I have refrained so far from using this blog as a soap box for ranting about alternative energies. I will try to continue avoiding this, but I have found something that gets my point across without me having to rant. My grandmother sent me this article the other day and I couldn't resist sharing it with you.
The article is about how Holland is stepping away from renewable energy sources due to the high costs, and in turn stepping toward nuclear power. In doing so, Holland has become the first nation to break away from the EU's goal of being 20% renewable. To make the statement stronger, Holland was a strong supporter of the Kyoto Agreement and was responsible for persuading other nations to adopt renewable energy sources for their future.
So why would Holland make such a drastic turn-of-face? The answer is simple: Money! Like every other industry, the power industry also must be profitable to be viable. Holland was putting roughly 4 billion euros a year into renewable energies. In short, they don't ever see their investment being returned upon, or at least not in the near future. The recently cut this yearly subsidy to about 1.5 billion euros a year and instead are first the first time in 40 years allowing the construction of nuclear power plants. As opposed to renewable energies which will never recoup the expenditures they require, nuclear power is a sustainable clean power source that is economically viable. It makes sense ecologically and economically.
I don't mean to imply that renewable energy sources don't have an important role to play in fulfilling our power needs, but that fact is simply that they cannot be expected to support a large percentage of the base power needs or the base load. In general, they are not reliable or strong enough to supply the constant power that we consume. I vote that we too quit so heavily subsidizing an industry which cannot support the role that we hope it will and look to a solution that can. At least for now, that is nuclear power. I am sure though that there are other sources out there which we would be better off pumping money into.
The One Responsible
- Aaron Ackerman
- Aaron is an engineering student at the Colorado School of Mines working on a masters degree in nuclear engineering. Also, he is a member of the Unites States Navy and will be a nuclear engineer on US Navy submarines when finished with his education at the School of Mines. Aaron's undergraduate background is in physics.
3 comments:
First, I would hesitate to call nuclear power a clean power source considering the radioactive waste it generates. But I agree that if this waste can be properly contained, then nuclear is a good option.
And a question: can nuclear be considered renewable in a way? In other words, will we ever run out of input materials, like uranium, to the point where nuclear is no longer possible? Just trying to compare it to fossil fuels, which will surely run out at some point.
Well, nuclear power is clean in terms of emissions. The the coal and gas power plants are dumping hundreds of thousands of tons of emissions including green house gasses and soot each day. I have not done any posts on the waste issue yet, but the amount of waste from a nuclear power plant is trivial as opposed to this. We are talking many orders of magnitudes less since fission contains 200 million times more power than combustion. This just means that the waste will be less. Today, all the waste from the plants are stored on site, which just tells us that there isn't that much.
Nuclear power is not really considered renewable since it does use resources from the Earth. On the other hand, with technologies such as breeder reactors and even given the amount of uranium we have on this planet, it offers us a pretty much limitless supply by current standards. We are not going to run out of uranium anytime soon and even if we do, we have breeder reactors which make their own fuel from non-fissile isotopes. We also have thorium reactors, which have a more abundant supply of fuel than the uranium reactors. So though not a renewable source, it is pretty much a limitless one as far as we can see now.
That clears some things up, thanks. I look forward to some posts about nuclear waste.
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