Japan Earthquake, Nuclear Energy and Reality

First off, my thoughts and prayers go out to all the Japanese people affected by Friday's massive earthquake.

Now, from the Twitter-sphere, I see that some Japanese people questioning the need for nuclear power.  We also see the Italians protesting against nuclear power in their own country.

Here's the reality: The current level of comfort that both the Japanese and Italians enjoy would not be possible without nuclear power.  Both countries have almost no indigenous sources of fossil fuel needed to generate the amount of energy consumed.  Renewable energy sources cannot scale up enough to meet those needs either.  Consider the fact that a generator powered by a wind-farm to provide base-load capacity would require either a coal or natgas-buring generator to work as a back-up due to the intermittent nature of winds.  Thus, without nuclear power, both countries would be dependent on the importation of fossil fuels to power their grid.  That, of course, is unacceptable to the Greenies with their claims of anthropogenic climate change due to CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

I guess a lot of people who complain against nuclear power do not have enough knowledge of electrical engineering to realise that their advocacy of alternative energy means a return to 17th century living standards.  There's absolutely nothing wrong in desiring a simpler, lower-energy existence.  But it is the height of lunacy to think that one can maintain modern levels of energy consumption without nuclear power or fossil fuels.  But I guess they won't realise this until Facebook or Twitter stops working due to the lack of power to run those massive server farms.