Being an entrepreneurial nation, America doesn’t ordinarily need to look abroad to find inspiration for progress. But U.S. business leaders and policymakers would be wise to notice how the rest of the world is treating nuclear power.
In late March, more than 70 nations attending a nuclear power meeting in Paris agreed in a closing declaration that atomic energy could “make a major contribution to meeting energy needs and sustaining the world’s development.” This was not just a list of pro-nuclear power countries; it included nations that have in the past opposed nuclear power.
Electric energy derived from controlled nuclear fission is clean and stable. It is not the bogeyman that environmentalists make it out to be.
In fact, it is a green energy source. There are no emissions from gas- or coal-fired plants. Neither are nuclear power plants giant Cuisinarts that process live birds as do the windmill farms, a favorite “renewable” energy source of environmentalists.
Environmentalists also like to talk about biomass as a renewable energy source. But the burning of wood, liquors, railroad ties, solid waste, straw, tires, landfill gases and other waste is not economic nor is it green. It releases nitrogen oxide and more importantly carbon dioxide when it is burned, in some instances more than coal.
Despite the phobias about nuclear power, it is safe. Not a single person has died in a nuclear power plant accident in the West. In the West’s worst accident, just over 28 years ago at the Three Mile Island facility near Middletown, Pa., no one was even hurt. There were claims of injury, but the courts eventually ruled against them.
To put it in perspective, tens of thousands have died in coal mining accidents and natural gas explosions, and many of them in their own homes.
Other countries don’t seem to share Americans’ fear of nuclear energy. Roughly 80% of France’s electric power is generated at atomic plants, compared to only about a fifth of America’s.
Are we really going to stand idly by as Franceleads the way to a new age of clean energy?