by Reena Kapoor
Finally a sane opinion piece in the WSJ today about nuclear energy by William Tucker (Let's Have Some Love for Nuclear Power). He correctly points out that nuclear energy is and should be a big part of the solution to America's energy problems. As I've said before, even the greens should support it for environmental reasons. But he correctly points out that the markets should pay for it - not the government through tax-payers (Vinod Khosla, Al Gore are you listening?). However that's only possible if nuclear energy can win the popularity contest it lost a long time ago. Americans are so tragically misinformed on this subject that achieving such enlightenment seems like a lofty goal. Try having a conversation about nuclear energy with your family and friends and you will be shocked to find that most of them are pathetically unaware of these simple facts:
- [N]uclear plants cannot explode. The fissionable isotope of uranium must be enriched to 90% to create a weapon. In a reactor it is only 3%. You could not blow up a nuclear reactor if you tried.
- The Department of Energy once crashed an F-4 jet going 500 miles/hour into a concrete wall the thickness of a nuclear containment structure. The plane vaporized while the concrete was barely dented. (You can watch it on YouTube)
- More than 95% of the material in a spent fuel rod can be recycled for energy and medical isotopes.
- We [Americans] have a nuclear waste problem in this country because we gave up reprocessing in the 1970s. The fear was that terrorists or foreign nationals would steal plutonium from American reactors to build bombs. This is a bit like worrying that terrorists will steal all the gold from Fort Knox. Other countries have built bombs in the intervening years. They didn't need American plutonium to do it.
- Meanwhile, France has proved that reprocessing works. With a fully developed nuclear cycle, the French now store all the waste from 30 years of producing 75% of its electricity beneath the floor of one room at La Hague in Normandy.
- And finally...the untimate red herring: How many people died due to the Three-mile island "disaster"? Answer: Zero.
- In the months following the accident, although questions were raised about possible adverse effects from radiation on human, animal, and plant life in the area, none could be directly correlated to the accident according to the United State Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
- Three-Mile Island cancer rates were also probed. The conclusion: There has been no significant rise in cancer deaths among residents living near the site of America's worst nuclear accident, report scientists.
Ask your friends and you will see that this is a popularity contest based on myths and fashion -- not physics and facts!
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