What would you think if you were told that there was a green energy source, available immediately, time-tested and proven safe, that was entirely carbon-neutral, cost-competitive with coal and endorsed by leading thinkers and green advocates worldwide, including Greenpeace co-founder, Patrick Moore?
Let's sweeten the deal - let's say that this hypothetical miracle energy was only in the infancy of its technological life-cycle, and had nothing to do except grow cheaper, safer and more efficient; let's say this perfect green energy could be produced entirely from American raw materials, thus assuring American energy independence. Let's say that this minor miracle is nuclear energy.
Forget Anita Hill, carbs and protein, Neanderthals and Betamax - never has a thing been more unfairly maligned than nuclear energy. Considered the de-facto energy of the future during the '50s, '60s and '70s, nuclear energy figuratively exploded until 1979, when Three Mile Island literally melted. The construction of nuclear generators in the United States all but ceased, as nuclear power became a national bogeyman.
The funny thing about Three Mile Island, though, is that it was a textbook example of nuclear safeguards done right. The worst possible thing that can go wrong at a nuclear reactor went wrong at Three Mile Island - the reactor core suffered a critical meltdown. Yet, the radioactive waste was held safely inside the plant by the containment buildings constructed over all U.S. nuclear generators specifically to deal with such meltdowns. No one was killed or even injured, and the surrounding area was exposed to a level of radioactivity equal to - gasp! - one-third of a medical X-ray. This was the tragedy which merited the condemnation of an industry?
There is an incredible perception that nuclear energy is the be-all and end-all of risk and waste, when nothing could be further from the truth. Nuclear energy emits no carbon dioxide. A reactor meltdown physically cannot produce the sort of apocalyptic explosion and fall-out which haunts the mass consciousness. Nuclear fission produces about 15-20 percent of America's electricity, yet there has not been a single fatality attributable to nuclear power in the last 40 years.
In comparison, fossil energy is extremely dangerous and staggeringly dirty. The heavy metals, carcinogens, and aerial pollutants released by coal-burning power plants are thought to lead to the premature deaths of 15,000 Americans per year, according to a Harvard study. Fifty-two hundred coal miners perished in horrific accidents last year in China alone, and American coal plants produce 100 million tons of solid waste annually - waste which is laced with mercury and other poisons. The ultimate fun fact? A coal-burning power plant, compared to a nuclear power plant, releases more than 10,000 percent the amount of radioactive material into the air.
While nuclear energy is extremely clean, it is not cleaner than, say, wind and solar power. The difference is that nuclear energy is cost-competitive. Using European Union numbers, wind energy can cost up to 15 cents per kilowatt hour, far exceeding coal's 3.4 to 4.5 cents per kilowatt hour. Nuclear energy, in comparison, costs 4.0-5.5 cents per kilowatt hour.
Of course, four cents is still more than 3.4 cents. But those numbers betray a critical inequality in current regulations of energy producers: nuclear power plants have to account for every atom of radiation and every pound of uranium and plutonium which goes into and out of their generators. In comparison, coal and gas-burning power plants have had, for centuries, free reign to spew countless millions of tons of pollution into the atmosphere.
Those who burn fossil-fuel deserve to be forced to absorb the costs of their emissions in the same way that nuclear power plants are. The European Union commissioned a study to put a Euro value on the costs accrued to society in terms of negative health and environmental impacts. Nuclear energy averages .4 Euro cents per kilowatt hour in such "externality" costs. Meanwhile, gas clocks in at 1.3-2.3 Euro cents per kilowatt hour in external costs, while coal is an astronomical 4.1-7.3 Euro cents per kilowatt hour. These numbers, incidentally, do not even take global warming into account.
If your eyes glazed over during that barrage of numbers, just know this: if fossil-fuel power plants were forced to absorb the cost of their own negative externalities in the way that nuclear power plants are, the price of energy generated from coal would double, and power from gas would cost 30 percent more. In such a scenario, nuclear energy would be the vastly cheaper energy source.
Wahhabism, Communism and science are the final three reasons to adopt nuclear energy. Much ado has been made about the nothing that is an assault upon a nuclear power plant. Even if a terrorist could breach the containment walls of a generator - several feet of steel-reinforced concrete - modern reactors are built to be able to shut down instantly. Compare such a "terrorist threat" to the very real reality that we funnel billions of dollars of oil money per year into the hands of Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran. Uranium can be mined and refined exclusively within American borders, cutting off a large part of our dependency on dubious foreign allies.
Here's where science comes in: the farcical fact is that America is chugging along with many of the same generators we built in the '50s, due to the prohibitive regulator difficulty of constructing new plants in this country. Yet the 103 nuclear plants currently operating in the U.S., even chugging along with first-generation technology, have managed to up their efficiency in the last 40 years by 50 percent. Even so, America's plants are a shadow of their European and Asian cousins in terms of cost per kilowatt hour and safety. Some European and Asian plants, for example, use each pound of uranium multiple times, decreasing radioactive waste emissions while increasing cost and energy efficiency. There is no reason America cannot use this same technology.
We have more to lose than almost anyone from energy dependence, and yet we are doing less than most to combat it. Nuclear energy deserves to be a greater part of America's energy package, and would be, if people were willing to take a critical look at the facts and disregard decades of scare-tactics and propaganda spewed by misinformed environmental advocates.
Weekly Columnist Bryan Murphy is a 3rd-semester economics major. His column runs on Fridays. He can be reached at Bryan.Murphy@UConn.edu.
Be the first to comment on this article!