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
Readers seeming for an objective look at nuclear power will not find it here. The author’s hysterical and obsessive concern of radiation pervades the discussion. Caldicott does make mainly of the main issues on the table, but she distorts the facts badly: she frequently condemns the loss of nuclear power and praises solar even though solar clearly costs more than nuclear (and she ignores the large roll that anti-nuclear activists have had in currently driving up the loss of nuclear power through law-suits and simply licensing delays); she does not like government assistance for new nuclear power, but tax credits for wind power are just fine; she complains of nuclear power plants’ need for cooling water (which has usually caused some river-side plants in France to shutdown temporarily during a current drought) but ignores the same need in geothermal plants; she criticizes the significant quantity of energy it needs to build a nuclear plant even though solar voltaic plants are similar; and she says we don’t have enough affordable uranium to grow the industry (only a century worth at the modern usage rate) even though government reports reveal that a slight increase in price would very multiply the accessible reserves; and she completely ignores the very promising thorium-cycle breeder reactor types, which like all breeders become nuclear power into an in-exhaustible resource via their miserly fuel use and have no nuclear bomb useable materials in the waste, but unlike some plutonium breeders (which she does argue and dismiss) could potentially meet or easily beat today’s prices, would avoid creation of long-lived radioactive waste, and would have much minor consequence of a serious accident. But worst of all, she completely conceals the enormous ecological damage and cost of individual life usually caused by the coal industry, and the huge difficulty and expense we’ll face if we try to phase out coal without currently using nuclear power. How could any assessment of the chances of nuclear power fail to compare this risk to that closely associated with coal which produces further that half the USA’s electrical power? Caldicott offers a wildly bright world view, powered by wind, solar power, and other renewables. She apparently has chosen not to listen to the frequently repeated statement by experts that these sources can supply at most about twenty per cents of our power because they are intermittent (with the exception of geothermal, but most of the affordable geothermal is already in use). Even reaching the twenty per cents level needs also energy storage currently using large hydro (which most parts of the U.S.A. do not have) or plentiful natural gas (which is rapidly becoming a severely depleted resource in the USA) for use in cost-effecting “peaking” plants and with compresses air energy storage systems (which boost the effectiveness of natural gas fired generation). Hydrogen-based storage is possible of course, but with an optimistic round trip efficiency of about fifty per cents, it will likely be two to four times more expensive than electricity from coal, so it will be a tough sell in the USA. Renewable energy is a great thing, but it cannot compete sparingly with coal, so ultimately a “no” to nuclear power is a “yes” to coal. With all of that reportedly said, she did have some practical points: our nuclear plants are aging and need to be eventually replaced one way or another; different plants should be more robust against terrorists; the nuclear industry (like any large business) can occasionally get very cozy with the government. There’s room for improvement, but nuclear power is still a satisfactory answer.