Nuclear Power

Nuclear power is a bad idea. It's a bad idea for the same reason procrastination is a bad idea. Don't get me wrong, I love to procrastinate. I consider myself a chronic procrastinator (I have put off writing this blog post for two weeks).

At first glance, nuclear power seems like a great idea. You take some matter and turn it into clean, abundant energy. Problem solved. Oh, except that as a biproduct, we are left with extremely dangerous radioactive material that would stay radioactive for tens of thousands of years. What's more, we have no way to get rid of this stuff safely, except to bury it in the ground and hope that eventually we will figure out what to do with it before it causes any harm.
This reminded me of a funny quote about procrastination: Hard work pays off later, procrastination pays off now.
To be honest, this is not all that different from the type of mindset that I'm picking up from this nuclear power idea. Basically, the payoff of cheap energy is immediate, and the consequences are put off until later.

In addition, the argument is made that nuclear energy does not contribute to global warming, which makes it a good thing. On the one hand, if the decision came down only between facing a global warming apocolypse in the near future, or a mass nuclear waste spillage cenario tens of thousands of years in the future, I would choose the latter. The reality of it is, however, that it is not a black-and-white choice between two sources of energy. There are many shades of gray, as we are discovering with our "go green" fad and our frantic search for an alternative energy source. Hydrogen fuel is a good idea, except that as abundant as water is, it is still not a renewable resource. The best option in my opinion would be solar energy. It may as well be renewable; once the sun is burned out, though most likely billions of years after humans have seen the last of this planet, life here would be screwed anyways.

Got a little off topic there. In short, nuclear power is like procrastination. Though we would not have to deal with it in our lifetime, eventually somebody would. That is what we are counting on by supporting nuclear power, that eventually, somebody would come up with a way of dealing with this. But what if nobody did? Are we really willing to play dice with the fate of our race?


Well that was pretty unorganized, as usual. Got to stop writing these so late at night...