We Don’t Need Nuclear Power
There has been a lot of promotion of nuclear power in recent years as the only option we have to cope with the energy crisis and environmental pollution. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that companies can make enormous profits from building nuclear energy power stations.
The argument is that nuclear energy is carbon free once construction is complete but it is very expensive to build and there are good reasons to have concerns about the safety issues.
As events in Japan have proved, it doesn’t matter how well prepared you think you are. You can never say with certainty that nuclear power production is safe. It simply isn’t.
Then there is the requirement to store the hazardous nuclear waste for a thousand years or more. How can anybody have any idea what might happen in the next thousand years and how can anybody make any sort of guess or assumption about the costs of maintaining a nuclear waste storage facility in a thousand years? How many companies do you know that are still in existence after 1,000 years? I’ll answer that. None, unless you include a few family or tribal farms which may still be in the same area after all this time.
Countries and government systems have changed enormously in the last thousand years so nobody can have any idea what will be the political system so far ahead. Can you imagine how we would feel if the Normans had, after invading Great Britain in 1066 AD, left huge piles of nuclear waste laying around expecting us to look after it? We would not be very impressed.
Nuclear power generation cannot be the right answer to our energy needs. We need to learn that energy is a valuable resource and not one to waste on lighting up empty office blocks at night. We should all conserve power and we would benefit by saving money on energy costs.
We still have a lot of energy available to us but that is no reason to go wasting it heating up the empty night sky. Energy conservation would save money, save energy and reduce the need for constantly adding to our electricity production facilities.
