Are You Afraid of Nuclear Power?

After the huge nuclear scare in Japan caused by overheating reactor, a slight panic ensued in America about how safe our own nuclear power plants were. Surely, many today are questioning nuclear power thanks to the recent media hype. The Surgeon General is even recommending that U.S. residents buy iodide to protect themselves from the threat of thyroid cancer. No wonder Americans are worried about nuclear power.

What many are forgetting is the fact that multiple nuclear plants in Japan stood up to the 9.0 earthquake, one of greater force than they were designed for, with no problems. The problem was that the cooling system, powered by electric pumps, quit as soon as the tsunami struck and the power grid failed. At the same time, the flood waters had also rendered the diesel powered back-up generators useless. Thus, the cooling system ceased to operate and the water inside quickly overheated and boiled off.

The United States Regulatory Commission had already identified the failure of diesel generators as an impending threat for causing a nuclear accident way back in 1990, and preventative measures were taken. In Japan, had the generators been in a higher location, they probably wouldn’t have been overtaken by the flood waters and could have prevented the overheating.

It is easy to see why Japan’s nuclear situation has many doubting nuclear power, but it is important to remember that the solution is not to run away from nuclear energy and sink millions more into alternative energies like wind power, which barely reduced greenhouse emissions due to the fact that the wind turbines are backed up by fossil fuel plants for when there is too little wind.

The United States government is already attempting to make fossil fuel energy sources like oil, natural gas, and coal look bad by taxing them to death. These means of power generation will become so expensive compared to green energy that consumers and businesses are forced to take part in the green energy movement. This already happened in the UK and Germany and now that they rely heavily on wind power, they are facing a huge electricity shortage.  

last time modified: July 15, 2011, 2:55 p.m.