Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (16 page)

The oil producing countries, meanwhile, are beginning to realise that money alone cannot build new sources of livelihood for their populations.

To build them needs, in addition to money, immense efforts and a great deal of time. Oil is a 'wasting asset', and the faster it is allowed to waste, the shorter is the time available for the development of a new basis of economic existence. The conclusions are obvious: it is in the real longer-term interest of both the oil exporting and the oil importing countries that the 'life-span' of oil should be prolonged as much as possible. The former need time to develop alternative sources of livelihood and the latter need time to adjust their oil-dependent economies to a situation - which is absolutely certain to arise within the lifetime of most people living today - when oil will be scarce and very dear. The greatest danger to both is a continuation of rapid growth in oil production and consumption throughout the world. Catastrophic developments on the oil front could be avoided only if the basic harmony of the long-term interests of both groups of countries came to be fully realised and concerted action were taken to stabilise and gradually reduce the annual Bow of oil into consumption.

As far as the oil importing countries are concerned, the problem is obviously most serious for western Europe and Japan. These two areas are in danger of becoming the 'residuary legatees' for oil imports. No elaborate computer studies are required to establish this stark fact. Until quite recently, western Europe lived in the comfortable illusion that 'we are entering the age of limit- less, cheap energy' and famous scientists, among others, gave it as their considered opinion that in future 'energy will be a drug on the market'.

The British White Paper on Fuel Policy, issued in November 1967, proclaimed that

'The discovery of natural gas in the North Sea is a major event in the evolution of Britain's energy supplies. It follows closely upon the coming of age of nuclear power as a potential major source of energy. Together, these two development will lead to fundamental changes in the pattern of energy demand and supply in the coming years.'

Five years later, all that needs to be said is that Britain is more dependent on imported oil than ever before. A report presented to the Secretary of State for the Environment in February 1972, introduces its chapter on energy with the words:

'There is deep-seated unease revealed by the evidence sent to us about the future energy resources, both for this country and for the world as a whole.

Assessments vary about the length of time that will elapse before fossil fuels are exhausted, but it is increasingly recognised that their life is limited and satisfactory alternatives must be found. The huge incipient needs of developing countries, the increases in population, the rate at which some sources of energy are being used up without much apparent thought of the consequences, the belief that future resources will be available only at ever-increasing economic cost and the hazards which nuclear power may bring in its train are all factors which contribute to the growing concern.' 'It is a pity that the 'growing concern' did not show itself in the 1960s, during which nearly half the British coal industry was abandoned as 'uneconomic' - and, once abandoned, it is virtually lost for ever - and it is astonishing that, despite 'growing concern', there is continuing pressure from highly influential quarters to go on with pit closures for 'economic' reasons.

Nine

Nuclear Energy - Salvation or Damnation?

The main cause of the complacency - now gradually diminishing - about future energy supplies was undoubtedly the emergence of nuclear energy, which, people felt had arrived just in time. Little did they bother to inquire precisely what it was that had arrived. It was new, it was astonishing, it was progress, and promises were freely given that it would be cheap. Since a new source of energy would be needed sooner or later, why not have it at once?

The following statement was made six years ago. At the time, it seemed highly unorthodox, '

The religion of economics promotes an idolatry of rapid change, unaffected by the elementary truism that a change which is not an unquestionable improvement is a doubtful blessing. The burden of proof is placed on those who take the "ecological viewpoint": unless they can produce evidence of marked injury to man, the change will proceed.

Common sense, on the contrary, would suggest that the burden of proof should lie on the man who wants to introduce a change; he has to demonstrate that there cannot be any damaging consequences. But this would take too much time, and would therefore be uneconomic. Ecology, indeed, ought to be a compulsory subject for all economists, whether professionals or laymen, as this might serve to restore at least a modicum of balance. For ecology holds "that an environmental setting developed over millions of years must be considered to have some merit. Anything so complicated as a planet, inhabited by more than a million and a half species of plants and animals, all of them living together in a more or less balanced equilibrium in which they continuously use and re-use the same molecules of the soil and air, cannot be improved by aimless and uninformed tinkering.

All changes in a complex mechanism involve some risk and should be undertaken only after careful study of all the facts available. Changes should be made on a small scale first so as to provide a test before they are widely applied. When information is incomplete, changes should stay close to the natural processes which have in their favour the indisputable evidence of having supported life for a very long time".'

The argument, six years ago, proceeded as follows: Of all the changes introduced by man into the household of nature, large-scale nuclear fission is undoubtedly the most dangerous and profound. As a result, ionising radiation has become the most serious agent of pollution of the environment and the greatest threat to man's survival on earth. The attention of the layman, not surprisingly, has been captured by the atom bomb, although there is at least a chance that it may never be used again. The danger to humanity created by the so-called peaceful uses of atomic energy may be much greater. There could indeed be no clearer example of the prevailing dictatorship of economics. Whether to build conventional power stations, based on coal or oil, or nuclear stations, is being decided on economic grounds, with perhaps a small element of regard for the 'social consequences'

that might arise from an over-speedy curtailment of the coal industry. Put that nuclear fission represents an incredible, incomparable, and unique hazard for human life does not enter any calculation and is never mentioned.

People whose business it is to judge hazards, the insurance companies, are reluctant to insure nuclear power stations anywhere in the world for third party risk, with the result that special legislation has had to be passed whereby the State accepts big liabilities. Yet, insured or not, the hazard remains, and such is the thraldom of the religion of economics that the only question that appears to interest either governments or the public is whether

'it pays'.

