Most Danes now in favour of nuclear power
Once derided, nuclear power is now seen as necessary by most people in Denmark (Photo: Shutterstock)Decades of staunch public opposition to nuclear energy fades as acceptance grows in light of global warming
By Daniel Nielsen and Matthew Keith Whitby
Public opinion on nuclear power has shifted dramatically in the last two years as the energy source is increasingly viewed as a way to mitigate climate change, reports Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende.
A Gallup survey conducted for the newspaper indicates a majority want nuclear energy used to reduce CO2 emissions. In a similar survey in 2007, only a quarter of respondents were willing to accept electricity produced by nuclear power plants. The latest survey shows 54 percent in favour.
“Concern about the climate has risen so markedly that it has overtaken opposition to nuclear power plants,” said Lars Kjerulf Petersen, a senior researcher in environmental science.
Neighbouring countries, such as Finland, the UK, Poland and the Baltic nations are planning and building new nuclear plants.
Bertel Lohmann Andersen, the director of Reel Energi Oplysning, said Denmark should ally itself with Sweden and Germany to construct a plant, and wanted politicians to take up the debate.
Greenpeace is sceptical however.
“The nuclear waste problem hasn’t been solved. The risk of reactor accidents and the danger of material being used for making atomic weapons remains,” Greenpeace climate and energy spokesman Tarjei Haaland said.
And the country’s governing parties have rejected the idea.
Liberal Party energy spokesman Lars Christian Lilleholt said this country already had a solution in concentrating on combined heat and power stations, of which there are 665 in Denmark, with a high proportion of electricity generated from renewable sources.
‘We’re not opposed to nuclear power, but it doesn’t fit the Danish long-term energy strategy,’ Lilleholt explained.
The Danes’ view of nuclear energy’s role in meeting energy requirements in a manner that prevents carbon emissions is consistent with many other nations. Sixty-one percent of Americans favor the use of nuclear energy and 8 out of 10 believe that nuclear energy will play an important role in meeting electricity needs in the years ahead. Among state electric utility regulators who must approve future electricity projects, nuclear energy is the preferred electricity option by a 2-to-1 margin over natural gas, 35% to 18%, according to a recent survey of regulators by RKS Research. These two electricity sources ranked ahead of win (15%), coal (8%) and solar (5%).
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Nuclear energy is a really bad joke. The costs of building the things are enormous, solar panels outlast them with zero maintenence.. And securing these potential disasters are a nightmare! Just keep in mind Homer Simpson works in a nuclear plant not because it’s a great idea… And the cost of the electricity will never be known because the process is never over…
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bad joke, eh? tell that to france. nuclear power supplies 80% of their electrical needs, and their electric bills are low, even after exporting 20% of their nuclear based electricity to their neighbors. its been that way since the early eighties.
but hey, whats a real world example against your homer simpson reference?
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Hello, well my attempt to inject a bit of humor seems to be a lost cause…
Real world? It seems to me in the real world one should consider more than one narrow set of criterion.. You cite electricty prices, do these prices include things such as the secure storage of the waste for 50,000 years? Or even 100 years? What about the fact that the reactors are inherently wasteful and require subsidised sdisposal, security and it’s the taxpayers who foot the bills for this and more. The reality is that there simply isn’t enough fuel to power nukes for more than a token amount of power for more than a couple of decades at best. Which brings up the moral problem of whether we have the right to use up a(nother) nonrenewable rescource our descendants may need..
Here we are on the cutting edge of this exciting time when we have the chance to re-think our archaic way of powering our lifestyle and I hope we can go in a sustainable way.. Oh and I have never heard of a “dirty bomb” being made from solar panels, wind turbines or hot geothermal water.
Cheers all
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I see you get your facts from the Simpsons too. Fossil fuel energy prices do not in the least way include the massive amount of carbon, toxic, and radioactive waste clean up needed as an every day by product of operation. In the US at least, nuclear plants typically DO pay for their own waste storage and disposal, often part of a nuclear plant’s decommissioning fund. France on the other hand, reprocesses, or recycles it’s spent fuel, greatly reducing the actual amount of radioactive waste. Again, this waste is miniscule in comparison to fossil fuel plants. Also, there is more than enough fissile material to power the world’s reactors for generations to come. Uranium alone will last many many decades, and Thorium reactors are coming into their own. By your logic, we might as well argue that solar power is no good, because the Sun will burn out within the next 5 billion years. Oh no! Oh, and I hae never heard of any industrialized nation being able to power its grid with solar panels, wind turbines, or geothermal (hot water created by the heating caused by the decay of radioactive elements in the Earth, lol). Go ahead, say Germany (~ $4billion gave them the ability to power 1% of it’s grid with renewables. Lets let our children foot that tax).
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