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Nuclear energy needed

To the editor:

Suppose all vehicles on the road are powered exclusively by electricity. Just think, no more polluting exhaust from gasoline powered engines. Pure green energy at last.

But how many have considered the huge quantity of energy required for auto charging facilities? Not too many, I submit. At present, green energy advocates appear to be blissfully ignorant of the enormous cost required for a charging source that will meet the demands of a large fleet of electrically-powered vehicles.

What then is needed for an affordable energy source for charging the batteries? Will solar energy meet these demands? Here is where we get a rude awakening. For instance, it is easily shown that many square miles of solar panels are required to equal the capacity of a single 1200-megawatt coal-fired plant.

Fossil fuels are out, having been condemned by green energy zealots who would shut down fossil fuel installations entirely.

With what are we left? How about wind power or hydroelectric dams? Countless hundreds of acres of wind turbines blighting the landscape and killing birds will not go over well with the general public. As solar power can only be generated during sunlight, wind turbines are useless on a calm day. Insofar as hydroelectric power is concerned, the US has probably already reached its limit of dams.

There is, however, a viable solution. That is nuclear power. Nuclear power is clean, and absent of stifling overregulation, is affordable. The industry has served us well with with few major disasters, the most notable of which are Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. There is no doubt, however, of the economic and psychological impact these disasters have had upon the public.

What can be done to improve the safety of nuclear power plants? As a suggestion, standardized reactors should go a long way toward ensuring safety. Not fifty different reactors, but perhaps a few select designs, each of a specific power output. Three standardized units should suffice, allowing focus on “what can go wrong” during a rigorous design stage.

No facility in the world will ever be 100% safe. But with engineering ingenuity, and taking relief from stultifying red-tape that does little to ensure nuclear safety while tackling challenges from a purely engineering standpoint, safety of nuclear power plants would be optimized. Potential accidents would thus be minimized.

Clean green nuclear power is well worth the risk. Only then will all-electric vehicles make any sense.

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