Years of stout opposition towards nuclear energy is fading, as global warming causes increased acceptance.
In Denmark, there has been a dramatic shift in the past two years in public opinion on nuclear power, as the energy source becomes increasingly considered as a tool to mitigate climate change, reports Copenhagen Post.
A recent Gallup survey in that country found the majority of Danes support nuclear power as a means of reducing CO2 emissions. In 2007, a similar survey revealed just a quarter of respondents favoured energy produced by nuclear power plants. The latest results show that 54 percent now favour the move.
“Concern about the climate has risen so markedly that it has overtaken opposition to nuclear power plants,” said senior researcher Lars Kjerulf Petersen from Aarhus University.
Other European countries including Finland, Poland, the UK and the Baltic nations are undertaking the planning and building of new nuclear energy plants in order to reduce CO2 emissions. Denmark has been urged to ally itself with Germany and Sweden in plant construction by energy advocate organisation Reel Enerji Oplysning chief Bertel Lohmann Andersen, who also encouraged greater political debate on the issue.
Opponents, however, remain adamant. “The nuclear waste problem hasn’t been solved. The risk of reactor accidents and the danger of material used in atomic weapons spreading remains,” claimed Tarjei Haaland of Greenpeace. The Danish government has also dismissed any new moves towards nuclear energy. “We’re not opposed to nuclear power per se, but it doesn’t fit the Danish long-term energy strategy,” said energy spokesman Lars Christian Lilleholt.
Lilleholt argued that Denmark already has an energy policy that concentrates on combining the country’s 665 heat and power stations with a high proportion of renewable energy.
The power supply from the nuclear power is very huge and its support to many industries.But the emission of the harmful form it should be reduce to minimum.
The U.S. hasn’t built a nuclear electric power plant in over 30 years. The full-set economy and skilled workforce that built them no longer exists. The U.S. has no industrial base or expertise left. Such an impoverished economy doesn’t require the kind of people who once built our nuclear power plants, nuclear submarines, or got us to the moon. When a nation resembles a police state surveillance control grid tyranny, it is in the ruling oligarchy’s best interest for the schools to turn out passive mind-numbed trolls. We would be very lucky if we could wrangle a concession to assemble foreign made parts for a nuke plant.
Nuclear power in the U.S. was sabotaged decades ago by corruption and a convoluted “engineer as you go” approach. Every U.S. nuke power plant is a one-of-a-kind which made them all economically unfeasible.
France did nuclear power the right way. Develop a sound nuke plant design and make them all the same. Economies of scale can be brought to bear in construction, maintenance, and repair. An engineer qualified in one French nuke plant can work at any of the others with minimal retraining. In the U.S., an engineer must go through extensive requalification if he goes from one plant to another.
Denmark should to go to France for nuke power solutions.
Nuclear Power Plants = Clean Power + JOBS JOBS JOBS JOBS
The creation of new nuclear power plants will produce great American middle class jobs. These great jobs are created in both the building and running of a new nuke plant. This can not be said for the building of solar panels and wind mills parts which will be done in China in order to keep prices down.
Note this comment by Jim Rodgers the CEO of Duke Energy:
“In an operation of a nuclear plant, there [are] .64 jobs per megawatt. The wind business–and we have a very large wind business–is .3 jobs per megawatt. In the solar business–and we’re installing solar panels–it’s about .1. But the difference in the jobs is quite different, because if you’re wiping off a solar panel, it’s sort of a minimum wage type of job, [with] much higher compensation for nuclear engineers and nuclear operators. If our goal is to rebuild the middle class, nuclear plays a key role there, particularly if coal is out of the equation.”
How are we being environmentally friendly when we purchase wind mills and solar panels from China? China electrical grid is run from power produced from the dirtiest coal plants in the world. They don’t even scrub their coal before they burn it. That means Solar Panels and Wind Mills = CO2 + heavy metal particulates + everyone’s favorite Mercury.
Viva the Nuclear Renaissance,
Jfarmer9