The earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan shocked us this weekend as we watched with horrified fascination as walls of water destroyed thousands of homes and killed countless people. In a country that experiences dozens of earthquakes a year, this particular disaster was beyond any scale ever contemplated by the compulsively disciplined and always prepared Japanese people, but they never lost their stoic presence and seemingly unlimited patience even as their well ordered lives and basic services disappeared before their eyes.
That stoicism, though, has begun to fade as the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant continues for a a sixth day. Evacuations of the area around the plant have now spread to 20 kilometers with warnings out to 30 kilometers. As the reality of the unfolding disaster became apparent, many people fled as far as Tokyo to escape the still developing crisis. Panic began to creep into Tokyo, 150 miles south of the stricken plant, as increased radiation levels were detected yesterday. Flights out of Japan are now jammed as people have begun to flee the country over radiation fears and collapsing infrastructure. It's the doomsday scenario many have feared for ages.
There's nothing like a natural disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane to make us realize that we really aren't in control of our own personal destiny. These events also cause us to reflect on how our own decisions as a society may actually exacerbate the long term effects of a disaster (such as building a city below sea level, then not properly protecting it against storm surges). In the case of this particular disaster, serious reflection has begun as questions are once again being raised about the wisdom of the use of nuclear power to generate base load electricity in many countries around the world, especially those in quake zones. It's now all over the media; some dismiss the concerns as hyperbole and others cry that it's the end of the world; however, many serious people are having that tough discussion about how we fuel our energy future if we don't use nuclear power.
Here's our particular problem: The United States, through weak leadership, short sightedness caused by our 2 year re-election cycle and the influence of corporate money, has utterly failed to establish a long term vision for our energy future. Band aid solutions, special interest legislation, and poor judgment have taken us into the 21st century with 60 to 100 year old technology and energy sources, and no one has the courage to call this insanity, well, insanity. The result is predictable, clearly demonstrating that our dependence on foreign oil from countries who hate us is suicidal. The ongoing unrest in Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, and even Saudi Arabia has highlighted this risk. Our dependence on oil has driven us into the deepwater of the Gulf of Mexico and into the Arctic to feed our gluttony.
At the same time, de-regulation and industry complacency led to the inevitable result of the blowout of the BP Macondo well and the ongoing environmental catastrophe that the media and politicians are happy to ignore. Speaking of ignorance, we are also willfully oblivious to the very obvious signs of limited worldwide oil reserves as well as the damage that we are doing to our own environment by our huge carbon footprint. Elected representatives, looking for cheap political points, give lip service to climate change, renewables, conservation, and sustainable energy sources while taking money from oil companies and actually doing nothing, except for allowing the same old policies that got us here in the first place to continue.
Which brings us to nuclear power. This is really the only non-carbon energy source that has any hope of stemming the tide of oil and coal consumption. But it has its obvious inherent dangers. Why does Japan use nuclear power? The answer is simple: they have to. Japan has no significant sources of hydrocarbon energy, so must use nuclear to avoid dependence on other countries for oil, gas, or coal. However, the problem is that the whole damn country is an earthquake zone, not the best environment for a technology that doesn't react well (no pun intended) when it's shaken around a bit and flooded with seawater. These same issues are faced by many nuclear powered countries, including us.
So what do we do? This is where being an adult comes into play. As adults, we need to consider that our world has limited resources, limited atmosphere, and limited space. And it's getting more crowded and dirty. Hydrocarbons simply can't fill all of our energy need. Renewables can't fill enough of our energy need. Natural gas, which is becoming more abundant, has become a great answer for a lot of our needs, but for the long run we still need non-carbon based energy to make our hydrocarbon resources last longer and be more environment friendly. Nuclear fills that place, but clearly we're not to the point where it is fool-proof safe. It's time that we all assess our own personal uses of carbon based fuels, and pressure our elected representatives to do something besides bashing the other side to get re-elected. It's also time that we demand they they also act like adults and responsibly address the issues around nuclear power design, construction, and operation, as well as the safety of that and other energy technologies.
Call your Congressperson, your Senator, your Governor, and your mayor. Tell them you want a comprehensive energy policy that's neither Drill, Baby, Drill, or sticking their heads in the sand. Only when pressure from the People is unrelenting will they perhaps get off their collective backside do something courageous. They won't do it by themselves.
Bob Cavnar, a 30-year veteran of the oil and gas industry, is the author of Disaster on the Horizon: High Stakes, High Risks, and the Story Behind the Deepwater Well Blowout. He is CEO of Luca Technologies.
