Getting Rid of Some of the Myths About Nuclear Power

Many people (particularly in NZ) are firmly against nuclear power because of a lot of misconceptions (and some valid points) that most people seem to hold. I had to do an essay on whether or not nuclear power can be considered a "green" energy source for a stupid assignment for a stupid course, and I found a lot of interesting facts (thanks Wikipedia and your hundreds upon hundreds (literally) of sources at the bottom of each page). Here are some of them:

- A coal power plant releases approximately 100 times the radiation of a nuclear power plant of the same capacity. This is because uranium and thorium are natural byproducts of coal burning.

- In 1982, coal burning in the US released approximately 155 times as much radiation into the atmosphere as the Three Mile Islands meltdown incident.

- The amount of radiation a person living within 50 miles of a nuclear power station receives from the power station is about 0.04% of what they receive from cosmic background radiation.

- France has the cleanest air of any industrialised European nation. This is considered to be a direct result of the fact that most of its power comes from nuclear power plants, so it doesnt have the polluting coal and oil power plants that other countries have.

- Nuclear power is FAR more efficient than solar / wind / hydro power. A single nuclear reactor (and a typical power plant has several reactors) normally produces about 1500MW of power. A typical-sized solar power station produces 5 - 20MW of power, a typical single wind turbine produces less than 5MW of power, and a typical hydroelectric dam (at least in NZ) produces several hundred MW of power.

- Solar and wind power require vast amounts of barren land in order to function. Apparently, in order to meet the world's energy needs with solar power alone, we'd have to cover 10% of the planet in solar panels. Hydro power requires flooding (and destroying) half a river valley (upstream of the dam) and drying out (and destroying) the river below the dam. Nuclear power requires a power plant.

- Nuclear power does produce radioactive solid waste. However some of this waste can be reprocessed for reuse in the reactor, while the rest can be treated to reduce its period of dangerousness to several hundred years, and buried deep below ground. Whether or not this is a good idea is still not known, but new technologies have been, are being, and will be discovered that reduce the harmfulness of radioactive waste.

- The planet has enough uranium to last us another 100 years using today's technology. However most of the planet's uranium is inaccessible to us at the moment, because its too expensive to extract it. If ways were found to extract it, we would have a reliable source of fuel for a reliable source of power for a long time to come (probably thousands of years).

- The major downside of nuclear power is that it is hideously expensive to set up (though not to run). While a single nuclear power plant would instantly solve all of New Zealand's energy problems for a long time to come, the fact is we simply can't afford the cost of setting one up.

So ponder on that. Nuclear power is not necessarily the spawn of Satan. While the effects of a meltdown would completely obliterate New Zealand, the chances of that happening are next to zero - and we (at least us Aucklanders) are used to living in a danger zone that has next to zero chances of killing us all - after all, Auckland is built on 50 something volcanoes in an active volcanic field. Adding a nuclear power plant to that is hardly dicing with death.