Reconsidering the Unthinkable

What a difference 30 years can make.

In an era of spiking oil prices and mounting global warming concerns, a growing number of policy makers, public intellectuals and others has developed a newfound appreciation for an energy source once considered almost taboo — nuclear energy.

It’s a far cry from three decades ago when many public figures shied away from any positive mention of this energy source following the Three-Mile Island accident in 1979.

Now prompted by growing concerns about the long-term effects of global warming, many opinion leaders are calling on Congress to set aside more money to fund construction of nuclear power plants.

One public intellectual firmly within the pro-nuclear power camp is Lynn Edward Weaver, president emeritus of the Florida Institute of Technology who explored the issue in an op-ed appearing today in the Orlando-Sentinel.

She observes that electric utilities are hoping to add between four and eight nuclear plants over the next several years — plants that could help the country go a long way toward alleviating the global warming threat. The problem is a lack of funding, something she believes only Congress can solve.

The practice of using subsidies to capitalize on a wider array of energy sources isn’t new, she says, adding that a similar practice already has been followed with oil, gas and coal.

“Wind and solar power exist only because of government subsidies. The main alternative fuel for vehicles — ethanol — is totally a result of tax credits and subsidies.”

Weaver is convinced a stronger commitment to nuclear power is essential for the nation’s national security and environmental requirements.

Equally convinced is Mark Hall, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System renewable energy specialist, who stresses that while the options associated with nuclear energy aren’t perfect, neither is any other alternative.

“There are no perfect solutions,” Hall says. “We’re going to be dealing with problems and problem solving no matter what direction we turn.”

And responding to critics of nuclear power who invoke the memories of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, Hall raises the question: “What did personal computers look like in 1979 (when Three Mile Island occurred)?

The point Hall tries to make is that other types of technology that minimize the risks associated with nuclear power have advanced along with strides in nuclear power in the 30 years since the Three Mile Island accident and in the 22 years since Chernobyl.

“Three Mile Island was before Apple and Windows,” Hall says, adding that in many respects, “we simply weren’t the technological society then that we are now.”

This is significant, Hall says, because it means that these new technologies now enable nuclear plant operators to assess risks and safeguard against them in ways that were scarcely imaginable some 30 years ago.

Hall also believes the sorts of grid-power approaches associated with nuclear power and other renewable sources of energy, such as solar and wind power, offer tremendous opportunities, especially for energy-efficient automobiles.

“We could use a combination of these grid-powered technologies to develop all kinds of automotive technologies,” Hall says, adding that an especially welcome development would be a small-engine biodiesel hybrid that also could be plugged into and recharged by a grid-power system powered by a combination of nuclear, solar and wind energy.

Hall and Weaver aren’t the only renewable energy proponents frustrated by the stalled progress associated with nuclear energy.

Writing last year, erstwhile Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani wondered how the French had pulled so far ahead of the United States, which had pioneered this type of technology.

Roughly 80 percent of the electricity in France is supplied by nuclear energy, while the United States derives only about 20 percent of its electricity from this source — a share that is expected to dwindle even further to about 15 percent unless policymakers can provide more incentives for expanding this energy sector.

Posted by Jim Langcuster at March 31, 2008 04:03 PM