«When we get rich it might be too late»

Alexey Vladimirovich, April marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. Has the attitude of environmentalists towards nuclear energy changed during this time? Some eminent scientists, such as James Lovelock, for example, have recently spoken out in favor of building new nuclear power plants. Has nuclear power become safer?

You are right, indeed there are environmentalists who today look at nuclear energy as a salvation. Among them is James Lovelock, actually an outstanding scientist, who formulated a very interesting idea — which, by the way, I like very much! — the idea of ​​Gaia, the hypothesis of the planet Earth as a single living being. But even eminent scientists can be mistaken. In general, the attitude of ecology towards nuclear energy has not changed and should not change. Because nuclear energy itself has not changed in these 25 years. It still carries three main threats, and humanity is unable to do anything about it. The first threat is the lack of safe nuclear reactors. They simply don’t exist. Moreover, it is not we, ecologists, who say this, but nuclear power engineers themselves prove it in a dispute with each other, trying to find out which reactors are better: gas, water-water, liquid metal … And it turns out that they all have a number of fundamentally unavoidable defects. What kind of security can we talk about? No, the famous definition of Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa of nuclear power plants as «atomic bombs that provide electricity» is still very accurate and relevant.

The second danger is radioactive waste. Nuclear workers claim that coal-fired thermal power plants produce even more radioactivity than nuclear ones. Indeed, coal dust contains «tails» of uranium, thorium, and other radioactive elements. But these are radionuclides that have always existed in nature, nature is used to them. And nuclear power plants produce radionuclides that have not been in nature for two billion years — since the formation of our planet. Or take the same plutonium. Before the beginning of the atomic era, it existed on the entire planet within 50 kilograms. And now it is produced by the tons every year. Therefore, it is not worth comparing waste from coal-fired thermal power plants and nuclear power plants.

Another important point: the half-life of the same plutonium is 24 thousand years, and there is not a single material that would withstand its colossal radiation for such a long period. Concrete, any composite materials — everything cracks in a few hundred years. A decision was made on temporary storage: to dig up the ground, create a repository from which, in 200-300 years, this waste can be removed and recycled if the necessary technologies appear. Or reburial in a new repository, if humanity does not have time to come up with anything suitable. But what right do we have to leave our problems to our great-grandchildren?

And finally, the third trouble is the inevitable connection between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. For the first six months of operation, nuclear reactors produce weapons-grade plutonium, which is not such a difficult task to isolate and collect.

At the same time, nuclear scientists often repeat that only nuclear power plants will save us from global warming, since nuclear power plants do not emit carbon into the atmosphere. But let’s not forget the colossal energy costs of producing steel, plastic and other materials from which this station is made. It is necessary to take into account the energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions in the process of mining uranium ore, enriching uranium, building nuclear power plants … So, if all this is summed up, it turns out that per unit of energy produced, nuclear power plants emit about half less carbon dioxide emissions than traditional coal and fuel oil stations. Of course, this is less, but this is not a decisive advantage, it will not save the planet in any way. Perhaps it would have saved if all mankind had switched to atomic energy, but now there are only 445 or 446 nuclear power plants, I don’t remember exactly. Another 60 are under construction. But most of them will not be completed, I’m quite sure of that. Because some kind of disaster like Chernobyl will inevitably happen — the three dangers of nuclear power plants, which I mentioned, have not been canceled and will not be canceled. Indeed, after Chernobyl, the construction of nuclear power plants ceased everywhere, for 20 years no one thought to build them. Then they started again, but this, unfortunately, only means that something terrible may happen again soon *.

So, there is still no alternative energy?

Why not? The price of solar and wind electricity is falling rapidly. Do you know what happened in Spain last March? There were forced to turn off wind farms due to overproduction of electricity. Moreover, more than half of it was first obtained with the help of wind farms. They had to be stopped — nuclear ones cannot be stopped so easily, they are too inert in this sense, which, by the way, is their additional minus. And after that, the Spaniards also built one of the largest solar power plants in Europe. In the US, they are also building a solar station of incredible power. And even in Russia, in any region south of Volgograd, it is absolutely realistic to provide all residents with electricity from solar energy. You just need to deal with these issues. Throw in tidal power plants, which can be very efficient. In our Far East, on the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, there is the Tugur Bay (I was there, I saw it with my own eyes, and therefore I know): a huge mass of water goes through a very narrow passage and rises 10 meters — and then falls. This is quite enough to build a dam, «catch» these rises and falls in the water level and generate energy. And 10 meters is not yet the highest mark, in the Penzha Bay the water rises by 12 meters. And projects of tidal power plants in these places have been around for a long time, and the construction will cost about the same as the construction of a nuclear power plant, and even more energy can be produced! There is only no political will to overcome the resistance of the oil, coal and nuclear lobbies and bring these alternative projects to life.

But after all, no profit can outweigh the threat to the life of all mankind. Why don’t we understand this danger? Do you have any explanation?

