Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Ted Talk : Does the World Need Nuclear Energy?

rating ***

This Ted Talk was not really information that is important but it is something to think about for the future and possibly save it from global warming or at least slow the process. This Ted Talk is kind of unusual and was said to be one of the first to be made a debate. The debate was between Mark Jacobson (Against Nuclear energy) and Stewart Brand (In Favour of Nuclear Energy). At the beginning they each have 6 minutes to cover their points and then 1 minute after to make comments about each others points.

Mark Jacobson who was against talked about mostly how wind and solar energy are better for the planet, economy and land space. More Points he covers would be;

- Nuclear power plants puts out more Carbon Monoxide/ air pollutants than wind turbines, hydro, or Solar Panels
- Nuclear takes longer to build, get permission to put up, and find suitable land space
- Nuclear takes up a lot of land
- Wind turbines take less place on the land/smaller footprint
- Wind turbines can power an entire U.S. vehicle fleet
- Nuclear needs room for facilities around the Nuclear Power plants, a buffer zone and uranium mining
- If we use Wind power than the arctic ice will last longer
- If we use Nuclear energy than the arctic will melt faster

Stewart Brand who was in Favour of Nuclear energy talks about the reliability Nuclear energy has, how much gases Nuclear admits in compare to Wind and Solar and how it can re-use nuclear warheads for electricity. More points he covers would be;

- How Nuclear Energy lets less pollutants in the air
- Nuclear energy is on all the time and you do not need to count on the weather for it
- Nuclear energy for one life time can fit in a coke can
- Energy from coal in one day lets out a lot of carbon dioxide
- Nuclear waste goes into a dry storage in back of Power plant
- Coal waste is let out into the air (carbon dioxide) and goes into atmosphere and causes problems we are most concerned about (global warming)
- If you add up the amount of green house gases let into the atmosphere, nuclear is a low contributor and coal is high
- wind & solars do not make as much energy with little quantity (need more for more power) and are not always reliable (if no wind or no sun for days)
- Use a large footprint of material rather than 1 Nuclear plant and still does not get enough energy
- solar panels need a lot of land, therefore they want to bulldoze beautiful land
- Can re-use nuclear war-heads as energy

If you want to know more and know in greater detail of what their points were just go take a look yourself!

I personally would rather solar or Wind as Nuclear Energy could potentially be a health hazard and be dangerous. The one thing i don't understand in this debate is that they both talk about how each way puts out more green house gases than the other. You would think Nuclear does but they argue it lets out less, but then the Mark who was against Nuclear energy says that Nuclear Energy admits a lot more green house gases. Maybe i did not understand the whole concept properly or what they were reffering to but that one part confused me.

I found this Ted Talk on Ted.com which has many different Ted Talks to choose from.

1 comment:

  1. I did not realize how long this was... hopefully I did not put too much info. that was not needed...

    ReplyDelete