Is Nuclear Energy The Answer To Fossil Fuels?

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Nuclear energy is held up as the obvious successor to fossil fuels as a solution for producing base load mainstream electricity. But is nuclear a viable long term solution or just another quick fix?

There is no doubt that fossil fuels have significant problems associated with their use. Peak Oil production will be the first to hit home. With an ever growing demand for oil production will eventually be unable to keep up and may have already passed into decline. More serious than this is the issue of pollution and the possibility of serious and practically irreversible climate change resulting from pumping endless amounts of Carbon Dioxide and other products into the atmosphere.

So how does Nuclear energy stand up as an alternative to fossil fuels in terms of a sustainable source of electricity production? There are several concerns about Nuclear energy that have given it a bad name. Reactor problems such as those that caused the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents, along with several others, are far fewer in number relative to the scale of electricity production than compared to casualties in the mining sector associated with oil and coal.

Storage of Nuclear waste is also largely an issue of the past with technology now available to store Nuclear waste in solid form, reducing virtually to zero the possibility of leakage, ground water contamination and so forth.

Weapons grade Plutonium-239 is another unpleasant byproduct of Nuclear energy. Enrichment of the fuel source is necessary to make it economically viable and this is where the Plutonium is produced. The use of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Second World War has forever given nuclear weapons a bad name. It is worth considering though that production of these weapons is a political issue and just because they can be made does not mean we should ignore the possible benefits of Nuclear energy technology.

But perhaps the most significant issue is that Nuclear energy is itself based on a non-renewable resource of Uranium. This fact alone should be enough reason for us not to place too much stock in it as a long term energy source. Given that worldwide energy use is increasing continuously and will do so far into the future, it is easy to see that Nuclear energy will one day face its own peak of production.

Surely it is not responsible to replace fossil fuels with another energy source that is just as doomed to fail in the future. Supporters of Nuclear power say it is the solution we need to reduce emissions immediately, and while it would do this we need to be looking further into the future.

To make correct, responsible decisions that take into account not only our own welfare but also that of our children and their children, we need to adopt wide scale renewable energy in the form of Solar and Wind power. These proven technologies have the capacity to meet our energy demands TODAY with no adverse future effects, assuming they are implemented in an intelligent way.

Governments around the world need to start making intelligent decisions that benefit both us and the generations to come. A secure, clean energy source is obviously the way forward so large scale renewable energy production must be implemented immediately.

Get more information about Nuclear energy, coal and oil by visiting the Fossil Fuels section of Roger Vanderlely’s website. You will also find information on possible energy developments such as the Bakken Oil Field.