Nuclear power is not the answer

Regarding the Friday letter, “Nuclear energy can answer our needs”:

In the 1950s, nuclear power looked like our best option for future energy. Today nuclear power seems obsolete and expensive. Nuclear power’s costs are rising because it requires tremendous amounts of costly fossil fuels to mine, process and transport uranium and build nuclear power plants. Plus, there are serious environmental concerns our federal government cannot seem to address.

Consider the current economic costs of building a nuclear power plant. There is talk of adding two more nuclear power plants along the Pee Dee River in North Carolina at a taxpayer cost of half a trillion dollars for 2 gigawatts of power (2,000 megawatts). For twice this cost we could produce the same output from solar power. The difference? Solar power comes with its own power supply while nuclear power plants must be constantly fed enriched uranium. Grid-tied solar power lends itself to distributed production that is easier on the grid and more likely to be fully or partly funded by home and business owners. Nuclear power is public-capital-intensive and heaps heavy loads onto an already overloaded grid.

Now consider the environmental costs. For every ton of enriched uranium produced seven tons of depleted uranium waste are produced. This highly toxic waste is housed in federal repositories at taxpayer expense indefinitely. Right now our nation has no long-term storage facility for spent fuel. After decades of interstate stalemate, half of our spent fuel is stored above ground at plants in air casks because the “temporary” water containment facilities are exhausted.

We need to power down and prepare for a different kind of existence than we have known for nearly a century. This does not mean we necessarily need to “tend sheep.” It does mean using ingenuity to live in harmony with nature vs. plundering and poisoning this home we share.

Eric Teegarden

Brier