In my position as nuclear power advocate, I hear all sorts of objections to my contention that nuclear power is the safest and cleanest form of exajoule scale energy known.
I hear all about "waste," as if "waste" was not an issue both with coal plants and solar cells and, for that matter, windmills.
I hear all about how nuclear power is too expensive, even though electricity generated from solar cells is ten times as expensive as nuclear power.
I hear all about how nuclear power takes too long to develop, even though building one or two reactors in less than 5 years that will produce as much energy as 50 years of solar cell production has produced.
Many people on hearing of my support for nuclear energy though say that the real problem with nuclear energy is that it's centralized. One cannot build a private nuclear power plant in one's basement, and therefore nuclear energy is not "distributed energy." Distributed energy, I am told, is better than centralized energy because, distributed energy is distributed.
Say what?
Distributed energy is better because it's distributed.
Nuclear energy requires large organizations, and we all know what that means. It means boards of directors, rich fat cats, investors, capitalization and - oh my God - profits and stockholders.
(I guess there have been no reactors built in socialist countries, but that's another matter.)
I am, for the record, not a socialist; neither am I a laissez-faire capitalist. I believe in well regulated capitalism in which the public's ownership of things like say, air, or water, or land, and health is an interest protected by the government, but where people can invest fairly and be rewarded fairly for assuming the risks of ownership and invention.
Anyway.
Here is the postulate: Distributed energy is better because it's distributed.
The "little guy" can own a solar cell, whereas only big guys can own nuclear power plants. Never mind that "Beyond Petroleum" BP is the largest producer of solar cells in a year. (As the "world's largest," they produce each year about enough to represent the output of a small natural gas power plant.) Distributed energy is better because well, if you have about $20,000 to drop, you can own your own solar plant, whereas for $20,000 you could not even hire someone to fill out the paperwork for a nuclear power plant.
So do I think that this postulate is supportable?
It is with interest I read a work that I am going to quote substituting the abbreviation "BBCT," for "Big Bad Corporate Types" for the word actually used in the work. Then I will identify the "big bad corporate types" and the work in question using some strategic deletions to not reveal my hand. I will also refer to something called "XXXX."
Let's go:
Politicians were eager to embrace...at first. On both sides of the Atlantic ... grew so quickly that some soon dwarfed the governments of places they served.
In the US, however, the relationship between people and BBCT soured fast. BBCT magnates soon gained reputations as power mongers. They bought off politicians and manipulated prices to put competitors out of business. Where they had monopolies they sometimes gouged... customers, particularly farmers, to make up for losses in more competitive locales. Shady stock manipulations by BBCT caused small stockholders, again including farmers, to lose money. Tabloids of the time pained pictures of fat-cat corruption, arrogance, and lavish lifestyles among BBCT tycoons. Periodicals carried color spreads of ...two million dollar vacation "cottage," for example, along with reports of...response when asked if his...would be willing to suffer a loss in the public interest: "The public be damned!"
The public responded with anger and anti-BBCT sentiment was still high as XXXX entered...the scene. By the end of the...century BBCT XXXX and the public fell into roles not unlike the players in an 1890's melodrama. The good public, itself the damsel in distress saw BBCT (run by robber barons) as the greasy, mustachioed villain. The XXXX, on the other hand was widely perceived as the clean-cut hero arriving to pluck the bound-and-gagged damsel off the tracks. Instead of being tied by the villainous BBCT, the public would find freedom with the heroic XXXX.
So who are the BBCT? The railroads/railroad interests that's who. And XXXX? Cars.
Yes folks, the biggest example of distributed energy on the planet by far is still the car. Has the car set mankind free from exploitation? Is the car what some people wish to represent, freedom?
The cited work is Divorce Your Car! by Katie Alford, New Society Publishers, copyright 2000, page 24, explained liberties taken.
The first chapter of this interesting work has a brief history of the car (which is easily the largest point source pollution machine on the planet) that includes interesting tidbits like this:
"...they predicted cars would enhance access to fresh air..."
"...it is the greatest health giving invention of a thousand years..."
"Driving offered 'a brisk activization of the entire organism'..."
"In cities and towns the noise and clatter of the streets will be reduced, a priceless boon to the tired nerves of this overwrought generation..."
"...some journals championed cars as a cure for road congestion..."
"...as early as 1907, a writer in the Municipal Journal and Engineer observed that, though early road-widening projects had been expected to relieve congestion, 'the result has proved to be exactly the opposite.'"
Now. My advocacy of nuclear power is not about whether anyone's arnacho-syndicalist-labor-socialist-libertarian-individualist-cooperative-independent social system is better than the status quo. My advocacy of nuclear power is about the environment. It is not about whether some well meaning folks have dragged a few solar cells to Haiti to power up a laptop for 20 minutes of internet access for kids. This not about Tortilla Curtain consumer guilt. It is not true that "distributed energy" is superior to centralized energy because it defeats "the oil companies."
Distributed energy is not proved to be better than centralized energy. Five million small coal fires in China are not superior to one large nuclear plant! (Yes, small wildcast coal systems are distributed power.
Cars are not superior to mass transit in trains.
I don't care what social system builds nuclear power plants, so long as they are built.
My advocacy of nuclear power is about the crisis in climate change on a world that now holds six and one half billion people, many of whom who have no access to decent living conditions.