The United States Needs To Fast-Track A New Era Of The Most Overlooked Low Carbon Energy Production Available Today: Nuclear Power!

By Keith C. Milne

The quite noticeable change towards a warming planet due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is an uncomfortable reminder that we need to ween off of fossil fuels as fast as possible.

Luckily, we humans have come a long way towards finding alternative way of generating power. Wind energy and solar power have spread across the U.S, seeing steady rates of growth, as has the development of hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen powered automobiles.

According to the U.S. Energy Information System, “Wind electricity generation has grown significantly in the past 30 years. Advances in wind energy technology have decreased the cost of wind electricity generation. Government requirements and financial incentives for renewable energy in the United States and in other countries have contributed to growth in wind power. Total annual U.S. electricity generation from wind energy increased from about 6 billion kilo watt hours (kWh) in 2000 to about 380 billion kWh in 2021. In 2022, wind turbines were the source of about 10.2% of total U.S. utility-scale electricity generation. Utility scale includes facilities with at least one megawatt (1000 kilowatts) of electricity generation capacity.”

The growth of solar capacity has a similar path, and it has been breathtaking to see the proliferation of solar arrays all over the land, from ground mounted mega farms with thousands of panels working to generate power, to having only a handful of panels up on the barn to offset some of the power that the family farm uses and all sizes in-between.

Despite the slow, sure growth of all the alternative energy sources, one source of low carbon energy has not grown at all and, in fact, is now dying a slow death: nuclear power.

Nuclear power needs to be revitalized, and it needs to happen right away. We are not off the hook with our power generation issues just because we’re seeing more wind turbines in the Midwest, and solar panels on top of malls and houses and other buildings.

The world is power hungry and growing fast. We are still very limited in how much power we can generate, especially with solar, because unless the energy generated this way is stored while being generated, it ceases to be a source once the sun sets for the day.

As the Earth gets warmer, drought will become more common and persistent, and some of the huge hydro-power plants that supply millions may no longer be able to meet demand when rivers cease to provide adequate water volume to keep the turbines turning and generating the mega-watts of electricity that places like Las Vegas, Nevada depend on.

According to the International Energy Association, “Nuclear power and hydro-power form the backbone of low-carbon electricity generation. Together, they provide three-quarters of global low-carbon electricity generation. Over the past 50 years, the use of nuclear power has reduced CO2 emissions by over 60 gigatonnes – nearly two years’ worth of global energy-related emissions.”

Imagine how much warmer the planet might be had all of that energy generated by nuclear power had been from, say, coal-fired power plants instead!

Global warming aside, our knowledge, along with the skilled personnel that work at the plants are already being lost, along with our source of weapons grade uranium which will eventually be depleted putting our national security at risk.

According to the International Energy Association, “Nuclear power is the second-largest source of low-carbon electricity today, with 452 operating reactors providing 2700 TWh of electricity in 2018, or 10% of global electricity supply. In advanced economies, nuclear has long been the larges source of low-carbon electricity, providing 18% of supply in 2018. It is considerably cheaper to extend the life of a reactor than build a new plant, and costs of extensions are competitive with other clean energy options, including new solar PV and wind projects.”

It is clear that alternative energy, “green” energy, has an important place in fulfilling the world’s power requirements over the long term. However, it is equally clear that until these alternatives to hydro-power and nuclear power are able to meet the required power demands, that we have little alternatives at this point in time. We’ve learned a lot from our past mistakes regarding safety around nuclear power generation, and costs rise exponentially over time.

We should not close the door on another industry in the U.S. like we did with the steel and chip manufacturing industries in the past, and then later perhaps having to negotiate a fair price to pay to get the power we need from another country, one that didn’t let their nuclear power plants languish and turn into toxic junk piles like we are risking in a big way right now. We cannot afford to let our nuclear plants fade, and then wonder, and scramble to figure out how we’ll make up the energy they provided, while our planet is continuing to heat up more and more every year.

The most logical way to proceed in order to foster a cleaner environment, with the eventual elimination of fossil fuels, is to use all of the available low or no carbon technologies to achieve the power generation we need now, and well into our future.