about the question I prefer to give the floor to someone who certainly understands it more than us ... some Jeremy Rifkin, an economist, American writer and activist. good read ...
is expensive. Generates waste is not disposed. It is based on a commodity in short supply. Opens new fronts of attack for terrorists. Technology is a central characteristic of a bygone era. The reasons of the student against Atomic Energy
Suddenly, nuclear power is back in fashion .. At the recent G8 summit held in Russia, St. Petersburg, U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian Vladimir Putin announced a far-reaching cooperation agreement for a quick "expansion of nuclear energy on a global scale" and called on other countries to join them.
The announcement of this agreement is only the latest of a series of initiatives undertaken by the White House to promote nuclear power .. Bush says future energy security, the United States and the world, will depend on an increase in confidence in against nuclear power plants. A technology that has for years suffered every infamy and shame, and who for years has been relegated to a sort of purgatory of science, is now being exhumed.
His virtues were feted by the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the famous scientist Sir James Lovelock, and even some environmentalists "repented." The nuclear accident occurred in 1979. Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and the terrible tragedy of Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986, have become distant memories now. Now that he is facing the high cost of oil on world markets, the greenhouse effect and consequent global warming of the planet in real time, lifting the shroud that covered nuclear power. To atomic technology was given a "ritoccatina", a sort of virtual facelift and is now presented by some as the source of the post-petroleum alternative. However, before our enthusiasm get out of hand, it is necessary to address a more sober and realistic look to the consequences of a new nuclearization of the world.
First, nuclear power is expensive and has high costs for facilities. With a list price of less than $ 2 billion to Central, the new generation of reactors still costs 50 percent more than what is necessary to align or to build coal-fired power plants to gas. Doubling the share of production nuclear power in the United States - nuclear energy currently provides 20 percent of the American requirements - may require one million dollars. In a country which is already facing record consumer debt and, where we find the money to build a new generation of these plants? Any other nation that is undergoing such hardship must ask the hard question. If government leaders from around the world are really serious with respect to the nuclear issue, to be honest with the public and to recognize that the consumer will pay the bill in fiscal terms, both as regards the tax increase to support of the construction plans, both as regards the increase in electricity bills.
Second, 60 years have elapsed since the beginning of the atomic age, and our scientists and engineers do not yet know how to safely manage the transportation, disposal and storage of radioactive waste. The result of combustion are exhausted nuclear bars stacked in warehouses and facilities in the world. In the United States, the federal government has spent more than $ 8 billion and took 20 years to dig up what was supposed to be an airtight underground tomb, built in the depths of Yucca Mountain in Nevada, for the containment of radioactive material. The vault was designed to be resistant to infiltration 10,000 years. Unfortunately the EPA, the federal agency for environmental protection, has already shown that the structure of underground storage is not evidence of infiltration.
Third, according to a study conducted in 2001 by the IAEA, the International Agency for Atomic Energy, the availability of uranium, the mineral resources of which we know may be unable to meet demand as early as 2026, in the case of a request to use very high, and since 2035, in the case of an average demand of fuel. Of course, it is possible that further exploration may lead to the discovery of other deposits and new technological horizons are able to reduce the demand for uranium, but for the moment remain similar scenarios pure speculation.
Fourth, the prospect of building hundreds or even thousands, of nuclear power in an era when rampant Islamic terrorism appears to be a decision to be mentally unbalanced. I wonder we have lost all sense of reality? On the one hand, the United States, European Union and much of the rest of the world are terrified of the idea that only one country, Iran, can get their hands on enriched uranium to further its program of power and can use that material to build an atomic bomb. Second, many leaders of those countries are eager to promote the spread of nuclear power plants in the world, to place one in each corner the planet. That would mean uranium and nuclear waste in transit everywhere, piled in places of luck and makeshift structures, often close to heavily populated urban areas. . Nuclear power plants are sensitive to the first target of terrorist attacks. On 8 November 2005, the Australian government arrested 18 Islamic terrorists who were organizing a plot to blow up the only reactor in that country. If we had managed, Australia would have seen a replica of 11 September with even more devastating effects. We should all be worried. In the U.S., a study by the commission that regulates the nuclear industry (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) has demonstrated through a simple survey that more than half of the central U.S. has failed to prevent the simulation of an attack on their facilities.
Finally, nuclear energy is a type of technology is not practical and highly centralized, typical of a bygone era. In an age distribution of technologies capable of undermining hierarchies, decentralizing power, giving rise to networks, systems, networks and open source business models, such as nuclear energy is unusually old-fashioned and obsolete. To a large extent, nuclear power was a creation of the Cold War. It represented the greatest concentration of power and reflected the geo-political framework of the years following the Second World War. Today, however, the geo-politics of the twentieth century is challenged by the emerging biosphere of the twenty-first century politics. The world is becoming flat. Whether the new technologies provide the tools you need to become active participants in a networked world. Nuclear power, by contrast, is an energy elite, controlled by a few. At a time when the concept of "power to the people" became the mantra of the poor and dispossessed, nuclear power is a relic, a true relic of the past and the resurrection takes us back in time. On the contrary, we should pursue an offensive effort to network all the decentralized and renewable technologies - solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and biomass - and install infrastructure hydrogen to ensure a continuous and steady supply of energy, able to satisfy our demand for electricity and transportation. Our energy future is common in the sun, not in uranium.
Jeremy Rifkin is the author of "Hydrogen Economy. The creation of the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth" (Mondadori, September 2002)
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