LETTER: Nevada and nuclear power
I lived in Las Vegas for 38 years and tirelessly tried to convey the great benefits of nuclear energy to all who would listen. Not many would. I commend you for your insightful and honest editorial of March 5.
The fact is that Nevada turned down — and even vociferously fought — the Yucca Mountain Project. Many like myself fought equally hard to encourage Nevada to accept used nuclear fuel because they knew the great treasure that lay beneath the veneer of fear-infused rhetoric that seemed popular at the time. All to no avail.
However, a new era is upon us. The technology exists today to directly extract energy by recycling used nuclear fuel. Not reprocessing as you have heard before, but recycling the material using fast reactor technology. In just the used nuclear fuel sitting on reactor sites in the United States today, there are 250 years of electricity based on the current consumption rate of our entire nation. Imagine the retail value — and we continue to turn it down.
As you noted, wind is about 8 percent and solar about 2 percent of on-again, off-again operation, completely dependent on continued subsidies and expensive, yet-to-be-perfected batteries to be viable. Nuclear power is always on, no subsidy needed and a six-decade sterling safety record. So what is not to like about a 100 percent domestic, 100 percent clean (already mined and already formed), safe, compact, available, cheap and robust energy source just sitting around not being used and called “waste”?
