As the United States struggles to find ways to combat climate change by reducing its emissions and ease its dependence on foreign energy, Greenpeace and countless other Environmental Idealists are a barrier to a cleaner, greener America. They demand a perfect form of energy – one without risk, without fuel, without waste, without pollution, without emission, without environmental drawbacks. In doing so, they take the perfect and make it an enemy of the good.
For over fifty years, the United States (and the rest of the world) has had the magic bullet that would solve its energy needs and reduce its emissions. Yet, because of misinformed voters, television and print smear campaigns, a plethora of science fiction literature, and Environmental Idealists, we are still afraid of the cleanest, greenest, most sustainable form of power the world has ever known: Nuclear Energy.
But how can nuclear energy by the cleanest form of energy? What about all that nasty radiation? Well, it turns out nuclear plants are incredibly well-sealed. In fact, living next to a nuclear power plant for your entire life wouldn’t expose you to much more radiation than your smoke detector will.
Coal power belches tons of Radon, sealed in most carbon-based fuels, into the air every year. To put things into perspective, a nuclear power plant produces one-hundred times less radiation per watt it produces than a coal plant.
There is one byproduct that everyone is concerned about, and rightfully so: Nuclear waste. Here in America, we have a very inefficient system for dealing with waste – we use nuclear fuel once and then dispose of it. Most countries simply throw it back into the reactor and get another fuel cycle out of it, again and again.
France is a great example of efficiency in this respect (though it hurts me to admit it). They reprocess their waste, getting outrageously more watts out of every piece of Uranium mined than we do. And the end result is much less nuclear waste that, though far more radioactive, is inert within a matter of decades (compared to several thousand years or more standard for U.S. waste).
But even the somewhat inadequate temporary nuclear storage facilities that we are using in the States today are safe and secure. They are shielded from radiation, well-guarded and inaccessible. While we recommend going forward with the Yucca Mountain Storage Facility, in the meantime, we still think it is safe to store nuclear waste in these temporary facilities.
And before we’re swamped with angry letters, no: we are not concerned with a meltdown. The last U.S. meltdown ended with zero (yes, zero) casualties. In fact, almost every nuclear meltdown ends the same way – no casualties, no radiation exposure. Modern U.S. nuclear plant design, regulation, and governmental response procedures make it impossible (read: impossible) for a Chernobyl-like meltdown.
A brief, if controversial, history lesson: Chernobyl was a combination of poor regulatory procedures, a criminally inadequate power plant design, under-trained technicians and a brief Soviet attempt at a cover-up that ended up killing or exposing thousands of people unnecessarily.
Besides, the zero American deaths convincingly linked to nuclear power plants sure sounds better than the tens of thousands of American deaths definitively linked to coal power every single year.
Sure, it’s easy to beat coal power when it comes to being clean and safe. It’s like beating up your little brother (your sooty, carbon-spewing, carbon-emitting little brother). What about solar and wind? Surely those are cleaner and greener!
Think again. Let’s ignore the fact that, for the foreseeable future, wind and solar power are a Hippie’s pipe dream for meeting American’s power needs.
Barring solar and wind power being properly integration into a power grid, something we haven’t quite worked out yet, we still need a way to save all that energy we could get from the sun for a rainy day or wind from a calm, overcast one. That means batteries, and lots of them.
Let’s not go into the chemistry of a battery today – all that is important is that we all know to eat them. Anyone who’s changed an old car battery knows that it’s probably best to keep those fragrant juices off your pants. The reason for that is simple: battery acid is highly corrosive and toxic.
Imagine a network of hundreds of millions of car batteries constantly being charged and discharged to maintain a power grid. I don’t need to point out the chemical waste produced by that endeavor (but I have anyway).
And unless we want to convince the entire state of Montana to hightail it to Wyoming, we’re going to have to find a way to reduce the land footprint of solar and wind power. Simply put, they take up a great bit of land.
Are we saying we shouldn’t keep researching solar and wind power sources? Of course not. When properly integrated into the power grid (a residential model on a roof, or on the side of a skyscraper), they can produce a large amount of energy, if perhaps not so reliably. It is a great way for homeowners and businesses to save a great deal of money on their energy bills.
But integrating them into the power grid to save money and trying to power an entire nation with them are two quite distinct things. Solar and wind power simply cannot, and will not, provide a primary source of power for the United States.
And while we’re spending billions trying to encourage research on renewable energy sources, coal, oil and natural gas plants continue to belch Radon and soot into the air every day, poison our air and our drinking water, kill tens of thousands of people in the U.S. every year, and push us ever-closer to a full-blown climate meltdown. The solution exists: we may not like it, but we don’t have much choice but to take it.
For every Environmental Idealist trying to save the world by painting their house with solar film and strapping a wind generator to their window sill, we need a pragmatic environmentalist who will embrace the clean, safe energy of atomic power. It’s the greenest thing to do.
