Over the last few decades, nuclear power has had a bad rap. This has been partly due to huge public misunderstanding about the truth of nuclear power, but also due to intentional disinformation liberally spread around by anti-nuke lobbies, writes Dr Kelvin Kemm, a South African nuclear physicist.
The anti-nuke propaganda has largely been spread with a political objective in mind, and that is to curtail industrial development and GDP growth.
Seawater does not go through the nuclear core and does not come out radioactive, no matter what anyone tells you.
Anti-nuke lobby groups argue that to ‘save the planet’ people must cut electricity consumption and make do with less. They point out that that means, curtail GDP growth, often with slogans like Change the Economic System.
However, the reality is, personal income is directly linked to the electricity consumption of a country. There is a well-known graph which illustrates this beautifully. It shows; if you double electricity consumption, you double personal income. There are no rich countries which use little energy.
So, the final objective of any African country is to strive to double electricity consumption as soon as possible, and then to double it again.
Over the last couple of years there has been a worldwide swing back to the concept of introducing much more nuclear power.
Another interesting fact is that world electricity consumption doubled over the last 25 years, and there’s no sign of the growth curve changing shape. So, world electricity consumption will double over the next 25 years.
In fact, it is likely to be much faster because so many more… [please fill in the form to continue reading.]
