This year’s G8 summit will be held next month in Toyako, Japan. A major part of the agenda will be to discuss the implementation of “green” energy sources in order to cut greenhouse gases and reduce the world’s “addiction” to oil. I hope the alternative of nuclear energy gets a fair amount of attention in this debate. It is time for the citizens of the industrial world to abandon the complex that nuclear energy is a volatile and dangerous form of energy, and embrace its numerous positive aspects.
Here’s a few:
1. It is cheap. It’s one of the cheapest forms of energy. (2 cents per kilowatt hour in the US)
2. It is much safer than the alternatives. The Three Mile Island incident was actually a success story, because the containment structure actually prevented a radiation leak. The Chernoblye accident was a consequence of primitive technology with a reactor with no containment vessel! A containment vessel should be able to withstand an extremely powerful impacts.
Coal mining is far more dangerous. There are about 5,000 coal mine deaths a year world-wide.
3. Nuclear waste can be recycled.
This will be a key opportunity for Japan to promote the environmental benefits of nuclear energy. Not only is Japan associated with being a green conscious country, but it is also the third largest producer of nuclear energy in the world, next to the US, and France.
The Japan Steel Works’ services (株式会社日本製鋼所) are in great demand owing to its role as the only manufacturer in the world able to manufacture the central part of a large capacity nuclear reactor’s pressure vessel in a single piece.
Japan has also introduced a reprocessing system in which plutonium is never separated from uranium. This new technology will prevent rouge and terrorist organizations from developing nuclear weapons.
For more details, I recommend you read an article by Patrick Moore in the Washington Post.
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