Climate change: The truth about renewable energy and nuclear energy

Climate change has been in the minds of the people for centuries and many people believe
in this including me. Scientists estimated that 150 billion people could be killed this century by the
effects of climate change and it would keep on growing if we just let the issue be. All of that can be
avoided if the temperature of the earth will be reduced by 1.5°C and that is exactly what the whole
world is aiming for. As of now there are a ton of countries who have heard these messages clearly
and are leading the way by setting an example to the whole world through the effort of phasing out
fossil fuels as an energy source and switching to a much more green and clean sources which is the
renewable energy. Take the UK for example; in 2018 they began the construction of Hornsea Project
One which was finished in early 2020. Hornsea Project One is an offshore wind farm located near
Yorkshire. When the project was done, it was able to deliver electricity to about 870 thousand
British homes. Still, in return, the consumers will collectively cost them to pay an additional 4.2
billion pounds (that's about 282 billion Philippine pesos) on their energy bills. Well, I guess that's
okay if it's going to save the planet, but is it though? Well, it turns out renewable energy isn't as
promising as we've all thought.

Renewable energy sources have been on the rage these days and it’s no surprise that they
are, with a lot of prominent commercial countries that are leading the way for a better future. One of
the prominent countries when it comes to renewable energy is Germany, as of 2020; Germany’s
renewable energy makes up about 50.9% of its total energy, with mainly wind energy as its primary
source. The wind farms in Germany produce about 55 000 MW of power, but most of the wind
farms are located onshore rather than offshore; Though Germany is planning to increase their
offshore wind farms in the upcoming years. One reason why Germany thought of using wind as
their primary source is because of the low carbon footprint that it produces. A tremendous amount of
energy is used to smelt the giant blades of the wind turbines, this process releases a ton of carbon
into the atmosphere; but once the turbines are up and running, they would be able to pay off their
carbon debt in as little as 5 months. But that’s about the only advantage of wind turbines other than
it being renewable. They could change their source into solar energy, but well-made solar panels can
break down in as little as 20-25 years and there are also cheaply made solar panels that can break
down in 5-10 years; when these solar panels break down, the materials may contain toxic chemicals,
these are called tech waste, and if these waste that we produce are not properly disposed of; it would
pose a great threat to the nature. Amidst all this; renewable energy sources have an inescapable
problem that no amount of technology can fix, they can only produce energy if the wind is blowing
or the sun is shining. In some places that’s as little as 10% of the time. If you look at it; renewable
energy sources aren’t efficient when it comes to producing energy. There have been talks and plans
about making a battery that can store the excess energy that renewables produce and use it to power
households whenever the weather conditions aren’t ideal, but looking at battery technology as of
now, that feat is just too far off in the future.

Now, if renewable sources are not good as well; then what energy source is reliable? Well,
one of the answers that many scientists believe is nuclear energy. Nuclear energy has been feared by
a lot of people, most probably because of the major nuclear power plant incidents in Chernobyl,
Russia; Fukushima, Japan; and Three Mile Island but even with these major accidents; nuclear
energy still has the lowest death rate compared to the other energy source; the total death toll of
nuclear energy numbers about 90 per 1000 TWh, In terms of carbon emission; nuclear energy
claims to have the lowest carbon emission than other sources, this can be observed in the case of
Germany and France. I mentioned earlier that almost half of Germany’s energy source is mostly
made up of renewable energy, with wind energy as their most prominent source. France, on the other
hand, did the opposite. The French government invested heavily in constructing nuclear power
plants and as a result; Germany’s carbon emission outnumbers France by a ratio of 2:1. The ironic
part is that French households actually enjoy a much lower energy bill compared to the households
in Germany. Now, what about the waste? In reality, 98% of the nuclear waste is stored carefully
underground for future recycling; the remaining 2% ends up being found outside the power plant,
but if we compare this 2% of nuclear waste to the billions of tech waste that we dump on other
developing regions such as Africa; that 2% of nuclear waste seems a lot better. Nuclear power plants
are also efficient when it comes to producing energy compared to their renewable counter parts
which are very dependent on the weather. Renewable energy power plants (when the right
conditions are met) can produce energy at nearly 75% of the time; though like I said earlier, that
ideal weather happens only 10% of the time in most places. Nuclear power plants on the other hand,
doesn’t have these kinds of shortages. Nuclear power plants make energy by using the heat emitted
by nuclear reactors to heat up water which in turn creates steam and this steam is then used to turn
the goliath sized turbines located inside the power plant which is also connected to a generator that
then creates electricity. These nuclear power plants never stop creating electricity, they continue to
work at their optimal condition for 24/7/365 day of the year. Nuclear power plants are only stopped
once every 2 years to refill the radioactive substance that is used to fuel the whole mechanism. At
this time, you would expect the whole city to be in a blackout, right? Well, no, even when the power
plant is turned off, the momentum of the goliath sized turbine is still enough to power up the whole
city until the refueling is done. This is why blackouts in cities with nuclear power plants are so rare,
if a blackout were to occur the most probable cause would be a bad weather affecting the power
lines. Renewable energy also has a problem with land usage. In order to build renewable energy
farms, a land size of 5 000 m2 will have to be cleared of vegetation and wildlife. This is disastrous to
the environment and local species that thrive in these lands. An estimate shows that if the UK
government chooses to power the country using exclusively renewable energy, almost 25% of its
lands will be transformed into wind farms, solar farms etc. Winds farms only return 2.5 watts per
square meter and if you compare that to nuclear which produces 1 000 watts per square meter then
its evidently clear how renewables are inefficient when it comes to land usage. We could solve this
by building wind farms offshore but offshore wind farm technology is still a bit new and we still
don’t know the long-term effects that it could do to the marine ecosystem.

