It is a great shame when solutions to problems exist but are drowned out by the ideological caterwauling of nay-sayers. A perfect example of this is everyone’s favourite bogeyman, nuclear power.

We all know that the Great Satan to our south is a ravenous consumer of energy - almost as bad as we are per capita. A lot of that energy is electrical, which is largely (about 50 per cent) generated by the burning of coal. By-products of this combustion include air and water pollution. Related CO2 emissions are also lately of grave concern to many. Whatever the reasons, it is generally accepted that to the extent that people demand electricity, it would be preferable if fossil fuels as a source were reduced or eliminated. Ultimately, fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource, and if we wish to maintain our standard of living and enhance that of less affluent people, we are going to have to find alternatives before these resources are exhausted. While it is to be hoped that “renewable” resources such as thermal, tidal, solar and wind will eventually evolve into being technically capable of supplying electricity demands on the scale demanded, it won’t likely happen anytime soon. With today’s technology, large scale applications of these technologies also require combustion, which produces the kinds of emissions we wish to avoid. The unpredictability of nature’s forces also requires that non-renewable sources have a fossil-fuel-driven backup.

The only non-fossil-fuel technologies currently capable of providing large amounts of reliable, low-emission electrical power are nuclear and hydro. Hydro has its own set of environmental, aesthetic, and geographical limitations; nuclear power should be considered as the only practical source of electrical power until renewables become feasible. The safety of modern reactors is such that the odds of a nuclear catastrophe (defined as a radiation-releasing core meltdown) in North America are calculated by experts to be about one in a trillion.

What about nuclear waste? Currently, 104 nuclear plants account for 19.6 per cent of US electrical production. The current annual US production of nuclear waste is 3,000 tons, which causes environmental angst in that it must be stored somewhere and be a potential source of radioactive contamination for thousands of years. But it doesn’t have to be so.

The Atlas V 521 rocket can launch a payload of 6.6 tons at a cost of $95 million. Doing the math, all of this waste could be launched into the sun for a total cost of $43.2 billion, or $144 per American per year – about 40 cents a day. If nuclear was substituted for all coal-based production of electricity, the maximum total waste produced would be 7,500 tons requiring $108 billion worth of launches annually. This amounts to $360 per American per year, or about $1 a day. Of course, this does not include the capital costs of building new reactors, or of building a giant rocket factory, but factoring in certain economies of scale, the US could have used the Bush and Obama “stimuli” to far greater effect had they embarked on such a project instead of bailing out banks.

Another long-term plus? Adding those rocketloads to the sun’s mass would have marginally increased the sun’s longevity! After all, we have to think ahead...