers on climate “tipping points” and “safe boundaries” for humanity.
After Hard Talk was broadcast, Rockström approached the Guardian for a correction. The journalist had misheard ‘8’ for ‘a’, he said and the quote was changed to, “It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate eight billion people or maybe even half of that.” Even by Rockström’s own amendment, he still finds it hard to believe even half of the current population would be able to survive 4 degrees of warming. Whether the loss of life is in the order of one billion or six billion, the prospect is nonetheless horrifying.
You can find a note on the amendment at the bottom of the article.
Our agriculture and our civilisation developed in a stable world. As we move into an increasingly unstable one – with temperatures on track to rise hundreds of times faster than at any period in the last 65 million years – we are entering uncharted territory.
Our climate and our human systems – the flow of people, goods, money, and information, as well as our ability to grow food and water, and generate energy – are all interdependent. How this complex human web will respond to climate and ecological breakdown is impossible to model precisely, but we know that even minor changes in similarly complex systems can cause nonlinear – I.e. major/disproportionate – change. There is a real risk that should multiple climate/ecological shocks hit at once, entire systems could fail or be heavily disrupted, causing ‘synchronous failure’ whose devastating effects would be felt across the world.
Our lack of scientific understanding about how and when this ‘synchronous failure’ could play out is profound and terrifying, given how rapidly we’re entering the unknown.
Nonetheless, leading scientists (including Sir David King, Kevin Anderson, Will Steffen and Aled Jones) are also warning of catastrophic consequences if we continue on our current path.
Extinction Rebellion is highlighting this risk, not to scaremonger but because leading scientists are doing so in peer-reviewed academic journals and media outlets. A group of scientists in Extinction Rebellion have now published an extensive document which has been vigorously peer reviewed. You can read it here.
Zion Lights, Michael Shellenberger, the Breakthrough Institute and their associated deniers and delayers are intentionally spreading doubt about the severity of the crisis and the action needed to respond to it.
We hope that any editors considering offering a platform to Lights, Shellenberger or others associated with the Breakthrough Institute, will first perform journalistic due diligence and interrogate their motivations and credibility.
If you have insider knowledge about efforts to cover-up the true scale of the climate and ecological crisis, visit Truthteller.life.
*This statement has been amended to remove a line which categorised Mark Lynas under the term “climate denier/delayer” because of his association with the Breakthrough Institute, co-authoring of the Ecomodernist manifesto, and criticism of misrepresentation of the science around GMOs.