Obama’s solution to looming climate crisis: nuclear power plants
Many scientists agree that global warming is a globally imminent catastrophe and that our current reprieve is caused by a temporary reduction in water vapor in the upper atmosphere. The best way to cut carbon emissions is to change how we generate power, and in the United States that’s still primarily done by burning coal. Obama wants to change that by investing in new nuclear power plants.
The nuclear industry is gun-shy right now about investing in new nuclear power plants because they’re afraid of getting the building half finished before funding dries up or that it would take too long to recoup huge investments with current electricity rates. How do you get around that? Obama thinks it’s with the government guaranteeing loans to the tune of $54 billion.
Every nuclear power plant costs about $10 million to build, according to NPR. Which means most companies can’t even get financing without loan guarantees. Two opposing points to the government’s intervention are financial risk for the American people and the highly toxic waste generated by nuclear power plants.
We just survived a smorgasbord of bailouts in the financial and automotive sector, are Americans ready to shoulder risk for more companies? Even if we can stomach the financial risk, the waste generated by a nuclear power plant lasts for hundreds of thousands of years. Right now we don’t even have a strong standard on how to deal with that waste. Maybe NASA’s new research focus will yield something.
Those two points lose some bite though with the broader context in focus. With a climate disaster imminent via global warming, immediate action is necessary. Shifting most of our power generation to nuclear would provide a drastic cut in emissions, and at the very least delay catastrophe.
Although nuclear power may have a nebulous classification when it comes to calling it green or not, investing in new plants would absolutely create jobs. The question is do more jobs and cleaner air justify toxic waste and risky investments.
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For me, there is no doubt about the fact that nuclear energy is worth the investment because of its proven capacity to displace coal, oil and natural gas. It is clean enough to run inside submarines and produces a waste product that is so compact that it is a simple matter to keep it in a container instead of dumping it into the environment.
However, do not just listen to me. Pay attention to people like Stewart Brand, James Hansen, James Lovelock, Patrick Moore, and many others who are famous for the care with which they approach environmental science and protection. Each one of those doctors has studied the options with their traditional care and come down in favor of increasing the use of nuclear energy rapidly enough to make a difference in global greenhouse gas emissions.
Rod Adams, Publisher, Atomic Insights. Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast
The waste actually is a big concern because there is so much produced anually, however it stills has as much as 95% of it's potency and companies are researchign ways to squeeze all the power out.
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