Do you want your tax dollars to be used to bail out the nuclear industry? Do you want to see between $50 billion and $100 billion of taxpayer dollars used over the next decade to keep these unprofitable, expensive, dangerous, and dirty reactors operating? Do you want to accumulate more radioactive waste with nowhere to go?
From the very beginning, private enterprise has not been interested in investing in the risky nuclear industry, so the taxpayer was tapped to pay for most of the research and development. Now the American Jobs Act proposes to continue that pattern in the mistaken belief that nuclear can help solve the problem of climate change.
On the contrary, researcher Dr. Benjamin Sovacool concludes, “Every dollar you spend on nuclear, you could have saved five or six times as much carbon with efficiency or wind farms.” His research is available insciencedirect.com.
This article appears in Jul 15-22, 2021.
What happens when it don’t blow….or dark?
On the contrary, investment into nuclear energy is one of the few things that I would like my tax dollars going toward. New nuclear technology produces very little waste and is incredibly clean and safe. The only reason it’s expensive is because states like California have made it so with restrictive policy. Instead, our state simply imports energy from other states and pats itself on the back for reducing carbon emissions while wagging the finger at the very states it gets its energy from.
It takes massive amounts of land and destroys entire ecosystems to produce enough energy with wind farms to power even a single city. It also relies on the right weather conditions, which is why wind farms can’t be built everywhere. It’s not sustainable and not efficient.
I agree that better efficiency in farming or in general can also reduce carbon, but there’s no reason not to combine that with one of the most reliable and clean energy sources we have available – nuclear energy.