Will Friends of the Earth Drop Their Opposition to Nuclear Energy?

I got a surprise this morning as I opened my email: the news that the U.K. affiliate of Friends of the Earth (FOE), one of the world's leading environmental organizations, may drop its long-time opposition to the use of nuclear energy.

The word comes from author, journalist and climate activist Mark Lynas, who recently had a phone conversation with Mike Childs, the head of climate change with the organization. Apparently, the organization is about to do an extensive scientific review of the positions for and against nuclear energy. Here's Childs from the interview:

[S]o we’ve commissioned the Tyndall Centre in Manchester to lead the review. They’ll go through a process of pulling together the arguments for and against nuclear power, both new nuclear power stations, extending existing stations, and some of the fast breeder ideas on the table. They’ll synthesise that and do a peer-review with proponents both for and against, to see whether they’ve got those arguments properly synthesised and understood. They’ll then do some further work around that, looking at the robustness and quality of those different arguments, and come forward with recommendations.

Very, very interesting (for more thoughts on the possible change, visit Rod Adams). It's too bad that this reconsideration of policy came too late for Rev. Hugh Montefiore, an Anglican bishop who was forced to leave the FOE board in 2004 for his support for nuclear energy. Rev. Montefiore passed away just eight months later.

One point that needs to be made here: this policy review is only taking place in the U.K. As Childs himself points out in the interview, each local affiliate of FOE is allowed to chart its own policy course, which I guess has Arnie Gundersen breathing a sigh of relief -- at least for now. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Another point that Childs made during the interview: the nuclear review won't disrupt any current anti-nuclear activities so as not to prejudice the result. Hence, we'll keep seeing stuff like this for a while. Our apologies, that link actually leads to a complete refutation of the Lynas piece. Guess the answer is no.