It has been suggested that hydro electricity and nuclear energy are better alternatives to burning fossil fuel, because these sources do not provide emissions. Those suggestions are wrong.
Hydro electricity (in the traditional sense) involves building dams and flooding valleys. This causes in the construction very substantial emissions. First, in the building of the dam massive quantities of cement and concrete are used. Cement production accounts for more than 2% of the global carbon dioxide emissions. Secondly, when you flood areas which have plants the disturbance of the soil and the rotting vegetation provides larges quantities of emissions of carbon dioxide.
Nuclear energy involves three sources of emissions; first in the mining and processing of uranium. Much depends on where you get your uranium. If it comes from India then the emissions given off in the mining and processing when taken over the whole life cycle are greater than if you simply dig up coal and burn it. If your uranium comes from Australia there are much fewer emissions involved in its production, but supplies of easy to mine uranium are dwindling fast as the world employs more and more uranium based nuclear power stations.
There is a possibility that using thorium to create energy will provide a safer and lower emission source than uranium, but thorium is a new technology not yet properly understood and may well end up like fusion power – always just around the corner but the corner is endless.
The “green” lobby dislikes nuclear power for one very good reason. In the course of producing energy nuclear power produces nuclear waste. I have written about this (see https://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2008/10/01/nuclear-waste-what-will-happen-to-it/ and at https://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/the-true-cost-of-nuclear-energy/). If the world is covered with nuclear power stations the amounts of nuclear waste to be stored would be enormous and the time periods over which they must be safely stored are longer than recorded history.
There is no free lunch, no silver bullet and no simply solution when it comes to providing the world with energy. Clearly heat producing energy from day light are under employed as are microgeneration, energy efficiency and energy savings.
Filed under: carbon dioxide, carbon emissions, climate change, electricity, energy, global warming, solar, solar energy, solar panels Tagged: carbon dioxide emissions, cement production, hydro electricity, nuclear energy, nuclear power, nuclear power stations, nuclear waste
