Nuclear Energy is the Future - 13 Stars Newspaper

An article by Margarida Veríssimo

Nuclear energy – the now adult child-actor

Nuclear energy is a subject that hides in the shadows of today’s race for clean energy. Nuclear energy is like the strange cousin that always brings politics into the picture.

Unfortunately, that cousin can sometimes be the seed of a great debate, and so it is with nuclear energy.

As we know, there have been times when this cousin has been the heart of the party, for example in a previous election season for nuclear energy. This golden age was in the 1960s. Nuclear energy was the Mirrorball of the party, everyone enjoyed the clean glow. But for various reasons, that very shine became a source of distrust.

In the 1980s, Chernobyl destroyed almost all future for nuclear energy in Europe, except for the French, who in their perverse view of liberté, ignored the cries of thousands of protesters. Then came a new wave of investment as oil from Russia became a difficult political issue, and the Middle East began to force a monopoly, and by 2010, the Mirrorball remained in motion, but in 2011, the Mirrorball would fall with the disaster at Fukushima, and shatter to irreversible damage. No one wanted that Mirrorball, and the danger of the broken glass that cut the skin of the public image and left scars forever.

Other parts of the party began to appear as solutions to extreme boredom. Solar panels became the alcohol that powered the engines behind the restless dancers. Wind energy became the DJ, with powerful beats, and fossil fuels remained the ugly men who kept the disco alive financially, but also the ones who ruined the party in itself.

The Mirrorball remains the only thing that distinguishes the disco from a bar. A bar will always rely on those ugly men, but a disco with a proper Mirrorball could attract more than those perverts, it could attract the future, the young generations that move the world. A real disco ball could bring back the young population looking for fun and a safe ride home!

That should be our mission. Nuclear energy has lived as a shadow of past glory and tragedy – the story of the child actor. But nuclear energy has grown up.

The triad of the public image

As you probably know – unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 10 years – the three ‘solutions’ to fossil fuels are solar, wind, and hydro. Even though they seem like the perfect girls in high school, they’re nothing more than the “Mean Girls” fuelled by good PR reps.

Solar panels – the energy of the future – as the slogans say. ‘The solar field that covers the Sahara desert could power the entire planet’ This energy, which is the cleanest and generates energy from the free rays of the sun, is amazing (insert sarcastic laughter). Even though this is a nice story, nothing could be further from the truth. Solar panels have a maximum lifespan of 25 years, and in order to power the Earth, we’d irrevocably damage ecosystems, as the solar panel environment warms by 1 to 3 degrees. More rare minerals would be mined for the batteries that would store the energy, and since batteries have an even shorter lifespan, resupplying them would quickly become a problem, not to mention that nighttime would still be a thing. So no, solar cells can’t be the future if you care about the environment, and are concerned about rising global temperatures.

Wind energy is another fallacy. It seems like the innocent princess of The Plastics, but ultimately, wind energy depends on wind, and the only way to harness that energy on a large scale is to create huge wind fields with wind turbines that destroy natural habitats because land must be cleared to allow safe energy production. The lifespan of wind turbines is only 20 years, and replacing them means increased resource consumption, not to mention the batteries that pose a threat to disposal and balance in the mining industry.

That leaves the least popular mean girl: hydropower.

Contrary to popular belief, hydraulic power poses such an immediate environmental threat that it’s currently unsustainable. Dams alter the environment and cause irreversible damage to habitats and ecosystems. Dams pollute waterways with micro metals. Marine hydropower plants pollute the oceans with microplastics. They’re also responsible for warming water bodies, causing dangerous changes to ecosystems, and threatening biodiversity. In addition, maintaining these types of facilities is so difficult that it’s simply more profitable financially to let them rot than to remove or rehabilitate them.

Now that I’ve shown you the true skin of the Mean Girls, let’s look at the real hero on the set. Let’s look at the weirdo that, in reality, everyone would love if they were informed and what this article is all about: nuclear energy.

What is nuclear energy?

Nuclear energy is simply the energy extracted from the nucleus of an atom. Nuclear energy can be produced in two different ways: nuclear fusion and nuclear fission.

Nuclear fusion means joining two atoms together. However, for us in the 2020s, we haven’t yet figured out how to do that on a commercial scale, and unless aliens visit us and show us the blueprints of their fusion power plants, we can’t count on this possibility for the near future. Therefore, right now, we’re using nuclear fission to generate energy, which of course means splitting the atom. Of course, nuclear fission is no longer viewed with amazement, but with a sideways glance. Let’s unpack this suspicion.

The problems

I know you’re going to come at me about disasters, so let’s get right to it. The first nuclear disaster in history occurred in Chernobyl in 1989, but keep in mind that this happened during the communist regime USSR that killed millions of people, was unstable, and didn’t care about safety. To this day we don’t know what happened, it’s still hidden in the fog of corruption, propaganda, and destructiveness. It cannot be taken as an example of something that would happen in the west, with all the security protocols we have. In fact, nothing like this is happening in any other power plant in the world at this time. It just comes to show how peculiar the situation was, and that we can’t draw any conclusions from it. Except for something like this, an explosion does pose a danger if it ever comes to happen.

