Nuclear power has been touted as a “clean” source of energy and the next answer to global warming.

However, the cleanliness of nuclear power is nonsense. Not only does it contaminate the planet with radioactive waste, it is a significant contributor to global warming.

It’s true, there is little to no fossil fuel used in actually producing nuclear power in a plant, but the reality is that enormous quantities of fossil fuel are burned in order to mine, mill and enrich the uranium needed to fuel the plant, as well as construct the enormous reactor itself.  In fact, a nuclear power plant must operate for at least a decade before all the energy consumed to build and fuel the plant has been earned back and the power plant begins to produce net energy.

Even the ‘harmless’ vapor that emits from the cooling towers are detrimental to the environment. Thermal pollution from nuclear power plants adversely affects marine ecosystems. “Once-through” cooling systems in use at half the U.S. nuclear reactors discharge billions of gallons of water per day at temperatures hotter than the water into which it flows.

In addition, according to a Public Citizen fact sheet, the typical reactor will generate 20 to 30 tons of high-level nuclear waste annually. There is no known way to safely dispose of this waste, which remains dangerously radioactive that remains that way for a quarter of a million years. In fact, the mere process of isolating this waste from humans and the environment guzzles even more fuel.

Nuclear power plants present unique safety and security risks. A severe accident or attack at a nuclear plant could be absolutely catastrophic. And accidents do happen. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and the David-Besse plant near Toledo, Ohio which came dangerously close to disaster when acid corroded a hole in its reactor head. Remember the scare that occurred when al-Qaeda considered attacking U.S. nuclear power plants.

The nuclear industry is one that is cost-inefficient and is propped up by government subsidies. These subsidies give nuclear energy an unfair and undesirable advantage over other types of safe and clean alternative energies.
But the matter of the fact is, no amount of tax dollars will make nuclear energy any safer, cleaner or more economical.

The hawks who push the nuclear agenda as a cost-efficient and clean source of energy clearly do not think of the cost of storing nuclear waste for quarter of a million years, the expense to the government for subsidizing uranium enrichment and the nuclear industry’s liability in the case of accidents. Clearly, advocates of ‘clean’ nuclear energy never bothered to find out that the Paducah uranium enrichment facility in Kentucky requires the electrical output of two 1000-megawatt coal-fired plants.

Nuclear power is not green and is absolutely not clean. Routinely emitted gases are unregulated because the nuclear industry, with no oversight, decided that they are biologically inconsequential. These inconsequential gases include radioactive isotopes such as xenon, krypton and argon which emit high-energy gamma radiation, which can mutate genes in reproductive cells.

Left unchecked, nuclear power plants will leave a toxic wasteland for our future generations.

It’s high time the world did something about it.