Why We Need Nuclear Power
Nuclear power is a touchy subject among those who are calling for a clean energy revolution. Its supporters emphasize that it emits no carbon and does not create air pollution. Its opponents point out that the United States has no good way of getting rid of the waste and that disasters at nuclear power plants are devastating. In terms of 2020 candidates, Bernie Sanders regards nuclear power as an unsafe alternative to fossil fuels and vowed during his campaign to ban construction of new nuclear power plants. Elizabeth Warren stated during her campaign that the United States should wean itself off of nuclear energy by 2035. Andrew Yang championed nuclear power, especially the use of thorium as a fuel rather than uranium (although some of his statements about thorium have been proven false).
Joe Biden supports nuclear power, but his stance on it is quietly tucked away in “The Biden Plan to Build a Modern, Sustainable Infrastructure and an Equitable Clean Energy Future.” He believes that it should be used along with renewables to phase out fossil fuels. Biden also understands the inherent risks and expenses of the huge nuclear power plants that we have now, which is why he plans to convene a climate-focused Advanced Research Projects Agency to investigate how to deal with the major problems surrounding nuclear power.
What’s my opinion on the issue? Fairly similar to Biden’s. While nuclear power’s inherent risks do concern me, I do think that nuclear is an important part of phasing out fossil fuels, at least until renewable energy sources account for more than roughly 18% of total US energy production. At the moment, the issue with renewables is that they aren’t very efficient. Last year, nuclear energy had a capacity factor (which measures how often a plant works at maximum capacity out of the year) of 93.5% in 2019, while solar power had a capacity factor of 24.5% and wind 34.8%. Like Biden, I understand the risks of nuclear power and I don’t have any clear-cut solutions to its problems. But I also know that if our country completely phased out nuclear power, renewables will not fill that gap; they’re just not efficient enough. Basically, we would be reducing nuclear waste (which is dangerous and is an immense problem in the United States, but I’ll get to that later) in exchange for a 30% rise in fossil fuel usage, which will give more power to fossil fuel executives and put more lives at risk from air-pollution-related deaths. To put this into perspective, a 2007 study based on energy production in Europe showed that coal and natural gas, the two fossil fuels that would assume the role of nuclear, kill about 330 times more people and 38 times more people, respectively, than nuclear power, in terms of accidents and deaths from air pollution.
Besides not producing any air pollution, nuclear energy is also carbon-neutral, which is a big plus considering that the Earth is pretty much on fire. Right now, the Earth is on track to warm about 3 to 5 degrees Celsius by 2050. That small temperature increase might not sound like much, but we’re set up for a catastrophe: violent hurricanes, extreme heatwaves, species extinction, mass starvation, and a lot of fatalities that could be avoided. That’s where we’re headed, and scientists say that we have until 2030 to cut our emissions in half. While renewables must be a part of the solution, nuclear energy will provide us with an efficient way to ensure a habitable planet for the generations to come.
But what about the waste? As I mentioned before, nuclear waste is a problem in the United States. There are 90 metric tons of highly radioactive waste stored in outdoor areas sequestered off from the rest of the world, and this number will continue to increase. The current storage situation is problematic because it makes the waste vulnerable to extreme weather events and could eventually encroach on areas where people live. There’s some hope, though. France, which gets about 70% of its electricity from nuclear power, built a nuclear waste reprocessing plant several decades ago. This plant turns between 94% and 96% of spent fuel into a “mixed oxide fuel” which can then be used as nuclear power again. Though there have been concerns about the plutonium in spent fuel being used for nuclear weapons rather than reprocessing, this has never happened. The benefits, in fact, far outweigh the negatives. Reprocessing turns waste back into fuel, which reduces the proliferation of nuclear material in the environment and also the amount of uranium that needs to be mined. Meanwhile, Finland has found another solution: It built a deep underground repository for nuclear waste called Onkalo, in which experts say that 100 years-worth of nuclear waste can be safely stored for 100,000 years. Part of Onkalo’s success is due to the trust that the village surrounding the repository has in the company overseeing the project.
The United States has tried something similar outside of Las Vegas — the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository — but has struggled to get the project off the ground for over 40 years. The community involvement that ensured Finland’s success with Onkalo was never considered at Yucca Mountain. Early on in this saga in 1987, Congress silenced the concerns of the surrounding communities and announced that the Department of Energy would only consider Yucca Mountain for the repository. This set the stage for endless protestations from Nevadans against the repository’s construction. In short, a long-term storage solution in the United States is possible, but we have to take a different approach than what we’ve been using for 40 years.
There’s one more argument against nuclear power that I want to touch on: nuclear disasters. In 1986, one of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine exploded, killing 31 workers immediately and many others afterward. Radioactive material then spread to the surrounding areas and caused an increase in thyroid cancer. Obviously, there is no getting around the fact that this was a terrible accident. However, the Chernobyl reactor used an obsolete and heavily flawed design. Countries that take care of nuclear power responsibly, such as France, Finland, and Sweden, have never had a serious accident. And when you look at the dangers of air pollution, water contamination, explosions, and all of the climate-change-related disasters that are very much in our future, nuclear starts to seem like an essential tool until renewables are invested in on a huge scale (which, under Biden, may not be that long).
As a country and a planet, we’re fast approaching one of the most monumental deadlines in history, and we’ve already taken too many extensions. Even if we want a more perfect solution than nuclear power, the chance to do so is long gone. This November, we must turn everything around.
