Links: Power Generation - Any form of power generation involves risks. Nuclear Q&A - Answers to common questions: What about radiation? What about waste? Why couldn't Chernobyl happen in the U.S.? Electric Cars - The personal transportation of the future. Reducing Impact - Are you concerned about the inherent dangers in any power generation technology? Try consuming less! The Evils of Coal - If you want to get steamin' mad about a power generation technology, try coal. Coal Power kills more people each year than Nuclear power ever has, worldwide, including Chernobyl. Clean Coal Power? - visit the Department of Energy's research page on making coal power cleaner. Greenpeace's anti-nuclear-power site Visit the U.S. Department of Energy's Information Amministration for more data, projections, and reports than you ever truly wanted!

Nuclear Power: The Environmentally Responsible Choice This page - and the linked pages which accompany it - explain why Nuclear Power is not the evil demon it has been made out to be. In fact, in many ways it is superior to any other existing power generation technology. This page is a quick summary - for more detail, click on any of the links referenced to the left. My main problem with existing summaries of this topic, such as PBS/Frontline and Yahoo (both of these are excellent, BTW, and well worth a visit), is that they both discuss Nuclear Power in a vacuum, they don't address the question: If you are not in favor of Nuclear Power, what large-scale power generation technology are you in favor of?   The Need For Power: In the U.S.A., per-capita consumption has been rising by a percent or two annually for a couple of centruies. In addition, our population is growing - the rate has slowed in recent decades, but we're still adding to it. As a result, our energy consumption climbs by a couple percent annually (link coming). If current consumption rates continue, we will definitely need more power plants in the future - what type will they be?   Cost / Benefit: In order to judge the relative merit of any power generation technology, we need to weigh the cost (the direct monetary cost, the environmental impact, and the cost in human lives) against the benefit. There are no power generation technologies that are cost-free.   Coal Power: In these pages, we'll constantly draw comparisons to coal power plants. In the U.S., about 56% of the total available grid power comes from coal power plants (although this link gives 65%). As we'll see, Coal is easily hundreds of times worse than Nuclear Power, as measured by almost any reasonable metric - it even puts out more radiation!. And yet, Coal Power Plants draw no angry crowds of protestors and they are seldom called out by environmental groups. So: Coal Power Plants apparently return enough benefit compared to their cost that they are considered acceptable. This means if we can show that a different technology returns more benefit for less cost, it should be considered acceptable as well.   Visit a modern coal power plant Clean(er) power from Coal?   Density: Nuclear Power is good because it is dense. Dense in this context means that the energy is stored in a concentrated form. The raw material (uranium ore) for Nuclear Power is thousands of times more dense in energy than Coal. This means we need thousands of times fewer people to mine the ore, thousands of times fewer railroad cars to transport the ore, and we generate thousands of times less waste. It also means we need to handle the waste responsibly since it is concentrated. Visit Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant.   Non-Gaseous Waste: If you got to chose the form (solid, liquid, or gas) of your waste, you'd pick solid. Your second choice would be liquid. Your absolute last choice would be gas. Why? It's relatively easy to store a solid. Storing a liquid is harder, but still feasible. Storing a gas is a nightmare - not only is it usually far less dense than a liquid or a solid (so you need far more storage tanks), but it is more difficult to contain, and more vulnerable to leaks. Well, we have good news here: The primary wastes from Nuclear Power plants are solid and liquid, and they can be stored in relative safety. The primary wastes from Coal Power plants are gaseous - there's no good way to store that, so we just belch it out into the atmosphere, increasing both acid rain and your and my risk of dying from respiratory illness. Contrary to popular belief, nonsmokers do not have a zero chance of dying from respiratory illness - thanks largely to Coal Power Plants and Internal Combustion Engines. Coal power is responsible for at least 20,000 deaths/year on the U.S. alone. (for more info, see also the Nuclear Q&A) Nuclear power is responsible for such a small amount that it cannot be statistically measured - almost certainly under 1,000/year in the U.S., and probably under a tenth of that!   Radiation: The biggest public concern over Nuclear Power is that both the uranium ore and the waste are radioactive. In fact, they are so radioactive that a people living next door to a Nuclear Power Plant can get almost as much radiation as if they lived next to a Coal Power Plant. That's right, Coal Power Plants emit more radiation than Nuclear Power Plants (more information). Worse, the uranium and thorium emitted from a coal plant are gaseous, and vented to the atmosphere. They would get almost a fiftieth as much radiation annually as if they had their teeth X-rayed during a dental exam, or flew on a intercontinental airline trip. If you're concerned about the radiation you absorb living next door to a Nuclear Power Plant, I can logically assume you never come close to a coal power plant, never fly in airplanes, never sunbathe, and never have your teeth X-Rayed. ....right? And certainly you would never consider (for slightly different reasons) eating a peanut butter sandwich! And if you do live next door to a nuclear power plant, and you move to get away from it, you'd better not increase your commute distance by more than about 125 yards, or your increased mortality from driving will outweigh any benefit. Take a look at your total radiation exposure. The line labeled "nuclear fuel cycle" is the average radiation exposure from all aspects of nuclear power. As advertised, it is tiny.   Nuclear Waste: Much of the concern over nuclear power revolves around the nuclear waste. Nuclear waste is a benefit of nuclear power, not a detractor. The fact that the waste is so concentrated that we are able to feasibly store it all is wonderful. Combustion techniques (coal, natural gas, oil, gas, wood, etc) generate so much waste relative to the power they produce that there is no way to store it at all, so they just belch it out into the atmosphere, causing acid rain, global warming, respiratory failure, and lung cancer. Another concern voiced by environmental groups is that the waste takes tens of thousands of years to break down. This is true - but it overlooks a major point: Waste that lasts for tens of thousands of years is superior to waste that lasts forever, and that is just what happens with much of the chemical release from chemical combustion power plants.   Chernobyl: A Chernobyl-style event could not happen in the United States, Western Europe, or Japan. People who protest Nuclear Power because of the Chernobyl tragedy are misinformed. The design of the Chernobyl plant was a dangerous older design that the Western World abandoned decades ago, for precisely the reasons that Chernobyl failed. See the Nuclear Q&A for more info.   Summary: Nuclear Power, compared to Coal Power, is easier to mine, easier to transport, emits less radiation, makes less waste, and generates more power when processed. Nuclear Power has killed fewer people in all of history than Coal Power does annually in the U.S.A. alone.   If you have questions, comments, praise, or criticism for these pages, I'd love to hear it. Send mail here.