Meltdown

Way up high in the Shenandoah Mountains where I live, it is difficult to maintain illusions about the natural world.

It is dying.

Maybe this is hard to see from a distance. Maybe from the confines of Senator Inhofe's dank office in Washington, D.C., or the musty bowels of the Huckabee campaign, it seems arrogant to claim that man is able to destroy the earth.

Up here in the mountains, it takes a world-class asshole to miss it.

Apart from the most obvious cases, like the Oriental Bittersweet vine, escaped from private gardens and smothering the mountains one acre at a time, the most painful proof of man's destruction is not what you can see right in front of you; it's what you will never see again.

A generation ago, hiking this part of the Appalachian Trail, visitors could easily look across 50, 60, 70 miles of the Piedmont foothills, almost to the tidewater basin. Today, on a typical summer afternoon, you're lucky to see 10 miles. That's because, according to the National Park Service, the Shenandoah mountains have the dirtiest air in the entire park system. Some days, visitors arriving at the entrance stations are greeted not only with glossy brochures about the flora and fauna, but with pollution health warnings. Enjoy the wilderness!

Just don't breathe.

Tracing the source of the pollution in these mountains is not complicated. It requires all the scientific sophistication of a third-grader. The park lies directly downwind from a slew of coal plants. Virtually all of the major contaminants in the local air and water are direct results of coal emissions. Coal produces ozone, which kills trees. Coal produces sulfates, which kill fish. No other park in the country has more ozone or sulfates than Shenandoah National Park.

A refresher on the food pyramid seems superfluous.

I have never considered myself anything other than an environmentalist. I have spent the better part of my life either in the wilderness, or trying desperately to get there. I have worked with solar power, rain-water catchment, and green living for more than a decade. And when I began researching nuclear power for my article, "Meltdown," in the current issue of GQ, it never occurred to me that an honest exploration of the subject would place me squarely at odds with nearly everyone else I know who cares about the environment.

Yet here I find myself. I did not set out to write "Meltdown" as an advocacy piece for nuclear power, and hope it doesn't read that way. But I think many of the facts about nuclear energy have been shrouded in a veil of mythology through the years. It has been my goal to get past the myth, and focus on the facts alone. Many of the fears about nuclear power, it turns out, are well-grounded in the data. Others simply are not. Taken as a whole, there is probably no question that the risk of a nuclear accident is both real and terrifying. Yet so is the stream of pollution that we choose every day instead, pouring millions of tons of carbon dioxide, mercury, and sulfates into the atmosphere, destroying ourselves and the world around us. While we wait for a more perfect solution, it seems to me that the environmental crisis is past critical. All of the options belong on the table. This includes the nuclear option.

A clear assessment of the facts is overdue. That is what I've tried to write.

Here's the link to the story at GQ.com.

Comments

[gopindrag]

04:38 PM on 02/28/2008

NU KU LAR and nothing about the 'terrists?

[JScott]

10:53 AM on 02/28/2008

Like other commenters may have mentioned----
Write about the nuclear waste disposal problem.
Write about the progress in nuclear fusion.
Write about renewable energy sources wind, biomass etc. Write about energy conservation.
Write about limiting human population growth.

[AnninCA]

10:18 AM on 02/28/2008

I so enjoyed reading your piece. Thanks.

[1will]

06:30 AM on 02/28/2008

So has the author disconnected his home from the power grid that supplies electricity from coal using power plants?

[mbaty]

02:09 AM on 02/28/2008

Until we can totally neutralize/reuse the waste from nuclear power it's a HELL NO. There are so many ways to get energy that don't result in toxic radioactive waste products that we have nowhere to store and that stay toxic for well beyond our lifetimes. Don't pretend that it's the "lesser of two evils." We are more ingenius than that.

[andhakari]

01:48 AM on 02/28/2008

Hmmm... There's so much to say in response to this, but for now just this: there's nothing to talk about UNTIL the waste deposition issue is resolved. Answer that, DO that, and we can talk about the rest of the crap, the expense, the risk, the temptations, etc. But if the waste is not being safely stored, forget about it. Don't even try to talk to me about it.
The environment is being destroyed because too many people are consuming too much of the planet, taking up too much space, and producing too much crap. Producing more nuclear energy doesn't resolve anything.

