“Renewable” energy is not reliable or clean. We need to embrace sources that are. Nuclear energy and natural gas.
Last year I watched both seasons of Star Trek-Strange New Worlds and to say the least I was not impressed. Like most of what’s coming from the “creative community,” it’s not very creative. Half of the shows were poor rewrites of previous episodes. But one of the scenes from the premiere gave me a very bad taste in my mouth.
The protagonist, Captain Christopher Pike, has a cabin in the Northwest. They show it in the middle of nowhere, snowcapped mountains, wildlife around, and what do they have to spoil the view. This ugly as sin white monstrosity with swinging blades. Yes, two hundred from now we’re supposed to believe the future is powered by windmills. I can believe in two centuries we will no longer be using oil for transport, etc., but our electricity will not come from wildlife killing eyesores like these.
Recent events have shown the fallacy in believing wind will power our homes and businesses. “Six days after bragging they were using 100% “renewable” energy, Spain’s power grid collapsed, plunging it back into the 19th century. Trains stopped, traffic lights were down, and people could not get cash from ATM machines.” They should not be surprised:
…The Spanish grid Operator REE [Red Eléctrica de España] said it had identified two incidents of power generation loss, probably from solar plants, in Spain’s southwest that caused instability in the electric system and led to a breakdown of its interconnection with France.
Spain is one of Europe’s biggest producers of renewable energy, and the blackout sparked debate about whether the volatility of supply from solar or wind made its power systems more vulnerable.
Redeia, which owns Red Electrica, warned in February in its annual report that it faced a risk of “disconnections due to the high penetration of renewables without the technical capacities necessary for an adequate response in the face of disturbances”.
You would think they would trust the science, right?
So, you need “clean” electricity, from an efficient and reliable source? Where do you get that? I think the French have shown us the way.
In the aftermath of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, France went on a massive effort to reduce their dependence of foreign imports for energy. They built 56 nuclear power reactors (an additional one is almost online), providing nearly 70% of their electrical needs. Knowing nuclear waste is a very hazardous material and a potential weapon, the debris is stored in one site (with a second site in the planning phase), guarded by the French army.
Unlike multiple other European nations, France is not experiencing power issues. Germany, after pledging to go all “green,” is reactivated shuttered coal plants (perhaps they should not have relied on Russian natural gas imports). Great Britian is suffering multiple outages (although not back to the 19th century like Spain and Portugal) from lack of stable generation capacity and lack of grid upgrades.
Personally I’m not a worshipper of the fantasy of global cooling (err global warming, wait climate change, or is it climate disruption yet?). I don’t qualify. I’m not worth hundreds of millions or billions, don’t live in a 25K square foot mansion, haven’t picked up a 450ft yacht nor have a private jet to travel to one climate conference after another.
But I am a conservationist. I believe the natural resources on Earth should be efficiently exploited for the benefit of mankind, and we should not unnecessarily pollute the air and water. Now a modern society requires reliable sources of power, particularly electricity. That’s where nuclear power is critical.
Modular reactors can provide power for cities with a small physical footprint, lower set up cost, and less nuclear waste. The US is looking at tripling its nuclear generation capacity over the next 25 years, while lessening our coal and fuel oil for electrical power production. That, with increased use of natural gas, will significantly drop emissions into the air.
While Europe is resistant to fracking (Europe potentially has more recoverable natural gas than North America), it and nuclear power are the cleanest, and most stable, sources of electricity available now. Brussels should remember America led the world in reduction of carbon emissions this century due to fracking and natural gas. If the Europeans are more worried about losing Arctic ice in 5-8-10-12-15-20-25 years (how far out we are going on this?), they should embrace this proven technology. The world can look at France and see how they’ve stabilized their power generation using the atom, or see the rest of Europe with its issues.
Demand for electricity will only increase in the future. Growing populations, more use of power per person, and technology (server farms take a lot of power to run) will insure it. Renewables are not “clean” (take a look at the lithium used in EV batteries, the petroleum products needed to lubricate and maintain wind farms), and with current technology are not reliable. If Europe (or any other nation for that matter) wants to avoid what happened last month in Spain and Portugal, nuclear and natural gas are your cheapest, cleanest and most reliable sources.
Michael A. Thiac is a retired Army intelligence officer, with over 23 years experience, including serving in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Middle East. He is also a retired police patrol sergeant, with over 22 years’ service, and over ten year’s experience in field training of newly assigned officers. He has been published at The American Thinker, PoliceOne.com, and on his personal blog, A Cop’s Watch.
Opinions expressed are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of current or former employers.
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