What is the Idea of Ecomodernism?

Ecomodernism is the idea that we need to use technology if we are going to coexist with nature. It also represents the idea that we need to decouple our economic output and societal needs from environmental impacts. Ecomodernism promotes the use of technology such as nuclear fission and intensive farming with genetically modified foods. Both of these technologies have many controversies, but they are both needed to have a sustainable and successful Anthropocene, the geologic era of humans. The reason why they created a new name for this age is that our technology has immense effects on the natural environment and that cannot be ignored. A Lot of environmental groups talk about reducing how much electricity we use and going back to simpler ways to sustain the environment. Going back to simpler ways is not possible, because, with a growing population, we will need this technology more and more, for energy, food, or infrastructure. All organic, non-GMO farming takes up more land than more intensive farming and is, therefore, more harmful to the environment. The argument that I will be speaking to today is the argument for nuclear power generation. 1

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How does nuclear power work?

Nuclear power works by splitting uranium atoms in a concealed space which releases large amounts of energy in the form of heat. The heat boils water which is run through a turbine attached to a generator. The reaction is caused by shooting a neutron flux into uranium-235 atoms. This reaction makes the atoms unstable which makes it split into two smaller elements (Krypton and Barium), energy, and more neutrons which cause more reactions. This causes a self-sustaining reaction that generates energy. 2

Why do we need nuclear power with other renewables?

Every source of power has its downsides which means that they have to be combined to power our ever growing energy needs. Renewables such as wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal are great but all of them have their downsides. Solar only works at day. Wind only works when it's windy. Hydro damages river ecosystems and most of the rivers in America are already damned. Geothermal can only be built in places where there is access to underground heat. And all of these sources don’t produce that much base energy compared with nuclear. Storage is a possibility to have energy when the sun isn’t out, and the wind isn’t blowing, but some of the problems with batteries are that they are very costly. Solar panels can’t generate more energy than the amount of sun that hits the ground. Solar panels today convert about twenty percent of the total light that hits them into electricity. Even if solar panels are increased to about eighty percent efficiency, which probably will never happen, the solar panels will only generate four times more than how much they generate now. And an eighty percent efficient solar panel would be much more expensive than they are now. To decrease the cost of a solar panel, we wouldn’t just have to decrease manufacturing costs, but also decrease the cost of the actual materials which is not possible. Solar panels use materials that can be quite uncommon and expensive to mine. This inhibits a large decrease in price, enough to allow for solar to “take over the energy world.” Another problem with solar and wind is that when it is not sunny or windy, you have to have a way to store energy. Right now, the best way of storing electricity is using lithium-ion batteries. These batteries also have toxic components and can be expensive to make. They also degrade over time, and there is a limit to the amount of energy stored in a set amount of lithium-ion batteries. Nuclear power needs to be used with these other sources of energy to have a sustainable influx of energy. Nuclear power is not the answer for the far future of energy because the largest harvestable sources of energy in the solar system are the stars. But because our energy gathering technologies are anchored to the ground, nuclear power is the perfect bridge technology until we have space-based power generation. 3 8

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What about the risk of nuclear disasters?

In the history of generating electricity from nuclear fission, there have been three major disasters. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. Of the three nuclear disasters, only Chernobyl had a death toll due to the radiation from the reactor. With Three Mile Island and Fukushima, the amount of radiation that was released was not enough to cause health effects to people around the reactor. A worry that people have about Fukushima is that the radioactive material leaked into the Pacific ocean and has spread across the entire ocean making the entire ocean dangerous. The truth of this is that for the first couple days after the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor, the water around the actual reactors did have high levels of radiation. These levels quickly dropped as the ocean diluted the radioactive nucleotides. The levels on the west coast of the United States are lower now than they were in the 1960s at the peak of the nuclear bomb testing. To give a sense of the radiation in the Pacific ocean, one would have to swim eight-thousand hours in the ocean around Hawaii to get the same amount of radiation one would get from a typical dental x-ray. 4 5 6 11

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What will we do with the nuclear waste?

The waste from nuclear power plants still contains 97% of its fissionable fuel. Many reactor types in the design state can repurpose this fuel for more energy. An example of this is the “advanced reactor” by General Atomic. Advanced reactors produce about one-fourth of the energy as a standard nuclear reactor, but this can be very useful for places that don’t need a full nuclear reactor. This can also allow them to be spaced out throughout which lessens the energy loss from transportation. They also only take around three-point five years to build versus the five years for a standard reactor. They have 53% heat to electricity efficiency because of an enclosed helium system versus the 30-35% efficiency of a normal reactor. They also have a much smaller chance of melting down because the fuel rods are made of a silicon-carbide matrix vs the metal they use in standard reactors, raising the melting point from 1700°C to 3000°C. It also takes more energy out of the fuel making it safer after a shorter amount of time compared to standard nuclear waste. It can also use many more types of fuel including the waste from standard nuclear reactors. This is just one of the reactors that have been designed. The way we store fuel today is very safe. First, the fuel-rod bundles are stored in water for around seven to ten years; then they are packaged dry into containers made of high-density concrete, around 20 inches thick, with a half an inch of steel plating. This blocks enough of the radiation that people can stand close to them without any adverse health effects. It does take around 10,000 years for the radiation levels of the nuclear waste to fall past background radiation but because it falls with exponential decay, the radiation falls very quickly in the beginning, and at the end, it decays much slower meaning that for the “tail” end of the decay period it is barely above background radiation. For storage, a place like Yucca mountain would have worked, people living in Nevada opposed the project because they didn’t want nuclear waste in Nevada even though the sight was very secure. 9 10