We need energy to live. But it takes energy to get energy. We climb a tree to get an apple. If the apple supplies fewer joules of energy than what we expended to climb the tree, our task results in an energy deficit.
This simple rationale plays out on grander and grander scales. We build windmills but only where there’s enough continual wind so that it provides a benefit greater than its cost. We dam rivers to make hydro dams as with the James Bay Project hoping that they provide more energy than what we lose from the loss of the environment. However, determining the utility and benefit of a task isn’t a simple matter.
There’s a resurfacing idea for using a nuclear power plant to provide energy to pry the oil from the Alberta oil-sands(1). This raises the obvious question as to why an energy source like the oil-sands needs to be accessed by an alternative energy supply. The answer is that oil-sands are, or will be, requiring more energy than they supply.
Assuming that both nuclear energy and the oil-sands provide the same ratio of benefit to cost then what does a nuclear reactor buy us? Simply put, the reactor allows us to utilize energy in a familiar form. Our transportation industry is based on petroleum not nuclear reactors. Hence, energy supply from a nuclear reactor is purely an attempt to maintain the status quo of relying on petroleum. The inane desire is to maintain our existing civilization and its ready transportation for lack of a defined future. We should be able to think of a future with a greater benefit.
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