For some time now, we mere mortals here in America have been told that our planet is fragile, and if we don’t do something we will all perish in ten or twelve years. From Al Gore (“I created the Internet”) and his An Inconvenient Truth, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Green New Deal, “we’ll all be dead in 12 years”), we are bombarded with the spectre of global warming caused by man’s incessant polluting of the atmosphere with CO2 carbon emissions. (Curiously, NASA claims the planet is in a cooling period; we’ll all freeze to death!)
According to the doomsayers, we MUST quit using fossil fuels and switch to renewable methods of energy production. Included in this scenario is to close down all nuclear power plants in the United States. This means, to these pseudo-scientists, that more wind farms and solar fields will need to be created to meet the needs of future Americans.
But those who advocate ending nuclear power generating stations in order to save the earth from more harmful emissions are simply wrong. Nuclear plants do not emit any carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; it is clean energy. By contrast, wind and solar power are proven to be harmful to the environment. It is estimated that it takes 450 times as much land in California to produce the same amount of energy from a solar farm as from a single nuclear power plant. In addition, the amount of concrete and steel far exceeds nuclear use of the same, and the need for power lines to transmit the energy takes up more land use and material.
Land use is also far more intrusive for wind farms, which have additional problems. These huge windmills kill millions of birds per year, a problem that environmentalist seen to ignore when comparing the evils of nuclear power to that of “clean energy”. Many acres of windmills are needed, much of which is taken from farmland that has produced much of the nation’s food supplies.
Another problem is the unreliability of both solar and wind energy production. The wind does not blow enough of time to keep the windmills operating at peak production, which requires a backup system, usually consisting of natural gas use to keep the electricity flowing. Solar systems depend on sunshine, but even in the sunniest states clouds keep energy production below maximum levels needed to keep the lights on, again need an alternative, usually fossil fuels, to substitute for sunlight.
Clean energy advocates ignore the emissions statistics, dismiss the land use excesses, and downplay the times when solar and wind are not operating fully. Yet all the evidence that nuclear is clean, reliable and sustainable cannot be dismissed so easily. If renewable energy fans are so eager to get rid of fossil fuels, nuclear energy is the way to go.
But wait! What of the danger of a nuclear meltdown, with radiation spewing over thousands of miles and killing large numbers of people with such poisoning over many years? Is this not a reason to kill off nuclear power in the United States? Let’s take a look at the most spectacular failures of nuclear plants since they came online in the late 1950s.
On the night of April 25,26 in 1986, the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, located in the northern Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic, suffered a catastrophic accident. During a routine test of the reactors simulating a power blackout, when all safety systems were turned off, meltdown, explosions and fire allowed radioactive material to spread over a large area. Dozens died in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, with radiation poisoning occurring in the months and years following. Some estimate the death toll has reached into the thousands because of this.
The nuclear plant was of a primitive design, not up to the standards of construction the rest of the world used. When compared to the manner in which plants in the U. S. were built, it is somewhat like comparing peanuts to potatoes. (On a personal note, those of us who have traveled in Communists countries can attest to the shoddy construction of their buildings, especially public structures. An accident was waiting to happen from the time Chernobyl went online.)
Second to Chernobyl was the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in northern Japan on March 11, 2011. Although this is listed as a nuclear accident, the problem was not initiated in the nuclear plant itself. The Tohoku earthquake generated a vicious tsunami, which destroyed the plant and allowed radiation to escape into the air. In this, one person died of radiation poisoning, while others will probably develop cancers, but it will be some time before a full accounting of the human toll will be known. All the other casualties were because of the tsunami and its aftermath. Where the plant was constructed was the main problem.
Most Americans opposed to nuclear power will leap to their default argument — “What about Three Mile Island?!” This island, in the middle of the Susquehanna River, some 14 miles from Pennsylvania’s capital, Harrisburg, was home to the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station. On March 28, 1979, an incident occurred when a stuck open valve allowed a small amount of radiation to be released into the air. Most of the release was contained in the structure itself, with no harm done to the surrounding countryside. At least 13 studies have shown no adverse effects to people, animals or plants in the 40 years since this ‘incident’.
Other than an irrational fear of nuclear disaster, initial costs of building nuclear power plants is the biggest drawback to going that route. With the increase in the availability of natural gas for energy production, the economics of nuclear power seem to militate against a huge push to build more reactors.
What of other nations and their reliance on nuclear energy? After the
Fukushima disaster, Germany decommissioned their entire nuclear system. Since then their energy costs have soared and their emissions of ‘harmful’ emissions have also risen. On the other hand, Finland gets 40% of its energy needs through its nuclear network, and their emissions have plummeted.
Arguments will continue to be made for and against using nuclear energy for our increasing needs for electricity, but if we are serious about making America more ‘green’ in our energy production, then we need to go all in for nuclear!