Nuclear power, revisited

Nuclear energy became anathema after nuclear plant accidents released radioactivity into the environment. But in the wake of environmental accidents due to oil spills and growing concerns about the environmental impact of burning coal, nuclear power is making a comeback.

More than 100 new nuclear power plants are planned to come online, worldwide, over the next 10 years. Lessons learned since Three-Mile Island insure that the new reactors will be safer.

Still a challenge to acceptance and wide-spread use of nuclear power is the disposal of high-level nuclear wastes (HLW), especially the spent fuel rods, which may continue to emit dangerous levels of radiation for a million years. Disposal of HLW is not just a scientific issue but a political hot potato.

Image of the atom from here.

Blowin' in the wind

Energy from the sun can be harnessed directly, by solar panels, but the sun is also the source for another form of energy.

Heat from the sun sets wind into motion. Wind energy has been harnessed for hundreds of years to power sailing ships and windmills. Sleek, modern wind turbines convert wind energy to electricity, and “wind farms” are cropping up atop ridges and wherever there is a strong, steady wind.

Large-scale production of wind energy requires a lot of wind turbines and therefore a lot of land and some people find the large wind generators noisy or unsightly. We cannot fill our gas tanks directly with wind or sunshine, but these alternative energy sources hold promise for future development.

Photo: a wind turbine from http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dopila/files/wind-turbine.jpg