The Nuclear Power Dilemma
Why Nuclear Power when there are more safe and efficient processes?
Clearly because the features/benefits ratio has been sold (or successfully lobbied) to those who make the decisions. Let’s look at them for a moment:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F21584aa5-e15b-43be-ac31-537a5c40a8d0_259x194.jpeg)
Features:
Ever-growing and always underestimated costs
Questionable safety
Old and un-advanced technology
Site-location protests worldwide
Cost per kilowatt hour dependent upon changing market prices
Short, 40 year life-cycle
Massive maintenance costs
An end product fuel-rods disposal issue the world has yet to solve
Uranium-dependent, a scarce and expensive diminishing resource
Benefits:
Not coal, oil or natural gas dependent
Therefore, a cleaner environment
Sounds like a highly dubious tradeoff to me, at a time when technology offers so many better options. As my engineer-brother once said dryly, “it’s a hell of a dangerous way to boil water,” which indeed it is. When these things go wrong, as at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, the results are socially disastro…