suijuris

 The wholesale obliteration of the Amazon Rainforest  should be more prevalent in headlines nationwide. I know it was a bigger topic several years ago, but although it is not page one anymore, the rate of destruction has not diminished.1.5 acres per second.Never allow that number to fade from your consciousness. I find myself timing menial household tasks and calculaying the land cleared.Fill the Brita filter ? 30 acres.Take out the recycling? 58 acres. Empty the compost container? 86 acres. Here I am trying to make a difference by composting one quart of organics at a time and 86 acres of priceless forest vanished forever! I personally think it should be a bigger priority than alternative energy or even CO2 output. It would not take that much to stop it. Mainly, set up sustainable farms to produce food andpay people to be the shepards of the forest untill enough sustainable activities are established that it would be unthinkable to them to clear any land as that is their income! I am quite certain that the financing for this entire process has been spent a thousand times over in Iraq.We need to bring this issue back into the consciousness of everyone in the nation (and world) When the Rainforests were first in the headlines, global warming was yet too be declared the emergency it has been  now. Reminding people of the Amazon destruction would carry much more significance now. I don't think people REALLY know whats happening or the losses occuring.

Here is a reminder, from the Rain Tree website

 The Amazon Rainforest has been described as the "Lungs of our Planet" because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest

:Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.

The Amazon Rainforest covers over a billion acres, encompassing areas in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia and the Eastern Andean region of Ecuador and Peru. If Amazonia were a country, it would be the ninth largest in the world.

The Amazon Rainforest has been described as the "Lungs of our Planet" because it provides the essential environmental world service of continuously recycling carbon dioxide into oxygen. More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest.

More than half of the world's estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical rainforests. One-fifth of the world's fresh water is in the Amazon Basin.

One hectare (2.47 acres) may contain over 750 types of trees and 1500 species of higher plants.

At least 80% of the developed world's diet originated in the tropical rainforest. Its bountiful gifts to the world include fruits like avocados, coconuts, figs, oranges, lemons, grapefruit, bananas, guavas, pineapples, mangos and tomatoes; vegetables including corn, potatoes, rice, winter squash and yams; spices like black pepper, cayenne, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, sugar cane, tumeric, coffee and vanilla and nuts including Brazil nuts and cashews.

At least 3000 fruits are found in the rainforests; of these only 200 are now in use in the Western World. The Indians of the rainforest use over 2,000.

Rainforest plants are rich in secondary metabolites, particularly alkaloids. Biochemists believe alkaloids protect plants from disease and insect attacks. Many alkaloids from higher plants have proven to be of medicinal value and benefit.

Currently, 121 prescription drugs currently sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. And while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified 3000 plants that are active against cancer cells. 70% of these plants are found in the rainforest. Twenty-five percent of the active ingredients in today's cancer-fighting drugs come from organisms found only in the rainforest.

Vincristine, extracted from the rainforest plant, periwinkle, is one of the world's most powerful anticancer drugs. It has dramatically increased the survival rate for acute childhood leukemia since its discovery.

The latest statistics show that rainforest land converted to cattle operations yields the land owner $60 per acre and if timber is harvested, the land is worth $400 per acre. However, if these renewable and sustainable resources are harvested, the land will yield the land owner $2,400 per acre.

http://www.rain-tree.com/facts.htm

THE BIODIVERSITY OF THE RAINFOREST

The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs (Square One Publishers, Inc. Garden City, NY 11040, © Copyrighted 2004) By Leslie Taylor

Why should the loss of tropical forests be of any concern to us in light of our own poor management of natural resources? The loss of tropical rainforests has a profound and devastating impact on the world because rainforests are so biologically diverse, more so than other ecosystems (e.g., temperate forests) on Earth.

Consider these facts:

A single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all of Europe's rivers.

A 25-acre plot of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of trees - a number equal to the total tree diversity of North America.

A single rainforest reserve in Peru is home to more species of birds than are found in the entire United States.

One single tree in Peru was found to harbor forty-three different species of ants - a total that approximates the entire number of ant species in the British Isles.

