Posted on 04/08/2005 7:59:31 PM PDT by neverdem
OP-ED COLUMNIST
If there was one thing that used to be crystal clear to any environmentalist, it was that nuclear energy was the deadliest threat this planet faced. That's why Dick Gregory pledged at a huge anti-nuke demonstration in 1979 that he would eat no solid food until all nuclear plants in the U.S. were shut down.
Mr. Gregory may be getting hungry.
But it's time for the rest of us to drop that hostility to nuclear power. It's increasingly clear that the biggest environmental threat we face is actually global warming, and that leads to a corollary: nuclear energy is green.
Nuclear power, in contrast with other sources, produces no greenhouse gases. So President Bush's overall environmental policy gives me the shivers, but he's right to push ahead for nuclear energy. There haven't been any successful orders for new nuclear plants since 1973, but several proposals for new plants are now moving ahead - and that's good for the world we live in.
Global energy demand will rise 60 percent over the next 25 years, according to the International Energy Agency, and nuclear power is the cleanest and best bet to fill that gap.
Solar power is a disappointment, still accounting for only about one-fifth of 1 percent of the nation's electricity and costing about five times as much as other sources. Wind is promising, for its costs have fallen 80 percent, but it suffers from one big problem: wind doesn't blow all the time. It's difficult to rely upon a source that comes and goes.
In contrast, nuclear energy already makes up 20 percent of America's power, not to mention 75 percent of France's.
A sensible energy plan must encourage conservation - far more than Mr. Bush's plans do - and promote things like hybrid vehicles and hydrogen fuel cells. But for now, nuclear power is the only source that doesn't contribute to global warming and that can quickly become a mainstay of the grid.
Is it safe? No, not entirely. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl demonstrated that, and there are also risks from terrorist attacks.
Then again, the world now has a half-century of experience with nuclear power plants, 440 of them around the world, and they have proved safer so far than the alternatives. America's biggest power source is now coal, which kills about 25,000 people a year through soot in the air.
To put it another way, nuclear energy seems much safer than our dependency on coal, which kills more than 60 people every day.
Moreover, nuclear technology has become far safer over the years. The future may belong to pebble-bed reactors, a new design that promises to be both highly efficient and incapable of a meltdown.
Radioactive wastes are a challenge. But burdening future generations with nuclear wastes in deep shafts is probably more reasonable than burdening them with a warmer world in which Manhattan is submerged under 20 feet of water.
Right now, the only significant source of electricity in the U.S. that does not involve carbon emissions is hydropower. But salmon runs have declined so much that we should be ripping out dams, not adding more.
What killed nuclear power in the past was cold economics. Major studies at M.I.T. and elsewhere show that nuclear power is still a bit more expensive than new coal or natural gas plants, but in the same ballpark if fossil fuel prices rise. And if a $200-per-ton tax was imposed on carbon emissions, nuclear energy would become cheaper than coal from new plants.
So it's time to welcome nuclear energy as green (though not to subsidize it with direct handouts, as the nuclear industry would like). Indeed, some environmentalists are already climbing onboard. For example, the National Commission on Energy Policy, a privately financed effort involving environmentalists, academics and industry representatives, issued a report in December that favors new nuclear plants.
One of the most eloquent advocates of nuclear energy is James Lovelock, the British scientist who created the Gaia hypothesis, which holds that Earth is, in effect, a self-regulating organism.
"I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy," Mr. Lovelock wrote last year, adding: "Every year that we continue burning carbon makes it worse for our descendents. ... Only one immediately available source does not cause global warming, and that is nuclear energy."
E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com
Thanks for the link. You should have mentioned that the source is the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
I'm pinging mainly for the links on this thread. In comment# 1, the nuclear technology for Pebble Bed Reactors is discussed. In comment# 11, the radiation and pollution hazards as well as recoverable minerals from coal fired electricity generation is discussed. At first I thought it might be some internet nonsense, but I persisted. At the end of the page, I clicked home to find out. It's the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Unfortunately, neither are short, but they are interesting.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
Well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. What has happened here is that Kristoff has a mixture of true and false facts and come to a correct conclusion. We should invest in nuclear energy, because it IS clean, and our energy needs are ever-increasing.
"But burdening future generations with nuclear wastes in deep shafts is probably more reasonable...."
