Safe Nuclear Power Best to Save Planet

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Nuclear Power - Economics, Design, & Industry

Date posted: 01/04/16

Gary L. Hoe, P.E. - a Professional Engineer and Albuquerque Resident, opines that periodically, people write to this newspaper demanding that our power company (PNM) convert to renewable power in a very short time. Many of those writers, unfortunately, are woefully ignorant of how reliable electric power is produced and believe replacement with wind and solar could occur cheaply and quickly. Truthfully, we have been spoiled by PNM. We want reliable electrical power, regulated to better than 1% in voltage and frequency, available 24-7-365 in all kinds of weather. If that power hiccups, we lose frozen food, we can not charge our phones, our computers reboot and our timers and other gadgets lose their programming. Horrors! To get quality reliable power, you must boil water into steam and spin a turbine with it. That takes fossil fuel .... or nuclear reactors. Per PNM, their 1,848 megawatt plant burns 7,500,000 tons of coal a year, which takes some 17,500,000 tons of oxygen out of our breathable air, and dumps 25,000,000 tons, tons mind you, of carbon dioxide and other nasty stuff up the stacks. Every. Year. So what to do? Many would have PNM replace all their coal with renewable sources such as solar and wind. But are those renewable only because the sun will rise tomorrow, or the wind may blow again? Solar people .. what happens at night? Wind people .. what happens on a calm day? Hydropower people, what happens during a drought? How about natural gas? It still takes two molecules of oxygen to combust one molecule of methane, being in natural gas as the main ingredient. Natural gas plants produce about 462 tons of greenhouse gas per thousand megawatt-hours, or 7,480,000 tons of it to replace the capacity of the San Juan plant. Every. Year. By contrast, nuclear plants produce ZERO greenhouse gas. Absolutely none. And the amount of actual nuclear waste is small. Plus, the safety record is unmatched by coal or natural gas. . an opinion well stated.