If we can’t afford oil...

Andrew Kenny debunks the myth that nuclear power is inherently dangerous or bad for the environment – and hails a surge of new nuclear construction around the world

The immense advantages of nuclear power come from nature, not from man. The nuclear force is by far the strongest force in nature, so that a very small amount of material can provide a very large amount of energy. This means that nuclear power causes the least disturbance to the environment (or, in the new jargon, has the ‘smallest footprint’) and can be most easily controlled. This helps explain the extraordinarily good safety record of nuclear power. As we stand on the threshold of a large worldwide nuclear expansion, it is well to know that nature has also ensured that nuclear power will be sustainable for the life of our planet.

We get all of our energy from two stars. One is the Sun, a second-generation star, which shines upon us, brings wind and rain, and through photosynthesis made all the plants that have fossilised into coal, oil and gas. The other is the Sun’s mother. She was a big mother, a first-generation star, and she died in the supernova explosion that made all of our heavy elements and scattered into space the debris that eventually condensed into our Sun and planets. We are made of that debris and so are the enormous amounts of uranium and thorium in the Earth, which heats her from within through radioactive decay. A minuscule fraction of this uranium provides 16 per cent of the world’s electricity through nuclear power stations.

Nuclear power can not only supply an increasing share of our electricity safely, cleanly, economically and sustainably, but it can also provide heat, including high-temperature heat, for desalination of water, chemical production, manufacture of synthetic fuels (such as petrol and diesel from coal and natural gas), hydrogen production (through thermo-chemical reactions) and winning of oil from tar sands.

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Herbert Thornton

September 24th, 2008 1:24am Report this comment

What a pleasure it is to read common sense about nuclear power. The faster this resource is expanded the better and the sooner we will be rid both of the pollution caused by petrol powered vehicles and other burners of oil products - not to mention our consumption of oil being the source of huge funding for people like Osama bin Laden and their bloodthirsty, medieval ambitions.

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