Dear friends and colleagues in faith,

Warm greetings in this new year of 2012.

This letter is a request that we in the faith communities respond to the calls of civil society, follow the example of faith leaders in Japan following the continuing disaster at Fukushima, and speak out clearly against our Department of Energy’s plan for expanding nuclear energy in South Africa.

When you have finished reading, please email us at coordinator@safcei.org.za to let us know of your support, if we have it.

You will have followed events in Japan last year with the same sense of shock that affected us at SAFCEI: the dreadful tsunami that took so many lives, and the subsequent breakdown, explosions and ongoing crises at the Fukushima nuclear reactor that forced the evacuation of 200,000 people, spread radiation around the northern hemisphere, and will take decades if not centuries to clean up.

The exact circumstances of the nuclear accident at Fukushima are unlikely to be replicated in South Africa. However, as long as we humans imagine that we are immune to natural disasters and human error and believe unpredictable failures of very dangerous technology will not happen to us, these disasters can and will happen again.

Is this what we want for South Africa? Our own leaders seem to have ignored what happened at Fukushima, brushing this great human tragedy aside. Our government is now intent on building no less than six nuclear reactors in South Africa.

The technocrats who advocate nuclear technology seem convinced of their own infallibility. They ignore public opinion. And all too often, they are no longer around when the full consequences of their grand plans play out.

Given the immense risks of nuclear power revealed by the Fukushima and other incidents, we are astonished that our own government continues to pursue this option. The construction costs could be more than R1-trillion. These already immense expenses do not take into consideration the costs of managing the legacy of waste, left for future generations to deal with. It is an open scandal that nearly 30 years after the construction of the nuclear power station at Koeberg, the government still does not have a plan for managing the high-level radioactive waste produced there. How then can it be trusted to deal responsibly with many times more high-level waste?

Faith communities in Japan are now standing up in opposition to all civilian nuclear power. We attach to this message, the call from the Catholic Bishops of Japan to abolish all nuclear plants immediately.

The moral problems with nuclear energy are simple:

• the imposition of endless risk and cost onto future generations, in defiance of our Constitution, which calls for inter-generational equity
• the constant danger of nuclear accidents
• the risks of nuclear proliferation and its use for weapons
• the necessity of entrusting authorities with more power than is healthy in any democracy
• the security risks and culture of secrecy that is inherent to nuclear technology
• the limited responsibility of nuclear planners, who are rarely available to be held accountable when their grand schemes fail

These immense moral hazards should silence those who claim nuclear energy is vital for economic reasons.

But the practical problems are as great:

• the vast and increasing cost of nuclear technology – these plants always cost more than the public is told when plans are announced
• no country in the world has succeeded in finding a full and proper solution for dealing with high-level radioactive waste, waste that will be dangerous for tens of thousands of years
• the ever-increasing costs of fueling technology dependent on an increasingly scarce resource: uranium
• the reluctance of private capital to fund or insure nuclear facilities
• the dangers of building nuclear plants near rising seas which are vulnerable to growing numbers of extreme storms
• they cannot be precisely scaled to match actual demand
• the costs required to build secure facilities in an age of increased risk of terrorism
• real doubts over whether the planned construction schedule is in fact viable

Renewable energy technologies are advancing swiftly. In a country with South Africa’s great potential for the use of renewables, nuclear energy should not even be considered.

As faith communities, we must speak out against these plans:

We invite you, as faith leaders with profound responsibility, to take these actions:

• please email us at coordinator@safcei.org.za to let us know if you support this call, or would like to receive further information and resources from us?
• encourage your faith community to take a stand against nuclear energy
• write to the national press expressing your opposition to the nuclear programme
• join SAFCEI in a unified call to government from faith communities to abandon these reckless plans

with best wishes

Bishop Geoff Davies                                   

SAFCEI executive director