Gwyneth Cravens. Illustration by David Anderson.

Novelist, journalist, and former anti-nuclear activist Gwyneth Cravens spent 10 years researching and writing Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy. She tells us why she now favours nuclear.

This: How did you become an advocate for nuclear power?

Cravens: Through my good friend Rip Anderson, a scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. He’s one of the world’s experts on nuclear waste and risk assessment as well as being an environmental activist. One day I started asking him about nuclear power, which he supports as a source of energy. He helped me sort out the myths I had assimilated from my ban-the-bomb days. I came to realize he was right.

This: I assume you, like many of us, had equated nuclear power with nuclear destruction.

Cravens: The word nuclear makes us jittery. We associate it with the end of the world. But the end of the world is called something else—global warming—and, ironically, nuclear power is one of the ways to prevent that from happening.

This: You target coal and natural gas as the sources of energy we should be protesting against. What are your arguments against coal-fired plants?

Cravens: In the U.S. alone, some 24,000 people a year die prematurely because of coal pollution. Hundreds of thousands more suffer heart and lung problems. There are no deaths among the American public attributable to commercial nuclear power. Radiation can’t escape through the reactor containment building of a nuclear plant. Those walls are five or six feet thick and made from special concrete.

This: I was startled by a comparison you made between the waste generated by a coal-fired plant and that from a nuclear one.

Cravens: In France they get almost 80 per cent of their electricity from nuclear power and they reprocess it, unlike in the U.S. As a result, over 20 years, a family of four in France would produce an amount of waste tinier in volume than a small cigarette lighter. If you got all your electricity from coal-fired plants your individual lifetime share of solid waste would be about 68 tons. You’d also be responsible for 77 tons of global-heating carbon dioxide. There’s no combustion going on in nuclear plants, so they don’t release greenhouse gases.

This: How are hydroelectric dams a problem?

Cravens: Dam failures certainly kill fewer people worldwide than fossil-fuel pollution—it kills 3 million people a year. Dams are an important source of low-carbon electricity and we need them. But in terms of risk, dam failures are far more of a threat to people and wildlife than nuclear plants. This: Don’t the events at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl suggest nuclear plants aren’t safe?

Cravens: The Three Mile Island meltdown and its by-products were contained. The evacuation was due to a misreading of data and was totally unnecessary. Chernobyl was a stupid, horrible accident that was entirely preventable. The reactor had virtually no containment. If it had, Chernobyl would have been no worse than Three Mile Island. We have no plants of that design in North America.

This: How have your friends and colleagues reacted to your book?

Cravens: Many were skeptical when I started the project. But to a person they have all said that after they read the book they changed their minds about nuclear power.

This: Do you have any doubts that nuclear is a safe source of power?

Cravens: Nothing is totally safe. But this comes close. Studies have shown that cancer is no more prevalent around nuclear plants than anywhere else. In the U.S., 73 percent of emissions-free electricity comes from nuclear. If we want to reduce greenhouse gases, nuclear power is necessary. Fundamentally, to me, my book is about confronting prejudice—my own and that of others—toward nuclear power. To learn I was wrong about it was a very liberating experience.

Unlike oil spills, which produce sensational images of oil-covered ducks, uranium tailings spills are under-reported and quietly insidious. Here are some of the stories you might have missed:

Elliott Lake, Canada

Spill: Accidental. In August of 1993 a power failure at the Rio Algom’s Stanleigh mine allowed uranium tailings to spill into McCabe Lake and contaminate the water source.
Contamination: Two million litres of tailings entered McCabe Lake.
Effects: Tailing spills had devastated 90 kilometres of the Serpent River by the late 1970s. The Serpent River First Nations indigenous territory is thoroughly contaminated with radioactive waste.
Punishment or resolution: The Atomic Energy Control Board of Canada charged Rio Algom with one count of failure to provide proper training for employees, and one count of failure to prevent a spill. The mine has been decommissioned.

Mailuu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan

Spill: Pending. Kyrgyzstan was one of the primary sources of uranium for the U.S.S.R.’s Cold War arms race. Two million tonnes of toxic waste sits in 23 open pits around Mailuu-Suu. The tailings sit atop a mountainous fault line, making a toxic disaster nearly inevitable.
Contamination: In 2005, a landslide caused 300,000 cubic metres of material to spill into the Mailuu-Suu river, dangerously close to one of the tailing piles. The Mailuu-Suu river connects to water sources for civilians in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Effects: Over 23,000 people are at immediate risk of overexposure to radon, with a potential risk for millions. Some cancer rates in the area are twice as high as the national average.
Punishment or resolution: None. In 2008 The Kyrgyz government created a special agency to deal with the cleanup of the tailings with the help of NATO and the World Bank, but to date little progress has been made.

Mounana , Gabon

Spill: Intentional. During 40 years of uranium mining in this former colony, French nuclear giant Cogéma opted to dump radioactive tailings into Ngamaboungou creek, polluting Mounana’s water supply.
Contamination: More than two million tonnes of uranium tailings were disposed of in the Ngamaboungou river valley.
Effects: To date the only data on the impact of tailings disposal is from Cogéma itself, who claim there was no real impact. Cogéma calculated that area residents, however, are exposed nearly three times the international guidelines for occupational exposure.
Punishment or resolution: None.

Kakadu, Australia

Spill: Accidental, repetitive.
Contamination: Over the course of its lifetime, the Ranger uranium mine in Northern Australia has released over 2000 cubic metres of contaminated water into the wetland and waterways surrounding Kakadu National Park. A trucking accident near the mine earlier this year spilled 17,000 litres of sulphuric acid into the wetlands—the largest chemical spill in local history.
Effects: Uranium levels in the nearby Corridor Creek are now 4,000 times the recommended drinking water standard. One recent government study found cancer rates among the Aboriginal population in the Kakadu region are twice as high as those living elsewhere.
Punishment or resolution: Ineffective. The Ranger mine has been repeatedly fined for failing to meet standard regulations, between $82,500 and $150,000 per incident. But tailing breaches continue to occur.