The World in 2030

180 The World in 2030
accurate set of costs from the US fleet of nuclear
power plants.’ 342
My second additional reason for believing that we should
pursue the development of renewable or sustainable energy
sources rather than nuclear power is the problem of nuclear
proliferation. If the present nuclear powers continue to
increase their nuclear power generation resources there
are no moral grounds to suggest that other, less developed
countries should not do the same thing. And as the number
of nuclear reactors in the world proliferates, so does the
opportunity for the building of nuclear weapons.
My third additional reason for believing that nuclear
energy production should be scaled down rather than
ramped up is that the more nuclear power stations there are,
the more targets for international and domestic terrorists
exist. We know that we currently live in an age of extreme
danger from international terrorist ideologies and the cost
and difficulty of protecting nuclear installations from
terrorist attacks must be enormous – as would be the risk
to the public if a major attack on a nuclear plant were ever
to succeed. It is also pertinent to add that nuclear power
stations in some regions of the world are also vulnerable to
earthquakes and tsunamis.
However, disagreement on the subject of nuclear power is
widespread. In the UK even the liberal and environmentally
conscious The Observer newspaper (a sister publication to
The Guardian) looked hard at the realities of securing British
future energy supplies and in May 2007 ran an editorial
entitled ‘Nuclear Power Is The Only Realistic Option’. 343