One Environmentalist Confronts the Nuclear Question

After reading an article in the San Francisco Chronicle where one Nobel Prize winner endorsed a wide-scale expansion of nuclear energy as a way to curb greenhouse gas emissions while still providing affordable power, one of the contributors to Groovy Green wrote the following:

The one befuddling thing was the belief that nuclear energy will be our saving grace in the end. Is this true? I am not as knowledgeable on nuclear energy as I am on solar or wind power. Professor Smoot does make a good point when he says nuclear technology is the one thing we can produce at scale that we need, but is the ”manufacturing” of this form of energy worse than the energy itself? Will the end result of nuclear energy justify the means in which it is made?

My suggestion: Take a look at a presentation that NEI CEO Skip Bowman gave to the National Academy of Engineering late last year (PPT). It's an honest assesment of why we're seeing utilities think about building new nuclear plants that also includes answers to many of the standard questions the industry gets about safety, security, waste and economics. Anyone who is interested in the issue should take time to read it.

UPDATE: More from We Support Lee.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Power, Nuclear Energy, Environment , Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics, Electricity

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Fluor Invests in NuScale

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Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin

NEI Nuclear Notes

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