By Nick Griffiths-Haynes
Yule 2006
2006 saw the 20
th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine where a nuclear reactor over heated and released a cloud of radioactive particles that covered most of Europe. The UK government has recently released its latest energy review that makes the case for including nuclear generation as a part of the UK's generating capacity. The nuclear industry is putting itself forward as the only way of generating large amounts of power without producing enormous quantities of CO
2 and the environmental campaign organisations are dusting off their No Nukes badges.
The debate about nuclear power is back. But both the pro and anti arguments have been made many times before and far more eloquently than I ever could. The pro nuclear lobby argue that we need secure, reliable energy that doesn't produce CO2 and can meet the growing energy gap created by surging demand around the globe. Anti nuclear groups counter with the scarcity of uranium reserves, the increased risk of terrorist attack at nuclear installations, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the problem of waste. Put simply, it comes down to what comes first; the human need (greed?) for more power to fuel our civilisations, or the Environment around us? What is a druid perspective on all of this? How does the philosophy and spirituality of druidry affect our thinking on this very sticky topic? How does it inform our approach to the debate?
Druidry teaches us about the importance of connection. Everyone and everything linked to the world around them by the intricate threads of relationship. Be it the ground you walk on, the air you breathe, your family, your pets, your food... Each of us moves through an intricate web of these connections. We try to raise our awareness of these threads, to be conscious of them and enter more fully into honouring the connections that sustain us. Making relationship with the world around us, more fully integrating ourselves with our surroundings, our environment, and our planet.
The Land
Naturally we get a dose of radiation from the land around us and from what little gets through our protective atmosphere. The Sun is a huge nuclear furnace vital to life on our planet. Volcanic rocks, sea water and plants contain tiny quantities of radioactive elements, our own bodies contain around 1 part per billion (ppb) of uranium. The radioactive decay of uranium, thorium and 40-potassium is thought to be largely responsible for the heat that drives the movement of the tectonic plates.
Radiation and radioactivity are a natural part of the world we live in, part of the beautiful complexity of nature. The small doses we are continually exposed to are one factor amongst many, set in a subtle balance that allows life to flourish.
We recognise the sacredness of the landscape around us, valleys, hills, rivers, mountains... We respect and honour as best we can the land beneath our feet, the places where we live. Whilst acknowledging that to live the lives we enjoy sacrifices must be made, a certain amount of exploitation has to take place. Questions need to be asked about how much of this exploitation can be sustained. Do we really need the next big power hungry gadget? Is it honourable to buy or use that particular waste of the earth's resources? We mine and plunder the earth for resources we cannot do without every day, ever since our species discovered the use of flint, copper and bronze. We use tools made from materials like iron, aluminium and oil... Do we really need to rip out another ore to supply less than 100 years of energy?
Warm rocks such as Pitchblende, a type of uranium ore, hide the energy to power cities. Uranium occurs in trace amounts almost everywhere and is naturally about as abundant as metals like Arsenic and Tin. However, minable deposits are less common. The major countries currently producing ore for the world market are Canada, Australia, Niger, Namibia and Uzbekistan. Uranium is a non-renewable resource we are expected to use up within the next 100 years at current rates of extraction. This doesn't take into account any increase in demand from planned new power stations or the up-take of the technology around the world by countries with no previous nuclear programme. For an average reactor, 50,000 tonnes of ore is needed each year and the number of reactors globally is already growing.
Where is the honour in carving out the side of a mountain for our continued comfort? Or hollowing out the insides to provide "safe" long-term storage for our wastes? This is what is happening at Yucca mountain in Nevada, USA and the UK is investigating similar plans for the "disposal" of its high level nuclear waste. Do we need to do this to ensure the survival of the species? Are there alternatives? Why do we need this level of comfort anyway?
Thousands of tonnes of uranium ore are mined and quarried each year. Giant trucks as big as houses carry blasted rock to be pulverized ready for processing. In Australia arguments rage about the rights of aboriginal peoples whose sacred landscape is being plundered to feed the greed of an invasive alien culture. They receive a tiny percentage of the price of the ore to have their temples and sanctuaries poisoned and destroyed.
The hill farms of North Wales who were unlucky enough to receive rains as the Chernobyl dust drifted by, received extra doses of radioactive particles to such an extent that even now, 20 years on, the movement of their flocks is still restricted and their relative safety monitored by Geiger counter.
I cannot think of a society where it is considered OK to leave your waste lying around without bothering to clear it up. It is disrespectful, dishonourable... Leaving pools and pockets of land (for example, the deserts used for weapons testing, 3 mile island or the 1000s of km2 in Ukraine and Belarus) contaminated for centuries and left unfit for habitation... simply because of low (human) population levels in environments that we find too isolated or difficult to use in any other way. Apparently the earth is ours to use and abuse as we see fit.
Ancestors
We honour our ancestors in this tradition, the current of humanity that flows through us. We reach back along our bloodlines as our blood pumps through our veins, to show that we honour all of the people who came before us, who went first so we could come into being. All of the emotions, needs, wants, fears, loves, losses... all that we are and all that we will become. As we pass on our genes our blood and our teachings, we honour our ancestors by honouring our descendents. They merge to become one and the same.
As individuals, we are a tiny point in the continuum of humanity. If we accept the truth of the flow of our blood from the past into the future, how can we then say we truly honour this flow, when we passively buy into an energy source that will leave our descendents with radioactive rubbish that remains a danger to them for up to 100,000 years?
