Nuclear is the cleanest, safest and most affordable power source
I am pleased that Janine Myburgh of the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry supports nuclear power (“Row over nuclear power”, Argus, 1 Dec 2020). Nuclear power is by far our best option for the future electricity generation we desperately need. It is clean, safe and affordable – the most affordable of all energy sources.
Koeberg, the best power station in South Africa history, has provided us with clean, safe, reliable, cheap electricity since 1984. We need more Koebergs.
By contrast, wind and solar, forced upon us by REIPPPP, the renewable energy programme, have burdened us with the most expensive electricity in South African history, and the worst – although no doubt it has made huge profits for rich renewable power companies.
Around the world, as more and more renewables are added to the grid, the final price of electricity goes up and up. France, getting over 75% of her electricity from nuclear, has much lower electricity prices than Germany and Denmark, which get a large fraction of theirs from renewables.
Nuclear power does reduce carbon dioxide (CO ) emissions, and renew
2 ables do not. Replacing nuclear with renewables has made Germany the biggest emitter of CO in Europe.
2
But CO is a wonderful, safe, nour
2 ishing, without which life on Earth would perish. It is a feeble greenhouse gas, already saturated in its only significant absorption band, and has never been seen to have any noticeable effect on global temperatures. But it promotes plant life, and it is now at very low levels in the life of our planet. We need more.
Nuclear will not give us more, but nuclear is otherwise our best source of future energy.
NOTES:
1. REIPPPP: Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme
2. Eskom is now forced to pay 215 cents/kWh for REIPPPP. Eskom’s average selling price is about 90 cents/ kWh. But it is much worse than this. Eskom has also to pay a fortune to convert the useless, unreliable, wildly fluctuation renewable electricity into useful electricity.
3. The Earth’s EMF radiation peaks in the IR. Here carbon dioxide has only one significant absorption band, at 15 micron. It is already saturated at the peak.
Adding more CO in theory should
2 have little effect. In practice it seems to have no effect.
ANDREW KENNY | Sun Valley