comments on nuclear energy
mike made a comment in the previous post about nuclear energy and my reply comment was so long that i'll post it here, instead:
given the current technological, infrastructure, and cost limitations of alternative energies, nuclear power is the best energy source option. most alternative energy sources are still in their relative infancy and need considerable technical development before they could meet US energy demands, demands which are growing every year.
in energy production, the main technological criteria of importance are energy conversion and economic efficiency. wind, solar, and hydroelectric power all have a low energy conversion efficiency, and large-scale solar farms, in particular, are presently cost ineffective compared with most other energy sources. the wind power industry has faced criticism from avian wildlife groups that have documented bird deaths from turbine blade accidents. hydroelectric power requires damming high-flow rivers, which has its own host of problems to contend with. (dam construction has faced more environmental group opposition than almost any other kind of large scale construction efforts in the last three decades.) plus, more dams are being blown up in the states than are being built. hydrogen power is, as far as i know, only a small-scale solution and lacks any infrastructure or publicly released plans for infrastructure development. all of these energy sources are viable, and more or less clean, but need more research and investment in order for them to mature to the point of being feasible and, more importantly, reliable.
nuclear waste transportation and disposal are big problems to which we have only short-term solutions. even so, nuclear energy is a more practical solution than the alternatives for meeting our energy demands for some of the reasons stated above. furthermore, nuclear fission only emits water vapor which, though it has been shown to contribute to global warming, does not have nearly as detrimental effect on the atmospheric balance as carbon monoxide or dioxide, or methane gas.
as i'm sure you know, we still have nuclear plants operating within the US, and there is considerable research on fusion at UT-Austin (and UW-Madison) and overseas, most notably at the ITER fusion reactor. research is continuing and nuclear energy is getting cleaner, less expensive, and safer.
these are some of the reasons why i feel nuclear energy is currently the best solution, and i hope we can learn from the advances of france and japan, as well as the mistakes that sweden has made. with the goal of energy independency through a non-greenhouse gas emitting energy source, nuclear power is the most viable solution.
1 comment:
Yo, the article I cited is not the best re disposal issues. The biggest problem is not how to communicate warnings of a nuclear waste disposal site to future generations but that a human-made structure would have to last however long the half-life of said nuclear waste is. I.e., for hundreds of thousands of years a human-made structure would have to remain both hidden and unleakable.
We can't do that right now. Thus right now I don't support more nuclear energy until the disposal problem is worked out, even though nuclear energy is more efficient conversion-wise and economy-wise.
And since at this time we don't possess the technology for no- or safe-waste nuclear energy, but such technology is possibly achievable via more research, I don't see any difference between that idea and the idea that with further research we can harness the green energy forms that Jamon mentions in ways more cost-effective and nondamaging to the environment.
I think nuclear energy is still an accident waiting to happen, and indeed nuclear accidents have happened and do happen all the time.
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