A Quote by George Monbiot
Even when nuclear power plants go horribly wrong, they do less damage to the planet and its people than coal-burning stations operating normally.
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Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is one of the reasons we have a coal-dependent infrastructure, with the resulting environmental impact that all of us can see. I suspect environmentalists, through their opposition of nuclear power, have caused more coal plants to be built than anybody. And those coal plants have emitted more radioactive material from the coal than any nuclear accident would have.
I believe we should be investing in the potential of nuclear technology based on thorium, to end the use of plutonium and lead to much safer nuclear power plants, less toxic nuclear waste, and less opportunities for nuclear weapons proliferation.
In the mid-1980s, operating problems took [nuclear] plants off-line so often that, on an annual basis, they operated at only about 55 percent of their rated total generating capacity. Today, as a result of several decades of experience and an intense focus on performance ... nuclear plants in the United States operate at over 90 percent of capacity. That improvement in operating efficiently is so significant in its impact that it can almost be seen as a new source in electric power itself.
The climate-change industrial complex pontificates that the U.S. has to stop using coal to save the planet. But even if the U.S. cut our own coal production to zero, China and India are building hundreds of coal plants. By suspending American coal production, we are merely transferring jobs out of the U.S.
We must not let ourselves be swept off our feet in horror at the danger of nuclear power. Nuclear power is not infinitely dangerous. It's just dangerous, much as coal mines, petrol repositories, fossil-fuel burning and wind turbines are dangerous.
The incidence of Alzheimer's disease is growing at a pace like never before, affecting people at a younger and younger age. This is the direct effect of nuclear radiation polluting the air of our planet from the power stations and other nuclear experimentation.
It's not as though we can keep burning coal in our power plants. Coal is a finite resource, too. We must find alternatives, and it's a better idea to find alternatives sooner then wait until we run out of coal, and in the meantime, put God knows how many trillions of tons of CO2 that used to be buried underground into the atmosphere.
Nearly all of our existing power sources are generators which use a heat cycle. This includes our coal, oil, and gas fired utilities, our automobiles, trucks, and trains, and even our nuclear fission utility power plants.
Variable but forecastable renewables (wind and solar cells) are very reliable when integrated with each other, existing supplies and demand. For example, three German states were more than 30 percent wind-powered in 2007 - and more than 100 percent in some months. Mostly renewable power generally needs less backup than utilities already bought to combat big coal and nuclear plants' intermittence.
The best thing that we can do on climate change is make sure that China converts to a more nuclear future to limit those - that one coal-burning plant coming on a week that we expect - that would really help the planet. We need to work cooperatively with developing countries to make sure they emit less.
Coal ash gets far less attention than toxic and greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, but it has created environmental and health problems - every major river in the Southeast has at least one coal ash pond - and continuing legal troubles and large cleanup costs for the authority and other utilities.
Coal ash, the hazardous byproduct of burning coal to produce power, is a particularly insidious legacy of the nation's dependence on coal.
The central government wants to increase the number of nuclear power plants but we believe nuclear plants have their inherent problems.
I know we need more nuclear power in order - nuclear power, after all, is not dependent on fossil fuels and emits no greenhouse gases. I believe we're going to be able to have coal-fired plants that have zero emissions. We need to work on carbon sequestration technologies. I mean, there's a lot we can do together and achieve the objective, which a lot of people want, which is the reduction of greenhouse gases, and at the same time, have viable economic growth.
Two [Massachusetts coal burning power plants] remain: Brayton Point in the South Coast region and Mt. Tom, just down the road. Within the next four years, both should shut down and Massachusetts should finally end all reliance on conventional coal generation.
The Obama administration's EPA ruling to cut carbon emissions at power plants is a direct affront to workers in states like Alabama, which not only rely upon coal-fired plants to generate most of their electricity but are also home to thousands of coal industry jobs.
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