Nuclear Power Under-Utilized

Thursday, Aug. 10, 2006 | Re: “Nuclear Power’s Promising Future,” I have long been a strong supporter of preserving the environment. Nuclear power plants are a tool toward that preservation which we are under-utilizing, as the article pointed out. Where would Japan and other developed countries be without it? The disaster at Chernobyl has been given way too much sway by certain groups. The Russians were mired down in an ocean of financial and economic disaster as we now know. The government did not commit sufficient funds for inspection and maintenance at Chernobyl or anyplace else. Or, if they did, those funds went elsewhere. Corruption ran rampant as we learned, post-Cold War.

Let’s stop fighting wars for oil and cease our plans to desecrate some of the last pristine spots on earth in our endless lust for oil.

There are other ways to go, with nuclear, methane, the improved, modern coal mining methods, solar, wind power, hydrogen and fuel cells. None stand alone, and we will always need a great deal of oil. But less, if we find a wider variety of energy tools to go along with it. We must broaden our national and global imagination if there’s to be an earth left we’d want our great great grandchildren to live in.