In a special blog post on The Energy Collective earlier last week, Tennessee Senator Lemar Alexander reflected on the environmental concerns discussed during the first Earth Day 40 years ago.
Pointing out that initial focus was on the state of the planet and various kinds of pollution, he recalls how during “the first Earth Day and that is that, at the time, the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations were supporting nuclear power. In fact, nuclear energy was regarded as a savior to our environmental dilemmas. It cleaned the air of pollution and didn’t take up a great deal of space.”
Alexander explains why anyone would consider nuclear energy as a green energy source:
“The main thing is its tremendous energy density. The Nature Conservancy took note of this last August in their paper on “Energy Sprawl.” The authors looked at the amount of space required to produce energy from the various technologies – something no one had ever done before. They came up with some remarkable findings.
Nuclear turns out to be the gold standard. You can produce a million megawatt-hours of electricity a year – that’s the standard they chose – from a nuclear reactor sitting on one square mile. That’s enough electricity to power 90,000 homes.”
A post from Senator Kerry in the Earth Day spirit could also be found on the Energy Collective calling for Americans “to force Congress to pass climate and energy legislation, the comprehensive stuff not the weak tea…
And here’s what I’m saying and what we need you to demand: this is the way to transform our energy economy – put Americans back in control of our energy production – instead of sending so much of our money to oil-rich regimes around the world (yes, $100 million every day to Iran!) – and creates millions – millions – of the clean energy jobs that can power our economy in the next century.”
Both of these posts have one clear message: clean energy solutions, including both nuclear energy and renewables, are a must for America.
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