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Hammer’s mark: Is it time to dismantle the ‘nuclear’ family?

 

By Jeff Hammersmark

ewspapers all over are being
N= with articles about the

devastation in Japan. This week,
my column is not an exception, although
I don’t want to focus specifically on the
Japanese disaster, but rather on one of
its effects. Due to the events that have
occurred over the last week, the world
is very closely scrutinizing nuclear
power. Long touted as a clean, cheap
source of energy, nuclear power plants
have popped up in most industrialized
nations. It has always had its opponents,
particularly in the environmentalist

community, but with the spotlight on the

Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, more

people seem to be joining the opposition.

In a world with a very large and
growing need for energy, nuclear power
has its place. One could argue that the
energy produced by nuclear plants
would need to be produced one way or
another, and would potentially need to
be generated via dirty methods such as
coal burning. But how dirty is nuclear
energy? It may not be associated with
significant air pollution like coal plants
are or with habitat loss and land damage
like large scale hydroelectric energy
generation, but nuclear does have a
lot of downsides. The first and most

14

obvious is becoming apparent right now:
Nuclear power is highly dependent on
proper management and safeguards to
prevent a disaster from happening. This
not only applies to the active process of
generating energy from fissile material,
but also applies to the by-products of
nuclear power generation.

The spent fuel rod storage tank
in Fukushima is a perfect example of ©
how nuclear power remains risky even
after the power generation phase. The
fuel rods there have long stopped being
productive, but due to the length of time
they remain dangerously radioactive,
they must be stored and cooled in
water. When that water is removed, as
we saw in Japan, the radioactive fuel
rods overheat and become extremely
dangerous. Of course, we also have the
productive nuclear fuel requiring careful
management to ensure the process of
nuclear fission does not cause damage,
or disaster. Granted, Fukushima is
one isolated and extreme case, and the
vast majority of nuclear plants manage
their operations in a completely safe
manner...but isn’t there something
inherently and intuitively wrong with
depending on a source of energy that
contains so much potential for disaster?
Are we really okay with a source of
energy that, while generally safe, has the

- With the nuclear drama unfolding in Japan,

potential to render land uninhabitable and
entire regions radioactively hazardous for
years to come? Nuclear has its supporters
for sure, including up until recently myself,
but I would argue that most people, if
presented with a better alternative, would
rather see nuclear go the way of the dodo.

steadily. Even though alternative energy
is more expensive, how much is our
environment worth? How about our safety?
Or our long term energy independence?
These things are often overlooked in the
name of per-kilowatt-hour cost savings, but
they most certainly have significant value.
If we could only start considering all
these factors, perhaps we would see an
even stronger investment in alternative
energy. Maybe instead of seeing continual
applications for new nuclear power plants,
we could instead see a gradual phasing
out of this technologically marvellous, but
dirty and inherently risky, energy source.
Even you, the individual consumer, can get
directly involved in the push for alternative
energy. I’m actually typing this article from
a wind-powered laptop. How, you ask? The
first person to e-mail me at jdhammer (at)
care2.com with the correct answer wins
themselves a low-flow showerhead. And no,
I do not have a wind turbine hooked up to
my laptop.

we may be at a turning point.

Alternative energy has been around for
a long time, it’s just been really expensive
and under-productive. With climate
change becoming a widely accepted threat,
and energy needs continuing to grow
exponentially, investment in alternative
energy has never been higher. This has
led to a decrease in cost, an increase in
efficiency for technologies such as solar
panels and wind turbines, and an increase
in viability for ones such as biomass
energy and tidal power. Presently, it’s my
understanding that wind and solar are still
slightly more expensive than traditional
energy sources, but the gap is decreasing

 

<7 Ge,

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