The Case For Nuclear

 

Intro

    While we are all aware that one of the biggest existential threats to society in the long term is climate change, many of us are looking for the best options for offsetting some of the damage already done and proactively preventing what could be done in the future. If in fact one of our goals as a society of environmental pragmatists is to move towards the most efficient source of clean energy then I would argue, we're missing a big opportunity by neglecting the implementation of nuclear energy. While nuclear already accounts for about 20 percent of energy ranging across 28 states in the US, I would say that we should be pushing for much more. 

    Safety

    Obviously the biggest setback in the progression of the nuclear movement is the concern for the safety of nuclear power plants. When "nuclear energy" gets brought up, many people's minds go directly to Chernobyl. This is understandably so considering how, even though it is one of only 2 major incidents (Fukushima) involving nuclear power plants, it was a major catastrophe which caused numerous casualties as well as effected the lives of all those who resided in areas surrounding the plant. This should not be taken lightly, though energy sources like coal, oil, and even hydropower cause more deaths from accidents and air pollution than nuclear. Also, as the engineering behind plants have progressed over the years, plant production has gone up and incident rate has decreased. While solar and wind will likely be the least incident prone in the long run, nuclear is not far behind. While detailed analysis and large scale testing of plants did not really take place until the late 1970's, they have since shown that the worst possible accidents from todays conventional western power plants would not likely cause any drastic public harm. 

Efficiency

    Given that nuclear may still be considered by many to be too dangerous to integrate on a large scale, and other sources of clean energy already exist, why would we take our chances?

To be clear, I'm proposing that we need to integrate more nuclear plants *in addition to* the other key clean sources such as solar and wind. 

As far as pure energy efficiency goes, nuclear has the highest capacity factor of any other energy source by far (for many). This means that "nuclear power plants are producing maximum power more than 92% of the time during the year" as opposed to coal, which sits at about 40% and wind at about 35%. An excerpt from a nuclear article on energy.gov explains the significance of this:

"Why Does This Matter?

A typical nuclear reactor produces 1 gigawatt (GW) of electricity. That doesn’t mean you can simply replace it with a 1 gigawatt coal or renewable plant.

Based on the capacity factors above, you would need almost two coal or three to four renewable plants (each of 1 GW size) to generate the same amount of electricity onto the grid."

Also, while the initial cost of production for nuclear plants is indeed higher than other sources, the year over year energy return in the long term does not even compare. Nuclear by far produces the most energy per invested dollar after only about 5 years. The maintenance required to keep a nuclear plant in production is also far less than that over other sources. This keeps costs low overtime. 

Conclusion

    Although there are still understandable concerns for the further implementation of nuclear plants in the U.S. the fact of the matter is that it is a safe, cost and energy efficient, and underestimated source of clean energy.