Today is the Fourth of July. We celebrate the successful American Revolution that won our independence. Psychologists say that independence is one of the most important things to human beings. The ability to determine the course of our own lives and make our own choices is one of the things we brag about with respect to the United States.
There is a lot of talk these days about energy independence. Ironically, the U.S. has just passed Saudi Arabia in oil production. If we were primarily interested in energy independence, then we would keep the oil for our own use. However, some of the big energy companies have plans to sell U.S. oil on the international market. This would reduce the oil we have for our own use and increase the dependence of other countries on us.
The U.S. is currently producing record amounts of natural gas by the process known as hydraulic fracking which is polluting groundwater, contributing to green house gases and may be causing earthquakes. When the Russians threatened to turn off European gas, there were calls to liquify U.S. natural gas and ship it to Europe. This would reduce the natural gas that we have available and make Europe dependent on us.
Coal producers are digging up U.S. coal and shipping it overseas to China. This reduces the coal that we might need and it also makes China more dependent on us. Ironically, the pollution from the burning of U.S. coal in China is blown back across the ocean to pollute the air on the U.S. West Coast.
When it comes to nuclear power, while there are uranium mines in the U.S., a lot of the easy to mine uranium has been dug up and future U.S. uranium mining will be more expensive. The nuclear industry is truly global and the continued fueling and operation of nuclear power reactors depends on a global supply chain. When countries buy nuclear technology from other countries, they become dependent on those other countries for replacements. If the foreign company no longer makes those components, there are serious problems with keeping the old reactors running. Nuclear waste is piling up all around the world and nuclear plant operators are hard pressed to dispose of it. Some countries have been talking about developing a permanent geological repository that would take in nuclear wastes from other countries. This would mean that other countries that could not dispose of their own waste would not have energy independence.
While complete energy independence would be wonderful, the current situation in energy generation is more interdependent. Given that the cost of mining and drilling, transportation, processing, operations and waste handling will just keep going up, nuclear power is one of the least independent energy sources that we have. Development of sustainable and renewable alternative energy generation technology is the true path to energy independence.
