If the USA produced the same percentage of its electricity with nuclear energy as does France, the environmental savings in green house gases would be greater than 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually. This amount of carbon dioxide savings represents a further 15% reduction in green house gases than the Kyoto agreement savings. The time it takes Japan to go from regulatory approval to a functioning nuclear power plant is 5 years. Conservation, solar, wind power would provide 15% reduction in the present green house gases emisions, roughly equivalant to 250 million tons of carbon dioxide. The aforementioned are sound bitess from Newt Gingrich in a new book.
Yes but.... storage of plutonium, safety of nuclear power plants, use public transportation, ride a bicycle, etc, etc, etc. Yuca Mountain storage, 2 miles below the surface, in mobile, constantly exchanging casks is currently feasable. Demographics and an aging population are against bicycle riding. Look around you; how many 65 to 75 year olds are riding bicycles now. How many "aged" bike riding people would it take to reduce green house gases by 10 million tons; roughly 50 million of the 65 million new aged expected in 10 years. Public transportions in every part of the world is not self-supporting and is subsidized by tax dollars. How many "kneeling buses" would a municipality have to add to accomodate people with canes, walkers, wheelchair, and others who have difficulty climbing the stairs up into the bus. Who would help the people coming home from the grocery store with their load of groceries for one week. Or, would we, ie, society in general, expect that people would go to the grocery store every day as happens in the major part of the would: more municiple kneeling buses. In the present world, what happens when the sun does not shine: East Lansing would go without electricity for 7 months a year? Rochester New York, Seattle Washington, Peoria Illinois, Portland Oregon, etc are notorious for sustained cloudy days. What about wind energy? What happens when the wind does not blow. What is the track record of the wind farms along the California portion of Interstate 80: ideal sites for wind blowing, right? Wrong. Unintended consequences. How many migratory birds are chopped down by the whirling blades? How long are the winds sustained? Do the winds blow at night? Is there a transition in wind speeds between sunrise and again at sunset? You bet'cha there is. The wind stops! Maybe we should collect all the carbon dioxide from coal fired power plants and bury it in the ground. The technology is just around the corner, eh? Of course we are talking about influencing the 2% of green house gases attributable to human activity and not the 98% attributable to "natural" sources. Why have the oceans decreased by 5% their absorption of Carbon Dioxide? Does anyone know? Of course not. Why is the planet Mars Southern polar ice sheet melting at the SAME rate as our polar ice sheets melting on Earth? Has this anything to do with our Sun? Possibly, no one knows.
At what point, what will it take, which environmentalist will have to eat crow? Maybe it requires that the people who brought an end to nuclear power proliferation in the USA 30 years ago will have to retire (90% of whom will have osteoarthritis), endure their arthritic knees and hips, slow way down with their coronary artery disease, walk a lot less with their diabetes peripheral vascular disease and leg amputations. Who will shut off the hospital intensive care respirators, monitors, renal dialysis machines, when the sun does not shine or the wind does not blow?
There are more than 5 billion people in the world now, soon there will be 6 billion. Does anyone who has even the slightest knowledge of agriculture beleive that these billions of people can be fed with the present level of technology, crop and soil science, genetically enginered crops, energy dependent fertilizers? You are whoefully uninformed if you believe that, at least for the next 100 years, adequate for human survival, electrical energy can be harvested from the sun, wind, and getting back to nature with a 'healthy' life style.
I believe the present environmental generation, self focused and consumed by their youth, who are not using canes and walkers yet, will live to see a scarcity of electricity impacting negatively on the lives of billions of people. The repercussions of low electricity availablity will result in a class war some place on earth over energy, just as it is in the Middle East now for oil, there will be fighting for electricity between the haves and have nots. Those people who can generate electricity with a small carbon footprint, as coal, gas, oil will be increasingly costly and unavailable for most of the world's population, those producing people, and I am not saying countries, will come under relentless attack by the have nots. The present class war is believed to be related to religion; yet, looking at who is doing the fighting, commiting suicide, etc, it is the have nots; against France, Germany, England, island Sweden, groups within India, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, China, Indonesia, Australia, and of course, the greatest Satin USA. Religion is the seragot reason for the fight against the wealthy, and wealth in this century will revolve around the ability to produce energy.
The licensing, construction, and pricing of nuclear energy is likely to play the largest role in providing electricity to our world; at least until hydrogen based fuels become technologically feasable, most likely not until the 22nd century. The proliferation of nuclear energy is the most available option for this early part of our 21st century.