The number of species of fish in the Amazon exceeds the number found in the entire Atlantic Ocean.

It is estimated that more than 20 percent of Earth's oxygen is produced in this area.

The Amazon is by far the largest watershed and largest river system in the world occupying over 6 million square kilometers. Over one fifth of all the fresh water found on Earth is in the Amazon Basin's rivers, streams, and tributaries.

The magnitude of this loss to the world was most poignantly described by Harvard's Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist Edward O. Wilson over a decade ago:

 

"The worst thing that can happen during the 1980s is not energy depletion, economic collapses, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly that our descendants are least likely to forgive us for."

Yet still the destruction continues. If deforestation continues at current rates, scientists estimate nearly 80 to 90 percent of tropical rainforest ecosystems will be destroyed by the year 2020. This destruction is the main force driving a species extinction rate unmatched in 65 million years.

Something to think about, yes? Oh, and while you were reading this 60-200 acres of rainforest...vanished forever.

 

 Hi. My name is E.N. and I am an addict.I am co-addicted. I am addicted to facts. I am addicted to the truth.I am addicted to research.I am addicted to logic. And I am addicted to nature. Because of my addictions, when I hear a statement regarding our environment which is implied as factual, i am set in motion.Through the span of my years of addiction I have learned one important fact. Most of the "news" we hear is either biased, slanted, distorted, taken out of reference, or simply untrue. I will not speculate at the moment as to why. If the media/ action groups say "A" , and I am able to find 50 documented, reviewed, unbiased, studied at length,reproduced in labs and computer modeling sources which prove that "A" is really "B", I go with "B". These sources are relatively easy to come by. They are available to all. A library, an internet connected computer, a telephone and a brain supply all of a fix I could ever want. I am frankly rather shocked that more Americans are not truth junkies like myself. I will not share some of the truths I have uncovered as they are not relevant to my topic today. My topic today is multi-faceted. The overlying issues though are CO2 emissions, radioactive material emissions and safety. First, radioactivity. There is a massive amount of radioactive material (among them U-235) being released constantly in the US. And we are not being told about it. How much? Total U.S. releases  (from 154 typical plants) amounted to 801 tons of uranium (containing 11,371 pounds of uranium-235) and 1971 tons of thorium. Yikes. The predicted release(cumulative) by 2040 is expected to be Uranium: 145,230 tons (containing 1031 tons of uranium-235) :Thorium: 357,491 tons. That is a lot. The source? Coal.The main sources of radiation released from coal combustion include not only uranium and thorium but also daughter products produced by the decay of these isotopes, such as radium, radon, polonium, bismuth, and lead. Although not a decay product, naturally occurring radioactive potassium-40 is also a significant contributor. What, you say? Well, don't worry. I will list all references as well as provide a few relevant links.  Argue with this and you are simply a fool.According to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), the average radioactivity per short ton of coal is 17,100 millicuries/4,000,000 tons, or 0.00427 millicuries/ton. Why is this not publicized? King Coal hands a lot of money to a lot of "powerful" people. This informatiom would only stand to hurt the oligarchy. So they haven't pushed for nuclear energy at all and allow the outright LIES perpetuated by fear mongers ( including dear old Greenpeace) to go uncontested.For comparison, according to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants. And on this website greenpeace has the audacity to protest Nuclear energy and call it dangerous.We are getting nuked by coal!&nbspuring combustion, the volume of coal is reduced by over 85%, which increases the concentration of the metals originally in the coal. Although significant quantities of ash are retained by precipitators, heavy metals such as uranium tend to concentrate on the tiny glass spheres that make up the bulk of fly ash. This uranium is released to the atmosphere with the escaping fly ash, at about 1.0% of the original amount, according to NCRP data.. The retained ash is enriched in uranium several times over the original uranium concentration in the coal because the uranium, and thorium, content is not decreased as the volume of coal is reduced.Consequently, the energy content of nuclear fuel released in coal combustion is more than that of the coal consumed! Coal-fired power plants are not only generating electricity but are also releasing "hot" nuclear fuels whose commercial value for electricity production by nuclear power plants is over $7 trillion. (Thus solving Nuclear plant construction costs as well as environmental concerns regarding Uranium mining.) How does the amount of nuclear material released by coal combustion compare to the amount consumed as fuel by the U.S. nuclear power