Taking a Positive Tack with the Marketing Messages of Solar, Nuclear
Here’s a conversation between members of the pro-nuke group of which I’m a part. It demonstrates a peculiar aspect of all this, i.e., that the group feels a need to beat up on renewable energy at every turn. At the very best, that is self-defeating, as I’m sure most people find it tasteful and unfair. You don’t see Coors commercials trying to communicate that Budweiser is skunk urine, yet what’s happening here is not too dissimilar.
Member A, marveling over Time Magazine’s recent article on solar. Did you see that? All positive, and no negative.
Member B, one of very few who “gets this.” Here’s a great message, about positive messaging.
My reaction: Unfortunately, a great number of the groups that promote nuclear energy feel the need to disparage solar, wind, geothermal, hydrokinetics, etc. with every article they write. It’s unclear why they take this position.
Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and that’s the case with solar as well; there are environmental negatives associated with the extraction of raw materials, fabrication, transportation, installation, and maintenance of those solar arrays over long periods of time, which are warrantied for at least 25 years. There are also land-use issues, as I’ve discussed elsewhere many times.
Yet there is also no doubt that the overall energy derived from such arrays is many dozens of times more than the energy that went into fabricating the array in the first place. For that reason, most people, regardless of how much or how little they know about the subject, simply abbreviate their thinking as follows: solar, overall, is a good thing. And they are absolutely correct in making that abbreviation.
I feel that attacking renewables because they have some percentage of negatives is a “little” perfectionist, for one, but they can’t say that nuclear energy doesn’t have negatives in extraction, processing, using, etc.
All these arguments are trying to make beleive that nuclear, oil or coal generators don’t use the same type of resources, like steel, aluminum or all the rest of materials that go into manufacturing these generators.
We all konw that to manufacture something you have to use resources, and that these have to be mined, processed, refined, cooked or whatever process needs to be done; don’t they get it?
Which type of generator needs more resources, time to build, etc.?
The question here is that, as we generate the electricity from there on, renewables will emit a very small amount of pollution,if they do; use the resources in a clean way, need very little new input of resources (as they are free); not like coal, oil or gas generators that will need a constant supply of oil, coal or gas, which we all know that pollute our environment; and which we all know are unstable in price and alway tend to be costlier with time.