Sign the petition! - Don't nuke the climate !

Home page > Sign the petition!

DON’T NUKE THE CLIMATE!
International campaign - Copenhagen Climate Summit 2009

Climate change and its impacts are now undeniable. Leaders from the whole world will have to reach a new climate agreement during the December 2009 Copenhagen Summit. Urgent measures must be taken to achieve a massive reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions: our future depends on it!

Under the current Kyoto Protocol, nuclear energy is rightly excluded from the possible solutions available to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the nuclear industry, in collaboration with certain countries, is pushing for this dangerous and polluting technology to be included in the next climate agreement as a “clean” technology.

The nuclear industry would then be able to take advantage of significant public investments… at the expense of real solutions! Such disingenuous strategy would mean losing the fight against climate change and promoting the global expansion of the nuclear industry, with its associated risks.

True facts

Global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by at least 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.

Industrialised countries, the main producers of greenhouse gas emissions, must reduce their emissions by 40% by 2020.

It takes about 10 years to build one single reactor. So the nuclear option is definitely no answer to the urgency of the fight against climate change.

75% of global greenhouse gas emissions are produced by sectors of the economy which don’t depend on electricity. The nuclear option is therefore irrelevant for those sectors.

For each euro invested, increased energy efficiency and certain types of renewable energies can achieve up to 11 times more reductions in greenhouse emissions than nuclear power.

Nuclear energy only amounts to 2.4% of global energy use. It is a very marginal energy.

Since 1974, the OECD countries have officially committed 55% of their energy research budgets to nuclear energy, i.e. 250 billion dollars.

Private nuclear operators benefit from enormous public subsidies, direct and indirect, without which they could not commission a nuclear reactor.

The future costs of decommissioning nuclear power plants and managing radioactive waste will reach hundreds of billions of euros.

The hotter the weather, the more unsafe it becomes to operate power plants: 1/4 of French nuclear reactors had to be shut down in 2003 because of the summer heat wave.

As climate changes, droughts become more frequent. Yet the production of nuclear energy requires 25,000 times more water per kWh than wind or solar energy…

A study by German scientists has shown that there is a 117% increase in childhood leukaemia within a 5 km radius of some nuclear reactors.

The International Commission on Radiological Protection states that any irradiation dose may cause cancers and hereditary disorders.

Radioactive waste remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. There is no solution to prevent radioactive substances from leaking into the environment.

More reactors mean more equipment and more nuclear material spreading across the world. The proliferation of nuclear weapons becomes faster and easier.

The real solutions to fight climate change exist: energy efficiency, energy saving, increase in renewable energies…

…fighting deforestation, transition towards sustainable farming, economic relocalisation, etc…

The emerging sector of renewable energies is already employing 2.5 million people across the world.

In less than 10 years, Germany has created 300,000 jobs in the renewable energy sector.

For the same investment, energy efficiency and renewable energies create 15 times more jobs than the nuclear industry.

Please sign this petition to political leaders and negotiators:

Your signature will be printed out on an individual petition postcard, which will be handed in by our delegation in Copenhagen.

During the Copenhagen Summit, you will be responsible for reaching a new international climate agreement. It is of the utmost importance that this agreement should set ambitious targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and should define appropriate solutions to limit climate change and to enable our communities to adapt to its impacts.

Therefore, I ask you to reject nuclear energy as a "clean" technology, and to oppose its inclusion in the mechanisms to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, for the following reasons:

Nuclear power is a totally inappropriate solution for the reduction of those emissions: its contribution can only be very small, would come too late and be negligible compared to the contribution from energy saving and renewable energies. Moreover, nuclear power is very expensive and deprives the real solutions from funding. Choosing the nuclear option will thus mean losing the fight against climate change.
Nuclear energy is a dangerous and polluting technology. The risk of major accidents is real and increases with the number of reactors. Radioactivity poses a serious threat to health, and there is no solution to the problem of nuclear waste management.

You owe it to all of us to advocate the real solutions for climate change!

To sign the petition please fill in the fields below. Fields marked * are required.

First name*
Surname*
E-mail*
Occupation or title
Postal address

Postal code or zip
Town
Province or state
Country*
* Required field
	Tick the box if you do not wish to receive information emails from us

Réseau "Sortir du nucléaire" | Contact |

RSS 2.0