Nuclear is not an option

Reading The Long Emergency by James H Kunstler I almost feel like there is no alternative to nuclear, but then I snap out of it.

Using nuclear to maintain our society as it is won't work.

I am most certainly anti-nuclear, and I am fully aware of the reality of this position and the consequences of not building nuclear power plants in the face of an imminent global oil shortage.

In the post fossil fuel world (yes, it will happen one day not far from now) there will be consequences to not attempting to replace our 'cheap' abundant fossil fuel with the stop-gap of nuclear energy. Canada should start setting up sustainable decentralized energy systems that are not reliant on the grid right away.

Without fossil fuels to build nuclear power plants, large scale wind farms, solar grids, etc, we will find ourselves unable to maintain a society that's anything like what we have now. Based on the information in the book The Long Emergency I'm not even sure that we have a choice. A few decades (50 years?) down the road we may find ourselves with a broken down energy grid, using mostly coal and wood for energy because solar and wind power systems have broken down. When my 3 year old son turns 50, and his children are making a life for themselves, we won't have the abundant energy to consume at an unnecessarily rapid pace like we do now.

Nuclear will prolong the scenario of fossil fuel depletion, societal & government inaction, and the economic pains that accompany it, with the addition of radioactive waste. In the end we will not be able to maintain or replace the nuclear power systems without fossil fuel energy anyways. I'm having trouble imagining nuclear power plants that exist just to provide the energy to build more nuclear power plants, in addition to the nuclear power plants needed to provide energy to an entire country that continues to become more energy hungry.

How many nuclear power plants would we need, how much fossil fuel is needed to build them, what will we do with the waste, who will pay the bill, how will we maintain them or build more when fossil fuels run out... these are the same old questions and the answers are obvious to me.
Too many.
Too much.
Unknown, and no sure answer yet proven.
Taxpayers, through current subsidies to nuclear energy.
We won't be able to.

The bright side is that we can work now towards localized sustainable energy systems, reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, reduce our consumption of energy and shift the economy away from the current growth model. For example if we slow down the oil sands destruction, we will employ those who would have been working in the tar sands in green technologies like solar, wind and geothermal instead. This is a shift that the Green Party has explored thoroughly. (<--pdf link)


There's still no way around the fact that there will be less readily available easily accessed energy to go around in the future (we're already seeing this with the profitability of the once shunned and now coveted tar sands), and if the old-line parties are suggesting sustainability under the current economic model of growth and consumption, they either don't get it or they're lying.

Using nuclear to reduce climate change will not work. Strangely, Patrick Moore, formerly of Green Peace and James Lovelock disagree. Some people are not fans of Patrick Moore, and although I find Lovelocks thoughts on a number of subjects interesting, I (and many others) disagree with him on this point. Nuclear energy won't solve the climate crisis.

First, there are considerable GHG emissions produced in the consumption of fossil fuels needed to create & ship the materials, mine the uranium ore and run the machines in the building of a nuclear power plant.

Second, who's to say that we wouldn't just continue to consume fossil fuels at the same rate, with electricity from nuclear power plants to fuel our increasing demand for energy? This seems to be a more likely scenario than having nuclear power stations everywhere, asking Canadians to start conserving energy and change their lives while pouring billions of tax dollars into subsidies for nuclear development, one of the most expensive forms of energy.

Third, the climate is changing, and even if we stopped all consumption of all fossil fuels right now the climate would still continue to warm. That statement is based on research that shows that there is a 'lag time' in the order of many years with regards to the effects of GHG's on climate change.

There are environmental and economic problems with this source of energy. We should be preparing to deal with the effects of climate change, while reducing our fossil fuel & general energy consumption levels. Building nuclear power plants is a short term stop-gap that will do nothing positive for humans or the planet in the long term.