My partner and I have been talking a lot about sources of energy since the Fukushima crisis began to unfold. I understand that there are still a lot of folks who are still at least interested in nuclear energy as a path towards oil independence, but I can't help thinking about the awful negative impacts of nuclear energy gone wrong-- not just in the immediate future, but for our children and for our childrens' children.
Nuclear energy has incredibly high upfront costs, including governmental investment... Yet, it is largely run (in the US and Japan) by private corporations. We all know that corporations are driven more by the bottom line than by concern for citizenry, and this makes financial concerns as pressing to those designing and operating nuclear power facilities as human health concerns. There seems to be an unresolvable tension between the two competing concerns.
Humans are fallible and mother nature can dish out way more than we can possibly imagine in combinations that we could never possibly imagine. This means that plants designed to meet the letter of the law are not over-engineered enough to withstand whatever is dealt us.
In light of these issues, it seems folly to use such a dangerous source of energy.
All it takes is one accident and these isotopes are polluting the environment in a wide area essentially "forever" in human time. Japan is already a small country with a large population and can't afford to have 50 miles of territory off-limits for 100's of years.
We don't have enough experience to understand the long-term impacts of such a nuclear accident.
So, I've been revisiting the ideas of wind and solar, and in my recent reading, I found a bright story in the rubble of the nuclear nightmare unfolding in Fukushima.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
In this article, Kelly Rigg describes how much of Japan's wind energy remains online
There has been no wind facility damage reported by any association members, from either the earthquake or the tsunami. Even the Kamisu semi-offshore wind farm, located about 300km from the epicenter of the quake, survived. Its anti-earthquake "battle proof design" came through with flying colors.
Mr. Ueda confirms that most Japanese wind turbines are fully operational. Indeed, he says that electric companies have asked wind farm owners to step up operations as much as possible in order to make up for shortages in the eastern part of the country:
Apparently only 3 farms are off-line due to grid failure, but not damage to the turbines according to Rigg.
Here is a map of Japan's windfarms: http://www.thewindpower.net/...
If instead of spending billions to set up nuclear power plants, couldn't we use some of that money to set up more wind and solar and the rest to do some more R & D on capacitors and batteries that can make wind and solar viable continuous sources of power? I'm really just thinking of the human impact here... I'd love to hear what others think, because I'm no expert on this stuff, just a concerned citizen who wants my baby to grow up in a safe, healthy environment.