What they say about Nuclear Energy

     Past blogs I have posted have been about how great nuclear power is and its benefits, but now it is time to see what other people have to say about nuclear power. Mr. Jeremy Rifkin, author of "The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the World Wide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth" does not believe nuclear energy is what the United States needs to climb out of the energy crisis we are facing. In an article he wrote on "commondreams.com" titled, "Nuclear Energy: Still a Bad Idea," he contends that "nuclear power plants are 50% more expensive than putting coal-fired power plants online, and they are far more expensive than new gas-fired power plants."  Rifkin is arguing that our country is already in a bad economic state and that building new nuclear power plants we will go deeper into debt.  However, what Rifkin fails to acknowledge is the amount of energy that nuclear energy can produce compared to coal.  Studies have shown that about one gram of uranium is equal to about one ton of coal; the amount of money of one gram of uranium compared to one ton of coal would save the United States thousands of dollars to save.  So yes, creating new nuclear power plants would be expensive, but in the long run, less money would be spent on obtaining uranium than obtaining coal.
     Rifkin also questions how nuclear waste and spent nuclear rods could safely be disposed of.  "60 years into the nuclear era, our scientists still don't know how to safely transport, dispose of or store nuclear waste. Spent nuclear rods are piling up all over the world."  Rifkin believes that even after all this time and research that today's scientists do not know how to safely dispose nuclear waste or what to do with the nuclear rods, since the half-life of uranium is such a long time.  Again, Rifkin does not realize that Congress actually passed a bill that allows nuclear plants to reuse nuclear rods and recycle uranium to be used again for power.  This in turn would allow for less nuclear waste to be produced and less nuclear rods to be "piling up," and only pumping out more energy for the country.
     One thing that Rifkin does support is the need for cleaner energy in this country.  "...we should pursue an aggressive effort to bring the full range of decentralized renewable technologies online: solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and biomass."  These forms of energy are all reusable resources of energy and pump out clean and efficient energy that powers the homes of Americans and also keeps our environment clean.  Although these means of energy help the environment and bring energy, Rifkin does not look into the reliability of these energy forms.  Solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are all variable forms of energy, i.e., that they can change at any given moment.  Some days it is cloudy (less solar energy), days can be less windy than others (less wind energy), and flows of rivers are changing from fast to slow (less or more hydro).  These forms of energy can help the energy crisis, but they cannot but cannot be primary forms of energy, the energy for people would be too unreliable.  Rifkin also talks about how much these plants would cost for nuclear power.  The amount of turbines, solar panels, or windmills needed to create enough energy to supply the entire country would have to cost money and that is a very large amount of money. 
     Nuclear energy, although it does have some problems, is reliable, clean, and safe for the environment and the people who use it.  It allows for constant energy flow at an inexpensive rate and has become safer than ever.  People need to realize that nuclear power can and will help the United States out of this energy crisis and have surpluses of energy for generations to come.