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Aug. 30th, 2007 09:44 amAnd then things like this are why I keep reading the Opinion page (well, that and the Bagley cartoons).
Nuclear safety
I served as a nuclear power plant operator on a U.S. Navy submarine. I know something about the technology and dispute Joseph Mangano's Aug. 25 diatribe against nuclear power plants ("Nuke plants in Utah would pose public health risks," Opinion).
Nuclear power technology is far safer than the cost involved with fossil fuel power plants. Comparing a modern light-water reactor to Hiroshima or Chernobyl is either ignorant or deliberately disingenuous. Chernobyl was sodium-cooled and poorly designed. The Japanese use nuclear power extensively, and the specter of Hiroshima can hang heavier nowhere else. Modern reactors have literally zero chance of melting down or exploding.
Nuclear power plants in the U.S. have cost a total of three lives, at a naval experimental reactor in the 1960s. Coal mine, pipeline and oil rig accidents, refinery fires and air pollution from burning fossil fuels take many lives, a cost all too well known here in Utah.
Solar and wind power should be pursued, but denying nuclear power a place in a comprehensive strategy to wean ourselves away from fossil fuel is shortsighted in the extreme.
We have the uranium, we have safe technology and we have the known cost of burning fossil fuels. Weigh the costs and decide based on reason.
Yes. Yes. It's well-reasoned, it's by someone who has reason to know what he's talking about, and it uses the word disingenuous. Also it reminds people of the Crandall Canyon coal mine collapse just a few weeks ago.
I may disagree with the fellow's use of the Oxford comma, but that's really a very minor thing to get worked up over.
Nuclear safety
I served as a nuclear power plant operator on a U.S. Navy submarine. I know something about the technology and dispute Joseph Mangano's Aug. 25 diatribe against nuclear power plants ("Nuke plants in Utah would pose public health risks," Opinion).
Nuclear power technology is far safer than the cost involved with fossil fuel power plants. Comparing a modern light-water reactor to Hiroshima or Chernobyl is either ignorant or deliberately disingenuous. Chernobyl was sodium-cooled and poorly designed. The Japanese use nuclear power extensively, and the specter of Hiroshima can hang heavier nowhere else. Modern reactors have literally zero chance of melting down or exploding.
Nuclear power plants in the U.S. have cost a total of three lives, at a naval experimental reactor in the 1960s. Coal mine, pipeline and oil rig accidents, refinery fires and air pollution from burning fossil fuels take many lives, a cost all too well known here in Utah.
Solar and wind power should be pursued, but denying nuclear power a place in a comprehensive strategy to wean ourselves away from fossil fuel is shortsighted in the extreme.
We have the uranium, we have safe technology and we have the known cost of burning fossil fuels. Weigh the costs and decide based on reason.
Yes. Yes. It's well-reasoned, it's by someone who has reason to know what he's talking about, and it uses the word disingenuous. Also it reminds people of the Crandall Canyon coal mine collapse just a few weeks ago.
I may disagree with the fellow's use of the Oxford comma, but that's really a very minor thing to get worked up over.
