Nuclear is by far the largest zero carbon energy source for the US. It is larger than hydro, wind, solar, geothermal – every other “green” energy source combined. It also requires no backup – which is done in the US by burning gas.
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Fukushima: Get Over It
People still seem to insist on screaming “Fukushima” as if it is the nail in the coffin of nuclear power. I have news for you. It isn’t.
The reality is that besides the Fukushima reactors being quite old, and with fairly poor containment, a 9.0 earthquake was survived, followed by a 100 ft high (~30 m) tsunami. About 20,000 people were killed from the wall of water that resulted, but still the focus is on the nuclear accident.
The accident happened primarily because the infrastructure was so badly destroyed that adequate cooling could not be brought to the reactors in time, plus there was a fear – both an unnecessary environmental one, and a financial one (since salt water destroys reactors), about opening the reactors to the oceans.
In any case, changes have already been implemented around the world to update reactors to add further backup protection systems. Here is an example of how Canadian reactors now handle this situation as an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vggzl9OngaM
There were zero deaths from the public from the reactor, much as the fear-mongers would have you believe otherwise as they quote insane numbers for cancer that do not materialize, yet at the same time about 1,000 deaths came from suicides and complications of evacuations. The reality is that in many cases it would have been better to just stay behind, or at least move back much sooner. There was no need to stay away for years on end – our specifications for what counts as a “safe” background level has little to do with reality, and everything to do with public fear.
So, let’s have no more of this silliness, okay?
Germany – Where does the power come from?
A meme was recently created alleging Germany didn’t need nuclear because it has solar and solar and wind. Here is where the power comes from, and you can check it easily for yourself.
The Dangers of Nuclear Spent Fuel and Transatlantic Flights
Look at these poor people, dying in agony as the plutonium in the spent fuel surrounding them irradiates them and turns them into… oh, wait.
As you can see, they are not dying. In fact, I’m in contact with several of them who tell me that after 4 years now, the entire original group is still alive and quite cancer free.
When you do the math, you discover in fact that a transatlantic flight exposes you to more radiation than you would get from spending some time next to some spent fuel casks. (see the meme text above for details).
Wind Power: Appearance vs. Reality
Several years ago, the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station added what they called a “Commemorative” wind turbine to the grounds shared by the nuclear power plant. Note how much energy it generates.
Wind Power Capacity
You often see articles like “100% of new capacity built in location X this year was renewable“, but what does that mean?
Let’s explore the German wind power build-out as an example. If you look at this graph from 2014, you will notice the actual capacity that the turbines are rated for is the upper line. The lower, small series of spikes is the actual power produced by the wind turbines. It occurs at effectively random times and so does not follow demand, and it is roughly 20% of the theoretical maximum total of the turbines.
This means that if you build a 10 MW wind turbine, over the year you should get an average of 2 MW out of it – and, as I mentioned, randomly. Power grids can handle a little of this kind of power, but there are serious limits what you can put on the grid. Ignoring that though, it means you need about 1500, 10 MW turbines (capacity would be 15000 MW, actual output 3000 MW) to equal a single good size nuclear plant in output. However, having the power reliably produced from the nuclear plant means that it is predictable and useful.
Predictable and useful means you can reliably displace other sources with it. We burn a lot of coal and gas because we know when it is burned it will reliably produce energy, and cheaply (at least for the cost of the fuel anyway). Nuclear power can replace coal because it will generate energy reliably, continuously, and cheaply.
Note also the original example quote from the top said “built in year X”. This means if you had 10,000 MW of power infrastructure, and you built a total of 100 MW more, and it was all wind, you would increase the total capacity by 1%, and even less impressive, the total power by 0.2% (since the wind power only produces 20% of its rated capacity).
What about the waste? Part II
Why I’m passionate about nuclear energy
I admit, this is a long read, but there is a lot to be passionate about nuclear energy.
(and I still couldn’t cover it all)
I would argue that the more time you spend learning about nuclear energy, the more amazing it becomes and the more passion you feel about it. In short, I see it as the only real solution we have for fighting climate change, but in addition to that, it will also save the human race and bring the world up to a standard of living never seen before – without massive tradeoffs to the environment. The tradeoffs are not zero, but they are by far the best we have.

Thorium becoming U233 also has value beyond that of power. U233 decays into very special isotopes that are needed for various industries, and one is being considered for cancer research. This is no ordinary research. Picture a radioisotope bonded to an antibody designed to attach to cancer cells. It is injected, arrives at the cancer site, attaches, and blasts just those few local cells to kill them. This kind of treatment could work on “impossible” cancers of today like pancreatic and Leukemia. Idaho national labs (INL) was working on this, though they have been quiet as of late.
The higher temperatures would allow us to generate chemical reactions that we now have to burn coal or gas to accomplish. Many things would be in reach, such as making ammonia from water and nitrogen in the air. We currently consume over 1% of the country’s energy making ammonia for fertilizer for food and industrial use, that energy is done by fossil.

Nuclear energy has the lowest deaths per kWh than any energy source we currently use, and I’m including wind and solar. And, I’m including Chernobyl and Fukushima. Contrary to what people claim (we can discuss that later), the total deaths from Chernobyl were under 100, and Fukushima was 0. However, the tsunami and suicides from being uprooted killed about 20,000.
People also think we don’t need nuclear sometimes because we have wind and solar. I did the math, if you replaced just Palo Verde, you’d need about 100 sq miles of solar panels just on a kWh basis. Worse still, output would be 0 at night, near zero on cloudy days, and 3x too much during the peak. It is not reliable power, so you have to back it up. Your options are: nuclear with no backup needed, coal with no backup needed, “green” with added burning of natural gas as “backup” (most plants rely HEAVILY on natural gas). As Germany rapidly discovered, as you shut down nukes, you burn more coal. There is very little you can do about it because nothing else has the power density or stability of these.
These are most of the reasons I’m passionate about nuclear, but there are just so many other possibilities. How about indoor farms for vegetation? Cheap electricity means we could grow food in climate controlled, LED lit conditions, with no harmful insects, and thus less chemical use and waste run-off. It would increase the output of a farm vs its land area many-fold as you could now have what amounts to a skyscraper producing food. Even a single story would be better though, since fully controlled conditions would more than double yield and cut usage of other chemicals in half.
Going even more sci-fi, since the MSR/LFTR plants are so efficient, and require basically no intervention, why not build them as “robots” (self-running plants). Use the energy generated to make more of them with energy to spare, and now you have a self-replicating system of power plants. Your energy cost is now basically 0, since no humans are needed, and all the energy required (which would be your major cost) is made by the plants.
Remember the RTG’s on space probes? If you really want to explore space, or possibly colonize it, you need nuclear, and a lot more than a few RTGs. That probably means MSRs, since they are efficient and power dense.
I am convinced that the world does not need to starve itself on a thin gruel of expensive energy, but instead to embrace and develop newer and cheaper nuclear technologies, gaining access to more and more energy. This energy is what we need to live on and enjoy this planet for all of the billions of people and the billions more that we would be easily able to afford.
Knowing all this, how could you NOT be passionate about nuclear?