Colby Cosh has a new article in the online National Post and I want to bring it up and add my opinion.
It is starting to look as though wind cannot meet more than a fraction of our energy demand even if other issues with the technology, like esthetics and wildlife impacts, are ignored.
To summarize the article quickly, windmills provide a fraction of their potential and at the wrong time of day. Worse, they provide it in such an unstable matter that it has potential to cause brownouts and blackouts on the power grid.
The fact of the matter is that almost all of the renewable and ecological energy sources available to mankind have drawbacks that prohibit their widespread adoption. Solar technology is limited to sunny parts of the world with little cloud cover, wind power is not stable and also geographically limited. Hydro involves building dams that threaten wildlife habitats, geothermal and tidal power suffer again from being limited to a few locals worldwide.
In my opinion, the growing population of earth needs energy that is cheap, plentiful, and virtually pollution free. Nuclear Fission power is all three.
Yes, there are risks as demonstrated by Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Serious risks. But with a well trained staff and proper funding there is no reason why a modern nuclear power plant cannot have a virtually spotless record. Its time for our governments to make the right decision and move forward towards the future.
2 comments:
I'll be the first to admit that I don't know much about nuclear power...except the scary stuff maybe...but what happened at Chernobyl is more than just a serious risk...I wouldn't want your nuclear power plant anywhere near me!
Did you know that when we lived in Barrie the Bruce Nuclear Power plant on Lake Huron was only about 180 Km away? The Pickering plant is just outside of Toronto.
At Chernobyl "numerous safety procedures were disregarded" during testing and the type of reactor used there is not similar to the Candu reactors. http://www.chernobyl.co.uk/
Nuclear power in Canada is clean, safe, dependable, and relatively cheap when evniromental costs are factored in.
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