I would like to stress the importance of nuclear energy. We need energy to drive innovations. We need energy to drive the economy. We simply need energy in order to reach our full potential as human beings.
1. Nuclear Energy is clean and safe.
There is currently only 70,000 tons of waste to deal with. Imagine that! I am being serious, because even though this sounds like a lot of waste, this pretty much makes up all of the waste that has ever been generated in the course of say 40 to 70 years of using it. Coal plants might burn that much coal in a month. There is definately more waste in coal waste than in nuclear by far. Also coal is like a big filter in the ground that catches toxic metals such as murcury and gallium. This makes it kind of hazardous.
2. Nuclear energy is abundant and limitless for at least a good billion years or so.
There is an unimaginably enormous amount of energy locked into nuclear isotopes. We can make these give us energy and keep doing it forever!
3. Nuclear waste can be recycled.
Now here is a recycling plan that makes a difference. I couldn't care less about recycling materials, unless they are very rare or valuable. The way I see it, the land fill is an opportunity to recycle later. Nuclear material can be recycled to give us our most valuable asset. Energy. This means that the 70,000 tons that was thought to be waste really is not waste, but an opportunity to recycle and obtain more energy.
I say that in order for something to have the greatest benefit there should be an inverse relationship between its value and its cost. As an example, water is the most valueable resource in the world if you've been without it for 2 days. But it has the greatest benefit to us because its cost is negligable. Energy should be the same way. Quality food as well... etc.
4. Cap and Trade is just a tax by any other name. There is a definite relationship in how much profit a corporation can make and how much they are going to charge for their services. All things being equal there will be a price set that will reflect all the input cost plus the profit margin. A carbon cap and trade will force the coporations to have a higher input cost and they will pass this on to us. There is no way around that. The only thing that will happen is higher prices and possibly a sqeeze on the profit margins of corporations as they find that they can not sell at quite the same amount they would have to raise prices in order to completely offset their carbon tax. Nuclear Energy is the solution to a zero carbon energy economy. And there is no limit to the amount of energy that can be produced. Solar and wind are limited in nature. Nuclear is 24/7 and produces energy all the time wether we are collecting it and using it or not.
5. We have all these spare nuclear weapons around. I would imagine that there is a highly refined stockpile ready to be all blown up. We could certainly borrow some of the material from there. After all what are we going to do with the nuclear material stockpile if we don't ever blow it up, god forbid we ever do. That material would be considered nuclear "waste" and is so highly refined that we would have to "dirty-it-up" a little in order to actually use it in a conventional nuclear power plant.
Nuclear material comes from nature. Ever thought about mixing it down and diluting it until it has a lower radiation level and then storing it maybe somewhere that it came from in the first place. Of course if we ever plan on recycling it that would just add an extra step to get it all back.
6. If we were to subsidize our own power we'd save a whole lot of money more than likely. I'm thinking trillions unless someone figures out how to keep making it more expensive. In reality nuclear power would be as simple as throwing some nuclear "logs" on the proverbial fire. I'm pretty sure that the first experiments were probably not far off as different enrichment levels were experimented. It could be practically free if we made no effort to put up any safeguards or use technology to get much better results. What keeps nuclear power expensive is regulation. The regulations that keep armed guard and massive facilities over top of this otherwise pretty simple powerplant. I am not saying that regulation is a bad thing. I am only saying that it is as expensive as we make it.
7. Nuclear Energy = Infinite Energy = Everything (quite literally). But as a practical example, Electrolosys on sea water produces Oxygen, Hydrogen and a few other things. Oxygen is nice for breathing and a lot of other good purposes. Hydrogen can power vehicles. Since we could make as much Hydrogen as we ever needed we now have all the transportation fuel we will ever need. This incudes the fuel to take us to the moon and mars, which is also based largely on Hydrogen. Burning hydrogen produces fresh water. There are many other necessities that can be generated from energy and electricity on which we could thrive.
8. Arguements that Nuclear Energy is somehow worse in mining that ore than coal mining are illogical. Mining Coal and Mining Nuclear ore are pretty much the same thing and there are many of the same heavy metal by-products. The major difference I see is that with nuclear power the bedding structure can be set so that it is self-maintaining and produces its own fuel. Mining would at that point be unnecessary. Let me reitterate that there would be NO MORE MINING! Only isolated reprocessing. Coal will be mined forever. Once coal is burned there are more byproducts to deal with. Tenessee recently had a wall collapse where thousands of tons of coal ash byproduct are stored. Carbon sequestration reduces the useable power from coal so that would ultimately increase the amount of coal that was burned with some being used just to store the byproduct of the rest.
9. There is an enormous amount of energy in nuclear material. One pound of enriched Uranium can produce as much as 2.2 MILLION pounds of coal. That is only in one cycle which last about 18 months. There are currently a little over 100 nuclear powerplants in the United States. Those few power plants produce nearly 20% of our electricity demand. Wouldn't that mean that 500 powerplants would produce 100% of our electricity demand in the United States. We could build more and export electricity while fully powering our country at whatever level we feel like. Not a level that has been limited by how much carbon is emitted.
Nuclear energy is not the demon that it is made out to be. I could go on forever about how one can use the enormous amount of energy that is available in Nuclear Energy. The "not in my backyard" slogan is misleading and outdated. There are far worse things in your backyard. I guarantee it! But, since we live in the days of sloganism I'll close with this. There are six billion reasons to choose nuclear energy. What's yours?
Related Links:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/obamaclark/gGxtKp/commentary