[stevesrant]

12:24 AM on 02/28/2008

It seems somehow ludicrous to mine, purify and transport an extremely toxic substance, then start a (hopefully) controlled fission reaction for the purpose of boiling water. If every roof in America was covered with photovoltaic panels, the only problem would be for the electric companies, who would have nobody to sell their nuclear/coal generated electricity to; hydro could probably do the remaining job. We have the technology, and if our government wanted to, they could accomplish this. They obviously don't want to. There is no energy crisis, there is a centralization crisis: sunlight is not metered, or traded on the world market.

[JasonEverettMiller]

12:30 PM on 02/28/2008

Brilliant point.

[DemandTruth]

04:33 PM on 02/27/2008

I must admit, I can't see too many benefits to nuclear power as it stands right now. You know, being an environmentalist, that the earth is a closed system. You also know how long it takes nuclear waste to degrade and stop becoming a huge danger to living beings (not in the lifespan of humanity - a really long time). What is your solution for storing radioactive waste? Where we gonna put it? In a lock box under our beds? Really. The ground can only hold so much. And what about the huge amounts of water that are needed for cooling purposes? What happens to all our water when we start using it to cool nuclear rods? Can we drink it after that? Just pump it back into the lake where we got it? I think nuclear power is short sighted. We MUST, if we are to continue to exist as a species, emulate nature in our lifecycles. There is NO waste in nature. Every byproduct is used by something else in the cycle. What are we gonna use radioactive nuclear waste for?

[Necron99]

04:41 PM on 02/27/2008

Look...radiation is generally not good for living things, and we need to do our best to keep our exposure at a minimum, but a couple of points:

1. global climate change will kill a hell of a lot more people a hell of a lot faster.

2. All the radioactive material in the world, that's ever gone into a bomb or a power plant *came out of the ground*--and when we put it back, it's less radioactive overall, by definition--we have taken energy from it to power our civilization.

Let's please be clear about what our priorities should be & what we should be afraid of.

[oldpotsmuggler]

03:56 PM on 02/27/2008

Humans could kill ourselves with either pollution or radiation. The planet cannot be killed with pollution. The planet could be killed with radiation.

That seems like a significant difference to me.

I first started studying these issues in the late sixties, so I have quite a strong and well formed opinion that the nuclear option is simply not to be considered.

[jmpurser]

04:48 PM on 02/27/2008

I'm not a nuke advocate in general but I would say that pollution can kill the planet. And if something "just" kills us I really don't care what else survives.

Selfish of me but there you have it.

[justmeinAz]

08:38 PM on 02/27/2008

I worked in nuclear power for years, and I can tell you that there are ways to safely handle nuclear materials, which are all naturally occuring isotopes, not man-made. The biggest problem we have is what to do with the waste, but that's because we're legislatively blocked from recycling it (as other countries do) to make more fuel. There's such a thing as breeder reactors which do this. It could be a somewhat closed system. I think the political resistance to nuclear power has really stunted research and development into more sophisticated and efficient solutions to our problems with nuclear, which is why we still use the ultra-low tech "hide it in a cave" method of disposal today. Opening the area up to more R and D will solve these issues. After all, we pulled it from the earth in the first place, and made it less, not more radioactive by using it for power. There must be a way to safely return it where it came from.

[oldpotsmuggler]

01:40 PM on 02/28/2008

The only thing required to destroy the nuclear power industry is to hold it to the same liability standard as every other part of the economy is subjected to. Without statutory liability protection, that industry dies.

Is there any other reason needed to argue against going further in this direction?

[hopeless277]

03:53 PM on 02/27/2008

So you're offering to store the nuclear waste at your house? I thought not. The transportation and storage of nuclear waste is the deal-breaker in the nuclear power debate. Once that question is answered to the satisfaction of the nation, I might agree with you. Until then, coughing is better than melting.

[jmpurser]

04:50 PM on 02/27/2008

I would modify your statement to say that the transportation and storage of nuclear waste is the CURRENT deal-breaker.

And like Wil I really think we need to deal with this. The profit motive isn't going to get us safely over this hurdle and I really think we need nuke as well as other solutions. We're well past the stage where we can pick and choose.