coal: requires a 1000 km line of railway trucks filled with expensive coal, emits more than a billion cubic metres of gas that overheats the globe, and creates dust and more than 600,000 metric tonnes of toxic ash.
oil: needs four or five super-tanker-loads of heavy oil important from unstable parts of the world, emits nearly as much greenhouse gas as coal plus huge volumes of sulpher oxides that, in the atmosphere, turn into acid rain and other highly toxic compounds.
natural gas: imported over long distances by ships and popelines proned to accidents and leaks; emissions are highly polluting and the gas supply is vulnerable to terrorists.
nuclear: foods on about two truck-loads of cheap and plentiful uranium importand from stable countries like canada or australia. gas and acid emissions: zero. toxic ash and dust: none. high-level radioactive waste produced: a few bucketfuls.
we know nucluer energy is safe, clean and effective because, right now, 438 nuclear reactors are supplying almost one-seventh of the world's electricity.
to phase out nuclear energy just when we need it most to combat global warming is madness. rational concerns for safety are not the issue. the anti-nuclear agenda is pushed by groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, and by some politicians. They are pursuing goals in which neither environmental good sense nor science play a part - a strange way to defend the earth.
the green idea that renewable energy can fill the gap left by retired nuclear power stations - and also meet the constantly rising demand for power - is romantic nonsense.
according to the uk's national radiological protection board, doses from the entire nuclear industry amount to less than one per cent of our total exposure. medical uses such as x-rays amount for 14 per cent and the remainder is natural. compared with known cancer risks such as smoking and poor diet, it reports, the risk from non-medical, man-made radiation is about 1/100th of one per cent.
the whole point of nuclear energy is that it makes so little waste, and people who fight nuclear energy on these grounds are not being sensible... all the high-level (most highly radioactive) waste produced in the uk after 50 years of civil nuclear operation would fill a 10-metre cube... compared with the 13,700 cubic km of co2 gas produced by burning fossil fuels.
nuclear waste does indeed take a long time to decay, but its most dangerous radioactivity is lost within a few years, rather than the hundreds of thousands claimed by the Greens. much of the remaining waste can be returned to the fuel cycle and re-processed.