It is not as if there were any lack of authoritative voices to warn us. The effects of alpha, beta, and gamma rays on living tissues are perfectly well known: the radiation particles are like bullets tearing into an organism, and the damage they do depends primarily on the dosage and the type of cells they hit. As long ago as 1927, the American biologist, H. J. Muller, published his famous paper on genetic mutations produced by X-ray bombardment.' and since the early 1930s the genetic hazard of exposure has been recognised also by non-geneticists. It is clear that here is a hazard with a hitherto inexperienced 'dimension', endangering not only those who might be directly affected by this radiation but their offspring as well.

A new 'dimension' is given also by the fact that while man now can - and does - create radioactive elements, there is nothing he can do to reduce their radioactivity once he has created them. No chemical reaction, no physical interference, only the passage of time reduces the intensity of radiation once it has been set going. Carbon-14 has a half -life of 5,900 years, which means that it takes nearly 6,000 years for its radioactivity to decline to one-half of what it was before. The half-life of strontium-90 is -twenty-eight years. But whatever the length of the half-life, some radiation continues almost indefinitely, and there is nothing that can be done about it, except to try and put the radioactive substance into a safe place.

But what is a safe place, let us say, for the enormous amounts of radioactive waste products created by nuclear reactors? No place on earth can be shown to be safe. It was thought at one time that these wastes could safely be dumped into the deepest parts of the oceans, on the assumption that no life could subsist at such depths." But this has since been disproved by Soviet deep-sea exploration. Wherever there is life, radioactive substances are absorbed into the biological cycle. Within hours of depositing these materials in water, the great bulk of them can be found in living organisms.

Plankton, algae, and many sea animals have the power of concentrating these substances by a factor of 1,000 and in some cases even a million. As one organism feeds on another, the radio- active materials climb up the ladder of life and find their way back to man.

No international agreement has yet been reached on waste disposal. The conference of the international Atomic Energy Organisation at Monaco, in November 1959, ended in disagreement, mainly on account of the violent objections raised by the majority of countries against the American and British practice of disposal into the oceans. ‘High level' waste continue to be dumped into the sea, while quantities of so-called intermediate' and 'low-level' wastes are discharged into rivers or directly into the ground. An AEC

report observes laconically that the liquid wastes 'work their way slowly into ground water, leaving all or part (sic!) of their radioactivity held either chemically or physically in the soil.

The most massive wastes are, of course, the nuclear reactors themselves after they have become unserviceable. There is a lot of discussion on the trivial economic question of whether they will last for twenty, twenty-five, or thirty years. No-one discusses the humanly vital point that they cannot be dismantled and cannot be shifted but have to be left standing where they are, probably for centuries, perhaps for thousands of years, an active menace to all life, silently leaking radioactivity into air, water and soil. No-one has considered the number and location of these satanic mills which will relentlessly accumulate. Earthquakes, of course, are not supposed to happen, nor wars, nor civil disturbances, nor riots like those that infested American cities. Disused nuclear power stations will stand as unsightly monuments to unquiet man's assumption that nothing but tranquillity, from now on, stretches before him, or else - that the future counts as nothing compared with the slightest economic gain now.

Meanwhile, a number of authorities are engaged in defining 'maximum permissible concentrations' (MPCs) and 'maximum permissible levels'

(MPLs) for various radioactive elements. The MPC purports to define the quantity of a given radioactive sub- stance that the human body can be allowed to accumulate. But it is known that any accumulation produces biological damage. 'Since we don't know that these effects can be completely recovered from,' observes the US Naval Radiological Laboratory, 'we have to fall back on an arbitrary decision about how much we will put up with; i.e. what is "acceptable" or "permissible" - not a scientific finding, but an administrative decision.'" We can hardly be surprised when men of outstanding intelligence and integrity, such as Albert Schweitzer, refuse to accept such administrative decisions with equanimity: 'Who has given them the right to do this? Who is even entitled to give such a permission?'" The history of these decisions is, to say the least, disquieting. The British Medical Research Council noted some twelve years ago that

'The maximum permissible level of strontium-90 in the human skeleton.

accepted by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, corresponds to ].000 micro-micro- curies per gramme of calcium (= 1,000

SU). But this is the maximum permissible level for adults in special occupations and is not suitable for application to the population as a whole or to the children with their greater sensitivity to radiation.'

A little later, the MPC for strontium-90, as far as the general population was concerned, was reduced by ninety per cent, and then by another third. to sixty-seven SU. Meanwhile, the MPC for workers in nuclear plants was raised to 2,000 SU.'s

We must be careful, however, not to get lost in the jungle of controversy that has grown up in this field. The point is that very serious hazards have already been created by the 'peaceful uses of atomic energy', affecting not merely the people alive today but all future generations, although so far nuclear energy is being used only on a statistically insignificant scale. The real development is yet to come, on a scale which few people are incapable of imagining. If this is really going to happen, there will be a continuous traffic in radioactive substances from the 'hot' chemical plants to the nuclear stations and back again; from the stations to waste- processing plants; and from there to disposal sites. A serious accident, whether during transport or production, can cause a major catastrophe; and the radiation levels throughout the world will rise relentlessly from generation to generation.

Unless all living geneticists are in error, there will be an equally relentless, though no doubt somewhat delayed, increase in the number of harmful mutations. K. Z. Morgan, of the Oak Ridge Laboratory, emphasises that the damage can be very subtle, a deterioration of all kinds of organic qualities, such as mobility, fertility, and the efficiency of sensory organs. 'If a small dose has any effect at all at any stage of the life cycle of an organism, then chronic radiation at this level can be more damaging than a single massive dose.... Finally, stress and changes in mutation rates may be produced even when there is no immediately obvious effect on survival of irradiated individuals.'"