It is unecessary. We should back out of the fooking stupid Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Then we can re-enrich our spent fuel rods and re-use them. No need to truck all that crapola over to Yucca Flats either.
No, not necessarily. It might absorb in the infrared, but it can only absorb what is already there. Now, if it were absorbing outside of the infrared, and emitting within the infrared, that would be a more plausible story. (And I always forget--absorb shorter wavelength, emit longer wavelength, or vice versa?) (You'd think I would remember--knowing the emission profiles of fluorophores is essential to my work.)
No, not necessarily. It might absorb in the infrared, but it can only absorb what is already there. Now, if it were absorbing outside of the infrared, and emitting within the infrared, that would be a more plausible story.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe carbon dioxide absorbs what it can of the electromagnetic spectrum to an energized state, but it's not a stable state. It will tend towards its resting state, releasing energy or decompose as a molecule. Excess energy will be reflected as heat or reflected from the atmosphere. It's not a benevolent heat sink. The temperature can get higher. If you understand the emission profiles of fluorophores, then I think you can understand the heat capacity of carbon dioxide. As I wrote before, it is a plausible theory for global warming, but it's not proven.
I hope you didn't miss my last statement in comment# 15. While I don't think man-made greenhouse gases are responsible for the bulk of global warming, I don't think generating more carbon dioxide helps if it can be avoided. Don't get me wrong. If we didn't exhale carbon dioxide, we would be dead. But thank God for photosynthesis.
If I were in charge, I would have a hands-off energy policy. People could drill for oil, invest in nukes, build windmills, whatever. As far as global warming goes, isn't there still a considerable amount of debate as to how much of it we're causing, or even whether it's occurring overall? To Mr. Kristof: I'd wait until all the facts are in before condemning fossil fuels.
GO NUKES!
To put it another way, nuclear energy seems much safer than our dependency on coal, which kills more than 60 people every day.
Source, please, Mr. Kristof...
If it turns out our global warming (if it is actually occurring) is anthropogenic, I would rather the federal government (and all the world's governments) plant millions of trees on their lands first before they regulate and tax fossil fuels to death.
I don't doubt that global warming is occuring. Check melting glaciers. I happen to believe most of it is due to periodic, increased solar radiation which happens according abundant scientific evidence.
According to Jonah Gold berg in the following link, we've done it already in this country.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine
I happened to read it at NRO, so I noticed that StoneGiant didn't include the link to the following story which I just posted not long ago.
Basic quantum mechanics: any atom or molecule absorbs light (radiation) at a specific wavelength, causing the electrons in the outer orbital to jump to the next higher orbital, which is normally empty. The state of being in a higher orbital is unstable, so the electrons give off the energy at another discrete wavelength and jump back into the lower (stable) orbital. I think another way atoms absorb light energy is by increasing their kinetic energy (the velocity at which the electrons move around their orbital). Anyway, those classes were a LONG time ago.
I hope you didn't miss my last statement in comment# 15. While I don't think man-made greenhouse gases are responsible for the bulk of global warming, I don't think generating more carbon dioxide helps if it can be avoided.
No, I didn't miss that statement. How's this for a thought exercise: Analysis of past global temperature changes indicates that atmospheric carbon dioxide increases always follow temperature increases. If CO2 CAUSES an increase in global temperature, wouldn't its increase following previous warming periods have exacerbated those warming trends? The temperature records, however, show that increases in CO2 levels not only lag behind temperature increases, they often occur during a cooling trend.
I was hoping that you checked the link provided with the term "radiant energy" in comment# 15. It's interesting. Mars appears to be getting warmer.
I checked it out.
I did not mention that I think that fluctuations in the heat output of the sun are the most likely cause of global warming. A warming trend on Mars is certainly consistent with increased solar output. The question is, what causes the sun to warm and cool periodically?
I've read a number of stories about increased sunspots being observed over the last decade or so. I also came across a story in Scientific American that a bunch of satellites that were launched in the late 1970's recorded increased solar radiation in the time since they attained their orbits.
The question is, what causes the sun to warm and cool periodically?
Exactly, and how do you prove it to make the morons on the left shut up? It seems that all we have at hand is geological evidence of periodic ice ages. But much of that is only usable only to advance politically correct notions, e.g. evolution.
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