The Fall of Uranium, or Hitting the Metaphorical Wall
March 15, 2011 No CommentsBy: Noah Fram
Nuclear radiation kills people. That is fairly common knowledge, on a par with the idea that cigarettes are unhealthy. World War Three terrifies people everywhere mostly because the prospect of a nuclear holocaust is the most plausible doomsday scenario anybody’s yet invented. But nuclear power is a quite different story. It survived Chernobyl, outlasted Three Mile Island, and remains the only use of uranium developing countries are theoretically “allowed” to develop. Debate still rages around the disposal of nuclear waste, of course. But nuclear power itself has always seemed relatively safe, except among extremists on both sides of the aisle.
Perhaps Japan will finally bury it. The recent earthquake, for all the immediate catastrophe it has caused, also appears primed to trigger a partial meltdown in a major Japanese power plant. This is no human error, like the aforementioned crises, but rather the subatomic equivalent of an act of God: plate tectonics are unavoidable, and it is far more difficult to build an earthquake-resistant nuclear reactor than an earthquake-resistant skyscraper. Immediately, any nuclear plant on the West Coast is at risk of a similar catastrophe. Other natural disasters (hurricanes and blizzards, among others) frequent the areas of the world not suspect to the horror of a nearby fault line. Essentially, no area of the world is truly safe from the risk of such an event bypassing the most carefully crafted safeguards and turning a nuclear reactor into a cancer machine.
If this threat of immediate damage is added to the already formidable armory of the anti-nuclear lobby, the risks may begin to outweigh the benefits in the public mind. And in the hair-trigger environment of modern American politics, even the hint of such a shift may cause a radical change in the temperament of the federal government. However, like any grand change in opinion, this one raises more questions than it answers, dominated in my mind by this:
What do we do instead?
At the moment, electricity is generated primarily by nuclear or fossil fuel-burning plants. Hydroelectric power exists in the few places lucky enough to possess large rivers, but its capacity is quite limited, and solar is simply not cost-effective at the moment. Therefore, barring a massive government expenditure to promote tidal generators and proliferation of photovoltaic cells, the slack would be picked up mostly by coal and natural gas. In today’s increasingly environmentally conscious but spending-averse atmosphere, this may not be a valid option. So, the decision is essentially between nuclear power or less power. And if any politician believes that telling their constituents to switch all their light bulbs to CFLs and run the air conditioner less in summer will go over well, they’re even more delusional than anybody thought.
We are limited, as always, by the extent of our scientific knowledge. In particular, we are operating under a remarkable dearth of science which does not turn a significant and quickly realized profit. Fossil fuels and nuclear power are cheaper, and don’t incur research and development expenses, so are naturally favored by an economy which reacts only to immediate stimuli. Sadly, the vaunted American ingenuity seems incapable of picking up the slack left by the free market in anything resembling a timely fashion. And by the time technology catches up to public sentiment, we will have moved on to the latest anti-naval missile China developed or the autocratic lunacy of the Qaddafi regime. Once again, the public good will have been foiled by the public.
The scenario in Japan should make us question the long-term efficacy of nuclear power. But more than that, it should make us ponder the state of scientific inquiry. Science for its own sake is admittedly a hard sell, so politicians tend to throw it under the bus in the sacred name of the campaign. Quite possibly, this is the most thoroughly that science has been inundated in market theology. The scientific method is available on auction.
For some reason, I suspect this is far from what Adam Smith intended.
Image source: www.reuters.org
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