When the nuclear accidents occurred a few years ago at Three Mile Island and at Chernobyl, many, including myself, thought the age of nuclear-generated power was over in the United States. It looks like we may have been a bit premature in that assessment.
The critical need for new power plants and the approaching crises with greenhouse gases, has a lot of people rethinking their opposition to nuclear power generation, including some enviornmental groups. Jim Marston, director of the Austin branch of Enviornmental Defense says, "We're looking at it again."
The downside of nuclear power is the possibility of a radioactive leak, and the difficulty of disposing of spent rods in a manner that would be safe for current and future generations.
On the upside, the plants could be built with numerous and redundant safety systems to prevent nuclear accidents. The nuclear plants also do NOT produce any greenhouse gases.
We will never get a handle on greenhouse gases if we continue to build the dirty coal-powered plants. That much is clear. So I guess it is only natural that we again consider using nuclear power. I would just feel a whole lot better about it if we could solve the "spent rod disposal" problem first.
Texas currently has two nuclear power plant sites operating -- near Bay City and Glen Rose.
While I don't claim to be an expert in this area, I think you might find with a little digging that the used fuel storage issue has been somewhat overblown, once once considers the actual technological issues involved and the actual health impacts - versus looking at it from the "fear of all radiation at all times" standpoint. Its become more of a political issue than a technological one (in my view, anyway.)
ReplyDeleteOne thing that would benefit everyone is a sense of perspective - which the public has little of for energy supplies. We understand warfare and its basic technology because we’ve got a lot of veterans and lot of decent movies on it. We don’t have the same understanding of electricity generation. It’s hard to do on a large scale no matter what your supply - fossil, nuclear, wind, or squirrels on treadmills.
I’ve tried to provide some perspective - particularly on nuclear - with my novel “Rad Decision”. It is available online at no cost to readers at RadDecision.blogspot.com - and they seem to like it, based on their homepage comments.
I’ve worked in the US nuclear industry over twenty years, but have no problem with other, workable solutions. (It’s the workable part that’s the rub.)
“I’d like to see Rad Decision widely read.” - Stewart Brand, noted environmentalist, internet pioneer and founder of The Whole Earth Catalog.
RadDecision.blogspot.com