It turns out that there are better ways to reduce carbon emissions than risking meltdowns, or managing and securing tonnes of weaponizable radioactive material for decades. Who'd have thought?
These totally obvious insights come courtesy of
For years, my concerns about nuclear energy’s cost and safety were always tempered by a growing fear of climate catastrophe. But Fukushima provided a good test of just how important nuclear power was to slowing climate change: In the months after the accident, all nuclear reactors in Japan were shuttered indefinitely, eliminating production of almost all of the country’s carbon-free electricity and about 30 percent of its total electricity production. Naturally, carbon emissions rose, and future emissions-reduction targets were slashed.
Would shutting down plants all over the world lead to similar results? Eight years after Fukushima, that question has been answered. Fewer than 10 of Japan’s 50 reactors have resumed operations, yet the country’s carbon emissions have dropped below their levels before the accident. How? Japan has made significant gains in energy efficiency and solar power. It turns out that relying on nuclear energy is actually a bad strategy for combating climate change: One accident wiped out Japan’s carbon gains. Only a turn to renewables and conservation brought the country back on target.
What about the United States? Nuclear accounts for about 19 percent of U.S. electricity production and most of our carbon-free electricity. Could reactors be phased out here without increasing carbon emissions? If it were completely up to the free market, the answer would be yes, because nuclear is more expensive than almost any other source of electricity today. Renewables such as solar, wind and hydroelectric power generate electricity for less than the nuclear plants under construction in Georgia, and in most places, they produce cheaper electricity than existing nuclear plants that have paid off all their construction costs.
In 2016, observing these trends, I launched a company devoted to building offshore wind turbines. My journey, from admiring nuclear power to fearing it, was complete: This tech is no longer a viable strategy for dealing with climate change, nor is it a competitive source of power. It is hazardous, expensive and unreliable, and abandoning it wouldn’t bring on climate doom.
The real choice now is between saving the planet or saving the dying nuclear industry. I vote for the planet.[Emphasis added, by me.]
The entire piece is much, much longer than this excerpt, and definitely worth a read -- the details of journey towards this conclusion are quite compelling. It shouldn't surprise anybody, though, that he finally reached this conclusion after analyzing the available evidence, since almost everybody who wasn't already inside the dying American nuclear industry had already done exactly that, years ago.
I understand why the United States, in particular, are still clinging to the nuclear illusion. America ushered in the atomic age, and can still look nostalgically backwards to a time when an atomic-powered version of 1950's America looked like it might be the future. But it really wasn't the future; it was, and is, nothing but an expensive dead end. And it's high time for the last adherents of the nuclear delusion to admit that those rosy 1950's visions of an atomic future should be relegated firmly to the past, where they belong.
Nothing says "the past" quite as strongly as something that once screamed "the future." Maybe one day, we'll get fusion power, clean and plentiful energy based in nuclear physics that doesn't come with the costs, dangers, and long-term waste management problems of fission technology. But that day is not today, so for now, let's just all put down the Vault-Tec, shall we?
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