The Case for Nuclear Power

It is a sad state the world is in with regards to power. Oil and coal, the current main sources of power, pump billions of pounds of pollution into the air each and every year. Governments are prepared to load themselves with debt for centuries in order to find a solution. Yet, the solution is already here, and has been here for decades.

That solution is nuclear power. A clean, safe, virtually limitless well of power. There is little R and D money required- the main cost would come from building plants. Nuclear power has only benefits over any "technology" currently in development.

Perhaps the main cause for concern is safety. Nuclear power conjures up images of the Chernobyl disaster, something that nobody, including me, wants ever to be repeated. However, evidence points that it never will be. In typical human fashion, engineers learned from the mistakes of Chernobyl. All plants have a "defense system". Should that fail, there is a second defense system. According to Bernard L. Cohen, the risk of death related to nuclear power is "less than 1%". With this in mind, he estimates that there would be, at most, one death per century that is related to nuclear power. One could assume that coal and gas already cause a similar amount of deaths, if not more. Some may argue that wind and solar would cause 0, however per century, odds are that a freak accident would occur with any of these alternative energies. From a tower falling onto someone's head to someone getting electrocuted from a solar panel, it is reasonable to assume that, like nuclear power, one death per century at least will occur.

On meltdowns, Bernard Cohen has this to say:
"A fuel melt-down might be expected once in 20,000 years of reactor operation. In 2 out of 3 melt-downs there would be no deaths, in 1 out of 5 there would be over 1000 deaths, and in 1 out of 100,000 there would be 50,000 deaths. The average for all meltdowns would be 400 deaths. Since air pollution from coal burning is estimated to be causing 10,000 deaths per year, there would have to be 25 melt-downs each year for nuclear power to be as dangerous as coal burning."
With advance in nuclear technology, it would take perhaps 100,000 years to cause even a single death as the result of a meltdown. Close calls are not really close calls, at least not anymore. With the improvement in material sciences and engineering theory, not only are meltdowns made extremely unlikely, but should they occur, the chances of any deaths occuring are so negligible that the risk of a meltdown causing a death is nil.

Further, the risk of genetic disease from a functioning nuclear power plant is the equivalent of a male wearing pants for 8 days. Perhaps, if these people are so worried about the potential diseases, they should become nudists. At least then they wouldn't be hypocritical.

Two trillion dollars invested in nuclear power would yield approximately 30 times the amount of power of clean energy. The real waste in power is not the pollution of carbon producing plants, but the money sink that goes to fund far inferior technologies. It is true that nuclear power produces a fair amount more of pollution but surely the human mind can think of ways to deal with this.

The vast majority of nuclear waste is harmless. It is already present in the soil, and is simply absorbed back in. For the trace amount of radiation that must be kept from human contact, there are several solutions. First is the one that is already used- dumping it into the ocean or so far underground that no one can get to it. Obviously, in a talk about clean energy, these are unacceptable. Then, there are the solutions that critics decry as outlandish or dangerous- sending trash into space. Humans have gone past the asteroid belt, they have put probes in orbit around venus, and even sent them past that. My solution- the sun. The sun is enormous, comrpised of so much nuclear material that Earth could never upset its make up. Radiation the likes of which no one will ever know the effect of first hand is sent through our solar system constantly. As outlandish as it sounds, humans are perfectly capable of sending waste towards the sun, which will in turn destroy it. Perhaps it will send this waste back at us, but in a form that is simple for our atmosphere to handle, in fact, a form that our atmosphere is handling constantly.

The best part is, by actually funding nuclear power research, we can find ways to eliminate, or, at the very least, reduce such waste! We have only scratched the surface of nuclear power, with more funding it is very possible that this deadly waste is reduced to near 0, eliminating the problem altogether. Currently, we get a 1% yield from material used in nuclear reactors. The room for improvement is absolutely massive. The yield of nuclear power plants, with research funding, can increase their yields to unimaginable levels, while at the same time reducing waste!

It is time for the American people to stop being scared. Nuclear power has come a long way. Einstein, Curry, and the other physicists behind nuclear fission saw the potential for peaceful purposes. They did not set out to make a weapon, they set out to advance humanity forward. It is time for us to accept the future and to move on to the next age: nuclear power. The alternative is to continue funding inferior energy sources, and, as our electronics become more complex, eventually their yield will not be nearly enough.

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