A blog on the New York Times from about a month ago highlighted some of the problems concerning nuclear policy.  The issue primarily revolves around the classification of nuclear as renewable.

Strictly speaking, it’s not renewable.  Uranium, while quite common all over the planet, is only concentrated enough to be worth extracting in a handful of areas.  Furthermore, extraction involves typical mining infrastructure and the environmental hazards that come with such operations.

Then there’s the radiation, which is only nominally dangerous, but a concerning nonetheless.  Also, most reactors cannot use uranium as found in nature and it has to be enriched, which is a rather taxing process.  Not to mention the possibility of nuclear weapon proliferation and the disposal or containment of hazardous waste byproducts.

So it’s obvious that nuclear power simply isn’t renewable.  Why on earth would anyone try to classify it as such?  It comes down to subsidies.  Everyone likes clean energy and lately the term renewable has become synonymous with it.  In the U.S. as well as elsewhere, anything clean and green seems to get subsidized or have less restrictions compared with older energy sources like coal or oil.

It’s not surprising that nuclear power pant operators and beneficiaries want to get in on the fun and in all honesty, they deserve to.  Nuclear may not technically renewable, but it does have fewer emissions than comparable traditional energy sources.  Newer generation plant designs use passive safety measures, making radiological disasters next to impossible.  These new reactors are also more efficient.  All things considered, nuclear plants built in the near future bear little more than basic resemblance to their predecessors.

Nuclear might not be the most innovative source of energy, but it’s proven, it’s safe and it’ll reduce pollutant emissions in the short-term.