Comments on Nuclear Power

Comments on Nuclear Power,

By Brian Burgess

For those who don’t know, I am a HUGE supporter of Nuclear power.  It’s arguable that nuclear energy the most cost efficient; there are many studies out there that average the cost of production on par with wind, and even lower than all the fossil fuel types.  I’ll link a few here, World Nuclear Association, and here’s an indepent analysis- http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/analysis/nuclearpower.html. Me, being the skeptic of all things, I’ll conclude that from what i can see, in Nuclear’s current form (being that all of our plants are 20+ years old), we can probably engineer modern nuclear plants to where the cost of electricity can be lower than all the fossil fuels.  Maybe that will change, maybe it wont.

But what about the environment?  Groups like Green Peace are always quick to point out Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.  Even CNN recently did a story about “Where is the waste going?” What the article doesn’t mention is YUCCA mountain, a permanent storage for all nuclear waste.  It will probably be completed by 2020, it costs booku bux, however many groups criticize that it’s not safe.  After doing some extensive research, I’ve found it is 99.99% safe.  The reason Nevada was chosen for the site is because there’s NO ground water, it’s a desert.  Therefore even if all the safety measures failed, we’d still be pretty OK considering the only thing that would be radiated is sand.  The odds of that land becoming a lush jungle in 100 years is zero.  440,00 years ago it probably WAS a jungle, however in 10,000 years, the radiation will be probably less than the average radiation i got when drinking the water in Northern Illinois.   But still, Nevada residents are saying NIMBY (Not in my backyard) and are being fed propaganda.

What about Chernobyl you ask?  Well the famous meltdown wasn’t its first problem.  In fact, that particular reactor had a history of fires and other problems long before the incident, and in a developed nation, like the United States, that plant would have been maintained properly or shut down.  Upon further inspection of 3 Mile island, there were no casualties, very marginal increases in reported cancer (1 specific cancer for males),  and no injuries.  So we could say that, in the United States, there have been no significant deaths or injuries associated with Nuclear Power.  We can’t say that for coal, after all, we have cave collapses every year.

Environmentally, Nuclear is the most “green”.  Since there is a permanent spot to put the waste, there will be no adverse effects on ANY environment (including the desert in Nevada).  That’s the best we can say for pretty much any man made power- Wind power kills birds, Hydroelectric disturbs rivers, coal, oil, and natural gas all give off some atmospheric particles and C02, (no comments on global warming in this article, although we can all agree C02 is probably not a good thing).  So the way I see it, if Nuclear is the greenest, the safest, and the most cost efficient method we have, why aren’t we using it?  If the costs of electricity were lower, it becomes much more practical to start using plug-in cars, plug-in lawn mowers, plug-in everything!

Disclaimer: Blog does not represent the view or opinions of Lake County Young Republicans