Nuclear Energy

Following Three Mile Island in 1979 no new nuclear power station has started anywhere in North America. Chernobyl 1986 killed public interest in much of Europe for more than a decade. New plants have come on line and are being built in many European countries. In the last decade there has been a growing move to building more nuclear plants in the United States and in Canada, but the nuclear crisis in Japan is adding more doubts. The German ordered all nuclear plants closed, a typical overreaction that will result the in the plants being quietly restarted over the coming months after a “review”.

We need a diverse array of energy production plants ranging from hydro to coal to wind to solar to thermal. Nuclear also needs to be in the mix too, but it must be done smartly with lessons taken from the failures of the first generation plants. No form of power generation is free of issues. Solar and wind supplement but due to their nature, they are not reliable to provide 24/7 power. Coal, while abundant, adds pollutants to the air and water system. Oil and natural gas while cleaner than coal are sources that are running out and for which we must drill in more risky and sensitive environments. Transportation is also an issue with oil, and somewhat with natural gas too. As for hydro, there are few rivers left where dams can be built and even then the result is the flooding an horrendous swaths of land for form the necessary reservoir lakes behind the dams. Thermal, we just do not have enough sites to construct sufficient plants.

Nuclear has its significant issues too, but it must be in the mix. Our vehicles, trains, aircrafts, buildings, roads, bridges, etc. are far superior and safer than they were four to seven decades ago. As with any mechanism, we learn from past failures and correct them.

Any new plants built today would be third generation plants. Safety of a plant is directly related to its capacity to cool the rods under any circumstances, and for having redundant systems in case the first, second or even the third system fails. The third generation plants, with a greater array of redundant back-up cooling systems, are far safer than the first generation plants. These new generation plants have also designed into them more natural cooling systems and features not available 30 and 40 years ago when the first plants were designed.

No doubt the lessons learned from Japan will be incorporated into the fourth generation plants that are currently on the drawing boards. These new systems must be prepared to handle not one major event, but to make events at the same time.


Also, consideration should be given to having smaller reactors, reactors that are more readily cooled via the natural environment rather than larger units with their large bundles that require constant flow of water to cool them adequately.


We must not just look to the third and fourth generation systems, but existing systems must also be upgraded. There are other redundant systems that can be added, and must be added as quickly as is possible, and if not, close down the outdated plants.


No matter how we may feel about one energy form or the other, our society requires huge volumes of energy that can only be met by a diverse cadre of systems, including nuclear.