A Need for Alternative Energy

A need for alternative energy has never been greater than today.  Unfortunately it seems that humanity always waits until the need for change is so great that the issue can no longer be ignored to bring about this change.  What is even worse is when the proposed change is no better and sometimes even worse than the current situation.  Many politicians today claim to be environmentalists and claim that they recognize the need for alternative energy and their solution is often nuclear energy.  While nuclear energy addresses some of the problems created with burning fossil fuels, it brings forward a whole different set of problems.  To switch from coal powered energy to nuclear power is like replacing a cigarette with a heroin needle; you may get rid of the negative effects of the cigarette such as cancer and tooth discoloring but you are replacing them with other problems such as infections and heart failure.  This is why not many counselors helping people quit smoking recommend heroin as the solution but rather nicotine patches or gum to help transfer and eventually nothing at all.  This is the type of solution we need to obtain clean renewable energy.  First we must begin a transition period using both fossil fuel and renewable energy and eventually we should cut out fossil fuel entirely and use only renewable energy. 

One of the first issues with nuclear energy is the cost to produce and maintain nuclear power plants.  Some experts contend that the price to produce nuclear energy is far below that to produce energy from coal or natural gas.  Mary L. Walker, former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy under the Reagan administration claims that the average cost to produce one kilowatt-hour is a mere 1.83 cents compared to 2.07 cents for coal and 3.18 for natural gas.  Yet the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has recently found that the actually cost is much higher at 6.7 cents per kilowatt-hour.  Some may think, “That’s a pretty large difference, what could cause that?”  Often advocates of nuclear energy like to leave out hidden costs of nuclear energy in order to make it seem more appealing.  For example the fact that the nuclear industry is subsidized by the U.S. government and would only pay 9.8 billion out of the 560 billion dollar insurance liability cost in the event of an accident; that’s only two percent of the cost.  There are many other hidden costs as well such as storing nuclear waste, and the fact that cheap nuclear materials required to fuel nuclear plants would be depleted within three to four years if the United States became completely nuclear power dependent, which would cause the prices of nuclear power to skyrocket.  The government has recently increased their estimate to store such waste since 2001 due to inflation and the increase in waste and will likely increase it again due to relatively little information on the topic.