Africa-Press – Namibia. ‘GREEN ENERGY’ is hype. I fully agree with Mr Kees Dekker (‘The Implications of Stopping Using Fossil Fuels’, The Namibian, 26 November 2021) that solar panels and wind turbines alone cannot solve the foreseeable energy crisis.
And what is dubbed green technology is far from being as ‘green’ as many uncritical environmentalists would like them to be. However, the not upcoming but in fact already happening climate crisis caused by man-made emissions is a great threat to humankind. Something has to be done.
Mr Dekker does not address this directly. He recommends a video that, to my mind, offers a questionable analysis. Questionable also why in his summary for the reader he leaves out what Goehring & Rozencwajg (G&R) sees as a “medium-term solution”. In this and at least one other video, they promote – unequivocally – the idea of nuclear power as the only solution. They emphasise this so strongly that one gets the impression they are desperately trying to find investors for this technology.
Nuclear power is worth looking at, and the German physicist H Lesch recently did just that coming up with interesting calculations. The OECD estimates that uranium deposits are available for 130 more years for existing plants. They provide 4% of primary energy worldwide. The worst emitter, coal, provides 80%. Here we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place. If coal burning is not phased out soon, we can look forward to a ‘Mad Max’ world.
If we replaced coal-fired plants with nuclear power stations, however, the number 130 has to be divided by 20 and the uranium reserves would be depleted in less than 20 years. What then? Liquid salt and travelling wave reactors as Bill Gates suggests?
At present, only two fast neutron reactors are operating commercially. This technology has very high security risks and therefore makes building not only very expensive but also requires long procedures to get a governmental go-ahead. Is the immense capital requirement a reason why G&R keeps promoting it?
What is not included in the already high costs are the gigantic sums taxpayers would have to cough up. Financial reports of governments reveal most of the direct subsidies but usually hide most of the indirect costs for society. These are gigantic.
Equally gigantic, if not more, would be the amount of nuclear waste if all these reactors were built. Annually, the world’s 440 existing reactors produce 8 300 tonnes of highly radioactive waste. Thousands more reactors would increase this to close to a million every year. To date, there is no solution in sight yet on just how to deal with the existing 250 000 tonnes. This is what G&R calls a “medium-term” solution. I prefer to leave non-toxic property or cash as legacy to my children and grandchildren.
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