Leaving Nuclear Power Behind

[Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on Daily Kos on March 21, 2011.]

When we consider that the essence of nuclear power depends so much upon the balance between heat and cold, and protecting the engineered boiling of water, a lot can go wrong, including natural disaster as evidenced by the Fukushima problems in Japan. Too, much time goes by between incidents of loss of that control, so we forget. We shouldn't.

Six nuclear reactors in Japan, hit by an earthquake and the wave of a tsunami, have lost control that we are slowly regaining. Pundits talk about what happened, and cite the obvious: the tsunami disrupted the cooling process and heat overcame cold. There is more to learn, and informed people do not accept simple solutions to a complex problem until the failure is controlled and it has been studied and vetted in the scientific community.

Natural disaster is one thing, but this nuclear stuff, fuel and radioactive waste, has been the target of those who would do others harm. Too, humans make mistakes as happened at Chernobyl. If we had no other way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, we might consider it, but we need not. Then there is the radioactive output of the controlled water boiling: What about that? These are all reasons to refrain from building more nuclear reactors and to decommission the existing ones.

We use about 20 kilowatt hours of electricity each day in our home and there must be a way to reduce the amount of electricity purchased from the grid, and generate some or all of our own. This may be the better pursuit than public discourse over whether or not to build new nuclear reactors in the United States. It is a pursuit corporations and electric utilities are sure to hate.

Because if a viable (including it works and cost competitive) methodology for home made electricity could be developed, our house and others would uncouple from the grid, leaving the utilities behind. It is a path to be taken in lieu of more nuclear power plants. An enterprise that can be replicated, and if cost effective, could lead to jobs, advances in technology and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Worth considering as the Japanese engineers struggle to regain control of the nuclear reaction, and we look on, helpless to change it.

~Paul Deaton is a native Iowan living in rural Johnson County and weekend editor of Blog for Iowa. E-mail Paul Deaton