Nu-cu-lar Age

At last the US is coming out of its nuclear dark age (or nu-cu-lar as former President Bush would say). With the approval and encouragement of President Obama ground has been broken on 2 different nuclear power plants that will have a total of 4 reactors when finished. If completed, these will be the first new nuclear facilities in the US since the 1970s. Considering we started this show it's about damn time we rejoined the race.

For a little history, the first nuclear energy was generated in 1951 in Idaho. However, commercial use of nuclear energy was not until 1954, and Russia was the first this time. At this point in time there are 435 power plants world wide with an additional 63 under construction. The US alone has 104 plants currently in operation.

I understand the opposition to nuclear power. Events like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukashima make us all cringe, but they are far from the norm. In fact, world wide, from 1952-2009 there have only been approximately 100 nuclear accidents. That's less than 2 a year on average and less than 1 incident for every 4 plants currently in operation. 57 of these accidents have occurred since Chernobyl and 56 of the total 100 have occurred in the US where we are still running plants from the 1970s and earlier despite better, safer designs. Death tolls are hard to calculate, mainly from the effects of Chernobyl that have caused at least 4,000 instances of cancer over the years, but direct deaths from nuclear accidents are surprisingly low. In fact, the direct death toll from Chernobyl (56 people) is more than half of the total of direct deaths from all other nuclear accidents.

Nuclear waste is another concern that should be considered. Currently, France is the best model for reduction and disposal of waste. In France, more than 75% of all electricity is produced from nuclear power and of this approximately 17% comes from recycled waste. Believe it or not, there are processes that can be used on nuclear waste to remove remaining plutonium or uranium to be reused in power plants later. This greatly reduces the amount of waste in need of disposal, though it does not entirely eliminate the problem. What waste remains is disposed of in deep geological sites and are retrievable (meaning they're not just throwing a bunch of radioactive shit on the floor of a cave somewhere).

On the more positive side, we should realize that the primary waste from power plants is nothing more than good old H2O. All the "smoke" billowing from the towers is primarily water vapor and nothing to be afraid of. Considering the harmful waste from coal and petroleum burning, waste that is nearly impossible to contain, nuclear power starts looking pretty good. The cheap cost of this energy is another major plus, though the construction costs mitigate this somewhat. Considering the US's current energy sources it starts looking even better:




Petroleum and coal burning have the greatest effect on the environment and constitute more than 60% of the US energy consumption. Natural gas is better, but still produces significant CO2 emissions. Renewable resources such as air, wind, and water are ideal but as you can see we have a long ways to go on their implementation and, considering the current volume of US energy consumption, these are not feasible as our sole energy source.

It's time we face facts. Nuclear energy is a smart power source that we need to take advantage of.