Published: June 24, 2008 12:30 pm            

Nuclear power plants worth exploring

Back in the late 1970s a great hue and cry went up from environmentalists paranoid over a push to build nuclear power plants, so much so the idea eventually went by the wayside. The infamous Three Mile Island incident in March 1979 near Middletown, Pennsylvania had skeptical naysayers nearly beside themselves saying, in effect, “I told you so!” With that “disaster” the move toward nuclear power breathed its last.

Jimmy Carter’s presidential commission issued a 178 page report blaming the incident on mechanical malfunction complicated by operator error and mismanagement.

But was it really such a great disaster? Hardly. No lives were lost, nothing was contaminated and no one died of radiation poisoning.

The subject comes up again due to spiraling energy costs and Republican Presidential candidate John McCain’s recent bold announcement that he wants 45 new nuclear reactors built in the United States by 2030.

According to the New York Times there are currently 104 reactors supplying approximately 20 percent of America’s energy needs.

Part of McCain’s thinking on the issue is colored by the fact other industrial powers are constructing new nuclear power plants of their own. The Times quotes the presidential candidate as saying, “China, Russia and India are all planning to build more than a hundred new power plants among them in the coming decades. Across Europe there are 197 reactors in operation, and nations including France and Belgium derive more than half their electricity from nuclear power. And if all these nations can find a way to carry out great goals in energy policy, then I assure you that the United States is more than equal to the challenge.”

McCain didn’t speculate on how these reactors would be financed, and to start construction of 45 new ones may be overreaching due to construction costs.

Still, perhaps the most telling piece of evidence regarding nuclear power plant safety in America is that since the Three Mile Island incident almost three decades ago no other nuclear accident has been reported. Nuclear power is safe, clean and relatively inexpensive. McCain’s idea is worth exploring.

        

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