Follow Robert L. Cavnar on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dailyhurricane
James Zogby: Economic Roots of Bahrain's Crisis and a Needed Gulf Cooperation Council Response
Karen Berg: Amid Disaster, the Light That Binds
Rocky Kistner: Oil Spill Reported Near Deepwater Drilling Site in Gulf
I've posted these links elsewhere on Huff Post, and I'll keep posting them ad nauseum:
Generation IV nuclear technology solves all the major concerns of current reactors: safety, waste and proliferation. Already tested under real-world conditions, this design has inherent safety passive safety systems, that work according to the laws of physics -- not an operator's competency. Read Tom Blees' book, "Prescription for the Planet" at http://www.prescriptionfortheplanet.com/ to learn about "Integral Fast Reactors." More info at Science Council for Global Initiatives http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/ an independent non-profit formed by scientists -- not paid for by the nuclear energy industry.
----------
Keep an open mind, think critically.
Cavnar:
"Which brings us to nuclear power. This is really the only non-carbon energy source that has any hope of stemming the tide of oil and coal consumption."
That is a lie.
This is the truth.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/better-wind-resource-maps/
Current wind technology deployed in nonenvironmentally protected areas could generate 37,000,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, according to the new analysis conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and consulting firm AWS Truewind. The last comprehensive estimate came out in 1993, when Pacific Northwest National Laboratory pegged the wind energy potential of the United States at 10,777,000 gigawatt-hours.
Both numbers are greater than the 3,000,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity currently consumed by Americans each year. Wind turbines generated just 52,000 gigawatt-hours in 2008, the last year for which annual statistics are available.
That means we have 12 times as much electrical power available, from wind alone, than we currently use from all sources. And before anybody even tries that old "baseload" canard, Archer & Jacobson have proven that by linking geographically separated wind farms, no less than 20% of peak capacity is delivered as baseload.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jam.pdf
12 * 20% = 240%
These are well-known results to energy pundits, and not disputable. The corporate media just doesn't broadcast anybody but corporate too1s, like Cavnar.
We are still suffering the consequences of being lied into a war, and we are supposed to trust politicians with nuclear energy?
Oh, to the individual who seems to think "uranium mining uses fuel and that makes CO2" somehow makes a point about something - sir you need to grow some sense. Uranium mining and processing gives the highest return per ton processed for energy consumption vs energy return for any industrial process in use in modern times. The notion that we should only use processes that do not consume fuel is simply impossible in this universe.
http://www.nunnglow.com/uranium-mining/open-pit-mining.html
The Swedish Energy Ball can be installed on private homes for wind powered energy: http://www.jetsongreen.com/2008/09/swedish-energy.html
Bush and Obama have been promoting nuclear power and have yet to break ground on one plant in the ten years since the supposed "nuclear renaissance" began. The cost of new nuclear is not competitive with wind or even solar at today's prices. Wasting money on nuclear power is taking money away that could be used for (much cheaper) energy efficiency or cheaper, truly green, power like wind and solar that we need to avoid generating greenhouse gases.
What we need to do immediately is redirect all the oil and nuke subsidies to clean technologies. I have great confidence in the American people being able to refine and deploy much better solutions. When we needed jets and rockets, we figured it out and look at us now. Clean Energy should have the same kind of support.
A lot of dirty energy proponents pretend to support clean energy while actually opposing it, by claiming that clean energy isn't ready to deploy, and only will be with much greater investment into research. It's bogus. The way to get more powerful clean energy is to buy the clean energy that's on the market, to "signal" to manufacturers that they should build more, and that there is a market they should compete for.
But to the specifics about nuclear power. I do note that it is relatively safe, especially when compared with fossil fuels. But it ain't gonna happen. People were leery about having nuclear plants nearby before the latest earthquake, and before the articles noting the number of US nuclear plants that are in fault zones. Argue all you want, there won't be any new plants approved in this country for at least 5 years. If there's one more accident, Fuhgedaboudit!
But even with a normal permitting process, we could get tens of gigawatts of wind farms approved and installed for every gigawatt of nuclear power. Then, if we copy the German incentive system of having the utilities pay for user-supplied kilowatts, we could have solar panels on tens of millions of roofs. Not to mention the work on tidal energy.
Seems to me that the adult thing to do would be not to go with outmoded technology, like fossil fuel and nuclear, but to go with the wind and the sun and the water.
will be powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Walmart Canada sees using hydrogen fuel cells as
an emerging alternative to using lead acid batteries as a power source for material handling
equipment, particularly at high-throughput distribution centres.