Like renewable energy source, nuclear energy still has its disadvantages. The most notable
ones are the mining and enriching of the radioactive substance. Most nuclear power plant design use
uranium as its main fuel; mining uranium, however uses fossil fuel which leads to the creation of
CO2 and further enriching uranium also creates CO2. This however can be solved by using the
already decommissioned warheads from past wars. Since 1987, Russia and the US have been
constantly decommissioning their warheads this creates a steady influx of stock in already enriched
uranium which can be used to fuel nuclear power plants. There is also an option of using a different
substance to fuel the power plant, one likely candidate is thorium. Thorium, like uranium, is another
element which is abundant here on earth. Thorium was actually one of the candidates to be used in
power plants back in the 60’s when nuclear power plant technology was still new; the only reason
why uranium was picked over thorium is because uranium makes much more better bombs.
Thorium can still be used to make bombs but it doesn’t deliver the same amount of performance
than using uranium, it’s said to be really difficult and inefficient. There has been skepticism about
using nuclear power plants because it may lead to nuclear weapon proliferation, but by using the
uranium in decommissioned warheads and changing the fuel for nuclear power plants, we could
actively avoid this problem, or should I say; killing two birds with one stone.

Thorium-based reactors in nuclear power plants have some major advantages over their
uranium counterparts. One of which is the fact that thorium reactors creates much less nuclear waste
than uranium, some scientists claims that there will be a thousand times less nuclear waste from
thorium reactors. Another advantage of thorium is that natural thorium can be used directly as a fuel
so it doesn’t have to go to any enrichment processes to create energy. With this, the problem about
CO2 emission from mining and enriching can be bypassed. I mentioned earlier that most people fear
nuclear energy because of the past accidents that occurred, but lately there have been talks about a
thorium-based power plants that its proponents claim to be meltdown proof. This reactor design is
called Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor or LFTR in short. Most nuclear power plant meltdowns are
caused by excess temperature caused by insufficient cooling but in the LFTR’s design there is a plug
located beneath the reactor that is designed to melt when the temperatures get too hot and drain the
nuclear substance to avoid a catastrophic meltdown. The reason why thorium-based reactors aren’t
really popular is because it’s not been actively used in the past years unlike uranium which has been
active since the 1960’s but how would we even know if thorium is the diamond in the rough of
nuclear energy if we won’t even try it first, and that is exactly what India is trying to accomplish.
India has one of the largest resources when it comes to natural thorium and the government has
already pledged that at 2050 they are expecting to meet 30% of energy demands with thorium-based
nuclear power plants.

I’m not trying to actively disparage renewables, personally I believe that they have an
important role to play at saving the planet. Renewable energy technology still has a lot more
potential to grow, but as of now, the technology is still not quite efficient. Nuclear energy also have
been ridiculed by most people but it’s really hard to not look at the facts that nuclear energy is
indeed another safe form of energy, and until renewables come up with a new breakthrough at their
technology; I think it’s safe to say that nuclear energy might just be the form of energy that we need
to save the planet.