industry? According to  figures, 111 American nuclear plants consumed about 540 tons of nuclear fuel, generating almost 1.1 x 10E12 kWh of electricity. During the same year, about 801 tons of uranium alone were released from American coal-fired plants. Add 1971 tons of thorium, and the release of nuclear components from coal combustion far exceeds the entire U.S. consumption of nuclear fuels. The same conclusion applies for worldwide nuclear fuel and coal combustion.But because of regulatory differences, coal-fired power plants are allowed to release huge quantities of radioactive material that would provoke enormous public outcry if such amounts were released from nuclear facilities. Nuclear waste products from coal combustion are allowed to be dispersed throughout the biosphere in an unregulated manner. Collected nuclear wastes that accumulate on electric utility sites are not protected from weathering, thus exposing people to increasing quantities of radioactive isotopes through air and water movement and the food chain.  Another "concern "is that nuclear plants produce weapon making nuclear material. But, because electric utilities are not high-profile facilities, collection and processing of coal ash for recovery of minerals, including uranium for weapons or reactor fuel, can proceed without attracting outside attention, concern, or intervention. Any country with coal-fired plants could collect combustion by-products and amass sufficient nuclear weapons material to build up a very powerful arsenal, if it has or develops the technology to do so. Of far greater potential are the much larger quantities of thorium-232 and uranium-238 from coal combustion that can be used to breed fissionable isotopes. Chemical separation and purification of uranium-233 from thorium and plutonium-239 from uranium require far less effort than enrichment of isotopes. Only small fractions of these fertile elements in coal combustion residue are needed for clandestine breeding of weapons material by those nations that have  the inclination to carry out this worrisome task. Technologies do exist to remove, store, and generate energy from the radioactive isotopes released to the environment by coal combustion. When considering the nuclear consequences of coal combustion, policymakers should look at the data and recognize that the amount of uranium-235 alone dispersed by coal combustion is the equivalent of dozens of nuclear reactor fuel loadings. They should also recognize that the nuclear fuel potential of the fertile isotopes of thorium-232 and uranium-238, which can be converted in reactors to fissionable elements by breeding, yields a virtually unlimited source of nuclear energy that is frequently overlooked as a natural resource, a perfect way to phase out coal in favor of nuclear. Now, on to safety. We have determined that radioactivity release from Nuclear energy is  basically nothing. Coal kills 50,000 people annually as a direct result of discharged breathable pollutants. On an average, 50-100 coal miners are killed each year. in this country alone.  In the history of the US Nuclear energy program, not one person has been killed as a direct result of power generation. Don't even mention TMI. I was growing up in Harrisburg during that non-event. No one died or was even exposed to radiation. The whole thing became an issue just because The China Syndrome had recently been released. It was a scary movie, I agree. But I am more fearful in real life of being hacked up by a hockey mask clad psycho than I am of a melt down.  . Led by France (70% nuclear) Europe is turning to nuclear at a rapid pace. The modular, gravity cooled "pebble bed" plants are not cost prohibitive, are designed to be simple to operate and simply cannot have any kind of hazardous problems occur. Given the population density, proximity to neighboring countries, and the combined scientific pool of Europe, do you think they would all be turning to nuclear were it not the safest energy production method available? Of course not. Modern and even older  Nuclear powered energy generating plants are safer than driving your kid to his soccer game. But, Chernobyl! Yes, Chernobyl was a nightmare come true. But, consider the main factors responsible. A failing, broke government in charge of maintaining safety at an ancient plant that was unsafe even when it was built run by disenchanted, underpaid workers. The only positive is that the world was able to study exactly what went wrong and make certain it simply can not ever happen again by designing modern plants from the ground up.  No other industries have  ever  been so compelled to remove ANY real , supposed and even theoretical dangers like the Nuclear industry.  Even Holland, the wind power leader, is removing it's wind farms and going nuclear.  Nuclear is safe. Ironically, there were 8  human fatalities last year  involving wind turbines.(in addition to : specific windfarm locations-no US totals:Altamont California site:900-1300 Eagles, Owls hawks, Falcon and other raptors every year for the last 20 years.- killing a raptor is a federal offense by the way-Mountaineer site, SC 2000 bats at the very least in one summer, close to a million birds nation wide and on and on) see: http://www.responsiblewind.org/reality.php- warning- SAD photos...)

