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So it was that after he became an engineer, my uncle later worked on the construction of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power reactor near San Luis Obispo, Calif. It was, no pun intended, always a hot topic of debate at family gatherings.
Since I was a "no nukes" kind of guy, there was no way I would ever trust The Man to do right by the environment. To me, Diablo Canyon and all the other nuclear energy plants going up around the country constituted an invitation to inevitable disaster. My heart was with the green movement. Back then, anti-nuclear sentiment was running high--especially after the accidents at Three Mile Island in March 1979 and Chernobyl seven years later.
"Do you have any idea what you're talking about?" Uncle Harold said.
Well, that was a bit fresh. After all, I had watched The China Syndrome. OK, even though it was a movie, what if the scenario played out for real?
Uncle Harold, who was having none of it, refused to buy into any emotional arguments. He ticked off with lapidary precision a long list of benefits from nuclear energy and explained the safety mechanisms that accompanied the construction of modern plants. That was so unfair of him to use facts in an argument where it was clear that I was on the side of the angels.
Of course, I wasn't alone in making the popular mistake of twinning opposition to the spread of nuclear weaponry with nuclear energy. As if they were forever joined at the hip. My uncle died a couple of years ago. I don't know whether I've become any wiser over the years but with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I sure wish I could get a do-over with him.
Fast-forward three decades after those conversations and this country--along with the rest of the word--is locked in a noisy debate about how best to reduce fossil fuel consumption. It's been a slow haul.
The overhang from the no-nukes era still casts a shadow. Any proposal to put more investment into nuclear energy always presents the risk of political suicide. So it is that the last time federal regulators in this country allowed work to begin on a new reactor was the same year as Three Mile Island (though the plants never got built). In fact, the U.S. has not brought a new commercial reactor on line since May 1996.
Even so, about 20 percent of the country's electricity gets generated by nuclear. Sounds impressive until you compare that statistic against France's 78 percent. (Not surprisingly, France's carbon dioxide output is one of the lowest per capita in Europe.)
Yet resistance to nuclear energy may be receding from its high water mark. In an interview with CNET News.com, Frank Bowman, CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said that some of the industry's once sternest critics are giving nuclear another look. The list includes the likes of Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog (you don't get more crunchy that that), and Pulitzer-winning author Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel). The most notable one-time opponent to change his mind about nuclear is Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore. In the current issue of Chief Executive magazine, Moore says nuclear energy now has to be part of any solution to the nation's energy challenge.
That's not a switch that has gone down well with his former colleagues. In fact, Moore told the magazine, some within the environmental movement now treat him with "considerable disdain."
"It's quite ironic that the very people who are most concerned about climate change are generally the same ones who are against the solution that, from a technical point of view, is straightforward," he said.
After all the angst and questioning that attended my own about-face, I understand why it's so difficult. But the greens may find themselves increasingly isolated. Earlier this week, NRG Energy asked the government for permission to build a couple of reactors in Texas. Another company called Constellation Energy is also rumored to be close to applying for a license.
Forget saving the world--though that's an appealing idea--the growing global competition for increasingly scarce energy resources has turned the search for alternatives into a national security priority. I don't want to re-argue the pros and cons of the debate over climate change, global warming and greenhouse gas concerns but the time is long past for fresh thinking.
And that means giving nuclear a fair shake.
Biography
Charles Cooper is CNET News.com's executive editor of commentary.
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What we should be doing, even more extensively than nuclear, is applying other power sources, such as wind and solar, and in as many places as possible, right down to individual rooftoops. The more energy generated by each home (and the more conserved through energy efficiency), the less we'll need nuclear generation (or coal, oil, etc). Reducing the need for more plants, and more emissions of all kinds, is what we need.
Na... Forget about nuclear...
more development need to be done in order to find a nuclear method that is clean.
you always have to tie the threat of nuclear winter to nuclear energy, "the bomb" is so simple to make.
However, in America, much of the anti-nuclear hysteria came from the highly educated segment of society (and Hollywood types who like to think of themselves as smart). Perhaps it was driven by guilt (i.e., "We are wasteful and therefore are not deserving cheap energy"). Obviously there was an anarchistic element to many of the anti-nuclear protesters as well.
But then again, few 60's hippies studied nuclear physics, so maybe ignorance was the root cause of the resistance, after all.
What is interesting is, the best treatise on energy transformation I ever read said it is the improvement in energy density of the fuel which enables energy transformation.
Our steam engines went from wood to coal not because we ran out of forests, but because coal was more dense (in terms of BTU/pound and BTU/cubic foot) than wood. This made the transcontinental railroad possible, because a train could carry a limited amount of fuel, and there was a desert (i.e., no trees) to cross. It also meant pure steamships could travel oceans, not just rivers.
Likewise, petroleum was more dense than coal, not only easing the carriage of fuel, but enabling the creation of a much less bulky motive source, the internal combustion engine. The result was automobiles and airplanes.
When one considers this, one realizes the energy density of hydrogen is problematic. By the same token, the energy density characteristics of biofuels are problematic, not so much in the end fuel product, but in the source material.
It was after reading this I realized, we were not waiting for the energy source transformation from oil, it had indeed already happened. Nuclear energy met the theory of energy density transformation, and had occurred fifty years ago. Certainly there are limitations when it comes to vehicles which carry their own fuel supply (note French and Japanese bullet trains do not carry fuel, they connect directly to the grid), but the concepts of energy density also apply to the transportation infrastructure for fuel.
The anti-nuclear Luddites were blind like a child is blind to the truths of the world. I'm glad to see some of them finally reaching intellectual adulthood.
Same thing they told me in Jr. High School. We all know we must ultimately move in an alternative fuel direction that may include nuke, but short term 3-Mile Island and China Syndrome movie delivered an effective one-two punch to the American opinion on nuke power and brought new development to a stand still.
was a stroke of (evil) genius, when the nuclear industry and their
governmental mouthpieces decided to buy into the CO2
paranoia, and use it for furthering the dubious cause of nuclear
energy.
Everyone needs to do their own research, and look at the
scientific facts. The world's climate always changes. We are
currently coming out of a particularly cold period, and move into
a slightly warmer one. CO2 makes up around 0.04 percent of
Earth's atmosphere, the manmade part is less than 0.01 percent.
Yet, suddenly these less than 0.01 percent are supposed to be
responsible for 100 percent of global warming. Does this seem
reasonable?
Nuclear power is an old, obsolete, and failed technology. It
offers no promises for the future. It is expensive and extremely
dangerous. Nuclear power stations are health hazards - forever.
They are prime targets for terrorist attacks. In short, they are a
very, *very* bad idea.
We need to invest in clean and sustainable forms of energy only.
Where there is a will, there is a way.
"If a young man isn't a little bit liberal he has no heart. If when he
is old he is still liberal he has no brain."
I'm sure the quote was not his own, but it really meant something
coming from him. He was an old liberal. You live and hopefully
learn.
- Dirty trash
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by Stephen Russell
September 28, 2007 10:06 AM PDT
- I'm sorry but your just making the next MISTAKE when your refuse of the process is a toxic combination that lasts FOREVER in mankinds eyes.
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