By John LaForge
The industry yarn that solar and wind power are intermittent and unreliable while “nuclear produces base-load electricity 24/7” is disproved with every refueling outage or unplanned shutdown. During the late summer heat wave Sept. 2, New York state’s largest reactor, Nine Mile Point on Lake Ontario, went into emergency shutdown — right when customers ordinarily need the electricity most. Surface water too hot to cool reactors have forced temporary shutdowns the world over. Still, the 18-year-old climate activist Ia Aanstoot, from Sweden, told Greenpeace in an open letter to “drop your old-fashioned and unscientific opposition to nuclear power, and join us in the fight against fossil fuels instead.” A Greenpeace spokesperson replied “building new nuclear plants just isn’t a viable solution. The top priority is to cut carbon emissions as fast and, ideally, as cheaply as possible, and nuclear fails on both scores. … Solar and wind technologies are a much cheaper and quicker way to cut emissions. We don’t have the luxury of endless time and resources so we should focus on solutions with the best chance of delivering.”
— Nuclear Regulatory Commission Event Report 56710, Nine Mile Point, Sept. 2, 2023; The Guardian, Aug. 29, 2023.
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