Cleaner solutions lead to murky problems

Everybody is going nuclear - or at least everyone seems to be thinking about it as a shortcut to cheap plentiful electricity.

I don't know that I buy into it being an alternative energy source. Sure it is an alternative to petrochemicals, but that phrase typically means a greener, renewable energy source. OK, technically it is also renewable, as long as we can keep finding radioactive material to fuel the fission process.

But it certainly isn't green.

That isn't stopping countries from Sweden to the UAE from looking at building new reactors to provide power.

Long an opponent to nuclear power, Sweden has flipped positions and has opened the door for new reactors to be built.

China and India, both burgeoning industrial giants who are sucking up power of all kinds even with the economic downturn, have nuclear reactors in the works. In fact, four plants are scheduled to go online this year in India alone.

So why the push?

First of all, there is little question that nuclear power is far cleaner - at least initially - than even the cleanest of coal plants. It is also a long-term power solution as demand for electricity continues to grow.

The more industrialised India and China get, the more electricity they need. Right now wind and hydroelectric just aren't doing the job for a nation as large as China, at least not until they can get their Three Gorges Dam actually up and running.

For the Arabian Gulf, it is a no-brainer.

It is known that their supplies of oil and gas are, ultimately, limited. Every one of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries has major development projects underway designed to pull in all kinds of foreign investment. With indoor ski slopes, giant malls and a collection of world-class skyscrapers demand for energy to power everything from industrial air conditioners to lights is only going to continue growing as their economies do.

And as electric cars become increasingly popular in Europe and the US, nations there are going to need to find more sources of power. After all, it is no good having a green car if you can't fuel the darn thing. There is even a section in the US's massive economic stimulus bill that would dump money into nuclear power.

But the most important factor, especially for once anti-nuclear Sweden, is energy independence.

After all, who in Europe wants to remain dependent on an increasingly bellicose Russia for 25 per cent of their natural gas? Last month Europe was cut off from gas supplies after a price dispute between Russia and Ukraine, leaving much of Europe without heat in the midst of winter. The same thing happened in 2006, and the threat has cropped up more than once.

But one problem remains - for about 300 to 300,000 years.

Building a lot of nuclear power plants would most certainly solve a host of short-term problems, and bridge the gap between traditional energy sources and new greener options.

But everyone is going to have to find storage facilities for the radioactive waste produced by these plants.

Already it is almost impossible to build a waste site in the US or Europe without encountering incredibly hostile opposition from nearby residents. While China might not have that problem, most other nations are going to be hard-pressed to find dump sites inside their borders.

If everyone starts building reactors, who's going to take the waste from nations desperate for safe storage?

Here in lies the problem with a band-aid energy solution like nuclear power: Everyone could end up with enough energy, but also with a load of radioactive waste that no one will touch.

- The writer is a freelance journalist based in Alaska, USA.