Nuclear Power is Not the Answer to Global Warming or Anything Else
Nuclear Power is Not the Answer to Global Warming or Anything Else – Review
Meeting the energy demands of the 21st century is growing to require both unique innovations, which will always have unfortunate rapidly growing pains, and a variety of energy sources. The author is able to easily ignore both of these issues. Barely a page into the book, Helen Caldicott’s first strike against nuclear power is the Chernobyl accident; needless to say Helen remains her arguments with the subtlety and grace of an Ogre and the insights of a first grader. Every minor detraction is vacuously usually expressed without any significant comparison. For example, Helen points out that fossil fuels are desperately needed to transport uranium, but fails to address the transportation losses of traditional energy sources. Other absurdities involve the analogy of how a nuclear plant makes electricity, “… cutting a pound of butter with a chainsaw…”, once again implying the existence of a generally preferred conventional alternative where none exists. Finally, Helen thinks all subsidies and investments in nuclear power as fraudulent wastes while the same for green power becomes unquestioned. Non-answers for green power that Helen ignores are the big manufacture of greenhouse gases from hydroelectric power (4 times that of an equivalent coal plant, see the Nature Journal, December 2006), and very positive views on both power generation and lifetime losses of wind and solar energy methods. Nuclear power might not be the answer, but neither is this critical diatribe.