The other disaster happened in 2011 in Fukushima, which was caused by an earthquake and a tsunami, because the Japanese government built a power plant right next to the sea, in a country with several tsunamis a year. And even the 2011 disaster had minimal impact, because it was water that got into the reactor and released some of the radiation, but not in the form of explosions and irradiation of particles into the atmosphere.

In both cases, areas of land were classified as contaminated, and scientists believe that healthy human life isn’t possible in these areas. At the end of the day, several people live within the ‘nuclear band’ of Chernobyl, and lead their lives there with no apparent problems, people who decided to return to their land and try to live a normal life without paying attention to the ‘mortal radiation’.

Of course, there is reason and power in voices screaming in fear of disaster. I completely understand where they’re coming from. But I want to reiterate that radiation is a danger, but radiation leaks are a thing of the past, and besides, if we really care about the environment, nuclear is the only way to make energy a problem of the past, and besides, something we don’t have to fight for and can provide to every single community.

Before you come at me with the fear of nuclear waste, here are the facts. Even though many decades of TV and films can be destroyed, nuclear waste isn’t shiny, smelly goo, it’s not stored in those yellow containers, and it’s not in a cave somewhere as many shows would have us believe (cough, cough, DARK, Simpsons). What is nuclear waste anyway? Nuclear waste is nothing more than anything that can produce any kind of radiation. It can be gloves, metal rods, paper, etc. These are divided into 3 categories. LIW, ILW, HLW, which means low, medium, and high risk. Nuclear power has been in operation for decades and only 0.1 to 0.3% of all waste is actually high risk and 97% is low risk. And before you try to mumble a word about the safety of that nuclear waste, let me tell you the truth.

The nuclear waste is first compressed with glass, ceramics, and cement: neutral substances that keep the radiation dry and cold. Then, instead of aluminum cans, all the waste is packed into literal coffins made of lead and concrete. If you think that’s not safe, you should know that there is no record of anyone dying from nuclear waste. On the other hand, one in five deaths in the U.S. is caused by fossil fuel waste. The total waste generated by nuclear power plants in the world is 450,000,000 kg. That’s right, fossil fuels produce 130,000,000,000 kg of waste per year. Also, fossil fuel-based power plants produce 100 times more radiation than nuclear power plants. Because yes, everything has radiation!

An additional small note, because sometimes people think that the gases that come out of the usina are CO2 or other pollutants, and no, the only gas that ever leaves the usina is H2O, so water vapor. Nuclear Energy does not cause any harmful emissions.

So why this public image?

Nuclear Energy, as you can see, is not some strange high school student. Nuclear Energy is the person everyone wants to befriend, but the rumors are so negative that no one can even begin to understand where the hate is coming from. Of course, in this case, it’s a little clearer.

Since NE is such a viable solution to all our problems, why is the public image so bad? Well, it’s all thanks to profits and rich people, as usual. As you can imagine, there are some industries that are not so happy about saving the planet and society so easily, especially companies that rely on fossil fuels. So when one of the richest industries in the world is against nuclear energy, it’s difficult.

Since the 1960s, almost all protests and all kinds of propaganda against nuclear energy have been and continue to be financially supported by the oil companies, which want people to believe that nuclear energy is scary and unsafe, even though it is so much safer than any kind of fossil fuel.

In reality, the only reason Nuclear Energy is so in the shadows is marketing and misinformation. Oil companies seize on horrific stories and twist them to their liking, making fun of those who can not afford energy and who have suffered from the tragedies. It’s sick marketing that several countries have tried to hide so far, but these companies shout harder and move crowds to riot with them, stirring up pity and the purest of human emotions, fear, just to perpetuate the cycle of destruction and profits they have going.

However, these companies can shout louder than evidence, governments, and researchers, so what can we do? We can read about the issue and, as always, inform people and remind them that it is childish and inefficient to push this idea through without a proper approach. The only way to change someone’s mind is to put all the cards on the table for them. You have to show them the deaths of the firefighters in Chernobyl, who lay in their beds for weeks with internal burns and cancers, and those who had to leave their country in Fukushima and Chernobyl. You must show them the truth, but also bring them up to speed. You also have to show them that this is indeed the solution for now. And who knows, maybe one day energy will be something we will not have to discuss or dwell on. Maybe one day we will achieve clean energy through nuclear power. If not, we will have to look for other solutions, because the ‘triad of public image’ must be destroyed!

Resources to explore the situation and build your opinion:

Videos

Nuclear Fusion: Inside the breakthrough that could change our world | 60 Minutes – YouTube

Is nuclear power safe? | Oliver Stone and Lex Fridman – YouTube

Documentaries

The Nuclear Revolution: How The Atom Changed The World | The Atom And Us | Timeline – YouTube

CRITICAL: Greens For Nuclear Energy – a documentary – YouTube

The Atom: A Love Story – 2019 – available on Netflix

Books

A Bright Future – by Joshua S. Goldstein and Staffan A. Qvist – 2019 (personally never read it)

Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich – 1997

Websites