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Wade Allison is Professor Emeritus of Physics and a Fellow of Keble College at Oxford University, England. On behalf of the Global Warming Policy Foundation Dr. Allison, a senior nuclear and medical physicist writes a paper regarding the reassessment of nuclear radiation safety.
The paper entitled, “Confidence in Nuclear Energy”, illustrates how this energy is constantly stymied by poor and inadequate science and an irrational culture of maximum precaution. As soon as “nuclear energy” is mentioned, many people first think of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the safety drills of the cold war, or the disasters at the nuclear plants at Chernobyl, Ukraine, and Fukushima Daiichi in Japan.
The nuclear energy plant at Chernobyl was operated under the rule of the communist Soviet regime that cared less about security, safety, and people and more about plentiful energy at the absolute cheapest cost. The construction and maintenance at Chernobyl was extremely substandard, precarious, and shoddy. As for the Fukushima Daiichi, it was imprudently erected in a precarious area and a Tsunami was its demise.
The other nuclear issues were carried out as a result of war, the most barbaric and cruel of all human activities. May this pursuit never reign upon the earth again. Further, it does not have to happen if nuclear energy is produced from ‘thorium’ – a radioactive mineral like uranium, but one which cannot undergo a meltdown or produce recoverable plutonium for making weapons and its radioactive waste does not last as long as that of uranium.
The linked video imparts the merits of thorium. There is enough for thousands of years’ worth of energy in Lemhi County in the State of Idaho. Neither the generation of energy or electricity from uranium or thorium emits any carbon dioxide, nor does it require facilities for colossal battery storage or any modification to the current electrical grid.
Despite the Paris climate accord, France has long been the world’s leader in the use of nuclear power – currently, over 70% of all electricity produced in the land of “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” is generated by nuclear power.
For a very long time now, many climate change dissenters have hailed nuclear energy as the epitomic compromise. Here we have an energy source in grand abundance, one that requires no greater area than fossil-fueled energy plants and necessitates no changes to the grid, and, to top it off, emits no carbon dioxide. Yet the eco-politicians, eco-justice bureaucrats, and activist scientists continue to persecute nuclear as a most-dangerous alternative. They have no real evidence to back the claims, but then again they have no truthful scientific evidence for continuing the anthropogenic climate change assertion either.
The reason for the removal of nuclear energy from the table is that the action effectively eliminates climate change as a purely political weapon. These people understand that atomic energy, as the linked paper cites, is safe, efficient and adequate, and much more stable and consistent, but it removes the armament to continue their battle for command and control.
The elimination of nuclear energy is an absolute disgrace – detractors obviously have much more concern for political posturing than the protection of people.
