James Doone on why atomic energy is the way to go to secure Europe’s future.
Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.
— Democritus, pre-Socratic philosopher and student of Leucippus, the father of Atomism.
Atom, the word coming from the Greek atamos — uncut, indivisible — is a simple word referring to the many atoms that make up the foundations of our very cosmos. Existence itself comes from these units of matter. All existence, all being requires energy to function. A car cannot travel without diesel, nor a ship without wind to foster the sails, nor a rose tree can grow and live without the rays of the sun, water of the earth and oxygen of the air. All living organisms that dwell upon the face of the world, our planet, need energy to achieve motion and to travel onwards into the coming future. One can see if one browses the history books that the 20th century was known as the Atomic Age, (also the Industrial Age, Mechanical Age, etc) but I do not think it can or should truly be known by such a title. The 20th century saw the advent of atomic power, both in hostile forms (atom bomb) and peaceful forms (nuclear power stations) so that is when atomic power came to be but until atomic power is adopted in toto in Europe, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the time period should not bare the title ‘Atomic Age’. The 19th century was the Industrial Age, the 20th century should be called the Mechanical Age and the 21st the Technological Age … the atomic age is yet to come; perhaps the 22nd century will bear this epithet.
In our time of 2024, the tidal wave of anti-nuclear feeling sweeps over the visage of the continents of the old world and the new alike, with masses of the peoples clamouring like hoplites at Gaugamela against the perceived evil void, dark mass of green slime that is uranium, the fuel of nuclear power and the power stations that run on it for the wondrous and awe-inspiring fact and operation of nuclear energy. Civilisation cannot run without food and energy. Missing either one of these is a death sentence as the extinction of the sun would be for the entire globe. The Soviets were concerned with creating Homo Sovieticus and the Americans with Homo Oeconomicus but instead all governments should be concerned with constructing a peaceful le monde atomique (world of atoms) via atomic power.
Trying to construct the modern world with all its technology, science, industry, business, connectivity on wind and solar is a fantasy. The sight of solar panels in England is as preposterous as seeing hydroelectric plants in the deserts of the Levant or wind turbines 100 meters below ground in a Soviet mineshaft, or trying to operate fire power in the blizzards of the Antarctic. Solar panels in Jordan or hydropower in Russia — a land of over 36 major rivers — make perfect sense to a logical mind whereas the inverse does not. England is a land of constant rain, and the sun might as well belong to tomes of fables accounted as real as fairies and manticores. I suggest think-tanks and governments should only consider real alternatives to fossil fuels which to my mind are atomic and hydroelectric energies. For those lovers of prose, alas, we must now turn to the field of mathematics and data.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Europe’s total energy supply in 2021 stood at 13.1% coal, 30.5% oil, 26.7% natural gas, 2.9% hydro, 10.2% biofuels and waste, 12.0% nuclear and the rest coming from solar and wind etc. Only 12.0% atomic power in Europe! However, those numbers concern only total energy supply. Now for the energy production of Europe: coal 12.5%, crude oil 16%, natural gas 18.7%, hydro 5.2%, biofuel etc 17.4%, nuclear at 21.8% and the rest from renewables. Around 20% of Europe’s energy production comes from atomic power. ‘Not great not terrible’ — such was Diatlov’s quote about radiation levels from the historical fiction HBO miniseries Chernobyl. I highly recommend all to watch it, not just for entertainment but for a good education on what happened at the Chernobyl plant in 1986 despite dramatic license, though more on that later. I find the amount of nuclear energy usage and manufacture in our continent to be both an embarrassment to our Union and the supposed high civilisational point of our continent. The IEA reports that France’s energy production stands at 74% atomic power! Vive la France! Germany’s production stands at 9.5% nuclear, it pales in comparison.
A BBC article from the 16th April 2023, with the headline ‘Germans split as last three nuclear power stations go off grid’, shows that the German state, for reasons I cannot fathom, is listening to the climate activists who are fanatically against atomic power, most likely I assume due to myths, half-truths and ignorance of how atomic power actually works and functions. We have all heard of the scare word CHERNOBYL which is used to frighten people with the memory of the nuclear disaster in Soviet Ukraine in the 1980s. However, a simple point that must be stated often and widely is that the West does not and has never used RBMK reactors. Instead the West uses: Pressurized water reactor (PWR), Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) and even Heavy Water Nuclear Reactor (HWR) . According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), nuclear energy is far safer than other forms with the death rate per unit of energy produced (TWh) of coal being 24.6 deaths, 18.8 oil deaths, 2.8 natural gas deaths, 0.04 wind and 0.02 solar and nuclear energy standing at 0.03 deaths. This shows that nuclear is one of the most safest forms of energy out there. This reason alone should be enough for all persons mindful of the environment to be pro-nuclear. According to Euronuclear.org, the support in some of the EU nations for atomic power is increasing and this is a positive development for our Union and continent.
The United States has around 93 reactors providing atomic power to the people of the US which accounts for around 20% of the their domestic power generation and at least 28 US states have at least one commercial reactor, so says the U.S Energy Information Administration.
The fact is that the disaster at Chernobyl, which came about for numerous reasons, could not happen in the non-RBMK reactor-using and safety-conscious West. If we as a civilisation, as an economic union, as a continent wish to power ourselves into the 22nd century and do so with plenty of energy to fuel our metropolises, industry, nations and very civilisation, then we need abundant cheap and efficient sources and there is none better to fill that role than atomic power, or as the Soviets would have called it, атомная энергия (atomnaya energiya). The US Office of Nuclear Energy states that out of all fuel sources, atomic energy is the most efficient at 92%, with natural gas at 56% and wind at a dismal 35% and solar at 24%. So evidently atomic power is the way.
We have a saying in German, Atomkraft ist erneuerbare Energie (atomic energy is renewable energy).
