Nuclear Power.
Issue:
Can nuclear-generated power lead us away from climate change? Long touted as safe, clean, affordable and necessary by the nuclear industry but dangerous, dirt, expensive and unnecessary by many others, the traditional debate over nuclear power has recently taken on a new twist: a group of environmentalists and nuclear representatives claim nuclear power is a promising way to mitigate the aggravating effect fossil fuels have on climate change. Others maintain that the risks posed by nuclear power plants are too great to consider continued use, even in the face of catastrophic global warming.
Deception:
Proponents of nuclear power continue to downplay or ignore the real and phenomenal risks of nuclear power generation, risks that have already played out in various locations around the globe, some coming close to catastrophe and others inflicting unprecedented long-term damage upon the environment and society. Chalk River, Ontario; Windscale/Sellafield, United Kingdom; Kyshtym, Russia; the North Atlantic Ocean off Greenland; Monroe, Michigan; Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania; Pripyat (Chernobyl), Ukraine; Fukushima, Japan - each of these and many others bear witness to the risk and the irreversible and unforgiving damage wrought by "peaceful" nuclear power. As well, 60 years after the advent of nuclear power there is yet no solution to the challenge of safely storing nuclear waste for the generations to centuries it takes for them to become non-radioactive.
Reality:
Nuclear power is not safe. It is not clean. It is not affordable. It is not necessary for combating global climate change. Set aside all the promises that have been made regarding the safety of nuclear power because they simply have no bearing in the face of the intractable problems inherent in the technology (for further reading on this point, please see "Deceptions Explained" in the second part of this essay below).
To claim that nuclear power can be safe, clean or affordable reaches the height of human folly. It stands in blatant opposition to the truth of the current crises in Fukushima, where three nuclear power plant reactors damaged by the March 2011 Tōhoku tsunami remain uncontrolled with no solution to their unpredictable damage potential in sight - or even known - more than four years after the initial earthquake and tsunami that led to the initial and ongoing meltdown of three of its four nuclear reactors. In an effort to protect our financial and prideful investment in nuclear power we continue to imagine that its problems are insignificant and solvable - but the risks in nuclear power persist because the risks are inherent in the technology and beyond our ability to eliminate or even control.
To proclaim the Fukushima crises - and the nuclear power risks it represents - as an acceptable alternative to the damage wrought by burning fossil fuels is the sort of deception that can only be practiced by those whose fantasies, dreams and quest for profit have the power to set aside reality. It presents a false choice between global warming and the use of an inherently unstable technology that remains unpredictably risky even after 60 years of research and use. It ignores the decades-old problem, never resolved, of how to safely and securely store highly toxic radioactive materials for many generations to come.
Resolution:
Despite our decades-long experience with energy shortages, costly energy and dirty energy, we continue to ignore the lessons we learn but fail to apply: we consume far too much energy relative to the results we achieve from its use, and we are not investing what we could - and must - in safer and cleaner methods of power generation, efficient use and conservation.
Origin of Energy:
Energy is everywhere; it powers our universe, our world, our bodies and minds and possessions. The power we extract from fossil fuels and the atom are not new energy, only trapped energy. We are not producing it; we are only causing it to flow from one form or entity to another. We understand that there are numerous ways to tap into this energy flow, many of which are at least wholly within our ability to control even if they are not entirely environmentally sound. Solar and wind, for example, are not without their drawbacks; but those flaws are not insurmountable and will can be prevented from placing the world at mortal risk.
The Move To Renewables:
In time and with adequate incentive we will continue to improve the energy quotient received through current sources, both renewable and non-renewable, and we will find new technologies for redirecting energy in ways yet unknown. The task is to develop those methods that pose the least risk. This is less likely to happen if we remain addicted to the artificially cheap energy from nuclear power. In 2005, renewable energy sources were a small part of our energy output, equaling just 20% of the nuclear power output - which itself constituted less than 30% of the output of either coal or natural gas. By 2011 renewables had increased energy output to a level exceeding 60% of the nuclear power output, which had remained essentially static. by 2013, renewables constituted the entire increase in new energy output capacity (not volume), reaching 15% of total U.S. capacity (U.S. Energy Information Administration).
