Energy Crisis? Global Warming? Dependence on Foreign Oil? Nuclear Power is the Answer!

This video is from TerrestrialEnergy.org, which argues that nuclear power is the green solution to the energy crisis.

As I continue my lifelong study of engineering, I keep coming to the conclusion that nuclear energy is the answer to so many of our current energy problems. No other energy technology can compete with nuclear technology for efficiency - a nuclear power plant produces 93 times as much energy as it consumes. A family of four consuming nuclear power for 20 years will produce a cylinder of nuclear waste the size of a cigarette lighter. Nuclear plants also produce zero CO2 (Al Gore's favorite green house gas), while coal plants in the US produce 1.8 million tons a year.

Of course the big concerns about nuclear, and the reasons so few plants have been built over the last 30+ years, are safety and waste. I'm not going to give an exhaustive explanation of how nuclear power safety has increased since 1970, but this information is readily available. I will say that thirty years (a millenia in terms of technological advancement) of power plant design has produced the ability to create plants for which a disaster like Chernobyl is impossible.

It's also important to remember that the alternatives aren't really all that safe either. Air pollution from coal dust kills roughly 10,000 people per year, and some analysts calculate we would have to have 25 reactor meltdowns per year for nuclear power to match that (keep in mind there have only ever been two). Then there's all the dangers of actually generating power. From 1970 to 1992, Coal killed 6400 people (remember all those mining accidents?), Natural Gas killed 1200, Hyrdo killed 4000, and Nuclear killed 31.

Nuclear waste is a tricky thing. You can't transport it very far because there's always the risk of it leaking somehow - imagine a space shuttle carrying nuclear waste exploding on the launch pad. The best idea seems to be burying it, but no one wants it buried near them. Again, I won't give a detailed analysis (you can get that at the links below), but I will say the following. First, it's possible to recycle and reuse nuclear waste to make plants even more efficient and reduce the radiation levels of the waste. Second, we're not talking about a lot of waste here - the United States only produces enough waste in 40 years to cover a football field to a height of 10 meters. Third, President Bush already approved a site for a long-term storage facility in the Nevada desert, but the political climate surrounding nuclear power has pushed construction back many times. Fourth, keep in mind the alternative - coal ash is actually more radioactive than nuclear waste.

I think there is a general agreement that the future of energy is the elimination of fossil fuels. I think wind, solar, biofuels, and other renewable energy sources are fantastic, but from what I've read I don't believe we can get the quantity of energy we need from them without significant technological advancements. Nuclear power can immediately provide massive amounts of power with less damage to our environment and less loss of human life and quality of life. At the very least we could become more reliant on nuclear power while we continue to strive for more efficient renewables.

Of course, the biggest deterrant to the use of nuclear power is a political climate of fear surrounding it (it's illegal to even build a plant in California, if you can believe it). I hope by writing this post I can help to dispel this fear in a small way.

Terrestrial Energy
The Oil Drum
The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management

Risk of Nuclear Power by Bernard L. Cohen, Sc.D.

World Nuclear Association - Economics of Nuclear Power

World Nuclear Association - Safety of Nuclear Power

Wikipedia - Yucca Mountain

Nuclear Energy Institute

Scientific American