Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
Stock Market Up 8 Out of First 9 months - 13th Dec 24
What Does a Strong Sept Mean for the Stock Market? - 13th Dec 24
Is Trump the Most Pro-Stock Market President Ever? - 13th Dec 24
Interest Rates, Unemployment and the SPX - 13th Dec 24
Fed Balance Sheet Continues To Decline - 13th Dec 24
Trump Stocks and Crypto Mania 2025 Incoming as Bitcoin Breaks Above $100k - 8th Dec 24
Gold Price Multiple Confirmations - Are You Ready? - 8th Dec 24
Gold Price Monster Upleg Lives - 8th Dec 24
Stock & Crypto Markets Going into December 2024 - 2nd Dec 24
US Presidential Election Year Stock Market Seasonal Trend - 29th Nov 24
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past - 29th Nov 24
Gold After Trump Wins - 29th Nov 24
The AI Stocks, Housing, Inflation and Bitcoin Crypto Mega-trends - 27th Nov 24
Gold Price Ahead of the Thanksgiving Weekend - 27th Nov 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast to June 2025 - 24th Nov 24
Stocks, Bitcoin and Crypto Markets Breaking Bad on Donald Trump Pump - 21st Nov 24
Gold Price To Re-Test $2,700 - 21st Nov 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks: This Is My Strong Warning To You - 21st Nov 24
Financial Crisis 2025 - This is Going to Shock People! - 21st Nov 24
Dubai Deluge - AI Tech Stocks Earnings Correction Opportunities - 18th Nov 24
Why President Trump Has NO Real Power - Deep State Military Industrial Complex - 8th Nov 24
Social Grant Increases and Serge Belamant Amid South Africa's New Political Landscape - 8th Nov 24
Is Forex Worth It? - 8th Nov 24
Nvidia Numero Uno in Count Down to President Donald Pump Election Victory - 5th Nov 24
Trump or Harris - Who Wins US Presidential Election 2024 Forecast Prediction - 5th Nov 24
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Should We Rethink Nuclear Power?

Commodities / Nuclear Power Mar 09, 2019 - 04:37 PM GMT

By: OilPrice_Com

Commodities

While it seems to fly in the face of everything we believe and have been taught about nuclear power, it may actually be the safest form of power production that we have. Ironically, the immense potency of the power of splitting an atom is simultaneously what makes nuclear weapons so dangerous as well as what makes nuclear power so safe.


Despite high-profile nuclear disasters like Chernobyl in Ukraine (then the Soviet Union), Fukushima in Japan, and Three Mile Island in the United States, the deaths related to nuclear meltdowns are actually very few. In fact, climate scientists Pushker Kharecha and James Hanson discovered that overall, nuclear energy actually saves lives--their study found that up until now, nuclear power has already saved nearly two million lives that would have been lost to air pollution-related deaths from the contamination that would have been produced by other, more traditional, sources of energy.

Nuclear power is an incredibly clean form of energy thanks to its staggering efficiency. The uranium used to produce nuclear power has the ability to create a whopping one million times more heat than equal masses of fossil fuels or even gunpowder. Nuclear power has the valuable ability to create massive amounts of heat without creating fire, and therefore it produces no smoke. This means that it’s a much, much cleaner alternative as compared to fossil fuels, which cause seven million premature deaths per year (according to data provided by the World Health Organization) thanks to the massive amount of smoke produced by the industry.

While renewable resources like wind and solar are also much, much cleaner alternatives to the fossil fuel industry, with negligible levels of emissions, nuclear has a lot of benefits that renewables can’t compete with. One of these is that although nuclear plants create massive amounts of energy, they take up very little space thanks to their energy density. Even in places where the sun shines the majority of the time, like in California, a solar farm takes up 450 times more space than a nuclear plant to produce the same amount of energy.

On top of taking up far less space than renewable energy production, nuclear also requires a much, much smaller quantity of materials and therefore produces considerably less waste. Put simply, nuclear is far more efficient and energy-dense than either solar or wind. In fact, according to a fact sheet published by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the entire nuclear industry in the United States, one of the biggest energy-consuming cultures per capita in the world, produces just 2,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel rods each year, or just a single soda can’s worth of waste per person served by nuclear energy per year.

Michael Shellenberger, president of independent research and policy organization Environmental Progress and a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” sums the matter up simply: “the energy density of the fuel determines its environmental and health impacts.” In his think piece titled “Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet” Shellenberger goes on to say, “It’s true that you can stand next to a solar panel without much harm while if you stand next to a nuclear reactor at full power you’ll die. But when it comes to generating power for billions of people, it turns out that producing solar and wind collectors, and spreading them over large areas, has vastly worse impacts on humans and wildlife alike.”

Despite the strong case for nuclear, however, it remains a hard sell in the United States thanks to a poor public image and overblown safety concerns as well as an adverse political climate. Even those politicians who are pushing for green energy reform are simultaneously pulling away from nuclear. With all of the solid evidence in its favor and an ever-increasing need to clean up our energy act, what more will it take for nuclear to become part of the United States’ energy future?

Link to article: https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Should-We-Rethink-Nuclear-Power.html

By Haley Zaremba of Oilprice.com

© 2019 Copyright OilPrice.com - All Rights Reserved
Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

OilPrice.com Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in