“Because we stopped building large “base-load” [nuclear, etc] power plants more than a decade ago, some regions of the U.S. face potentially damaging power shortages. Excess capacity in the grid system is falling, and some experts now foresee possible cascading blackouts or brownouts. Our own energy bills are not immune from these effects.”

Nuclear power is “Clean, Safe, and Affordable.” By combining the use of nuclear and renewable energies (wind, wave, hydro, etc) we can achieve energy independence. Americans, we can win this battle. We can stop our addiction to fossil fuels. We can clean up our environment. And—we can do it in an affordable manor.

Will we?

Radical Environmental groups not only oppose all forms of renewable energy (see the information on our homepage), but the also oppose nuclear and LNG. Someone needs to explain to me what energy form we can use, if we cannot use the above mentioned? Nuclear energy is needed. Show your support for affordable, renewable, and clean energy: sign our petition.

According to Robert J. McTaggart, assistant professor of physics at South Dakota State University in Brookings:

Recently, several environmental leaders have contended that a combination of renewable energy sources and conservation alone can meet all future energy needs while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to pre-1990 levels. Certainly, conservation is worthwhile: Efforts to eliminate the waste in energy use and develop more energy-efficient technologies can reduce the need for more electricity-generating capacity. Recent experience in California is proof of that.

Since 1990, California’s economy has shown steady growth, but energy use has been flat. Much of the credit for this achievement goes to the state’s electric utilities, which conducted energy audits of thousands of homes and office buildings and offered energy-savings through time-of-day pricing and other incentives to use less electricity through demand-side management. The utilities also installed solar, geothermal and wind energy systems. But they found out they would not be able to get by with conservation and renewable energy sources alone. San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said it would need more nuclear power to meet projected growth in electricity demand.

Because we stopped building large “base-load” power plants more than a decade ago, some regions of the U.S. face potentially damaging power shortages. Excess capacity in the grid system is falling, and some experts now foresee possible cascading blackouts or brownouts. Our own energy bills are not immune from these effects.

Addressing the growing demand for electricity - more than 25 percent by 2030 given average economic conditions, according to a June 2008 Energy Information Administration report - only with fossil fuels will result in additional fuel price increases and unwanted foreign entanglements. On top of this, a diverse mix of clean-energy sources will be required to satisfy potential caps on carbon dioxide emissions by Congress. Of the energy sources currently available, nuclear power is best suited to simultaneously address our national security needs, reduce our carbon emissions and meet the future energy demands of the nation.

Today, nuclear power accounts for 19 percent of the nation’s electricity and 74 percent of the carbon-free power generation. Nuclear power is clean, safe and affordable. Last year, the cost of producing nuclear-generated electricity, on average, was 1.7 cents per kilowatt-hour. By comparison, it cost 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour to provide electricity from coal, 6.8 cents from natural gas and 10.2 cents from oil. The performance of nuclear plants today is vastly improved over what it had been 25 years ago. In 2007, the 104 U.S. nuclear plants, on average, were producing electricity 92 percent of the time compared to 56 percent of the time in 1979. Annual production of electrical power has increased from 255 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity to more than 800 billion kilowatt-hours - with the same number of plants.

One argument many have made against nuclear power is the production of spent fuel - aka nuclear waste. Spent fuel today is stored safely and securely at nuclear plant sites until it can be transported to a central repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The volume of waste produced by nuclear power is tiny compared with what is produced by fossil fuels, and heavy metals and dust from fossil fuel wastes are more likely to get into our air and water than anything produced by nuclear power.

“Nuclear waste” is somewhat of a misnomer: Approximately 90 percent of today’s spent nuclear fuel can be (and probably should be) reprocessed, reused and converted into electricity.

…Without nuclear power…it will be difficult to achieve energy security and reduce our emissions of carbon and heavy metals without seriously affecting our standard of living.

Following this, according to the New York Times:

The United States could have 40 or 50 new reactors by 2030, said Richard J. Myers, vice president of policy development at the Energy Institute. But “this assumes the first four or eight just go very nicely and very smoothly,” he said.

Renewable energy is coming. The fossil fuel addiction will be broken.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 8:47 am and is filed under Energy, Nuclear. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.