I’m afraid there is. On the Kola Peninsula there is the city of Nikel. I don’t know what and how it is now, but in order to understand the psychology of this environmental irresponsibility, it is very useful to know what happened there 20 years ago. There is (at least — there was) metallurgical production: nickel, of course, something else … Constant emissions of sulfur, heavy metals. The outskirts of the city are dead, scorched earth. Nothing grows for tens of kilometers around! It means you can’t live there. And people live. In the early 90s, on the wave of perestroika, journalists got there. No one provided them with data on the health of the townspeople, but they simply went to the cemetery and read the dates of life on the tombstones. And they calculated the average life expectancy of the citizens of the city of Nikel. It turned out 42 years. After that, the journalists began to torture the townspeople: “But why do you live here? Leave as soon as possible and as far as possible!”. And you know what they heard: “Why leave? The pay here is very good.”…

Here is the answer. Maybe this is too harsh an example, but in fact, approximately such a change in consciousness took place in Russia in the period approximately from 1995 to 2005. Money has become the most important thing in human psychology. Not family values, not the future of children, not health, but money that needs to be earned here and now. As a result, there is no such obsession with consumption as we have anywhere else today. Perhaps the Western world experienced something similar 100-150 years ago, and everything happened somehow smoothly. And it hit us too abruptly and became a real shock from which we still cannot recover. All over the world there is a clear and logical law: if people live better, if they get more money, their life expectancy increases. But this is not the case with us: during the period of oil money, the wage curve rose sharply, and life expectancy did not grow. This means that we spent the money we earned anywhere, but not on improving our environment.

What can each of us do on our own personal level to protect the environment?

This is not really my topic, there are people who can answer this question much more competently. But at the simplest, everyday level, these actions are obvious and have long been implemented in many foreign countries. In the USA or Europe at every turn you can meet brochures like «do your part for the environment». Sometimes the advice seems almost ridiculous: for example, make sure that your car’s tires are always properly inflated. It turns out that this saves up to 15% of gasoline. And this is not only about your benefit, but also about the fact that your car will emit less harmful emissions into the atmosphere … Unfortunately, we do not yet have such a household culture. But there are people who are trying to do something and live, constantly remembering their impact on nature. However, they are still white crows. But there is no other way, we must go in the same direction, taking the most simple and obvious steps … Separate waste collection, for example, so as not to constantly burn huge amounts of waste. I’ve dealt with this issue a bit. And I can tell you that the garbage business in Moscow — collecting and processing it — is a cash flow of 5 to 7 billion dollars a year. One flight of a large garbage truck costs 5-10 thousand rubles. This is serious business, and those who run it are obviously not interested in reorganizing the system.

But in Switzerland today, 95% of the garbage is collected already sorted. In Japan, at one time even criminal liability was provided for throwing out unsorted garbage. As a result, Japan is one of the cleanest countries with a very high life expectancy. However, the Japanese spend at least 3% of GDP on environmental protection. In Russia, this figure is one tenth of a percent. Moreover, this percentage is constantly decreasing. When I was an adviser to President Yeltsin, we had half a percent, and we shouted until we were hoarse: «Give me three percent!» The result — today one tenth remained.

Perhaps we are all to blame for this state of affairs. After all, society can influence state policy in the field of ecology.

And maybe and should! But society must be ready, it must be mature enough for this, it must be aware of its own interests and the danger of a thoughtless attitude towards nature. Then the green parties get seats in parliaments, then the governments decide to refuse the construction of nuclear power plants — as was the case in Germany, for example. But the problem is that our society is not ready for this. Vladimir Putin once said in the sense that we will deal with the environment when we get rich — there are, they say, more pressing issues. But, I’m afraid, by the time we get rich completely, it will be too late.

Remember our terrible last summer. Why did it turn out to be such a firefighter? Yes, because the forest code was changed, and no one was responsible for the safety of forests. And why was it changed (and the water was also changed along with it)? After all, this is still the same ideology: natural resources are the main thing that Russia has, they must be exploited, not protected. It seems that since 2008 the rhetoric has begun to change little by little. Dmitry Medvedev even said in one of his speeches that we have finally become rich enough to deal with ecology. But in the end, of all environmental initiatives, only energy conservation is more or less developing today. Because this topic is directly related to money. It has been proven that the ruble invested in energy saving brings 3-4 rubles in the very near future.

Do you think that we are behaving incorrectly, not only because we do not demand from the authorities to protect nature, but also because we ourselves do not give a damn about it …

Not to her, but to yourself! How can we make sure that we at least think about our health, about the health of our children? I don’t know. The consequences of pollution affect every person! Half a million die annually in Russia from diseases associated with unfavorable environmental conditions. You know, I really don’t like to talk about it, but I myself got a cancer rate. And I have the right not only to talk about it abstractly. In Moscow, for some types of cancer, especially for children, in the last four years, the incidence rate has increased by 15–18%. Only due to air pollution in Moscow, 13 people die a year (and this is in ordinary years, without any forest fires, last year it was twice as many.) In road traffic accidents, for comparison, 4. However, we somehow worry about the transport problem, urge not to break the rules, launch social advertising, do something else. We don’t do anything about air pollution. But the only difference is that a car in an accident kills immediately, and poisoned air or water — after a few years. There is no other difference. In Russia, according to my estimates, about half a million people a year die due to causes related to unfavorable environmental conditions. What else is needed to understand that you cannot hide behind any fence from this problem? If it doesn’t work for us, I don’t know what else can help.

* The conversation took place a month before the events in Japan in March 2011.