The
primary reason the Trends editors are skeptical about forecasts of rapid
market penetration by new wind, water, and solar power technologies is the
prohibitive cost. To supply the energy needs of the entire world with those
technologies, even if it were feasible, would require an investment of
$100-$200 trillion. Even then, there is no guarantee that the
technologies would work as well as advertised.
What will work and has been proven to work? Nuclear power. The entire world
can be supplied with enough electricity to meet all of its requirements in 2025
with an investment of about $25 trillion using the new third-generation
Advanced Boiling Water Reactors produced by General Electric and Hitachi.1
The
new reactors are safe. They have passive safety systems that require no human
intervention. Some of them will operate at a high enough temperature,
according to Chemical & Engineering News,2 to produce hydrogen gas directly from
water. They are economical to build, operate, and maintain.
Developed
by GE in the 1990s, four of these reactors are already in operation in Japan.
Three more are under construction in Taiwan and Japan, and these countries plan
to build nine additional plants in the near future.
Moreover,
the next generation of nuclear reactors is in the works now. The
Generation IV International Forum was organized in 2000 by nine countries to
identify the best designs for nuclear reactors going forward.
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Argentina,
Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, the U.K., and the
U.S. were joined by Switzerland in 2002 and the European Atomic Energy
Community in 2003.
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Some
100 concepts were evaluated by more than 100 scientists and engineers, and six
designs were identified as meeting the criteria, according to World Nuclear
News. One of those criteria is that the Generation IV nuclear fuel be of a
nature that could not be diverted to terrorists for use in making nuclear
weapons.
Today,
we don’t hear a lot about nuclear power, even though it’s already with us in...
