Given our impending climatological doom, many scientists, bureaucrats, pundits, and my father have been suggesting a nuclear energy renaissance in the United States. There are three main reasons I believe this option should stay permanently off the table:
- It’s too expensive. The Rocky Mountain Institute makes the financial non-viability of nuclear plainly clear. How non-viable are we talking here? Try twice the cost of wind.
- The waste is geopolitically and environmentally toxic. I don’t know about you, but none of the current technologies for treating nuclear waste leaves me feeling particularly safe. Why this alone doesn’t rule nuclear out completely is testament to humanity’s painfully myopic decision-making tree.
- It’s not renewable. If “energy independence” is as big a goal as everyone claims these days, we should be avoiding tying our fortunes to yet another non-renewable fuel source proven to destabilize the regions where it’s found.
Why are we still even considering this?