Posts Tagged by Chernobyl
You’ll Never See Another Nuclear Power Plant Commissioned in the US
| April 14, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Nuclear |
Frequent commenter/author Frank Eggers writes on my piece on subsidies for nuclear:
Nuclear power has been demonstrated to be far safer than fossil fuel power. Coal plants cause health problems that, while severe, are difficult to pinpoint because generally they simply greatly increase the health problems which would exist anyway whereas nuclear accidents, though infrequent, have a more concentrated and obvious effect.
Frank: I’m not one of the hysterical anti-nuke people who grossly over-estimates the danger. Having said that: Read More
How Clean Is Nuclear Power?
| April 10, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Nuclear |
True to form, Glenn Doty writes a thorough and quite helpful comment on my piece about measuring the increase in the use of renewable energy. He closes with two ideas on which I would like to comment in return:
1) Of course, natural gas is far better than coal, and slightly worse than nuclear.
Personally, I think it’s impossible to put nuclear on a scale of “goodness” or “badness,” because we are incapable of knowing its implications to our health and safety. I’ll go out on a limb here and guess you haven’t polled the people living around Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island. And what might the future bring? More operational disasters? Catastrophes with handling nuclear waste? Rogue states with small dirty nuclear weapons? It’s impossible to predict, but it can’t be good.
2) At least coal power is plummeting. That’s good any way you wish to calculate anything.
Amen, my friend.
The Role of Nuclear in Clean Energy
| July 15, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Solar Thermal |
A recent letter to President Obama supporting nuclear energy was composed and signed by many people whom I have no doubt are genuinely distinguished and dedicated energy experts, and who I’m certain all sincerely and ethically follow their best lights on this subject. I’d like to supply some contrasting perspective.
In my estimation, there are six major factors that bear consideration in any complete discussion of the pursuit of nuclear energy:
1) Plant Lifespan
Read More
