Think energy diversity |
Otherwise, the article is just a half-baked attack.
The Nuclear Industry claimed that it could solve the Climate Change issue and cost less than other sources of electricity. Yet the price of new reactors went through the ceiling - besides taking 10-15 years to complete.
Two sentences, almost all wrong.
Consider:
- The nuclear energy industry never said it could solve the climate change issue - maybe some Nixon-like enthusiasm here and there. Nuclear energy is emission free and produces lots of electricity in a relatively compact space. Hydro is constant, emission-free, but a bit inhibited by the reluctance to build new dams. Solar and wind are less constant - they cannot run all the time - but when they do run, they add emission-free electricity to the grid. The phrase to describe this is energy diversity. Nuclear has its value, renewables have their value and so on.
- The price of a new reactor is certainly high, the cost of running them very low, and people just keep on building them. There are five in progress in the U.S., 25 in China (some U.S. sourced), and a bunch of countries are angling for their first facility – UAE is only the first. Most of these are or will be built and ready to go in three to five years.
Multiply those two sentences a few times and that's the article. I suspect the Clearinghouse knows all this and also knows why people keep throwing together nuclear facilities. From another of the group's articles on the site:
The global impacts to human health will continue to grow well into the future with most of the burden falling on the poorest in the world. From the loss of agriculture due to heat, desertification and extreme weather events, the many vectors causing disease are ominous and rapidly growing in size.
Just so, AA.
The growing number of extreme weather events and the economic fallout from them is well documented. The failure to act could be civilization's worst decision ever.
But civilization is acting. Nuclear energy is a key part of the act. Think energy diversity, AA, and it makes a lot of sense.
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