With no apparent intentional irony, Reuters today published two news briefs close together on their website, both of which involved nuclear power. I don’t have a screenshot, but they appeared side-by-side this morning (March 18). The first said that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expecting to receive numerous requests to build new nuclear reactors across the United States. After Obama was elected, I expected to see an increased push toward nuclear power. After all, nuclear is one of the cleanest sources of large amounts of electricity. The carbon emissions are low and the electricity output is high. Other sources of renewable energy might be cleaner and greener overall, but no other alternative source of power comes close to contributing as much power as does nuclear.
Of course, there are drawbacks with nuclear power. The obvious is the catastrophic consequences when the reactors fail. And that was the subject of the second news item from Reuters. It described a study that was recently conducted of the animal populations in the Chernobyl area more than 20 years after the famous meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. The study found that animal populations, across species, were far lower than was believed. So, even after the passing of so much time, the effects of the disaster are still very much apparent.
These news pieces highlight my own indecisions about nuclear power. On the one hand, I recognize that our need for large volume electricity must be met, even in the short term, with some source of power that is (much) cleaner than coal and that in the history of nuclear power, meltdowns have been few. However, when those catastrophes occur, they are devastating. And, of course, there are other issues, like where to store the nuclear waste and the negative effects on aquatic ecosystems of dumping out huge amounts of super-heated water from the reactors into marine environments. At least until other sources of renewable power can produce the amount of electricity to match nuclear, it really is a question of how much risk we as a society are willing to accept to power our lives.
