Ever since the first commercial reactors have started to produce electricity for the grid in the 1950’s (um, about 70 years ago now…) we keep hearing how nuclear is the clean, green power of the future. No emissions, no limits, just the infinite power of the atom. Even M. King Hubbert, the renowned petroleum geologist who pointed out the reality of peak oil production, has seen it as an infinite and stable energy source. (Don’t ask me how he could hold these two contradictory thoughts in his head at the same time.)
Today we know — although many still try to deny — that he was spot on with his first observation. Oil is a finite resource and it’s extraction follows a rise, peak, plateau and fall curve. Conventional oil (the scope of Hubbert’s studies) has peaked around 2005, and is on a bumpy plateau ever since, with growth only provided by unconventional and increasingly difficult and energy expensive to get resources. I have wrote many articles on the not so fantastic prospects this has in store for us, so now let’s examine the proposed alternative to fossil fuels: nuclear energy.
I’ve mentioned in the introduction to this article how Hubbert has presented a glaring contradiction between the reality of peak oil and his expectations towards nuclear power supposedly providing us all the energy we need for countless millennia to come. I say glaring, because as a geologist it should have been obvious to him that nuclear power is coming from Uranium, a mineral found in finite quantities, in finite reserves on this finite planet…
…click on the above link to read the rest…