Glasgow’s COP26 Climate Summit ended with a thud with world powers agreeing to stricter standards on carbon pollution, committing to ending coal-fired power plants in a murky future. But whatever happens to coal, the real revelation from Glasgow is the influence of the nuclear power industry, prepared to make a comeback after the 2011 disgrace of Fukushia-Daiichi’s meltdown in Japan. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was so horrified by another nuclear catastrophe that she pressed the German Bundestag to end the reliance on nuclear power. That was then, this is now, with the nuclear power industry selling world leaders on the new breed of Small Modular Reactors [SMRs], a sales job by the industry claiming a new generation of failsafe nuclear reactors. Anyone believing that nuclear power is risk-free and environmentally friendly needs their head examined.
Whatever the benefits of SMRs in terms of reducing future nuclear meltdowns, they produce the same nuclear waste as any nuclear reactor that have been in use since 1954 in Russia. While disposal seems like an easy problem, the fact is that you can’t bury nuclear was deep enough to stop radioactivity from leaking into the atmosphere and ground water. Nuclear waste has been the real downside to nuclear power since its inception. No one in today’s nuclear industry can claim that the new breed of reactors don’t produced dangerously radioactive nuclear waste. President Joe Biden, 78, and his 62-year-old Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm were singing the praises of the new breed of SMR reactions, capable of producing “baseload” energy, utilizing the least amount of land to produce electricity. Biden and Graholm tossed the renewable energy industry under the bus.
Biden and Granholm argue that only nuclear can meet the energy needs of the future without producing significant amounts of carbon pollution. So Biden and Granholm’s brainstorm involves trading carbon pollution for nuclear waste. Before the latest madness makes the world truly uninhabitable, scientists must continue to work on more efficient ways renewable energy can generate power, including solar and wind. Estimates coming from Glasgow have the nuclear power industry growing from $36 billion in 2017 to $49 billion in 2025. All GOP26 are brainwashed to accept the mass hysteria about climate change and global warming. Blaming the world’s man made climate problems on fossil fuels, the major declaration of COP26 is Armageddon around the corner unless the world reduces its carbon footprint. No climate scientist knows whether or not the climate can be changed.
If you listen to all the bloviating at COP26, you’d think the world is coming to an end with all the talk about deadly increases in earth’s temperatures in the next decade. But instead of working on green energy, Biden and Granholm have returned to nuclear power as the world’s savior from carbon dioxide pollution. Building out new power plants around the planet come with serious risks in terms of what to do with toxic nuclear waste, now leaking about nuclear disposal sites in Indonesia. Whatever the dangers of global warming, what would the world look like in 50 year with nuclear waste oozing into ground water and the atmosphere from plants around the world? Russia’s Rosatom is committed to building nuclear power plants around the developing world. World Nuclear Assn. [WNA] estimates that some 30 developing countries around the planet now consider nuclear energy in their future.
All the mass hysteria in Glasgow about global warning has opened the door for a comeback by the global nuclear industry. Countries like United Arab Emirates [UAE] have already launched its nuclear power plant. Belarus, Bangladesh and Turkey already have nuclear power plants in the works. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria have also jumped on the nuclear bandwagon, primarily to produce cheap electricity, with the added benefit of low carbon pollution. But nuclear waste disposal is no joke, requiring all countries considering nuclear power plants to look at the consequences on producing unprecedented levels of nuclear waste. High levels of radioactivity have already been detected in Jakarta, Indonesia, with the nuclear industry having no real plan how to dispose of nuclear waste. Whether the SMR nuclear reactors have less meltdowns in anyone’s guess. But nuclear waste is an undeniable fact.
Spreading nuclear power plants around the developing world comes with added risks because of political instability but, more importantly, lacking the resources to do the proper maintenance needed at nuclear plants. When it comes to coal or methane gas, the worst thing that happens is carbon pollution or occasional fires. When it comes to nuclear plants, there’s always problems has they age, with the prospects of accidents increasing as plants get old. Countries like Indonesia have their sights on nuclear weapons, following the route of Pakistan when the late A.Q. Khan helped engineer Pakistan’s A-bomb in 1998, an important step in keeping archenemy India at bay. So when it comes to proliferating nuclear energy, the world trades carbon pollution for nuclear waste, something that hasn’t been worked out by the nuclear industry. Before the world jumps both feet in, they need to consider the consequences.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
