It was fitting, as I began to write this column, to be distracted by playful shadows of steam cutting across the sun from Madison's east side coal plant, laden with the carbon emissions that are the price of running my laptop. It's just one more reminder of our carbon-captured economy. From Al Gore's Academy Award to the homeland security orations of John McCain - where nuclear energy takes precedence to oil imports - clean energy has entered the American conscience in a big way. Nuclear power, with its zero factory emissions and hyper-efficiency, looks to become the political darling of sustainable energy.
Nuclear power plants run on uranium, a finite resource like oil, except with much more land destruction and waste as well as longer timeline before affordable sources tap out. Already supplying 20 percent of U.S. electricity consumption, nuclear power may be the key to keeping up with energy demands as we attempt to shift from belching coal plants (providing 49 percent of U.S. energy in 2006) toward efficiency, conservation and renewable resources (2.4 percent and rising) such as solar, wind and geothermal power. Nuclear power provides the highest baseload capacity - the ability to produce power at all times - of any existing energy source, a bonus trait as engineers figure out how to effectively store energy from the fickle presence of wind and sun.
McCain isn't the only one who thinks nuclear energy sounds great. The uranium market has been booming, jump-starting the proliferation of mines everywhere. Between 2001 and 2007, prices rose over 1,000 percent to levels not seen since the market collapsed with Berlin's wall. The change is driven purely by speculation on where the carbon-conscious future is headed, rather than demand (at 180 million pounds of processed uranium annually for power plants), setting the stage for a crash should plant expansion get politically bombed.
Political blockades are easy to come by, since nuclear power creates a hazardous waste nightmare. Although spent uranium can be preprocessed to fuel plants, the United States has stood firm (and alone) in refusing to do this since President Carter, because it can result in weapons-grade plutonium. Nuclear weapons' fuel proliferation in a terror-spooked world could create a lot of weak points to build very big bombs.
Communities near nuclear plants are more likely to be concerned about accidents such as Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Such events are rare, and likely to become even more rare with the new generation of super-safe plant designs but equally alarming in their magnitude.
If our country had somewhere to concentrate and guard spent fuel, things might be easier, but the proposed storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev., remains closed as a geologic and political nightmare only after several billion dollars have been poured into its construction. Planning continues despite site weaknesses in groundwater seepage and earthquake and volcano vulnerability. Nevada flat out doesn't want it, but Congress overrode these objections in a 2002 resolution - because there is no plan B.
But it's uranium mining that may be the main health threat, argued public health researcher Doug Brugge before a packed hall at UW's Nelson Institute this February. Community effects of uranium mining have been devastating in the past, something Brugge studied first hand on the Navajo Nation in Arizona, where over one thousand uranium mines were operated from the 1940s to 1980s.
There is no process,"" Brugge said of government cleanup efforts. ""They just left a mess."" Miners were never protected from or informed of the health risks of radiation, leaving a host of health problems from lung cancer to kidney disease. Aside from the tailings of uranium, there remains ""a whole toxic soup"" that includes radon, arsenic and radium. Investigation into the effects on surrounding communities is just getting underway. Although regulatory standards have improved since, ""We still haven't cleaned up the mess from the first round of uranium mining,"" Brugge said.
For all its problems, nuclear power may still be a necessary part of our future, but we must approach it eyes wide open to fix the past and plan a safer future. Maybe someday I'll be writing columns without the carbon shadows, waving to national guards at the neighborhood plant. Nuclear power is just one part of the less-evil-than-coal solution to tide us over until something better comes along.
