I was reading this article earlier today and came across this little quote from Eicke Weber, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems: "The impact of a nuclear disaster [like the one in Japan] is simply too great for the government to continue its support for nuclear [power]." I don't think the situation in Japan should drive every country to pull their support from efforts to produce nuclear power. Japan doesn't really need to have nuclear power plants. The country is located on a fault line, so they are especially prone to earthquakes and attacks by giant, fire-breathing lizards. The densely populated east coast of the United States probably doesn't need to have large-scale nuclear power production either, the cost of a meltdown is just too high. But if nuclear power was just a little less expensive to start producing on a small scale, rural communities in areas without major faults and less than regular monster attacks could build their own plants. The mistake I think this article's writer, along with many other people make, is they assume they can come up a blanket plan that works for the whole country. A country as big as ours with so many diverse ecosystems needs to be able to tailor power options to the areas where the power is being produced and consumed.
No comments:
Post a Comment