Sustaining Future: Forget Nuclear

from Rocky Mountain Institute

This article analysis the economical fallacy of relying on nuclear power for replacement of carbon-based electricity generation.

The Economist observed in 2001 that “Nuclear power, once claimed to be too cheap to meter, is now too costly to matter”—cheap to run but very expensive to build. Since then, it’s become several-fold costlier to build, and in a few years, as old fuel contracts expire, it is expected to become several-fold costlier to run. Its total cost now markedly exceeds that of other common power plants (coal, gas, big wind farms), let alone the even cheaper competitors described below.

My biggest objection to nuclear power, however, is not just economic. The fact that the spent fuel will need million of years of safe protection is an impossible position for any rational (wo)men to consider the use nuclear power in the first place. No technology, nor political procedure exists to ensure that spent fuel will not be leaked into the environment and hence creating wide-spread radioactive health impacts to all life form.

The article also suggested a solution: micro-generation at end-user locations using a diverse methods and 'negaWatt¹'. This is a video from Greenpeace about distributed power generation