Word: nuclearization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That's debatable, to say the least. There's no question that a nuclear plant, once it's up and running, produces comparatively little carbon dioxide - a British government report last year found that a nuclear plant emits just 2% to 6% of the CO2 per kilowatt-hour as natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel - but nuclear energy still seems like the power of yesterday. After a burst of construction between the 1950s and late 1970s, a new nuclear power plant hasn't come on line in the U.S. since 1996, and some nations like Germany are looking to phase...
...Amory Lovins - a veteran energy expert and chairman of the Rocky Mountain Institute - there's a much better green reason to be against nuclear power: economics. Lovins, an environmentalist who is unusually comfortable with numbers, argues in a report released last week that a massive new push for nuclear power doesn't make dollars or cents. In his study, titled "The Nuclear Illusion," he points out that while the red-hot renewable industry - including wind and solar - last year attracted $71 billion in private investment, the nuclear industry attracted nothing. "Wall Street has spoken - nuclear power isn't worth...
...More nuclear subsidies, which many on Capitol Hill are pushing for, won't do the trick either. Lovins notes that the U.S. nuclear industry has received $100 billion in government subsidies over the past half-century, and that federal subsidies now worth up to $13 billion a plant - roughly how much it now costs to build one - still haven't encouraged private industry to back the atomic revival. At the same time, the price of building a plant - all that concrete and steel - has risen dramatically in recent years, while the nuclear workforce has aged and shrunk. Nuclear supporters like...
...nuclear, then which carbon-free energy source will power our post-climate change future? Lovins favors a diverse mix of renewables, integrated to compensate for individual faults - solar for when the wind doesn't blow, and vice versa. He also wants to focus on energy efficiency and micropower, shifting away from the old model of the massive central plant sending out electricity - i.e., your local nuke - in favor of smaller plants, even residence-scale ones, built close to population centers. Reducing carbon emissions, he argues, will be cheaper and safer if we turn away from nuclear in favor of alternatives...
Certainly Lovins is right to argue that the nuclear industry can't compete on the free market on its own terms - or even without the billions in subsidies it already receives. But renewables also receive their share of government largesse - the booming global solar industry wouldn't be anywhere near as hot without a generous German tariff. New research and development might cut atomic costs, just as we hope will happen for alternatives. And the sheer size of the problem facing the global energy industry demands that no solution can be dismissed out of hand. On June 6 the International...