With all the trauma going on right now over the horrors in Japan, a great deal is being debated about pros and cons of nuclear power. This is one of the most important debates we will ever have in this country and it’s unfortunate that it will not play out on the merits of clean air and safety but rather with the hysteria created by each side in its attempts to win the day for two dangerous power solutions that stand to see billions in profit if they can win the day for their exponents.
The reality is, that no matter which side you’re on, clean air or safety, your most able allies have very little care for the catchwords of their defense. The reality is that billions, maybe trillions of dollars are at stake here and to the corporate giants who are invested up to their eyeballs in the separate technologies of nuclear fission and fossil fuels the question is how to convince you, the consumer, that their particular technology will kill a lot less people than the other guy’s. In reality the question of how many people their technologies will actually kill is of no consequence to them. There is, after all, a bottom line to be considered and big business has never let a little detail like a few hundred thousand sick and dead people, stand in the way of their voracious stampede toward the almighty dollar.
But for those of us who do not own oil, gas or coal companies, or who do not control our own nuclear power plant, there is still some debate. It’s a debate I have been having with myself and others for may years, a very unsatisfactory debate because although I have finally come down on one side of the argument, I’m far from positive that I’m right and I really think that the final answer lies in some, as yet, undeveloped area in the solar, aqua or magnetic realm.
For now however the debate will be played out in two arguments. Nuclear power says that it is clean power that will not fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses, which, whether we believe in global warming or not, are still very bad for our health. Fossil fuel says that it is relatively safe and will not blow up the state of Pennsylvania or irradiate the Eastern seaboard as could happen in a nuclear accident like Chernobyl. Are, either or both telling the truth?
Not really but let’s take a look, first at nuclear power. Nuclear power plants will not fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gasses. We have tested them and we can safely say that their carbon emissions are almost non-existent. They could, however, in the event of an accident, fill it with radiation clouds that would have a more immediate deadly effect than any greenhouse gasses produced so far. But what is the danger of such an occurrence? Logic tells us that anything can happen and experience tells us that if it can, it will. So let’s assume that in the next twenty-five years, despite all the safety factors built into all the nuclear generators we erect in this country, there will be at least one major accident. So we have to calculate how much damage is done from this accident and what the general ramifications are for the entire country will be. The worst nuclear accident on record was Chernobyl so we must look to it as our example, since nothing in this country, so far, has reached that level of catastrophe.
On the other side we have oil, coal and gas technologies. Established evidence exists that the use of oil & coal pollutes the atmosphere and in some cases, the body of the planet and is a constant threat for smaller than nuclear catastrophes. I refer here to such occurrences as the Exxon Valdes spill and the BP explosion, various mine collapses and the pollution and destruction of eco-systems throughout huge sections of our country’s coastline or runoff areas connected to mining operations. There is also the policy of slicing off the tops of mountains to cheaply extract the coal under them.
Gas is a cleaner burning fuel but the acquisition of gas can be as environmentally unfriendly as anything connected to oil or coal. I refer to the practice known as fracting, the technology by which we currently extract gas from many sections of the world but especially the northeast of the United States and by which we inject chemicals and water into the earth to create fractures that allow the gas to be harvested. This procedure pollutes ground water and creates a foundation of enlarged fissures, that are thought to increase the possibility earthquakes.
Okay, so neither solution is a walk in the park but until we come up with something better, and we really must, it would be in our national interest to pick one.
I did some research on this and discovered that the radiation poisoning and subsequent cancer and other diseases that were the result of Chernobyl, killed about 10,000 people in the twenty-year period after the accident. I also did some research on the effects of air pollution and the subsequent, lung cancer, emphysema, heart problems, diabetes, etc., from coal mining operations in this country and found that we have a death rate of about the same number, 10,000, only in this case it’s every year.
The obvious conclusion is that we would have to have a nuclear disaster every year just to equal the health damage done by the use of coal in any one year. I didn’t come up with any figures on the number of deaths caused every year by carcinogens released by the use of oil, I guess because it is difficult to separate the oil pollutants from the coal pollutants in the atmosphere but even if we divide the coal numbers and give oil half we will still see an overwhelmingly more dangerous threat than exists with nuclear.
Of course the big argument that exists for the use of oil and coal is that they are far cheaper than nuclear or solar or anything else we have come up with so far. Well, that’s true if you only consider the cost of delivery but the reality is that there are far more and far greater costs involved than just delivery. I refer, of course, to the cost of health care for those afflicted by the myriad forms of pollution caused by the use of oil and coal. Think of the costs associated with the care of 10,000 dying and God knows how many sick people every year. It’s astronomical. Add that to the cost of delivery for oil and coal and you will see that nuclear is not only less polluting but far cheaper too and the same goes for the alternatives currently being developed.
After looking at both situations I have come down on the side of nuclear technology, based partly on the assumption (I already know about assuming) that the technology will continue to improve, moving the catastrophic occurrence further and further into the future, thereby giving us time to develop new technologies using the aforementioned sun, wind, water and magnets because one of them or some, as yet, unknown technology must surely be the final answer. The fact that the problems of fossil fuels are already upon us and in such volume as to be destroying the planet without need of catastrophic accident, although the two oil incidents were pretty catastrophic, is a large determining factor in my leanings.
The debate will go on. Hopefully we will use our proven problem solving capabilities to come up with a solution that will obviate the problems of fossil and nuclear before one or both destroy us. That will not happen, however, if the Right, in its blind rush to alleviate the deficit without raising taxes on the rich, is successful in cutting off funds that are necessary for research and development.