President Obama formally rejected the Keystone pipeline project, a controversy among Canada, the US economy, energy independence, and environment. No wonder he waited till the last year of his presidential terms to make up his mind. The viable alternative, however, was not even mentioned. Yes, nuclear energy.
Other than the Fukushima scare, what are the downside of nuclear energy? It is, relatively, cheap, it is renewable, it has zero carbon footprint. Yes, if it goes terribly wrong, it kills the neighbors. That happened very infrequently. (Three Miles Island did not kill. Chernobyl and Fukushima did.) Seriously, more people died from flu than nuclear power-plant accidents, by a long shot.
There is really no viable alternatives. We can continue to burn fossil. That’s the way for the decades to come. We can explore solar, wind, geothermal, waves, bio-fuel, and whatever. They won’t amount to a fraction of what fossil can produce.
Do you realize that the fresh water crisis is fully solvable if there are sufficient energy? Yes, desalization is an energy intensive process. California needs only one decent size nuclear power plant to solve its current water problem. And we can try to do fusion power plants. In case of disasters, such plant will emit lots of vapors and none will be radioactive or harming any lifeforms on earth.
It behooves me to observe the scare of nuclear energy. It is inevitable. Get on with it already.
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