Energy managers would need to think in terms of meeting peoples specific needs rather than in terms of delivering a certain number of kilowatts. Thus a need for cooling could be met, at least in plant, by planting trees and shrubbery and installing light-colored roofing and sidewalks rather than by powering air conditioners. And when opportunities for efficiency are exhausted, cost-effective technologies with relatively low emissions of greenhouse gases, are ready to be installed. Wind turbines and solar cells were the fastest growing energy sources in the world in the 1990s. To ensure our national security, energy sources will need to be resistant to terrorism and to extremes of weather.
Nuclear energy fails on both counts.
Nuclear power plants are susceptible to such incidents as abnormal conditions in the cooling water and attacks on fuel storage pools that could result in catastrophic releases of radiation. Furthermore, as a centralized form of power, nuclear energy depends on transmission lines that are liable to disruption by ice storms, floods, saboteurs, fierce winds. The ice storm in Quebec and the northeastern United States in 1998 and the wind storm in France in 2000 strikingly illustrate the problem. A decentralized system is more resilient than a centralized system. It also saves the money and the energy that would be lost in the transmission lines of a centralized system.