We can’t forget about nuclear power, even if we don’t like it very much

Nuclear energy has many people who oppose it “in principle”, and that has to do with the millions of years that its waste takes to decompose, and in the meantime they are a difficult danger to manage.

On the other hand, it has the advantage that it produces electrical energy in large quantities without any other type of environmental pollution apart from its radioactive waste.

But the path to clean energy has the great drawback that both solar and wind energy depend on the weather, and we need to have energy at all times, regardless of the weather.

And in that alternative, nuclear energy may fill the hole providing energy when necessary and in a complementary way to renewable energy.

Nuclear reactors began to be used in the 1950s and since then there have been three relevant accidents: Three Mile Islands (1976), Chernobyl (1986) and Fukusima (2011).

In 2018, according to the IAEA, there were 448 nuclear reactors in the world and 54 more under construction, and small, modular and safer nuclear reactors capable of producing electricity, which in turn could produce hydrogen and be also an alternative fuel in transportation.

The energy challenge ahead of us is so enormous that we cannot ignore any possibility of generating energy without polluting the environment with CO2.

According to experts, nuclear fusion is around the corner, but it is a corner that will not be found for at least 50 years, and then its implementation would take dozens of more years. Time we don’t have.

Maximum investment is needed in renewable energy, but without neglecting other collateral possibilities, and the new small and modular reactors could be a good possibility to get additional energy without sending CO2 into our already highly saturated atmosphere.

I believe that we must be pragmatic and play with all the possibilities that we have in our hand.

Will we be able to do it?