Natural gas, coal and petroleum still constitute the major share of our energy output and cause staggering environmental and health degradation - but their inherent risk is far less than the risk inherent in nuclear. These fossil fuels can be harvested and burned more efficiently and cleanly than they are currently, and our goal should be to phase them out over time in favor or renewables. Supplanting their mitigable risks with the unmanageable risks inherent in nuclear is not a solution.
Re-engineering Energy Use:
Power generation through safer methods is only half the story; we must enhance our efforts to use power more efficiently. Energy conservation does not have to mean "doing without"; it can mean using energy in smarter ways. When the U.S. government instituted the Energy Star guidelines for refrigerators in the 1970s it set in motion a sea change in the industry that reduced our annual energy requirement for refrigerators by a factor equal to the output of 16 average nuclear power plants. This neither killed the refrigerator business nor made them too expensive for U.S. homes. It instead reduced our power consumption and cost. This is the result of re-engineering just one of the multitude of appliances we use in our world.
Just as humans once learned to extract the energy trapped in wood and coal and oil, energy put there by the sun and trapped for years or centuries, humans in time learned to extract the energy trapped in atoms. Unfortunately for us all, and for the planet, unleashing the power of these energy forms means unleashing other components as well, elements such as particulate matter or invisible toxins that are dangerous and fatal to life, each in their own way. We formulate endless methods for mitigating these toxins but with only partial success. With fossil fuels our failure to do the job right has led to a climate on the verge of collapse. With nuclear power, doing the job right is not an option. It cannot be done without ever-present and catastrophic risk.
Rather than turn to nuclear power we can continue our turn toward renewable fuels, cleaner harvesting and burning of fossil fuels and a dynamic effort to use energy far more efficiently. And even to use it less.
End Note:
Nuclear power is the quintessential Pandora's box - once opened, never shut, its contents spilling into the world to do unknown and incalculable damage. It is the fury of the gods that we neither completely control nor truly understand. It cannot be harnessed safely. It can only redirect energy to run our world until it destroys it.
Yes, this sounds extreme. This is because it describes an extreme situation. Fukushima is out of control, now exceeding four years of unabated crises with no resolution in sight. The full effects of the past and present damage it has caused are yet unknown; its full potential for catastrophic contamination of the planet remains a mystery as well. The Pacific Ocean continues to be contaminated by radioactive water pouring unabated from Fukushima, spreading throughout the vast ocean, harming and killing its wildlife and increasing in volume every day. We do not yet know whether the disaster at Fukushima will spin further out of control. Worst of all, we do not know what to do if it does.
Can nuclear-generated power lead us away from climate change? Long touted as safe, clean, affordable and necessary by the nuclear industry but dangerous, dirt, expensive and unnecessary by many others, the traditional debate over nuclear power has recently taken on a new twist: a group of environmentalists and nuclear representatives claim nuclear power is a promising way to mitigate the aggravating effect fossil fuels have on climate change. Others maintain that the risks posed by nuclear power plants are too great to consider continued use, even in the face of catastrophic global warming.
Deception:
Proponents of nuclear power continue to downplay or ignore the real and phenomenal risks of nuclear power generation, risks that have already played out in various locations around the globe, some coming close to catastrophe and others inflicting unprecedented long-term damage upon the environment and society. Chalk River, Ontario; Windscale/Sellafield, United Kingdom; Kyshtym, Russia; the North Atlantic Ocean off Greenland; Monroe, Michigan; Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania; Pripyat (Chernobyl), Ukraine; Fukushima, Japan - each of these and many others bear witness to the risk and the irreversible and unforgiving damage wrought by "peaceful" nuclear power. As well, 60 years after the advent of nuclear power there is yet no solution to the challenge of safely storing nuclear waste for the generations to centuries it takes for them to become non-radioactive.
