Uranium Road: Questioning South Africa’s Nuclear Direction
by David Fig
(Jacana)
Does South Africa really need nuclear power to meet its energy needs? No, argues sociologist and ecological activist David Fig, we need something safer and better. Nuclear energy, even after we have resigned from the nuclear bomb club, has too many environmental risks, and is too costly to make it worthwhile.
Published with the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation (the educational foundation of the German Green Party), David Fig’s short book is a systematic plea against the extension of nuclear energy in South Africa. Sketching the emergence of the South African nuclear industry under apartheid, partly to build a nuclear weapons arsenal (dismantled in 1993), Fig presents a simple account of the physics of nuclear energy and raises the question of nuclear safety.
Nuclear energy, despite all its safeguards, is unsafe he concludes. There are simply too many factors that cannot be accounted for, even with the best precautions. Even the new pebble bed modular reactors – supposedly state of the art – are not guaranteed. Most of all, even if all the precautions work, we still do not have a suitably safe means of disposing of toxic nuclear waste. Dumping it in unpopulated, remote areas of Namaqualand is still no solution, no guarantee that people and environment won’t be harmed.
According to his calculations, the process itself it also extremely costly – and will cost the citizen far too much, particularly as proposed new reactors are developed. This is particularly disturbing given that alternative sources of electricity production are available, like wind power – cheaper, less damaging to the environment, and safe.
He is also most concerned by the way in which decisions to extend nuclear power have been made by government with little consultation or public debate. There is even evidence that central government has exerted pressure on local governments (notably Cape Town) to silence dissenting voices of councillors who oppose the extension of the nuclear industry. Read with past history, there seems to be a disturbing trend towards high-handedness and secrecy in nuclear policy.
David Fig writes clearly and convincingly, whether on nuclear physics, public policy or ecology. He makes his opposition to nuclear energy clear from the start. As such he has made a valuable contribution to what has been in effect a public non-debate. One hopes this book gets the attention it deserves – and that the public will call government and nuclear industry to account.