A greenhouse gas report was just released about New York City , and it gave some statistics about our consumption of power. Mainly, it stated we’re releasing 58.3 million tons of CO2 a year, roughly the same amount as the entire county of Portugal. Or, we’re responsible for 1% of the country’s total emissions. What do the numbers say? I don’t think anyone knows. New York is a big dirty city and everyone knew that. These numbers confirmed it. Considering almost 3% of the country lives in New York City, though, contributing only 1% of the Carbon emissions isn’t so bad, and considering at any given time there might be 25 million people in the City (almost 9% of the country’s population), maybe it’s not as dirty as we thought.
It’s still dirty though, as is the rest of the country and its in our best interest to clean it up. Our country needs energy independence, so why not kill two birds with one stone and make it Clean Energy Independence?
Nuclear Power has a stigma attached to it thanks to Chernobyl and the Cold War. People attach Nuclear Power with Nuclear War, and the two can be completely separated.
Nuclear power is a fairly simple concept, it uses uranium reactions to heat water, producing steam that turns a turbine which produces electricity. Simple enough. The latest reactor built in the US was in 1996. Think of the technology advances in the past ten years, then consider that most nuclear power plants in the US were built on 1970’s technology. Who knows what 1970’s technology looks like. It’s probably similar to an eight-track player. In 1996 we though a 512 MB Hard Drives and CD players was technology. Now, we have iPods, cell phones, plasma screens…. My point is that technology has advanced a lot. So has nuclear technology.
Chernobyl is the worst nuclear power disaster in history. It’s also the only one, and it was also built poorly by Soviet technology. Is it completely safe? No. Is coal mining safe? No. The point is, we can make it safe, and we can recycle our own spent fuel so it never becomes weapons grade or a radioactive hazard in some Nevada Mountain.
I’ll let the politicians figure the cost in dollars (I have a feeling the amount is similar to the cost to the Iraq War), but it’s in our best interest to champion the ideas. If we let the republicans do it, we’ll be fighting holy wars in the uranium regions of the world in 20 years. We don’t need that.
In the meantime let’s do our part as a society to conserve energy. New York City should start now. This August, we’ll have a blazing hot day and I’ll walk down Broadway or 5th Avenue and all the shops will have their doors open, blasting air conditioning onto the street. It’s nice that they air condition the street like that., but it’s a ridiculous waste of energy. Close the doors! Install revolving doors. Taxis, buses, police vehicles, all should be converted to hybrids within the year. It’s a start.