Reality:
Nuclear power is not safe. It is not clean. It is not affordable. It is not necessary for combating global climate change. Set aside all the promises that have been made regarding the safety of nuclear power because they simply have no bearing in the face of the intractable problems inherent in the technology (for further reading on this point, please see "Deceptions Explained" in the second part of this essay below).
To claim that nuclear power can be safe, clean or affordable reaches the height of human folly. It stands in blatant opposition to the truth of the current crises in Fukushima, where three nuclear power plant reactors damaged by the March 2011 Tōhoku tsunami remain uncontrolled with no solution to their unpredictable damage potential in sight - or even known - more than four years after the initial earthquake and tsunami that led to the initial and ongoing meltdown of three of its four nuclear reactors. In an effort to protect our financial and prideful investment in nuclear power we continue to imagine that its problems are insignificant and solvable - but the risks in nuclear power persist because the risks are inherent in the technology and beyond our ability to eliminate or even control.
To proclaim the Fukushima crises - and the nuclear power risks it represents - as an acceptable alternative to the damage wrought by burning fossil fuels is the sort of deception that can only be practiced by those whose fantasies, dreams and quest for profit have the power to set aside reality. It presents a false choice between global warming and the use of an inherently unstable technology that remains unpredictably risky even after 60 years of research and use. It ignores the decades-old problem, never resolved, of how to safely and securely store highly toxic radioactive materials for many generations to come.
Resolution:
Despite our decades-long experience with energy shortages, costly energy and dirty energy, we continue to ignore the lessons we learn but fail to apply: we consume far too much energy relative to the results we achieve from its use, and we are not investing what we could - and must - in safer and cleaner methods of power generation, efficient use and conservation.
Origin of Energy:
Energy is everywhere; it powers our universe, our world, our bodies and minds and possessions. The power we extract from fossil fuels and the atom are not new energy, only trapped energy. We are not producing it; we are only causing it to flow from one form or entity to another. We understand that there are numerous ways to tap into this energy flow, many of which are at least wholly within our ability to control even if they are not entirely environmentally sound. Solar and wind, for example, are not without their drawbacks; but those flaws are not insurmountable and will can be prevented from placing the world at mortal risk.
The Move To Renewables:
In time and with adequate incentive we will continue to improve the energy quotient received through current sources, both renewable and non-renewable, and we will find new technologies for redirecting energy in ways yet unknown. The task is to develop those methods that pose the least risk. This is less likely to happen if we remain addicted to the artificially cheap energy from nuclear power. In 2005, renewable energy sources were a small part of our energy output, equaling just 20% of the nuclear power output - which itself constituted less than 30% of the output of either coal or natural gas. By 2011 renewables had increased energy output to a level exceeding 60% of the nuclear power output, which had remained essentially static. by 2013, renewables constituted the entire increase in new energy output capacity (not volume), reaching 15% of total U.S. capacity (U.S. Energy Information Administration).
Natural gas, coal and petroleum still constitute the major share of our energy output and cause staggering environmental and health degradation - but their inherent risk is far less than the risk inherent in nuclear. These fossil fuels can be harvested and burned more efficiently and cleanly than they are currently, and our goal should be to phase them out over time in favor or renewables. Supplanting their mitigable risks with the unmanageable risks inherent in nuclear is not a solution.
Re-engineering Energy Use:
Power generation through safer methods is only half the story; we must enhance our efforts to use power more efficiently. Energy conservation does not have to mean "doing without"; it can mean using energy in smarter ways. When the U.S. government instituted the Energy Star guidelines for refrigerators in the 1970s it set in motion a sea change in the industry that reduced our annual energy requirement for refrigerators by a factor equal to the output of 16 average nuclear power plants. This neither killed the refrigerator business nor made them too expensive for U.S. homes. It instead reduced our power consumption and cost. This is the result of re-engineering just one of the multitude of appliances we use in our world.