3 users commented in " How Environmental Idealists Stand in the Way of Practical Change "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackDear John,
Your arguement for Nuclear is weak and mis-informed.
Where does Uranium come form? This is another form of fossil fuel which will depleat in the same way as Coal and Oil. It is not a long term solution!
It is by no means a magic bullet, You obviously have no idea what it takes to build a nuclear power plant. The time and money involved means that nuclear power plants are underwritten by Government and not insurance companies!
Name a Nuclear power plant that is insured by a private company! There is none, why? would it be that the risks are far to great?
Yes the disaster in Chernobyl was as a result of Soviet incompetence, but did you realise that there has been a number of very close calls in Swedish power plants in recent years.
Germany is in the process of decommissioning all their plants! You fail to mention this! I think that Germany may be a better role model than France.
France have been known to put radioactive waste on ships and distroy them in international waters! Does this sound like a good idea to you!
The biggest problem in your part of the world is that you have been hooked on fossil fuels for so long that you have become an energy junky, this weaning process is beguining and not even nuclear can solve it in the short term!
Most countries are not maximising their use of safe renewable energy such as Wind, Solar, Wave, Hydro power. So on the production side it could be improved quite easily. On the conservation side, US consumers use 2-3 times more energy than the average German. Does the average US consumer have a better or worse lifestyle as a result?????
Food for thought!
I’m sure that, at some point, we will run out of fuel — but it wont be in my lifetime, my children’s lifetimes, or my grandchildren’s lifetimes. Nuclear power will, at the very least, give us a bandaid that will last for hundreds of years. If we properly reuse the fuel we mine, though, we have enough fuel to power civilization for millions of years.
I don’t know about the rest of BBN’s readers, but I’m personally not a big fan of returning to a hunter-gatherer society. I’m not addicted to fossil fuels, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’m addicted to the amenities of modern life and I don’t plan on changing that. Sure, Germany may use less energy per capita, but they have more rail per capital than we do, more shared infrastructure per capita, less driving per capita, etc. etc.
But you’re right. I’m all for reduction of America’s energy consumption needs. But even if we all cut our energy consumption by 50%, we’d still be hopelessly linked to energy in a way that our Green alternatives simply cannot cope with the for the foreseeable future.
I agree that I’d rather have America powered by wind/solar than nuclear, but that doesn’t change one indisputable fact: given the level of our wind/solar technology, even at full capacity of all our wind/solar/hydro, even with a 50% reduction in our energy needs, even with a radical reformation of our nation’s transportation infrastructure, we’d still need huge amounts of traditional power sources (fossil fuels or nuclear).
And when it comes down to it, nuclear is cleaner and safer, both in the short- and long-term, than fossil power.
John, thanks for a clear and coherent description of the situation we’re in.
Declan, thanks for bringing your thoughts forth to engage in dialog. I’d like to go over your points, in order.
There is a huge supply of uranium. At present use rates, the supply is expected to last for over 600 years, based on geological surveys, at US$60 per pound of U3O8. At higher prices the supply is even greater. But advanced fuel cycles stretch the supply to thousands of years, while eliminating the long-lived actinides.
OK, nuclear is not a magic bullet. It does take considerable manufacturing and construction effort to build a nuclear power plant, almost as much as a comparably-sized wind farm, though much less than a comparably-sized photovoltaic facility. In the US, all commercial power plants are insured by insurance companies and by the owners. It is, in fact, the best-insured business in America. I don’t, of course, know what the situation is where you live.
Close calls are in the eye of the beholder. The argument for nuclear energy has never been that mistakes and accidents don’t happen. The argument always has been that there are enough safety provisions that it’s implausible that harm could come to any member of the public. And, after all these thousands of years of reactor operating experience, no harm ever has. That singular fact, unmatched by any other energy source, has to be significant. Furthermore, as experience grows, we can expect the risks to grow even smaller. It is entirely possible that no western reactor will ever cause harm to any member of the public.
I never would advise nationals of other countries how to deal with their energy problems. I would say, though, that Germany’s approach would not work here in the US. The idea of buying electricity at 50 cents per KWH when it suits the supplier and selling it at 20 cents per KWH whenever the customer demands it would never work here in the US, and in no way could it be considered sustainable.
I didn’t know about France’s sinking of ships. Certainly it’s not a good idea and I’d never countenance such a method of disposing of waste. Where can I learn more about it?
I 100% agree with you, and I think John does too, that there’s plenty of need for more renewable energy and conservation. Here in the US we are profligate in the way we use energy. Actually, the lifestyle is pretty good, but there’s room for greater efficiency. All this can do, though, is reduce consumption down to something nuclear along with renewables can handle. If nuclear energy isn’t maximized, then fossil-fuel use won’t be minimized.
Thanks for your food for thought. You raised some very good points.
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