TIME FOR MORE NUCLEAR POWER
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The Luddite-like opposition to nuclear power in the United States has waned with 60% supporting nuclear power (70% or men and 50% of women). The American public has been led to believe that nuclear power is extremely dangerous and that nuclear waste disposal is an unsolved problem. Those beliefs are based on preposterous distortions by media and environmental extremists.
The USA gets less than 20% of its electricity from nuclear plants compared to world leaders France 76%; and Belgium 54%. But, the USA produces more megawattage than any other country or course it proportionately uses more power too.
One of the biggest distortions concerns the disposal of spent fuel rods. While any waste has to be disposed of properly ash from coal fired power plants is far more hazardous that such rods primarily because there is so much of it. Scientific ignorance and self-serving hysteria has kept the USA dependent on hydrocarbon power for decades.
There has not been a new nuclear power plant built in the USA or Canada for 30 years. New applications are moving with glacial serenity though the NRC permitting process.
It would be relatively easy to triple US nuclear power production while all alternative fuels (wind, solar, tidal, geothermal) does not now appear to offer anywhere near such potential at least in the forseeable future.
Uranium is very prevelant in the Earth’s crust. Of course it also provides the heat making the planet’s core molten and contributing to the habitability of the Earth. Because the innocuous dull gray metal (see photo inset) is the feeder fuel for nuclear weapons it also fuels the profits of professional naysayers costing the nation its dependence on foreign oil and the dictators many of whom who rob us and hate us.
Comment by Zoe Thorne on 31 December 2009:
“There has not been a new nuclear power plant built in the USA or Canada for 30 years”
This could be simply to the fact that the technology required to build nuclear plants is unreliable and never comes in on budget. Nuclear energy is not the way of the future, like the burning of hydrocarbons it is more akin to old capitalist way of thinking. Comparing one form of pollution to another is an absurdest argument, ash versus spent fuel rods. Especially when if we focused our energies on DEVELOPING what is available to us to produce energy without creating polluting byproducts.
If the amount of government subsidization had gone into the developing of green alternatives some thirty years ago, we wouldn’t be having this conversation and perhaps the world would be a much cleaner place. But that won’t happen as long Oiligarchs and the Friedmanites have their way and the purpose of business is just to make money. It truly is a sad state of affairs, here we are in the 21st century being manipulated by 19th century economics.