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Nuclear Energy Is Not Our Methadone |
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I don't think it melodramatic to say the fate of the world hinges on our ability to ween ourselves from an oil addiction. Nor do I think I embellish when I say that the political, social and environmental consequences of this addiction are biblical in their magnitude. The seven angels with seven plagues have nothing on the consequences of not finding a clean alternative to oil.
President Bush and like-minded individuals have been pushing nuclear power as our methadone for years; a clean, safe, autonomous, zero-emission form of energy production, they assure. Well, if the fact of Bush's support isn't enough to dissuade you, a sober analysis of the reality of nuclear energy should be. First, the cheerleader-ing:
In keeping with his raw neoliberalist stance, Bush portrayed nuclear energy as an industry hobbled by over-regulation. If we could just cut the red tape, we could reap its "limitless" potential. As a step in that direction, we got The Energy Policy Act of 2005. Passed by a Republican congress and signed into law by President Bush, the Act chipped away at regulations, and offered incentives for nuclear power production.
I, like many of my peers, cringe at the thought of a renewed emphasis on nuclear energy. Hiroshima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Dr. Strangelove; all taught me that nuclear = bad.
But could this be a generational bias? One that we need to sniff out and snuff out in order to receive the cleanly bounty of nuclear energy? After all, some environmentalists have dropped their objections, and are now embracing nuclear as mother nature's guardian.
The long story made short is "no, it's not a generational bias. There are serious problems with the production of nuclear energy that remain unaddressed to this day." Most seriously, we have no way of responsibly dealing with the radioactive waste produced.
At present, there is no way to dispose of the waste. Our only option is to "safely" tuck it away. But the United States, and no other country that produces nuclear energy, has a permanent way of doing so. We simply stash it in the nuclear power plant that produces it. If that weren't myopic enough for you, here's the cherry: by recent estimates, we'll be out of space by 2014.
The world's first-ever permanent radioactive waste storage facility is being built underneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but that won't be finished until 2017. So, our best means of dealing with the poisonous byproduct of nuclear energy production is to hide it under a mountain in Nevada, and we're still a decade away from realizing that bold plan. Nevertheless, Bush irresponsibly lobbies for the expansion of our domestic nuclear energy capabilities.
Without a "cradle to grave" system, nuclear energy will never be the answer. We need an energy plan that's not guided by the nuclear industry, or the agricultural lobby, and certainly not the Bush administration. The world depends on it.
Follow the links for the candidates' proposed energy plans: Obama, Clinton, McCain
I'm not down with nuclear. This is one to stay tuned on. I, optimistically, believe that there will be dramatic gains in renewable (Wind, Solar, Hydro) energy sources within the next decade (prior to us storing nuclear waste next to Jimmy Hoffa). My house runs off the grease from Condeleeza Rice's face so I'll be alright. I do feel sorry for you poor bastards. - Joey
How did no one respond to my comment "this is one to keep an eye on"???? I thought it deserved a no shit Joey!!!!
I'm seeing the dramatic gains coming too, though I do feel nuclear might have a part in it all. Though as LGS notes, it's no holy grail. Nothing is.
What you're missing here, LGS, is the true nature of the nuclear waste problem. First of all, its not "waste". It's spent fuel. When nuclear fuel has run through the reactors we use today, it retains 90-95% of its energy. We don't need a way to "dispose" of it. Rather, all we need is a safe place to keep it. An ecconomical means to reprocess the spent fuel into forms that allow us to extract the rest of that energy is nothing more than a technical challenge that can surely be surmounted with adequate effort and funding, neither of which will appear if people like you can't get over your irrational fear of spent nuclear fuel. Also, the fact that spent fuel is now stored at the facilities where it was used should give you some indication of the vanishingly small amount of spent fuel the nuclear energy industry produces, about 2000 tons per year. Comapare that with the 100,000 tons of toxic and radioactive waste the coal fired plants that produce most of our energy put into the air we breathe every year. Sure, nuclear energy has some risks and challenges, but there simply is nothing else even close to ready to step in and replace coal any time soon. I'm all for wind, solar, geothermal, etc., but we need to be weaning ourselves off of coal now and we don't have time to wait for some revolution in renewables.