 So finally, to CO2. I won't bother telling you what you already know. Energy production from fossil fuels is responsible for 40-80%(regionally) of CO2 emissions. The biggest source of CO2 at a nuclear facility is the employees cars. So that's a no brainer. Feel like disagreeing? Here is your link. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/co2report.html   Argue with that if you are set on denying reality. In a nutshell, the report gives annual CO2 emissions from electricity generation by sourcein metric tons) Coal:1,787,910: Oil:106,294: Nat. gas:337,004: Nuclear/ hydro/wind:0  So in conclusion, lets look at the big picture.Fossil fuel electricity generation is BY FAR the biggest contributor to CO2 emission. It simply has to go. Leaving: Hydro-clean but declining due to dam removal (yay!Edward Abbey is smiling..) and continuing drought in western states where the majority of dams are, requiring fossil plants to fill the gap. Wind: clean, ugly, expensive(requiring govt. subsidy)damaging to pristine lands and wildlife as well as causing erosion from ridge top deforestation,  loud ( ever been to a wind farm? I have. You like the sound of a jet airliner riding a freight train?) impractical due to acreage required and wind inconsistency thus requiring fossil backup: and nuclear. Clean, safe, efficient, relatively cheap and by nature, guaranteed to get cheaper. That's the great thing. Water doesn't create more water, nor does wind create wind. Nuclear power, DOES create more nuclear power.The new nuclear program MUST require the use of depleted uranium as a weapons material to stop and fuel recycling to be applied. This would also reduce the amount of waste to a negligible amount.(2 or 3 tractor trailer loads for the entire nation per year. ) As well, new technology will soon allow nearly all "waste " to be recycled. That combined with breeder reactors and the incredibly vital capture of radioactive coal waste (all coal waste actually) will mean fuel is inexhaustable and copious enough to supply to foreign nuclear programs, thus removing any supposed reason they have for nuclear product manufacturing plants.Additionally, with Chinas explosive population and industrial growth, they are building new coal plants at an astounding rate. They must go nuclear as well and we could use free fuel (or guaranteed or something- I'm no internatinal economist....) as an incentive. The final scary chapter....

         Excerpt From "The Christiaan Science Monitor"http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1223/p01s04-sten.html 

NEW COAL PLANTS BURY 'KYOTO'

New greenhouse-gas emissions from China, India, and the US will swamp cuts from the Kyoto treaty. 

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor 

So much for Kyoto.

The official treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions hasn't gone into effect yet and already three countries are planning to build nearly 850 new coal-fired plants, which would pump up to five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto Protocol aims to reduce.

The magnitude of that imbalance is staggering. Environmentalists have long called the treaty a symbolic rather than practical victory in the fight against global warming. But even many of them do not appear aware of the coming tidal wave of greenhouse-gas emissions by nations not under Kyoto restrictions.

By 2012, the plants in three key countries - China, India, and the United States - are expected to emit as much as an extra 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide, according to a Monitor analysis of power-plant construction data. In contrast, Kyoto countries by that year are supposed to have cut their CO2 emissions by some 483 million tons.

The findings suggest that critics of the treaty, including the Bush administration, may be correct when they claim the treaty is hopelessly flawed because it doesn't limit emissions from the developing world. But they also suggest that the world is on the cusp of creating a huge new infrastructure that will pump out enormous amounts of CO2 for the next six decades.

Without strong US leadership, it's unlikely that technology to cut CO2 emissions will be ready in time for the power-plant construction boom, many say.

