Nuclear energy is being touted as the solution to energy shortages and climate change, at least by Fox News.
On the surface, it seems so reasonable. Nuclear doesn’t burn anything, so it doesn’t emit carbon dioxide. It produces lots of energy for a very small amount of fuel. What more could we ask? Well, quite a bit, actually. Rex Weyler has an excellent article explaining the shortcomings of nuclear; it’s too expensive to be economic, it produces more carbon than any energy source except fossil fuels, plants spend so much time shut down that it’s not reliable and our best solution so far for dealing with the waste is to dump it into the oceans.
It’s time for the debate about climate change to move beyond the quest for the next technological saviour. It used to be that nuclear fusion was going to be the answer to all our energy problems. Fusion produces huge amounts of energy out of hydrogen and the waste product is helium, an inert gas. It sounds like the perfect energy source, and for the last fifty years it’s been promised as right around the corner. But now, with fifty years of research behind it, we’re in an energy crisis and fusion is nowhere to be found.
Granted, fusion is a difficult technology, and it’s reasonable to believe that development times for other technologies could be shorter. But the point here is that estimates of how long it will take for a technology to fulfill a goal are typically underestimated by those who develop the technology.
So next time someone promises you that nuclear, geothermal, biofuels, wind or tidal are going to solve our energy problems, look them straight in the eye and ask them how the nuclear fusion reactor is coming along.
