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A few other reasons why nuclear is a dumb option
Nuclear power really is pretty dangerous—talking about nuclear safety is a bit of a myth. Nuclear power stations are a potential target for terrorists, and if we want to encourage a clean, safe world, nuclear is not the way to go.
Nuclear makes bad financial sense. When the fledgling nuclear power industry began to build power stations, the industry was heavily subsidized as nuclear was a promising new technology that promised “electricity too cheap to meter". Unfortunately, those free watts never really materialized. Solar on the other hand is the gift that keeps on giving—stick some photovoltaics on your roof and they will pump out free watts for many years to come with virtually zero maintenance.
Decommissioning is another big issue—just because you don’t know what to do with something when you finish with it isn’t an argument to ignore it. Would you like a drum of nuclear waste sitting in your garden? All the world round, we haven’t got a clue where to stick this stuff. Altough with establishing of a repository for nuclear waste, the problem doesn’t go away—it is simply consolidated.
Environmental responsibility
Until cheap accessible space travel becomes a reality, and let’s face it, that’s not happening soon, we only have one planet. Therefore, we need to make the most of it. The earth only has so many resources that can be exploited, when these run out we need to find alternatives, and where there are no alternatives then we will surely be very stuck.
Mitigating climate change
It is now widely acknowledged that climate change is happening, and that it is caused by man-made events. Of course, there is always the odd scientist, who wants to wave a flag, get some publicity and say that it is natural and that there is nothing we can do about it, but the consensus is that the extreme changes that we are seeing in recent times are a result of our actions over the past couple of hundred years.
Nuclear power really is pretty dangerous—talking about nuclear safety is a bit of a myth. Nuclear power stations are a potential target for terrorists, and if we want to encourage a clean, safe world, nuclear is not the way to go.
Nuclear makes bad financial sense. When the fledgling nuclear power industry began to build power stations, the industry was heavily subsidized as nuclear was a promising new technology that promised “electricity too cheap to meter". Unfortunately, those free watts never really materialized. Solar on the other hand is the gift that keeps on giving—stick some photovoltaics on your roof and they will pump out free watts for many years to come with virtually zero maintenance.
Decommissioning is another big issue—just because you don’t know what to do with something when you finish with it isn’t an argument to ignore it. Would you like a drum of nuclear waste sitting in your garden? All the world round, we haven’t got a clue where to stick this stuff. Altough with establishing of a repository for nuclear waste, the problem doesn’t go away—it is simply consolidated.
Environmental responsibility
Until cheap accessible space travel becomes a reality, and let’s face it, that’s not happening soon, we only have one planet. Therefore, we need to make the most of it. The earth only has so many resources that can be exploited, when these run out we need to find alternatives, and where there are no alternatives then we will surely be very stuck.
Mitigating climate change
It is now widely acknowledged that climate change is happening, and that it is caused by man-made events. Of course, there is always the odd scientist, who wants to wave a flag, get some publicity and say that it is natural and that there is nothing we can do about it, but the consensus is that the extreme changes that we are seeing in recent times are a result of our actions over the past couple of hundred years.
-“the most severe problem that we are facing today—more serious even than the threat of terrorism.”-
So how can we use solar energy?
When you start to think about it, it is surprising how many of the different types of energy sources around us actually come from the sun and solar-driven processes. We can see how all of the energy sources in this figure actually come from the sun! Even the fossil fuels which we are burning at an unsustainable rate at the moment, actually originally came from the sun. Fossil fuels are the remains of dead animal and plant matter that have been subject to extreme temperature and pressure over millions of years. Those animals fed on the plants that were around at the time (and other animals) and those plants grew as a result of the solar energy that was falling on the earth.