Kaboom?

by Wesley Andrus

Op-Ed, Environment, Science

In today’s culture, an American politician cannot say the word “nuclear” without blowback from wide swaths of their voter base. Nuclear power can be as efficient and clean as it wants, but it cannot seem to shake the burden of jaded public perception. All the focus of climate activists is on solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric power; the classic renewables. Money is poured into development, research, construction. But to what end? It’s true: if the sun isn’t out and shining, you don’t get solar power. Huge strain is put on solar-based power grids in the winter months, when people need that power most, simply because they cannot soak up enough sunrays. Battery technology doesn’t have the capacity to store enough power to cover for this deficiency. But a nuclear power plant does not suffer from such troubles.

In fact, these plants are the only source of power with a consistency of over 90%, compared to the uncomfortable 74% which puts geothermal in second place. Solar power hasn’t quite made it to 30% consistency yet. Good try, kid.[1] But somehow it is the honest belief of millions of Americans that renewables will create a backbone of the power industry. This is utterly delusional and counterproductive. Somehow the insidious belief that nuclear is dangerous and produces some kind of mysterious greenhouse gas emission has crept into public thinking and rotted there.

Let’s compare, shall we? Throughout the entire resource gathering process and including the emissions from mining and processing uranium, nuclear power accounts for… surely something close to natural gas, or oil, right? No? What’s this? In gCO2/kWh, nuclear has half the emissions of a hydropower plant? Surely some renewable power source is better. Nuclear is three times less than geothermal? Well, I know solar is clean. Oh yes, solar is very clean: with the maintenance of solar plants and the materials cost of their production, over the course of their lifetime, they will produce four times the carbon per kilowatt-hour compared to a nuclear power plant. Statistically speaking, the only renewable that can even compete with nuclear for cleanliness is wind.[2]

But OH, NO! Nuclear goes BOOM! You can’t use uranium; it’ll EXPLODE EVERYWHERE. This is the thought buried inside Americans that sours the public discourse and poisons the minds of environmental activists. What if like Chernobyl and like Fukushima both was like on Three Mile Island? Y’know? All disasters, to be sure, but they cannot compare to the horrific 1975 Banqiao Dam failure. It is statistically probable that this single event caused more deaths—from hydropower—than every nuclear power plant disaster and both atomic bombs combined, with an upper limit of 230,000 people losing their lives.[3] So how does the safety of renewables stack up against nuclear?

Well, the statistics are in, and…

The deaths per terawatt-hour favor nuclear over every other power source. But that’s just it: nuclear is so safe, that, through any given year, more deaths are caused by solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric power per unit of power generated—after factoring in “all those nuclear disasters.”[4] Statistically speaking, solar panels are five times deadlier than the massive building that’s supposedly dumping radioactive death-sludge all over the place and exploding every other minute.

Where are climate activists on this? Where are Americans on this?

Modern American culture is split between opposition to reforming energy for climate change or all-in-favor, no other route, renewable sources! These solutions will not work to create a sustainable environment: the societal perception of nuclear power must shift so that we can utilize the best hope for solving climate change in the long run. It’s a fact of life: you cannot make a cohesive, reliable, and realistic zero-carbon plan without nuclear power.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the various authors in this paper do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of Kamiak High School or The Gauntlet. 

Sources

1. Office of Nuclear Energy. “Nuclear Power Is the Most Reliable Energy Source and It's Not Even Close.” Energy.gov, 4 Mar. 2021, https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close.

2. Wolf, Jared. “Nuclear Energy Is Better than Solar and Wind.” Sustainable Review, 14 June 2022, https://sustainablereview.com/nuclear-energy-is-better-than-solar-and-wind/. 

3. Song, Liu. “75年河南水灾：滔天人祸令十万人葬身鱼腹.” Phoenix, 10 Aug. 2008, https://news.ifeng.com/history/1/midang/200808/0810_2664_710030.shtml.

4. Jaganmohan, Madhumitha. “Mortality Rate Globally by Energy Source 2012.” Statista, 29 Jan. 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/.