-Caveat Lector-
WASHINGTON TIMES EDITORIAL • April 24, 2001
In praise of nuclear energy
The not so-well-known subtext to the current energy problems in
California is the abandonment of nuclear power as a source of electrical
generating capacity. Since the 1970s, the needlessly difficult process and
endless legal challenges from anti-energy environmental groups have made it
uneconomical to build new plants. Few have been built, particularly in the
Western states. In fact, no new plant has been built since 1979.
However, up till now, the consequences of failing to make provisions, in
terms of greater power generating capacity, have not been made manifest to
the people who irrationally object to nuclear power. Now, the chickens have
finally come home to roost, and the time has come to confront the bogeyman
ginned-up by environmental zealots.
Abundant, affordable and clean energy is just what nuclear power could
provide. No fossil fuels are consumed, no "greenhouse gasses" are emitted.
And modern safeguards make nuclear power at least as safe, if not safer, than
other forms of generating power. Indeed, the fact is that despite the hype
surrounding the accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania more
than 20 years ago, not a single person has been harmed, let alone killed, by
nuclear power in this country. This contrasts mightily with the tens of
thousands who have been killed, and the hundreds of thousands afflicted with
diseases such as black lung and emphysema as a result of coal mining and
other "dirty" means of developing energy.
Fact is beginning to win out over fiction. The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, which oversees the license process, says that existing plants
will seek to renew their operating licenses instead. "We have even seen the
first stirring of interest in the possibility of new nuclear plant
construction in the United States, a thought that would have been
inconceivable even a year ago," NRC Chairman Richard Meserve told The
Washington Post.
The Bush administration can speed things along by supporting a proposal
to create a safe underground storage facility for spent nuclear fuel rods in
a remote area of Nevada called Yucca Mountain. Activists have fought for
years to prevent the opening of such a facility, but their objections are
based on either irrational fears, an inability to understand the safeguards
that have been designed, or an outright hostility to any solution that would
reduce energy costs for average Americans.
Liberal intellectuals such as Amory Lovins have stated publicly that
giving Americans access to cheap, abundant and renewable energy would be the
equivalent of "giving an idiot child a machine gun." It was this hostility to
an improved quality of life for average Americans that throttled nuclear
power in the 1970s. Let´s hope that in the dawning century, clearer thinking
prevails.
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