Just as humans once learned to extract the energy trapped in wood and coal and oil, energy put there by the sun and trapped for years or centuries, humans in time learned to extract the energy trapped in atoms. Unfortunately for us all, and for the planet, unleashing the power of these energy forms means unleashing other components as well, elements such as particulate matter or invisible toxins that are dangerous and fatal to life, each in their own way. We formulate endless methods for mitigating these toxins but with only partial success. With fossil fuels our failure to do the job right has led to a climate on the verge of collapse. With nuclear power, doing the job right is not an option. It cannot be done without ever-present and catastrophic risk.
Rather than turn to nuclear power we can continue our turn toward renewable fuels, cleaner harvesting and burning of fossil fuels and a dynamic effort to use energy far more efficiently. And even to use it less.
End Note:
Nuclear power is the quintessential Pandora's box - once opened, never shut, its contents spilling into the world to do unknown and incalculable damage. It is the fury of the gods that we neither completely control nor truly understand. It cannot be harnessed safely. It can only redirect energy to run our world until it destroys it.
Yes, this sounds extreme. This is because it describes an extreme situation. Fukushima is out of control, now exceeding four years of unabated crises with no resolution in sight. The full effects of the past and present damage it has caused are yet unknown; its full potential for catastrophic contamination of the planet remains a mystery as well. The Pacific Ocean continues to be contaminated by radioactive water pouring unabated from Fukushima, spreading throughout the vast ocean, harming and killing its wildlife and increasing in volume every day. We do not yet know whether the disaster at Fukushima will spin further out of control. Worst of all, we do not know what to do if it does.
Deceptions Explained:
As noted prior, nuclear power is not safe. It is not clean. It is not affordable. It is not necessary for combating global climate change. Set aside all the promises that have been made regarding the safety of nuclear power because they simply have no bearing in the face of the intractable problems inherent in the technology:
Safe: Nuclear power is inherently unsafe by virtue of its ability to permanently escape control by humans and take on a life of its own. Despite state-of-the-art technology and thoroughly tested safety measures, circumstances still conspire to send nuclear plants into crises that become unmanageable by their human tenders. Why? Because the technology is based upon initiation of a process previously known only to the sun and the stars, the chain reaction of splitting atoms. Once this reaction is initiated by humans, necessary for the generation of nuclear power, it must be controlled in every moment until the reaction is shut down by outside intervention. Any failure of human control of the reaction means that it takes on a life of its own and becomes a runaway chain-reaction. Sometimes a runaway can be contained, though not necessarily, before it does considerable, even catastrophic damage. Sometimes it cannot be contained, as is currently the case at Chernobyl and Fukushima. This is the side of nuclear power safety, or lack thereof, that cannot be overcome yet which is ignored or even denied by its proponents.
Clean: Nuclear power is infinitely dirty and cannot be cleansed of its toxicity, save by thousands of years of isolation. The splitting of atoms creates radiation and radioactive waste materials for which we lack the knowledge and technology to neutralize. We can only isolate it from all life for the hundreds to thousands of years it requires to become inert and harmless of its own accord. This storage requirement has not yet been effectively addressed by the world's nations or nuclear power industry. Radioactive nuclear waste has been accumulating in stockpiles around the world for over 60 years while permanent, unfailingly safe disposal methods remain unknown and unachieved. Spent fuel rods reside in guarded pools of water around the globe, forever vulnerable to the vicissitudes of human error, human conflict and natural forces which could launch them into catastrophic meltdown.
Affordable: The claim that nuclear power is affordable fails to include the costs of the afore-mentioned storage requirement. Yes, we find ways to account for the costs of generating power and often decide, in our typically incomplete manner of calculating the costs of any power generation, that it is affordable despite the immense damage the various processes involved inflict on our environment and communities, costs which are typically ignored but which must be paid by us all. Even assuming that nuclear power generation is truly affordable, taking all costs (financial and otherwise) into account, we continue to ignore the costs of radioactive waste disposal. We do this partly because we are ignorant of the true cost of disposal because we are yet unable to even formulate safe disposal/storage methods, much less calculate the cost that our power generation today will incur on society for generations to come.
