By Lucrecia Bernues
The world still relies mainly on fossil fuels, we see a clear global tendency to focus on climate change. We see solutions to mitigate the effects with green energy, but I don’t think this is going fast enough. Green energy has low greenhouse gas emissions, which is very important to help the climate change and stop using fossil fuels.
So, in that sense if I must think about generating energy, firstly I think about renewable energy, with neutral carbon traceability. However, in a big scale, for providing energy to a country, we cannot rely solely on renewable energies, since these are incipient, and they need to get better implemented and studied. We can discuss hydroelectric as renewable, I don’t think they qualify as renewable to provide energy to a country’s demand, because the size and the ecosystem around them changes so much. So, we need projects with solar and wind energy as back up, these have concerns with continuity because they are not firm energy. Obviously, we can add biomass, hydrogen, and geothermal energy to this equation, but again, we have very little implementation to have them in a big scale.
There is one indisputable form of energy that can cover a lot of the demand of a country, with little emissions, and that is nuclear power. The amount of energy you can get with nuclear is far greater than any other, in a far reduced space, with firm energy and with no green gas emissions. So, there is no competitor with this energy. This way it is perfect to be in the center of the energy transition. It can cover the basic demand, with the help of renewables, while working on better technologies for the future. It’s the key to develop a cleaner energy matrix. There is a downside with the residue of nuclear power, but new technologies can help solve the problem of storage and disposal of this residues.
So, I think the role of nuclear power is key to start the change and transition to new and alternative energy, without fossil fuels, and thus helping climate change.
Lu's Energy 