Volume 2, Issue 12- March 18-24, 2011
International Tribune
The specter of Chernobyl is haunting us once again. The world is back on a nuclear scare. As the world watches how things are unfolding from the multiple disasters that occurred in Japan, all nations that rely on nuclear energy are questioning their safety from using this source. And environmentalists who are opposed to the on nuclear power are back with a vengeance, taking advantage of the disaster to spread their half-baked vision.
Today, our industrial civilization is power-hungry and 86% of the world’s energy is still dependent on non-renewable fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas. With the global population increasing at such a fast rate and more vehicles being built require enormous amount of gas for consumption, nations must find ways to supply the power demand. What most average person is not aware of, in burning fossil fuels, we inject 23 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year into the atmosphere – 730 tons per second. Half of it is absorbed in the seas and vegetation and the other half remains in the atmosphere. This is significantly altering the composition of the air we breathe and seriously affecting the climate of our planet. As for safety, there have been more accidents from the coal, oil and gas industries. Since 1967, there have been over 100 oil spills that took place in the world. Just last year, British Petroleum’s oil rig, Deepwater Horizon, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, that started months of oil leaking unrestrained into the ocean. It is estimated that over 205 million gallons of oil were released into the Gulf. The clean-up is not over.
Why is nuclear energy cheap and clean? For starters, nuclear power plants emit absolutely no carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides or sulphur dioxides. The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) stated in a 2009 report, “In 2008, U.S. nuclear plants prevented the emissions of almost 689 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. This is nearly as much carbon dioxide as is released from all U.S. passenger cars.” Nuclear reactors use uranium as their fuel. Fission reaction of a small amount of uranium generates large amount of energy. With this type of power, nuclear reactions also release a million times more energy therefore a large amount of electricity can be generated. One gram of uranium yields about as much energy as a ton of coal or oil making it extraordinarily more efficient. Currently, the high reserves of uranium found on Earth, are expected to last for another 100 years unlike fossil fuels, which the world is almost running out of. More importantly, nuclear waste is about a million times smaller than fossil fuel waste, and it is totally confined. In defense of its safety, there have been significantly less nuclear accidents in the history of its commercial use compare to oil and gas: Three Mile Island in 1979 in Pennsylvania and Chernobyl in 1986 in Ukraine. Fear of the unknown is the propaganda of anti-nuclear groups. They preach fear of radiation and the spread of nuclearweapons. Their campaign has been successful only because radiation is a mystery to most people, and very few are aware of the fact that radiation is present everywhere in the environment. And believe it or not, the US and the former Soviet Union did not engage in a full scale war because of their nuclear capabilities. Both nations believed that a nuclear war is a zero-sum game. Nations are smart enough not to resort to nuclear annihilation. The hysteria has been propelled more, thanks to science fiction movies and novels.
The multiple catastrophes that Japan is now facing are beyond every man's or nation’s imagination. I hope that this scenario will never be repeated and that mankind and science will find more ways to avert disasters from completely and irreversibly damaging our civilization. Protecting human health and the environment is a priority. There is a wide variation of environmental impacts associated with power generating technologies. But which one is the lesser evil? Take your pick.
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