Nuclear Is
Not Green Energy
By Bashir A. Syed*
US
The back cover of the Bulletin
of Atomic Scientists (Jan/Feb. 2007 issue) has
an advertisement about the 3rd Annual Platts Nuclear
Energy Conference to be held at Omni Shoreham
Hotel, Washington, DC.
Here is what Secretary of Energy, Samuel Bodman,
said during the 2nd Platts Conference in February
2006: "Right now, 130 new reactors are under
construction or consideration around the world.
The explanation for this is simple -- the world
needs more energy, and less carbon."
The hard facts about nuclear reactors are as follows:
1. The life of a nuclear reactor is about thirty
years.
2. During this period the risk of accidents like
Three Mile Island (and many more unpublicized)
cannot be ruled out.
3. After thirty years a nuclear reactor is worse
than a graveyard, about which late Bob Hope used
to say: "I don't know why they build fences
around the graveyards. Neither anyone can get
out nor anyone wants to get in."
In exactly the same way, reactors keep on producing
radiation harmful to anyone who wants to go near
such dead reactors which are fenced in and declared
out-of-bound areas.
4. Nuclear waste has hundreds of radioisotopes
with millions of years of half-life. Science has
not been successful in producing a viable solution
to either diminish this radiation or to dispose
off the menace or health hazard which is capable
of producing tumors and cancers.
Concerned and conscientious citizens should protest
the building of such power plants and press for
the use of safe renewable energy alternatives
that are used on a larger scale in the world than
in the United States. Wind, solar (photovoltaic
and thermal), biomass, micro-hydro, and geothermal
offer long-term, safe solutions for not only diminishing
carbon emissions, but reducing earth warming and
lessening the risk to human health.
Even countries like Germany and Austria are planning
to decommission their nuclear power plants. Eisenhower
in 1953 announced the Atom for Peace program but
we know today that the atom is no longer for peaceful
purposes but for war.
*Member: APS, IEEE (NSRE & NPSS), Union of
Concerned Scientists, Amer. Solar Energy Society,
and New York Academy of Sciences. Senior Member
International Solar Energy Society. Fulbright
and NSF Scholar.
Vice President, R&D Alt-EnergyTech, Inc.
