The Logical Solution: Go Nuclear

It’s so popular – the French do it and now so are the Iranians. I’m talking, of course, about nuclear power. Wired’s got a fantastic interview with Gwyneth Cravens, a former no-nukes protester who is out to save the world – with nuclear power.I completely agree with Ms. Cravens.

An interesting statistic comparing the waste levels produced by individuals over a lifetime:

Cravens: “A family in four in France, where they reprocess nuclear fuel, would produce only enough waste [from their own energy use] to fit in a coffee cup over a whole lifetime. A lifetime of getting all your electricity from coal-fired plants would make a single person’s share of solid waste (in the United States) 68 tons, which would require six 12-ton railroad cars to haul away. Your share of CO2 would be 77 tons.”

That statistic alone sure makes nuclear power sound a lot sexier than coal.

I think the real best solution is energy diversity (wind where it makes sense, same for solar) but with more investment going to the cheapest production methods (coal and nuclear). If we can get “clean coal” up and running, that’d be fantastic, because it’d be cheap to maintain our existing coal infrastructure. The United States is often cited as being “The Saudi Arabia of Coal”.

Link at Wired.