7 reasons why nuclear energy may be better than you think
By 
Shan-ul-Hai •
July 28, 2008
I’m surprised that there has been very little activity on the blogosphere concerning the potential of nuclear energy as a key stepping stone in the path to energy independence. Even many environmentalists are opposed to the idea, since they don’t seem to realize the fact that nuclear energy is, in fact, completely clean and free of carbon emissions. I learned a great deal about this during college (one of my minors was in Radioenvironmental Sciences); here are some things that you might like to know:
- There are zero (0) Carbon emissions from nuclear energy. That means that if we stopped using fossil fuels and suddenly switched completely to nuclear (some countries, like France, are already over 60% of the way there), we would halt global climate change completely.
- There have been zero (0) casualties related to nuclear power in the history of the United States. The US coal mining industry, on the other hand, causes about 30-40 accidental deaths every year in addition to the thousands of coal miners who die of pneumoconiosis. And I don’t think I need to remind anybody of the casualties related to oil.
- Radiation-related effects are much less common than you’d expect. Significant likelihood of radiation sickness was not noticed in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (although there were a few cases); an overwhelming majority of the people in the Chernobyl area also walked out with no long-term effects (the chance of thyroid cancer, the most common side effect of radiation, is 0.0031% in the vicinity of the meltdown).
- The famous Three Mile Island accident was caused by a series of blatant human errors which can now be avoided thanks to our strengthened ability to have all human actions checked by a computer. Now, 29 years after the accident, zero (0) adverse effects have been reported among plant employees and area residents.
- Contrary to popular belief, nuclear waste does not remain contaminated for thousands of years. In fact, even the most active radioisotopes are usually safe to handle after they are allowed to decay for about a month (10 half-lives). Admittedly, there are some isotopes with a longer half-life; however, half-life is inversely proportional to activity, so these isotopes aren’t very active to start with (many of them actually occur naturally in the environment).
- Nuclear energy actually can power our cars (albeit indirectly). We are already producing cars powered entirely by electricity; now we just need to replace our coal plants (which provide 50% of our electricity) with clean energy (which provides under 30%, mostly coming from nuclear plants).
- Letting a country use nuclear power doesn’t mean that they’ll have the ability to build nuclear bombs. The “recipe” to build such a bomb isn’t even a secret; the reason why it’s so hard is because it can only be done with heavily enriched Uranium, which would be very expensive and can’t be produced without attracting attention (i.e. Iran). That’s why terrorists can’t build nuclear bombs (instead, they try to steal/buy them)… they don’t have the resources to enrich the Uranium.
One potential argument against nuclear power is the fact that, although we haven’t found any specific adverse health effects yet, we might notice some sort of problems in the future (similar to how we unknowingly built up environmental Carbon thanks to our overutilization of coal and oil). That’s why I think that the existence of nuclear power doesn’t mean that we can just halt all of our alternative energy research… but it does mean that we can start protecting the environment from a well-known hazard (Carbon) until we discover a magic ingredient to power the world with a cup of salt water.
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“1 There are zero (0) Carbon emissions from nuclear energy…”
Untrue, you will need to mine and transport uranium, which takes diesel. Theoretically, you could do this electrically, but this is not yet the case. See point 6.
“2 There have been zero (0) casualties related to nuclear power in the history of the United States…”
I have no exact figures, but I remember news stories about accidents. And how about this? http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6199
“3 Radiation-related effects are much less common than you’d expect…”
Haven’t you seen the pictures of the malformed children in Chernobyl? And you might not have enough information about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And how about the many Australian soldiers that died after they were so politely asked to come and check out the nuclear bomb tests?
“4 The famous Three Mile Island accident was caused by a series of blatant human errors which can now be avoided thanks to our strengthened ability to have all human actions checked by a computer…”
Untrue. Many accidents have been reported in the US and recently several France too, where a lot of uranium fell in a river. BTW, the problem with uranium is not it’s radioactivity, but it’s very toxic. It’s poison similarly to led.
“5 Contrary to popular belief, nuclear waste does not remain contaminated for thousands of years.”
Yes it does. And the question is which (sign)language you need to use so people will not open the caves in say 5000 years from now. But *modern* powerplants can now re-use this waste to the last bit. This could have been your major argument, but you missed that point.
“6 Nuclear energy actually can power our cars (albeit indirectly).”
True.
“7 Letting a country use nuclear power doesn’t mean that they’ll have the ability to build nuclear bombs.”
Well, that depends on the type of plant, and dirty bombs are always easy to make. Then there is the risk of bombing sites with nuclear waste, too. But I’m not afraid of terrorism.
Good points.
1. Yes, we’d have to do it electrically.
2. There have been accidents, but not casualties.
3. I didn’t say that there are no effects; I said that they are “less common than you’d expect”. There have definitely been some negative effects.
As far as Hiroshima/Nagasaki, I cited a BBC source. If they were wrong, then that’s a different issue. I also remember something similar from one of my nuclear engineering classes.
The nuclear tests are a different story. In Hiroshima/Nagasaki, the people who would be affected most drastically were the ones who ended up dying in the explosions. In the nuclear tests, there were multiple explosions and people were exposed to the radiation but not the actual bomb.
4. I didn’t say that Three Mile Island was the only accident; it’s just the biggest and most famous one. The NRC later found that the accident should have been prevented if all procedures were followed like they should have been.
5. If it can be re-used, then it’s not “waste”… I was trying to keep it simple by talking about the stuff that can’t be re-used.
7. Yeah, I guess you could classify a dirty bomb as a “nuclear bomb”. I don’t really consider the two to be in the same class, since a dirty bomb doesn’t create mass instantaneous destruction.