Necessary: this is final, desperate grasp of the nuclear power advocates in their quest to build more nuclear power generation plants. Unable to make a successful argument for safe, clean or affordable nuclear power, they are now holding up the threat of global warming to make their case. It is a sorry spectacle because it demonstrates the absolute moral bankruptcy of an industry which tries to sell its toxic and deadly wares to a public already under assault by the damage done to our climate by fossil fuels. It ignores the only solutions that can deliver us from both the dangers of nuclear power and the catastrophe of global climate change: cleaner use of fossil fuels, increased use of renewable fuels and greater focus on the efficient use of power.
As noted prior, nuclear power is not safe. It is not clean. It is not affordable. It is not necessary for combating global climate change. Set aside all the promises that have been made regarding the safety of nuclear power because they simply have no bearing in the face of the intractable problems inherent in the technology:
Safe: Nuclear power is inherently unsafe by virtue of its ability to permanently escape control by humans and take on a life of its own. Despite state-of-the-art technology and thoroughly tested safety measures, circumstances still conspire to send nuclear plants into crises that become unmanageable by their human tenders. Why? Because the technology is based upon initiation of a process previously known only to the sun and the stars, the chain reaction of splitting atoms. Once this reaction is initiated by humans, necessary for the generation of nuclear power, it must be controlled in every moment until the reaction is shut down by outside intervention. Any failure of human control of the reaction means that it takes on a life of its own and becomes a runaway chain-reaction. Sometimes a runaway can be contained, though not necessarily, before it does considerable, even catastrophic damage. Sometimes it cannot be contained, as is currently the case at Chernobyl and Fukushima. This is the side of nuclear power safety, or lack thereof, that cannot be overcome yet which is ignored or even denied by its proponents.
Clean: Nuclear power is infinitely dirty and cannot be cleansed of its toxicity, save by thousands of years of isolation. The splitting of atoms creates radiation and radioactive waste materials for which we lack the knowledge and technology to neutralize. We can only isolate it from all life for the hundreds to thousands of years it requires to become inert and harmless of its own accord. This storage requirement has not yet been effectively addressed by the world's nations or nuclear power industry. Radioactive nuclear waste has been accumulating in stockpiles around the world for over 60 years while permanent, unfailingly safe disposal methods remain unknown and unachieved. Spent fuel rods reside in guarded pools of water around the globe, forever vulnerable to the vicissitudes of human error, human conflict and natural forces which could launch them into catastrophic meltdown.
Affordable: The claim that nuclear power is affordable fails to include the costs of the afore-mentioned storage requirement. Yes, we find ways to account for the costs of generating power and often decide, in our typically incomplete manner of calculating the costs of any power generation, that it is affordable despite the immense damage the various processes involved inflict on our environment and communities, costs which are typically ignored but which must be paid by us all. Even assuming that nuclear power generation is truly affordable, taking all costs (financial and otherwise) into account, we continue to ignore the costs of radioactive waste disposal. We do this partly because we are ignorant of the true cost of disposal because we are yet unable to even formulate safe disposal/storage methods, much less calculate the cost that our power generation today will incur on society for generations to come.
Necessary: this is final, desperate grasp of the nuclear power advocates in their quest to build more nuclear power generation plants. Unable to make a successful argument for safe, clean or affordable nuclear power, they are now holding up the threat of global warming to make their case. It is a sorry spectacle because it demonstrates the absolute moral bankruptcy of an industry which tries to sell its toxic and deadly wares to a public already under assault by the damage done to our climate by fossil fuels. It ignores the only solutions that can deliver us from both the dangers of nuclear power and the catastrophe of global climate change: cleaner use of fossil fuels, increased use of renewable fuels and greater focus on the efficient use of power.