Posted: 09 Mar 2012 07:22 AM PST
Nuclear power -- alive and well 1 year later: Technologist Bill
Gates well explains why the nuclear
power renaissance lives on despite the Fukushima earthquake-tsunami
disaster: We
simply know of no other mass, non-carbon source of baseload electric
power. So it
is that, a year after the Japanese nuclear accident (pictured above,
precautions in the Fukushima area), there is hardly a blip in
the total number of planned new nuclear reactors around the world. Just
two of Japan's
54 nuclear plants are up and running, and Germany has closed eight of
its 17
plants. Yet the rest of the world is different: China and India appear
to have
slowed their respective plans for a large-scale buildup of nuclear power
in
order to accommodate their booming economies, but neither seems likely
to
actually cancel any of the construction. And, according to the World
Nuclear
Association, 60 nuclear plants are currently being built (
list) around the
world, about the same number planned prior to the March 11, 2011, Fukushima
accident. Gates argues that, given the unreliable nature of wind and solar power, the sole current
substitute for the energy density of fossil fuels is nuclear power. He explains: "Nuclear power provides 1 million
times the energy as hydrocarbons." A simple enough calculation.
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