The side products of the nuclear industry also cannot be ignored when thinking of our ancestors. Controversy is currently raging over the use of depleated uranium shells in the Gulf wars. The material used to make these weapons is a side product of nuclear fuel enrichment. The UK is again discussing when and if its trident missile programme should be renewed. Can humanity ever forget the total destruction caused when the Enlola Gay dropped its payload on Japan in 1945? As druids we talk of peace, we call to peace in our rituals, is this ever a peaceful technology?
Nuclear power may give us humans vast amounts of energy we can waste at will, but it is a solution to a human problem, and a short term one at that. It enables us to ignore the problems of over consumption and inefficiency endemic in our societies, and pass them on to the next generation, along with all the waste we generate no matter how good the next generation of power plants are. All the resources, energy and investment we waste on a technology with a built in life span, could be better spent on genuinely sustainable technologies that will allow us to generate energy far into the future.
If governments stopped paying subsidies to the nuclear industry and instead invested this money in the renewable sector (solar, wind, wave, etc), how much more advanced would these technologies be? Perhaps, more importantly, we should ask how much energy do we really need? Do our homes need to be fully illuminated and heated to 25°C all year round? How many electrical appliances does one household need plugged in on standby 24 hours a day? How much is necessary? A very simple question we could all do with looking at more seriously. Minimising our use of energy is probably the easiest way to bring down energy consumption and reduce CO2 in the short term.
As well as using less energy, we can install solar water heaters, solar panels and mini wind generators of our own (these things are now available on the high street!). We can look to see who is generating our electricity and use our buying power to insist on renewable sources. If it can be said that the market needs nuclear power, we as consumers, can wield our cash to prove where the demand really lies; with a planet left for our descendants in a better state than we found it.
Deity and Spirit
The concept of deity within druidry is extremely complex and intensely personal. One definition is simply that a deity is a power of nature with the power to kill. Another could be a spirit so large that we are never out of its presence. This leaves us with straight forward examples like the wind, the rain, cold, the sea and the sun (the nuclear furnace in the sky).
With modern understandings of nuclear and subatomic physics, concepts of deity using this model can become smaller. We can find very potent powers of nature in the miniscule world of atoms, nuclei, electrons and quarks. Single atoms essentially consist of three types of smaller particle. Negatively charged electrons that exist in clouds of potential surrounding the central nucleus, positively charged protons and particles with no net charge called neutrons that both make up the nucleus of an atom. (This is a simplified version of a very complex model involving many more even smaller and more unusual particles like quarks and gluons...)
Here are two of the mysteries of subatomic physics: What force keeps the negative electrons
away from the positive nucleus? And what holds the positive particles of the nucleus
together? This second force was named the "strong nuclear force" and some of this energy is what is released in a nuclear reaction or explosion.
This force, this power of nature is in everything. The world we inhabit, the air we breathe, our water, our food...The billions of atoms in our own bodies are held together by it and nobody fully understands what it is or how it works. A deity of matter, the glue that holds the universe we perceive together, something so minute we never think about it. It is this power of nature that holds pure energy together as matter. It is the solvent to carry the pigment in the paints of our soul's physical creativity. And we are using it to make steam to drive turbines to power our televisions and computers.
Do we honour our gods by tearing them apart? This is the process of nuclear fission. An atom is split to release the energy of the strong nuclear force, a force we don't fully understand.
Then there are the named gods, those ancestral deities, whose pantheons have evolved with the scattered tribes of humanity, springing up out of oral traditions across the globe. Tales told by the fire side of heroes and magicians, the god who made the desert, the great smith who works unceasingly inside the volcano, the woman who rides her white horses across the wild seas... These are the stories that teach us about the land and our relationship to it. They teach us about the cyclic realities of the world, one part always feeding into another in a sustainable cycle of mutual dependency. These are the lessons we ignore at our peril
We are only one type of organism living on the surface of this planet. What right do we have to destroy it? Not only for future generations of humans but for every other spirit? Where is the honour, the respect, the reverence for what we, as druids, claim to hold sacred, in one of the most damaging technologies the human race has ever invented?
We play the games of the gods, trying to harness powers of nature to do our bidding without understanding their scale, the sheer number of threads connecting and interconnecting with them. How much respect do we show for the immense power held in those tiny atoms? We are seeking to hold the sun in the palm of our hand and expecting not to get burned.
Useful Links
www.dti.gov.uk/energy/review
The UK governments recent energy review.
www.sd-commission.org,uk
The sustainable Development Commission response to the UK energy review.
www.newint.org/issue382/
An issue of New Internationalist magazine all about the nuclear debate.
http://cerncourier.com/main/article/43/8/12 An article from The CERN Courier that describes the movement of tectonic plates as a result of natural nuclear decay amongst other things.
www.nirs.org
NIRS/WISE is the information and networking centre for citizens and environmental organizations concerned about nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiation, and sustainable energy issues.
www.nuclearfiles.org
A web based resource for all aspects of nuclear power and weapons.
www.uic.com.au
The Uranium Information Centre, a website all about the Australian uranium mining industry.
www.dti.gov.uk/energy/sources/nuclear-power/ The UK department for Trade and Industry web pages dealing with nuclear power.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk The anti nuclear campaign from Greenpeace UK.
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/faqs/questions/nuclear_energy.html Friends of the Earth UK nuclear FAQ
http://www.monbiot.com/ An anti nuclear posting on George Monbiot's blog.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/uran.htm The World Nuclear Association is the global organisation that seeks to promote the peaceful worldwide use of nuclear power as a sustainable energy resource for the coming centuries.
Average background levels = 0.2 - 0.4mSv per year...Average annual dose UK = 2.5mSv (http://home.clara.net/darvill/nucrad/sources.htm).
Link to: http://www.million-against-nuclear.net One million Europeans against nuclear power. An anti-nuke petition.
