Today on Googler blog I am going to give you a few thoughts of mine about Japan’s nuclear crisis. We would all agree that the earthquake that caused these terrible consequences raises the question whether we should continue relying on nuclear energy or not. Of course, it is one thing for me sitting in front of my television set or pc to speak about those things, it is another thing for those who live in Japan and it is a completely different thing for those who work in Fukushima trying to put the power plant back into control.
However, it is not a problem that only Japan has to deal with, but the thing has become pretty global now and everybody is involved. Firstly, we see that not everything is under our control and in order for us to continue using nuclear power we need to think of more ways to make our power plants secure. If we are not able to do that, then I doubt if we can continue relying on this source for further supply of energy. Life and health is more important than cheap energy. But if it is possible to do, we should take advantage of any method to create more secure nuclear power plants.
By regulations of European Union my nation (Lithuania) had to close its nuclear power plant as it had one reactor that was Chernobyl’s type. At the moment we do not have any other source of energy of our own and we are forced to buy it from abroad. This is dramatically reflected in cost that we pay for electricity now. So, if we blindly reject nuclear power, we will definitely see much higher prices of energy production as other ‘renewable sources of energy’ are still much more expensive, be it wind, sun or some thermo power.
I wish we could switch to them, but at the moment, when economic crisis is still much felt around the globe, investing in these types of energy sources is beyond financial possibilities of most countries, unless they want to get deeper into debt. So, I think we should stick to nuclear energy for the time being and spend more time thinking how to make those power plants more secure. It involves a lot of discussion. Most probably nations which live in seismic zones should radically reduce the number of nuclear power plants. I think it will definitely happen. But closing power plants now would only increase the chances of the second wave of financial crisis, which in my opinion is a real threat even without taking into account what happened in Japan.
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