Nuclear Energy, The Lesser of Two Evils

Robert McKnight

3-6-09

11:45

More and more European countries are deciding that nuclear energy's not so bad.  Italy and Sweden recently reversed long-term bans on nuclear energy and even the UK's executive director of Greenpeace is singing a different tune.  He says climate change is simply the highest priority, and that though radioactive waste issues are indeed a problem, they're not as bad as carbon dioxide emissions.  

The Italian Prime Minister sited France as a nuclear success story, stating that nearly 80% of French power is of the nuclear kind, and the French pay half of what Italians do for their energy costs.  The French president wants to help the Italians, saying, "Europe must do two things - develop massive amounts of renewable energies, which we are going to do, and also develop nuclear energy."  He went on to say it's unreasonable to develop clean energy with only renewable energy.

According to a man from London's Chatham House, "We do have a world which is going to be using twice as much energy in 2050 as it was in 2000 and which has to produce by current estimates, something like 20 to 40 per cent as much carbon dioxide emissions as we're doing at the moment." 

So, we've got a lot of energy to produce now, we'll need to produce even more later, we should do it with a cleaner energy than fossil fuels, and we can't do it all with renewable energy.  Thus, nuclear energy is not so bad.

Can't help but feel weary of the potential for disaster here.  The whole world building tons and tons of nuclear power plants all in a hurry to curb climate change and so forth.  Environmentally, it seems like closing a door and opening a window.  A sharp cut in carbon emissions would be great, but we'd be up to our ears in nuclear waste or worse.  

The fact that money plays such a vital role in Europe's decision to embrace nuclear power isn't comforting either.  Of course they want cheap power, but I hope they're not selling their souls...    

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