Nuclear power

This entry is dedicated to nuclear power. Because of the latest incident in a Swedish nuclear power plant, I think it is time for me to offer my thoughts about nuclear power in general.

In short: I think nuclear fission is the only reasonable way to satisfy our energy needs until fusion power becomes actually feasible (I assume, it does)

People complain about the Greenhouse Effect as our primary ecological problem at the moment but often overlook the fact that most of our energy is generated by coal, gas and oil plants. Shutting them down would be a huge improvement in CO2 emissions. Acid rain would probably become less frequent as well. Moreover, fossil fuels could suffice for a far longer period of time to facilitate the transition of conventional car engines to hydrogen powered ones, for example.

The only real alternatives to fossil fuels at the moment are the renewable sources of power (wind, water and solar energy) and nuclear fission.

Solar energy is unreliable as it can of course only be used during the day. Furthermore, it is not efficient enough to be used as a substitute. Future research may improve this, but to what degree and how long it will take is uncertain.

Water power is a great way to produce electricity. However, I read some time ago that almost every profitable location is already used.

Lastly, wind power. I particularly hate this one. I recently read that building a wind plant CONSUMES MORE ENERGY THAN THE PLANT WILL PRODUCE IN ITS ENTIRE LIFETIME! (I’ll try to find the source edit: I could only find sources that claim exactly the opposite, i.e. 5 – 35 times as much energy produced. However, I am quite certain that I have read something like this somewhere) This fact alone negates every advantage it has. edit: OK, let’s correct this then: Wind power is also unreliable and quite expensive. So there.

Consequently, nuclear fission is in my opinion the only reasonable substitute for fossil fuels. There are certainly problems with nuclear waste but if the greenhouse effect is really this close to get out of control, the benefits more than outweigh the disadvantages. The security of newly built plants should be enough to prevent any type of radiation leakage or a nuclear meltdown. Additionally, terrorist attacks have been shown to do little to no damage to a nuclear plant. ;This site has a comparison of the costs for the individual means of electricity generation showing that “Nuclear power is cost competitive with other forms of electricity generation…“, whereas wind power is 1.5 to 3 times as expensive.

Even Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore now promotes nuclear power.

It makes me sad to see that Germany decided to stop supporting nuclear power and shut down every nuclear power plant. I think old plants should be replaced by new designs and new plants should be built instead. Electricity is already very expensive here and using more and more wind plants will only aggravate the problem.

I look forward to the day nuclear fusion solves all our energy problems. At least, I hope to be alive by then

By the way: Why is it taking so long to build the ITER? I’m quite sure the time needed to build such a reactor could be dramatically reduced by removing bureaucracy efforts and by allocating more funds. Nuclear fusion is after all one of the only possibilities to solve our energy problems, so let’s put more time, effort and money into research!

PS: Being the egoist that I am, I could not care less about ecological problems. For me, it does not matter whether or not humanity survives the next day. I just don’t want to pay horrendous electricity bills.