Nuclear Energy Faces Considerable Risk
M. Mayer writes a longer comment from which I excerpt:
Judging the risks (associated with a certain energy technology) is hard because it’s about making guesses about the unknown. … In a way it’s easier to predict that the sun will continue to shine than to predict that nuclear power won’t fall from grace.
Your point about the risk of nuclear falling from grace is an interesting one. I’m sure there are some fascinating discussions going on about the decisions being made in Japan, Germany, Italy, etc. And yes, there is the growing voice of the anti-nuke movement generally. Add to that the costs of nuclear that are spiraling even further out of control with each passing year.
Coincidentally, I was on a conference call just this morning in which I re-admitted my total bewilderment on the subject. I told the call’s participants, “Think of how far the cost of renewables will fall in the 8 – 10 years it will take to design, permit, build, and deploy the next nuclear reactor in the U.S. Who in their right mind would seriously consider such and endeavor? And yet we still read about a ‘nuclear renaissance.’ That there are people actually moving forward with plans of such enormous scope that are so obviously wrong and so completely illogical can mean only one thing: they have some serious money behind them. Watch out.”
Did you know every living US Secretary of State is actively begging everyone to stop all Nuke anything! Yes Kissinger, Shultz et al… you tube has it. Reason is Terrorists could get waste and we are all goners. They will get all the virgins and we will be a past race.
If the building of nuclear power plants is stopped, the building of fossil fueled plants will increase to the detriment of the global environment.
There are many ways to design nuclear reactors and many different possible fuel cycles. Unfortunately, we have made bad decisions on which nuclear technology to use. We have, with only a few modifications, continued to use the same nuclear power technology since the first pressurized power water reactor went critical. If we had done the same with automobiles, we would not have advanced much beyond the model T Ford.
Regarding the situation in Japan, how many people are aware of the fact that the tsunami set an oil refinery ablaze killing about 18 people? Why have the media failed to cover that? So far, NO deaths have occurred as the result of the damaged nuclear plants and it is questionable whether any will occur, yet the media dwell on that far more than on the thousands of people who were killed more directly by the tsunami. Reporting has been unbalanced to a highly irresponsible degree.