Linda Pentz Gunter is a long standing anti-nuclear campaigner. Her book, No to Nuclear: Why nuclear power destroys lives, derails climate progress and provokes war, is an excellent primer for those who want arguments against nuclear power. I suspect it will be widely read among those who oppose nuclear energy and that is a good thing, for reasons I will come on to. But it also should be read by the growing number of activists who are unsure how we are going to stop climate change or are seduced by the lies of the nuclear industry.
I was priviledged to interview Linda about her book during a recent book launch in Manchester for CND. Linda explained that the book came out of a growing need to tell the stories of those people, and animals, affected by nuclear power already. One of the great strengths of the book is how it explores the impact of nuclear power already. In particular, and probably of great interest to activists in Europe, Linda talks about the impact of nuclear power on indigenous people. She recounts how some of the poorest communities in countries like Australia and North America have been used as testing grounds for nuclear power, or sites for resource extraction. As she says, they get all of the danger and problems and none of the benefits.
But indigenous people are not just victims. They are also activists who have successfully mobilised against the nuclear industry. In telling the stories of how they have suffered and how they have resisted Linda gives us a new approach to nuclear power. One that sees communities as being sites that can demand a different approach to the environment and energy, free of corporate control. But these accounts also so a significant fact. Just like disasters and environmental crises impact worst along the fissures of capitalist society, nuclear power impacts the oppressed and exploited first and worst. Take the question of waste. It is black, indigenous and poor commuities that become the places were they want to dump it. As Linda writes:
nent, safe solution for the storage of radioactive waste, where does it go in the meantime? We must return to the lands of Indigenous peoples and communities of color. Yucca Mountain ripples acorss Western Shoshone land in Nevada. We are back in the dreamtim with stories of serpents. The Shoshone call Yucca Mountain "Serpent Swimming Westward." It is a sacred place. It was also never ceded to the US government. But, for a time, it was the chosen destination for America's high-level radioactive waste repository.
Two other arguments run through Linda's book. The first might seem counter-factual. Linda argues that nuclear power itself has been a distraction from action on climate change. Despite being portrayed as the solution to disaster, it's made it worse. Linda says:
Studies also clearly show that the political choice being made today to continue with or build nuclear power plants, rather than ceoncentrate on renewable energy, only further impedes progrss on carbon reductions, takes longer and of course costs far more. But because nuclear power got in the way of what could have been a global renewable energy revolution decades ago, there is a case to be made that it is far more a contributor to climat echange than it could ever be a solution to it.
I think this is an important argument against nuclear power. There has been a tendency to oppose nuclear power by highlighting its costs, or the amount of dangerous waste, or the technical problems associated with building reactors. What we must do is to look at the whole of nuclear energy within wider contexts. This flows then, into Linda's key argument, the one that opens the book and frames wider politics - the question of nuclear power, war and weapons proliferation.
Because nuclear energy plants always have the potential to be used to manufacture materials for nuclear bombs, building them in ever increasing numbers threatens the potential for more bombs. Indeed that has been the state reason behind many a country's nuclear plans, the "pathway to the bomb" as Linda calls it. She writes:
Any country with a "civil" nuclear power program is in possession of the necessary technology, skills and materials to develop nuclear weapons. This was already demonstrated by India's transition to nuclear weapons and is responsible for the concerns today surrounding Iran's nuclear intensions, which led in part to the decision by Israel and the US to bomb Iran's nuclear faciltiies in the summer of 2025.
It was also the excuse that the US and Israel used to attack Iran the month that I write this, opening up an appalling moment of imperialist war. But the existence of nuclear weapon potential also encourages others. As Linda points out Saudi Arabia, a country with masses of fossil fuels and enormous potential for solar power, is looking at starting a nuclear energy programme. That's clearly to put it on the path, or potential path, for nuclear weapons. The existence of nuclear energy esclating the possibilities of nuclear weapons elsewhere.
This is a short, readable and polemical book. It places nuclear power in the context of a wider economic system geared to profit and the need to protect markets and resources. It is, in that sense, a frightening book that makes it clear that the threat of nuclear war is getting worse. At the same time it reminds us that in places were there have been accidents, or where uranium is mined, or bombs tested, ordinary people, particularly those from minorities, are already suffering horribly. But Linda also makes it clear that we can resist. Who knew that in Orkney mass movements in the 1970s stopped uranium mining? Linda gives us good numbers of other examples.
Nuclear power can be stopped and in doing so we can strengthen the struggle for more just society and a more rational energy policy. Linda Pentz Gunter's No to Nuclear is an important weapon in that battle.
Nuclear power can be stopped and in doing so we can strengthen the struggle for more just society and a more rational energy policy. Linda Pentz Gunter's No to Nuclear is an important weapon in that battle.
Related Reviews
Ramana - Nuclear is Not the Solution: The folly of atomic power in the age of climate change
Walker - Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective
Gates - How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need
Lochbaum, Lyman, Stranahan & UCS - Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster
Bird & Sherwin - American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Walker - Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective
Gates - How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need
Lochbaum, Lyman, Stranahan & UCS - Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster
Bird & Sherwin - American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
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