Is Nuclear Energy The Best ‘green’ Energy…?
December 9, 2009 by
Filed under Articles
currently commercially viable at the moment?
Solar, hydrogen, wind, tidal, temperature differential, biomass, etc are all very brilliant- but not entirely practical for every situation.
Nuclear, though the potential for disaster like Chernobyl-Pripyat, 5 Mile Island, etc are very real- current technological advances mean nuclear is far safer than ever before.
The spent fuel can be recycled.
Nuclear- when running correctly, is highly efficient, exceptionally quiet and releases very little pollution.
Do you think the fossil-fuel lobby was ultimately behind the demise of nuclear?
Ape -X- on Wed, 9th Dec 2009 10:02 am
I worked in the Nuclear industry as a consultant it is by no means green. It’s operation is very clean in terms Carbon emmissions. However the waste is very dangerously radioactive and remains that way for thousands of years. All they do is a process called vitrification basically storing it inside glass then dumping it in sites. Usually paying corrupt third world governments to take it off our hands. The cost and energetics of recycling and not effective.
Any A level physics student will tell you a Nuclear Reactor is and controlled nuclear bomb. Failures can be catastrophic. They are also huge dangers from terrorist threats and a target in the time of war.
Nuclear energy as a hollistic process from production to fuel to the handling of depleted fuel is highly inefficient, economically poor and environmentally dangerous. It’s oeration is far more hazardous than any other method. The only nuclear method that should be considered in the future is Nuclear Fusion… this too is dangerous but its nature is such that in the future with the right containment field technology it may become the answer to the energy crisis. At the moment it is very dangerous as essentially one is creating a star inside a reactor.
Combined offshore windfarms and hydroelectric power stations are the way forward. Advanced drilling may make geothermal a possibility in the future.. But at the moment we should minimise the useage of fossil fuels by investing in and maximising the production of Renewable energy.
xyzpdqfo on Wed, 9th Dec 2009 12:07 pm
At this moment probably so. Until we can develop true ‘green’ technologies to be more practical.
People talk about the radioactive waste, but don’t understand there is radioactive waste (uranium and thorium) associated with a coal plant as well. Except it’s just released into the atmosphere instead of kept in containment the way a nuclear plant does. The NCRP found that the radiation exposure from an average 1000 MW power plant comes to 4.9 person-sieverts a year for coal-fired power plants and 0.048 person-sieverts a year for nuclear-fired power plants. That’s a factor of 100 times greater from a coal plant compared to an equivalent nuclear plant.http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal…
Not to mention a 1 acre nuclear plant generates the power of something like a 100 acre coal plant (can’t remember the exact figure.)
Nigel on Wed, 9th Dec 2009 4:33 pm
The large drawback of course is that its very expensive and all the nuclear waste produced needs to be stored somewhere.