"If all those power plants are online by 2012, then obviously it completely cancels out any gains from Kyoto," says Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler with the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The reason for the dramatic imbalance is coal. Just a few years ago, economists and environmentalists still pictured a world shifting steadily from "dirty" coal-fired power plants to "cleaner" natural-gas turbines. But the fast-rising price of natural gas and other factors abruptly changed that picture. Now the world is facing a tidal wave of new power plants fired by coal, experts say. "China and India are building coal-fired capacity as fast as they can," says Christopher Bergesen, who tracks power plant construction for Platts, the energy publishing division of McGraw- Hill.

China is the dominant player. The country is on track to add 562 coal-fired plants - nearly half the world total of plants expected to come online in the next eight years. India could add 213such plants; the US, 72. ( See chart below.)

Altogether, those three nations are set to add up to 327,000 megawatts by 2012 - three quarters of the new capacity in the global pipeline and roughly equal to the output of today's US coal-fired generating fleet.

The new coal plants from the three nations would burn about 900 million extra tons of coal each year. That, in turn, would emit in the neighborhood of 2.5 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, Dr. Schmidt estimates.

"I'm not hugely optimistic we are going to slow the rate of carbon emission overall any time soon," says Schmidt of the Goddard institute. "If this sort of thing continues unchecked, we won't be arguing about climate change in 2100, because the changes will be all too obvious."

But several uncertainties remain. First, not all of the plants may be built. In the US, for example, local opposition may halt construction of some of the 100 coal-fired plants now in various stages of development. According to Mr. Bergesen's numbers, 72 plants could be added, the basis for the Monitor's estimates.

Another uncertainty: Slightly less than half of the new plants Platts forecasts for China and India have an official start date. If only those plants with start dates are built, then the expected emissions from the three nations would total only 1.2 billion tons of CO2, still more than double the required reduction from Kyoto. But that estimate is conservative, experts say, because Chinese and Indian leaders face few political barriers to power-plant construction and big demands for more power.

 In reality, the only way for a person at this point to claim to be "green" is to support nuclear. The other clean options simply cannot supply our need for power. The rivers aren't available were to even want to regress in that direction and wind, aside from all of it's cons, would require covering the entire state of montana with turbines. So there is no choice. But don't worry, you will not be alone in admitting the error of your thinking when you decide to  know nukes. Here are a few names of note  who did too. From wired.com

"    "From Greenpeace to the Green Party, some of the most prominent environmental groups today made their reputations in the 1970s as opponents of nuclear power. So it was no wonder that greens were vexed last summer when prime minister Tony Blair proposed a new generation of nuclear power plants for Britain to confront the problem of climate change. But what galled them even more was the response to Blair from Hugh Montefiore, a former Anglican bishop and longtime trustee of Friends of the Earth. Writing in the British journal The Tablet in October, Montefiore committed what colleagues viewed as the ultimate betrayal: "I have now come to the conclusion that the solution [to global warming] is to make more use of nuclear energy." When Montefiore told fellow trustees that he planned to speak out, they made him resign his post.

Montefiore isn't the only dyed-in-the-wool green who has been exiled for advocating nuclear power. Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore left the organization after embracing atomic energy. British biologist James Lovelock, whose Gaia theory was an environmental watchword before he turned pro-nuke, is now persona non grata within the movement. "There are members of my former organization who would agree with me but have not gone public about the matter," Montefiore laments. "If only we had a few more people who would stick their necks out, it would help."

     

Going Nuclear

A Green Makes the Case

By Patrick Moore

Sunday, April 16, 2006; Page B01

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.

I say that guardedly, of course, just days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had enriched uranium. "The nuclear technology is only for the purpose of peace and nothing else," he said. But there is widespread speculation that, even though the process is ostensibly dedicated to producing electricity, it is in fact a cover for building nuclear weapons.

And although I don't want to underestimate the very real dangers of nuclear technology in the hands of rogue states, we cannot simply ban every technology that is dangerous. That was the all-or-nothing mentality at the height of the Cold War, when anything nuclear seemed to spell doom for humanity and the environment. In 1979, Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon produced a frisson of fear with their starring roles in "The China Syndrome," a fictional evocation of nuclear disaster in which a reactor meltdown threatens a city's survival. Less than two weeks after the blockbuster film opened, a reactor core meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant sent shivers of very real anguish throughout the country.

