Penn, I. (2022, July 5). Nuclear power gets a new push in the U.S., winning converts. Retrieved
August 4, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/05/business/energy-environment/nuclear-energy-politics.html
The Biden Administration proposed a fund April 19, 2022 where 6 billion in funding is needed to maintain nuclear plants and 2.5 billion is needed for creating new plants. While support in government for nuclear plants is increasing, the debate among the science community remains mixed. The former president of the American Nuclear Society argues that funding needs to be pushed because wind and solar alone cannot bring the U.S. to zero emissions. Other nuclear engineers argue that nuclear power plants are just “uneconomical nukes” because of the high costs of maintenance and catastrophic failures that may occur.
The article sheds some light on the mixed beliefs of the government pushing for nuclear power. On one hand, proponents like Gundren argue that there is a massive problem of building facilities for nuclear waste making sure none of it leaks and destroys the nearby environment. Furthermore, governments have been careless with nuclear power plants, which had led to many nuclear disasters like the Fukushima meltdown, causing irrevocable damage to the environment and fish populations nearby.On the other hand, many argue that nuclear power is one of the best ways to get “clean power” to reduce emissions and thus find sources of energy that do not contribute to climate change. This article showed me the complexity of incorporating nuclear power as clean energy in a large-scale form because the consequences of failure are enormous and horrific, yet the benefits serve to reduce damage being done to the environment. One argument brought up in the article is the usage of maintenance and construction for nuclear power plants. With such a high cost of spending, how would we know that all of it is being used to make sure that the plants do not fail? History has shown that when it comes to nuclear power plants, safety features can be overlooked, and maintenance can be half-heartedly done to reduce the cost of operations, thus leading to a disaster of some kind. I think that if nuclear power were to be incorporated to reduce CO2 emissions at a large scale, people need to see where the money for funding is going, and how the nuclear plants are being thoroughly maintained.
You’ve got one of my favorite topics, Datis. Nuclear is super nuanced and you captured that. One thing I would push back on though is that you mention there have been many nuclear disasters in your follow up paragraph. That’s not exactly true. The possibility is there, but they haven’t happened with really the exception of Chernobyl and Fukushima. Two.
It is interesting that Biden is pushing for more nuclear. Do you think this is a viable path forward considering everything you know, and the challenges of renewables and our carbon issues?
Great post, Datis. (Try to limit your follow up paragraph to 100 words though- tighten up.)
Thank you for the reply! As of now, I do think Biden’s push for nuclear energy is a viable path for carbon issues, but not for renewables. I think that renewable energy technologies need more focus to be properly developed and give us more energy so that we could have cleaner and more reliable sources of energy.
I think that its really interesting to see how the debate on utilizing nuclear energy borders on the ultimate risk of radiation contamination. Perhaps we can limit the possibility of nuclear disasters through more regulations, being that the only two major disasters, Fukushima and Chernobyl, were influenced by human error?
I think this is the path to go, and those regulations need to be heavily enforced. Outside government agencies need to check and ensure the safety of these plants. Thank you for responding!