Dutch to weigh up benefits of nuclear power
Ft.com: The Netherlands has added its name to the growing list of European countries that might build nuclear power stations to help meet their greenhouse gas targets.
Maria van der Hoeven, Dutch economics minister, said she could not envisage a nuclear-free future if the government was to meet its CO 2 targets.
"We are very gas dependent and we have to do something about it," she said. "In my opinion it will be very difficult to achieve a clean energy household in 2050 without nuclear energy."
She is due to present a report to parliament next month outlining Dutch energy options.
Maria van der Hoeven, Dutch economics minister, said she could not envisage a nuclear-free future if the government was to meet its CO 2 targets.
"We are very gas dependent and we have to do something about it," she said. "In my opinion it will be very difficult to achieve a clean energy household in 2050 without nuclear energy."
She is due to present a report to parliament next month outlining Dutch energy options.
Comments
I think nuclear power in the form of nuclear fission reactors is a great idea. There are improved technologies to bring to the global nuclear power industry including pebble bed reactors.
As the son of a now deceased DOE/Naval Reactors nuclear engineering duty officer, although my father had never served aboard any nuclear powered vessel, I was often reminded by him of the extreme safety record the U.S. navy has maintained in its fleet of nuclear powered submarines and surface ships. With rigorous training and screening of commercial nuclear power plant operators, I am sure we can find plenty of service oriented techies to operate commercial nuclear power plants.
Regarding the finite size of known Uranium ore deposits, we can make use of breeder reactors to produce additional fuel as our planetary stock of easily recoverable U-235 dwindles.
As we send manned expeditions out into our solar system, we can look for additional supplies of Uranium ore, and/or breeder reactor feed stock.
I am still a fan of nuclear fission powered generation or multiple generation interstellar space ark type manned missions to our local stellar neighbors. It might be possible in extreme limits to achieve a terminal velocity of 0.1 C for such space craft, although 0.03 C to 0.06 C is often quoted as a practical limit. Still, it is my feeling that highly optimized and efficient nuclear fission powered drive systems such as fission fragment drive, highly optimized nuclear fission powered ion, electron, or photon drive systems, should be able to reach 0.1C perhaps even higher velocities if enough effective staging is used in the design of the space craft.
Since we understand nuclear fission well and all ready use it to produce electricity, it seems a big waste to me that nuclear fission power is not being much more widely utilized for commercial power generation.
Nuclear fission reactors, solar energy harnessing systems, wind energy harnessing system could be utilized to produce chemical fuels such as H2 for combustion engines and fuel cell powered vehicles. Ambient solar energy could be utilized in fermentation tanks to produce hydrogenic gases such as methane as well as alcohols which could power the huge global fleet of trucks, buses, and cars.
Its seems silly not to go green this way. By the way, I do not want to say for certain, but I think my brother John mentioned to me that the environmental group Green peace know endorses commercial nuclear power generation for its potential to mitigate green house CO2 build up which in the end may be far more dangerous than a mishap at a commercial nuclear power plant.
Posted by: James M. Essig | June 3, 2008 1:00 PM