Going green

I've heard a lot recently about solar power and it occurs to me that nearly all of the power we consume is ultimately solar power. The sun shines, heating up the earth, causing the warm air to rise and cooler air to rush in to the lower pressure area. This wind turns turbines. When the warmed air cools, it's moisture condenses and the rain falls, powering hydroelectric plants. Rain causes plants to grow; over time, those plants decay and turn into oil or coal and produce natural gas.

So whether the power is photovoltaic, wind, hydroelectric, coal, oil, or natural gas - it is all ultimately solar energy. And as such, all ultimately renewable.

What we call "renewable" is simply a distinction in the time line. The sunlight that we use to make electricity today will still be there tomorrow, as will the wind. The rains will come again eventually, and as long as the plants keep growing, coal, oil, and natural gas will eventually be replenished - although it supposedly takes eons to do so.

The only non-renewable energy supply we have is nuclear. This energy is simply harnessing the decay of fissionable materials, and the energy density of radioisotopes is incredible.

Ironically, the non-renewability of nuclear fuels is a moot point; their effective life is on a par with the expected life of the sun, so as a race, we will run out of nuclear fuel when we run out of all of the other energy sources - that is, when the sun goes dark.

In my opinion, going green is a good idea for conservation, but it makes no sense in terms of energy production. Fossil fuels are the 'battery' - the long-term storage of solar energy. These will be depleted eventually. We do need to move to other forms of energy before that happens. And we ought to consume no more energy than the sun provides, just so that we can be good stewards of the Earth - unless we use nuclear.

So I vote for nuclear fuel. It is the only truly non-renewable fuel, but it is the one that gives us energy without slowing down the wind, holding back the waves, or shading the deserts. If managed properly, there is no environmental damage; spent fuel can be returned to the depths of the earth that it came from originally, doing no more damage than it did before it was extracted.

Ironically, nuclear is the greenest of the green.