Remembering 3/11
Fukushima Revisited: the Question of Nuclear Power
Risk of another nuclear disaster vs. the certainty of global warming
I earned my university degree in Mechanical & Nuclear Engineering. I wanted to devote my career to solving the problem of energy sustainability.
At that time, fission energy was expected to be a part of the solution in the near term, and fusion was the future. Both promised boundless clean energy to replace dirty fossil fuels pumped from autocratic countries in unstable, unfriendly parts of the world.
Even by the time I graduated, nuclear energy had lost its luster. The near disaster of Three Mile Island, not far from my hometown, and the Jane Fonda movie, China Syndrome, alerted Americans that nuclear power wasn’t as safe as promised. Then, about a month before my college graduation, the Chernobyl accident happened.
Suddenly, limitless clean nuclear power looked dangerous and expensive. Increased safety meant higher costs. Power plants generated nuclear waste for which we had no solution. Uranium fuel was mined mostly in the Kazakhstan, Russia, and the other countries of the former Soviet Union, and we see today where that got us. Fusion energy, which was 20 years away in 1980, still remains 20 years away in 2022.
