by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Despite of the potential disaster of a nuclear meltdown in Japan a British egghead claimed that the UK could never be able to generate enough energy just using renewables and that, to meet carbon targets we need the carbon-free nuclear energy, and nuclear is, so he said, a carbon-free energy source. Otherwise, he also said, we would have to seriously rethink our energy usage.
Let me state here, once again, that (i) Nuclear is NOT a carbon-free source of energy and (ii) that renewables could well do it all if we but had a different power system and changed our use and consumption. And renewables will have to do it for we cannot afford to do other.
The disaster in Japan has reignited the debate over nuclear power in Europe as well as America and around the world.
I have always unequivocally opposed nuclear energy and that for a number of reasons. Nuclear power is dirty, unsafe, deadly, and costly.
Nuclear power is dirty: It is dirty in the production of the uranium, that is the mining, which is dangerous to the miners and the environment.
Nuclear power is unsafe: As we can see, yet again, from the issues in Japan, there is no such thing as a safe nuclear power plant, whatever those in the industry and those in the pay of the industry would like us to believe.
Nuclear power is deadly: It is deadly if and when radiation is released and this, let's face it, happens more often that we are being told; much more often in fact. The waste is also deadly should it ever escape and leak and who can guarantee that those containers stored in this or that cave under ground will last those thousands of years. Who? No one.
Nuclear power is costly: It is costly to produce the uranium; it is costly to build the plants; it is costly to generate the power; it is costly to decommission the plants; it is costly to store the waste.
In the 1960s when Britain was on an all out run to build nuclear we were being told that the future was all electric – and homes were being built then that were to be heated electric only, etc. – and that because electricity was going to be so cheap that we would not even notice it in our pay packets. Very much like computers making out lives so much better with so much more leisure time that did not materialize and the power generated by nuclear is in fact the most expensive there is.
And still some of our politicians, who are in the pay, no doubt, of the lobby, though, are still saying we should build more of them.
Let's all make it very clear to our elected representatives that a "nuclear revival" has no place in the clean-energy future of our respective countries and that of the world as a whole.
We cannot afford nuclear power as it is way too expensive in the long run, for us and the Planet.
© 2011
