Jones attacks nuclear-energy ‘ignorance’ By NIGEL MALTHUS

Press, 13 July 1989, Page 7

Jones attacks nuclear-energy ‘ignorance’

By NIGEL MALTHUS

Sir Robert Jones has called for an end to the “deliberate medieval ignorance” of New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policies.

The businessmen who, as leader of the New Zealand Party in 1984, called for an end to defence alliances, said the ironic result of that was an all-embracing antipathy to things nuclear.

The attitude was "measurably wrong” and a "national embarrassment, with its foundation of prejudice and ignorance.”

Nuclear. energy was now the most environmentally pure of the principal sources of energy, contrasted with the “greenhouse effect” caused by the burning of fossil fuels and new awareness of the damage caused by hydro dams, he said.

Sir Robert, speaking to an audience made up largely of engineers and academics, lambasted those who knew the antinuclear sentiment was nonsense yet maintained

a “cowardly silence.” Scientists, intellectuals, science teachers and students and many other informed people were aware of the “unmitigated nonsense” being said but remained silent, abdicating their intellectual responsibility to speak the truth, he said. The occasion for Sir Robert’s speech was the twelfth . annual Hopkins Lecture at the Christchurch Town Hall. The lecture was jointly hosted by the Canterbury branch of the Institution of Pro-

fessional Engineers and the Engineering School of the University of Canterbury, but was open to the public and drew a capacity crowd at the Limes Room. Sir Robert saw the origins of the anti-nuclear sentiment in the 1984 General Election campaign, when the New Zealand Party instigated debate over the necessity for defence forces and the desirability of defence pacts. The intent was to get people to see how accepted attitudes could be changed simply by thinking radically yet rationally about them. But the public response obliged the Labour Party to push its anti-nuclear weapons and nuclear-free Pacific proposals. — which had, said Sir Robert, been Labour Party policy but were not of great moment and may never have got the airing they did without the New Zealand Party’s focus on defence issues.

The New Zealand Party was against all weapons but was never anti-

nuclear, he said. “It is supremely ironic that the consequences should be the warm, fuzzy, and totally irrational attitude to nuclear energy that now exists in New Zealand.

"In short, two revolutions in New Zealanders’ thinking occurred; one a giant step forward, that being on the economic front; and the other a giant step backwards in regard to nuclear energy.” Sir Robert advocated banning all warships, starting with New Zealand’s “un-needed and redundant frigates,” but said the notion that nuclearpowered or armed warships could somehow blow up in port was absurd.

There was a much greater danger of dams collapsing from earthquakes and the use of cars destroying the environment, he said. Sir Robert said that, in spite of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, the safety record of the nuclear power industry was extremely good, and opposition was based on

fear of what might occur rather than what had occurred.

In that regard it differed from all other environmental pollution debates, which were based on hard cause-and-effect evidence. "The fact of the matter is that the globe faces its greatest ever man-made threat through the use of previously acceptable, traditional fossil fuels, and when it comes to human lives the toll is quite horrendous from these traditional energy sources.” Sir Robert said studies by the American Brookhaven National Laboratory showed emissions from coal-fired power stations caused 37,000 deaths a . year in the United States.

By comparison, Three Mile Island caused no deaths, while Chernobyl was thought to have killed between 60 and 150 and probably shortened the lives of hundreds more.

The irony was that although one reactor at Three Mile Island was still operable, public

clamour forced it to close and be replaced by a traditional coal station — which, by the Brookhaven data, would since have cost 250 lives.

Sir Robert said only in New Zealand were antinuclear proponents treated seriously to the extent of having the backing of the law. The situation paralleled the early days of the car, when each vehicle had to be preceded by a man on foot carrying a flag.'

New Zealand could afford the luxury of its antinuclear policies because it had no need of nuclear energy sources, but that may change. "Contrary to popular current belief in our country, the evidence is increasingly pointing to nuclear-sourced energy as the most environmentally clean source of bulk energy for the future.”

Sir Robert said the debate over , nuclear energy, although foolish, had not all been in vain.

“At least it got us out of A.N.Z.U.S., and that has to be a step in the right direction.”