Keeping up with the Joneses
Letter to the Editor:
Recently I heard Bill Watenberg (engineer-scientist-nuclear physicist) speak about why we are behind in one, renewable, clean power and two, our refining technology of nuclear waste (radio-active hospital and nuclear missiles'). We led the way back in the 1960s/1970s in developing this in part at the Nevada test site. What happened that we are now behind?
Clean, renewable electric power comes from these: Hydroelectric dams; nuclear power plants; coastal tidal power, still in its infancy; solar power, those with storage of power at night; wind generation, the wind blows at night, but blows when it blows.
These don't pollute, they're constant, or in the case of the latter two nearly so.
Present use of coal and diesel and natural gas electric generation to supplement hydro and nuclear have problems; pollution of the air, very high oil prices, shipping or piping costs and re-refining cost increases, relating to the product named.
How about a new refinery? In over 30 years none have been built to increase gasoline, diesel, propane in large quantities at lower prices. Why? Well, from scratch, it takes three years to build a refinery, barring the lawyers and/or enviro-emotion-als of the ACLU and the Sierra Club.
Two other power sources: geothermal and land-fill dumps are not sufficient in power KV, or are not (as with geothermal) conveniently located.
Current (none built since the 70s) nuclear power plant sites could be expanded with little or no environmental studies (time and cost). In three to five years the boost KV power will take the U.S.A. back to 40 or 50 percent of America's 300,000,000 population's needs.
Lastly, since America developed the re-refining of nuclear and radio-active waste and are not using it, the French, German, Japanese, Russians, English and maybe the Chinese are, the question is: since it works so well, why don't we get past stupid by going forward rather than sideways, since Carter, in fear, stopped our nuclear programs back in the 70s? Hmm.
Freeman Johnson
Troy