In my opinion, Nuclear Power Plants are not "green energy" at all, neither is it cheap in any way - this myth has been held up for decades, but , as I believe, is thoroughly untrue, because if you add the CO2 and costs for
- the building of a powerplant
- the correct maintenance of a power plant
- the mining and transport of the radioactive material
- safe storage of nuclear waste
there is nothing green left about it.
As far as I know, to make a powerplant cost-neutral (the moment it will actually produce energy after all these investments) is after 20 years, because building a safe plant has that much cost - which is the moment that it should get a new coating. If you summarize the real costs (that have in terms of CO2 emissions been highly disregarded and in terms of costs mostly covered by tax money i.e. governments), natural gas/oil is about as green.
Additional there are more than enough risks available.
For example
- nuclear waste is dropped into the deep sea (and who knows when or where it will emerge again)
- the mining is partly done by children ( a way to make things cheaper of course)
- the reason that we still maintain this nightmare is, as I believe, the strong lobby. The nuclear lobby is, as far as I know, closely related to the weapon lobby.
So, I am asking - why do so many people still consider this nightmare as green?
It is so great question, but increasing numbers of people with the daily growth of demand on energy makes it really difficult to depend on traditional resources of energy, like oil and even those renewable and clean types, which still in need for more research to increase their efficiency... Developed countries use this type of energy to produce energy and to weapon themselves,,, who knows, what politically they tend to do with this "green" type of energy in the future ?
Hola Djamel,
I know that there is actually a rather strong movement of Anti-Nuclear Power in Japan, developping recently.
Hola Mohammad,
I believe there are other ways out of the energy crisis.
One thing we all can do, though is to actually start saving energy. There is such a great waste of Energy happening in the industrialised countries that "would not be amiss". I also believe that we can have enough energy for everyone if people manage their energy usage in a better way.
In terms of energy, lots of small drops can fill a bucket ... and another bucket ...
Of course, this will not completely save the energy problem - but partly!
Due to political lobby of the nuclear lobby (and the gov't not comparing like with like re life cycle as you mention, leaving out all the pre&post elements for nuclear)….
CO2-Emissions of Nuclears are still lower than the ones of a coal powerplant. I guess that's why.
Sovacool B. (2008): Valuing the greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power: A critical survey. In: Energy Policy, vol. 36:8, 2950–2963.
You are right to point out all the problems, but when the nuclear option became a power plant there were no other options for energy generation at the time.
Uranium mining is very costly today because the deposits are no longer on the surface or shallow (not many children involved anymore).
I don't think any country would like to be attacked by nuclear missiles after the fiasco of the Depleted Uranium weapons of the late 1990's, so they are not in great demand today (probably).
However, there are many safe nuclear plants operating around the world producing a lot of power with CO2 emissions far lower than those of the fossil fuels. If there was an alternative -but it is way off in the future - I am sure they will be discontinued slowly.
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