Electric Vehicles Alone Are Not the Answer ...but They are a Good Step

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Nuclear Power - Economics, Design, & Industry

Date posted: 05/03/16

Prof. Emmanuel Glakpe opines that affordable electric vehicles will reduce pollution deaths, but the electricity must come from clean sources...such as nuclear (to power the grid) and solar and wind where they make sense economically. Glakpe goes on by saying that it is becoming harder to ignore the growing number of studies showing that densely populated cities account for a disproportionate number of premature deaths from air pollution. Not only is the data on ground-level emissions more troubling, a person who dies from an air pollution-related cause typically dies about a decade earlier than he or she otherwise might have, it is coming from a greater number of respected scientists. That environmental injustice is at the root of premature deaths from traffic pollution has been suspected for years. A 2013 study done by the Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that air pollution causes about 200,000 early deaths each year, and that traffic pollution is the most significant contributor, responsible for 53,000 premature deaths, followed by power generation from plants burning fossil fuels....especially from coal. Scientists and engineers are way ahead of the politicians ... at least the politicians who have failed to do anything about deaths from traffic pollution. No fleet-wide switch to EVs can succeed environmentally unless there are assurances that the electricity that is used to recharge EVs comes from clean-air nuclear power and renewables. Just 20% of the U.S. electricity baseload comes from nuclear power and 7% from solar and wind power scattered in the west and southwest. Fossil fuels, mainly coal and natural gas, account for more than 50% of the U.S. electricity supply. Prof. Glakpe emphasizes that we cannot succeed in preventing premature deaths and serious health effects from air pollution unless we increase nuclear to provide the baseload power and renewables elsewhere.