What nobody noticed at the time, though, was that Three Mile Island was in fact a success story: The concrete containment structure did just what it was designed to do -- prevent radiation from escaping into the environment. And although the reactor itself was crippled, there was no injury or death among nuclear workers or nearby residents. Three Mile Island was the only serious accident in the history of nuclear energy generation in the United States, but it was enough to scare us away from further developing the technology: There hasn't been a nuclear plant ordered up since then.

Today, there are 103 nuclear reactors quietly delivering just 20 percent of America's electricity. Eighty percent of the people living within 10 miles of these plants approve of them (that's not including the nuclear workers). Although I don't live near a nuclear plant, I am now squarely in their camp.

And I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the "Whole Earth Catalog," says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group's board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.

There are signs of a new willingness to listen, though, even among the staunchest anti-nuclear campaigners. When I attended the Kyoto climate meeting in Montreal last December, I spoke to a packed house on the question of a sustainable energy future. I argued that the only way to reduce fossil fuel emissions from electrical production is through an aggressive program of renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, geothermal heat pumps, wind, etc.) plus nuclear. The Greenpeace spokesperson was first at the mike for the question period, and I expected a tongue-lashing. Instead, he began by saying he agreed with much of what I said -- not the nuclear bit, of course, but there was a clear feeling that all options must be explored.

Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric. Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable substitute for coal. It's that simple.

That's not to say that there aren't real problems -- as well as various myths -- associated with nuclear energy. Each concern deserves careful consideration:

· Nuclear energy is expensive. It is in fact one of the least expensive energy sources. In 2004, the average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric. Advances in technology will bring the cost down further in the future.

· Nuclear plants are not safe. Although Three Mile Island was a success story, the accident at Chernobyl, 20 years ago this month, was not. But Chernobyl was an accident waiting to happen. This early model of Soviet reactor had no containment vessel, was an inherently bad design and its operators literally blew it up. The multi-agency U.N. Chernobyl Forum reported last year that 56 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident, most of those from radiation or burns suffered while fighting the fire. Tragic as those deaths were, they pale in comparison to the more than 5,000 coal-mining deaths that occur worldwide every year. No one has died of a radiation-related accident in the history of the U.S. civilian nuclear reactor program. (And although hundreds of uranium mine workers did die from radiation exposure underground in the early years of that industry, that problem was long ago corrected.)

uclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years. Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind.

· Nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attack. The six-feet-thick reinforced concrete containment vessel protects the contents from the outside as well as the inside. And even if a jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode. There are many types of facilities that are far more vulnerable, including liquid natural gas plants, chemical plants and numerous political targets.

 Nuclear fuel can be diverted to make nuclear weapons. This is the most serious issue associated with nuclear energy and the most difficult to address, as the example of Iran shows. But just because nuclear technology can be put to evil purposes is not an argument to ban its use.

Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools -- the machete -- has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire.

The only practical approach to the issue of nuclear weapons proliferation is to put it higher on the international agenda and to use diplomacy and, where necessary, force to prevent countries or terrorists from using nuclear materials for destructive ends. And new technologies such as the reprocessing system recently introduced in Japan (in which the plutonium is never separated from the uranium) can make it much more difficult for terrorists or rogue states to use civilian materials to manufacture weapons.

The 600-plus coal-fired plants emit nearly 2 billion tons of CO2annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from about 300 million automobiles. In addition, the Clean Air Council reports that coal plants are responsible for 64 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 26 percent of nitrous oxides and 33 percent of mercury emissions. These pollutants are eroding the health of our environment, producing acid rain, smog, respiratory illness and mercury contamination.

Meanwhile, the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction.

pmoore@greenspirit.com

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, is chairman and chief scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. He and Christine Todd Whitman are co-chairs of a new industry-funded initiative, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which supports increased use of nuclear energy. His  article reprinted with the direct permission of Mr. Moore.

 

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