Who didn't like stuff that glowed in the dark as a kid?
I'm not entirely sure if this is coincidental or what, but there's recently been a spate of posts on nuclear power on American liberal blogs, all of which take as their starting point this pro-nuke op-ed by Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace. I've long thought that the only realistic solution to the problem of energy production and pollution is a vast increase the number of nuclear plants: a continued reliance on fossil fuels will drown us and cutting back on energy use to the point where windmills and solar panels could power the grid simply isn't going to happen.
My sense is that nuclear power is no longer politically (ahem) radioactive in the way that it was in the late 1970s and 1980s; I think a lot of this has to do with the end of the Cold War and the corresponding retreat of death in a nuclear war as a fear for the public. Moore seems to imply this in his article, saying that he and his comrades "believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust."
This isn't to deny that nuclear power does have the potential to go horribly wrong, as it did twenty years ago in Chernobyl, but it seems to me that faced with the question of how to provide power in a way that doesn't melt the polar ice caps it's the only game in town.
As to those accidents, the technology's a lot better today, and it seems to me that Chernobyl was in many ways an anomaly that's extremely unlikely to be repeated, involving Soviet technology, Soviet administration and reactor technicians conducting unauthorized experiments just to see what would happen. That doesn't make it any less of a tragedy, but a worse tragedy is waiting for all of us if we don't change the way we keep the lights on. And it seems to me, again, that nuclear power's the only plausible switch we can make.
posted by Ian Gray | 10:41 p.m.
2 Comments:
I think you've hit the nail on the head with a lot of your comments. There are other energy possibilities, of course, provided we're willing to make the massive infrastructure changes necessary for hundred of thousands of windmills, etc. Nuclear does seem to be the only bulk producer out there right now.
You might find my website interesting. It contains a techno-thriller about nuclear power endorsed by Stewart Brand, one of the environmentalists in Dr. Moore's article calling for a second look at nuclear. There’s no cost. See the homepage comments for reader reviews. I’ve spent many years in the nuclear industry. RadDecision.blogspot.com
I also agree with you that we're going to need nuclear if we hope to get away from fossil fuels in elecricity production. We should, of course, be working for more efficiency, as well, but I would give my right arm if someone could figure out how to grow an economy without more energy use - in other words, conservation is not enough.
It seems increasingly clear, too, that we need to get serious about global warming. Coal is dangerous both for the CO2 emissions and for its particulate emissions; but even natural gas, while cleaner, will still contribute to the greenhouse effect. And as for wind power and solar power, no one can seem to answer the question: what do you do on a hot day when the wind doesn't blow, or if it's cloudy? These sources are not reliable, so they'll only ever be able to account for a small part of the grid, and a ridiculously expensive part, at that. At the present, they seem to indicate not a progressive agenda, but a willingness by governments to waste public money to appease environmentalists.
I think one thing that way be worth looking at in addition to electricity is clean coal (http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/es/etb/cetc/combustion/cctrm/htmldocs/overview_e.html).
Coal in its current form is just about the worst form of energy (except that it's cheap); but if technology really can clean it up (including CO2), then we should embrace it. I don't know much about the technology, but it seems to me that the Ontario government should at the moment be looking at converting, not shutting down, its coal plants, because however bad they are, an unreliable power supply is worse for the province.
I've also never understood this great concern over nuclear waste. A lot of waste has a much shorter half-life than people assume. And in any case, I'd rather have a few tonnes of easily buried, easily monitored, easily guarded waste than an atmosphere full of pollutants. I'm not sure why we haven't gotten around to burying all our existing nuclear waste in the Canadian Shield, but the 50-year timetable being talked about it ridiculous; we should be able to make it happen in 10 with concerted effort. Then, one day, when space elevators exist, we'll toss it all into the sun. Problem solved.
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