Nuclear Power Needs to be Part of the Solution

For over 35 years, scientists have been telling us that our greenhouse gas emissions would cause climate change and that would lead to a climate crisis. Welcome to where we’re at now: the very start of a climate catastrophe that will only get worse. Had we listened and taken heed then, our present difficulties would be greatly reduced, and it would be much easier to further mitigate the problem. Perhaps we should listen to these scientists when they tell us that we now have to take even more drastic action to prevent complete disaster in years to come.

The fact is, we have to get to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. The burning of fossil fuels is the primary concern. Of course, it isn’t going to happen overnight, but zero needs to be the goal. We can get a great deal of the way with renewables. Wind and solar energy sources are clean and proven and must be further pursued. But these alone won’t get us all the way to zero. Fission-based nuclear energy (our current technology) has improved significantly; it’s now much safer, more efficient, and there is far less waste. It has the potential to take us the rest of the way.

In a Washington Post article, Jonah Goldberg argues that nuclear power must be part of any fight to take climate change seriously. Although Mr. Goldberg is wrong to criticize climate activists and politicians and their “periodic climate confabs that this is our ‘last chance’ to act or to save the planet” (they’re trying to save the world for our grandchildren, so cut them some slack), he is right to say that nuclear power needs to be a major part of the solution.

Nuclear power is safe, cheap, and carbon-free. It doesn’t cause any pollution in the usual sense. But like any source of energy, it’s not without problems. One is that no one wants them in their backyards, and partly as a result, they’re expensive and time-consuming to build. Another is that the source materials and fuel must be mined, and that’s a dirty, polluting business. Finally, there’s the problem of what to do with the waste.

Thanks to new technology, the waste from nuclear power is greatly reduced. But there’s still some; where do you put it? Mr. Goldberg is critical of President Obama for shutting the “perfectly safe” Yucca Mountain waste repository. That safety is debatable, but the current situation - nuclear waste is stored at more than 100 sites around the country – isn’t better. Other alternatives, such as recycling and other forms of storage, must be considered more seriously.

Regardless, there just aren’t any other solutions to climate change that will currently work for us. Think of it this way: nuclear power: it’s not just for Homer Simpson anymore.