George Monbiot: Now Hard Core Nuclear Power Supporter

Writing in Britain's Guardian, George Monbiot makes a great point as he comes out for nuclear power in the wake of the failures of the Fukushima reactors: in spite of a very rare combination of severe geological events followed by mistakes on the part of reactor site workers and higher management, yes, in spite of all that what happend? With a reactor designed with 40 year old technology the result was far less than the worst case outcome scenarios.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

I am not entirely persuaded by the point. But I want to be persuaded because the world needs every major energy source that exists. Look at the price of oil. Look at the rising difficulties with extracting oil. Look at the gray skies of Chinese cities. We need cleaner energy sources and can't afford to lose one.

Monbiot goes on to point out how inappropriate solar power is for a country like Britain that lies so far north. The densely populated European countries can't use much wind power without going offshore and that's more expensive. Solar power in North Africa delivered by cables into Europe is one discussed option. But with a civil war raging in Libya that option is looking dimmer. Does Europe want to put itself at risk so much more more political instability?

Most reactors do not sit near a subduction zone where one continental plate is getting squeezed under another plate. So most reactors aren't located where 9.0 quakes or 7 meter tsunamis are possible. Most reactors are not built as low to the ocean. Newer reactors have better safety features. Plus, this accident in Japan, rather like airplane crashes, will get heavily picked over by engineers to learn how to prevent even the level of failure we saw at Fukushima. Even better newer reactor designs have much better passive safety features that make them less vulnerable to failures.

As I've already pointed out the nuclear power industry could develop many tools and capabilities to rapidly deliver to a reactor site should multiple pieces of equipment fail at a reactor. Even if all the power generation and cooling systems of a reactor fails off-site equipment should be available for delivery within hours of the start of an incident.

Steve LeVine argues that our energy sources face multiple problems. There's not an easy solution.

What's going on is economic fear, but also a global energy system under severe stress. Over the last several months, we've learned the hard way in incredibly coincidental events that we are in firm control of almost none of our major sources of power: Deep-water oil drilling can be perilous if the company carrying it out cuts corners. Because of chronically bad governance by petrostates, we can't necessarily rely on OPEC supplies either. Shale gas drilling may result in radioactive contamination of water, though who knows since many of the companies involved seem prepared to risk possible ignominy and lawsuits later rather than proactively straighten out their own bad actors. As for much-promoted nuclear power, we know now that big, perfect-storm, black-swan natural disasters can come in twos.

Why do oil companies drill for oil in deep water with half billion dollar drilling platforms? Because that's where most of the new oil fields are going to be found. Offshore oil could make up 40% of world oil production by 2015. We are getting energy from politically, geologically, and technologically challenging sources because those are the sources that are left. The cost of solar power isn't dropping fast enough and solar and wind have big problems with intermittency. There is no one clear great solution for our energy needs.