Liberal Talk Radio

I’m still on the fence about nuclear energy. We know that coal-fired plants warm the earth and release toxins that prematurely kill hundreds of thousands of people every year, whereas, in terms of human health, nuclear energy has the potential to be completely safe, environment wise, until of course a reactor melts down. The benefits of not warming the earth and not killing hundreds of thousands of people per year have to be weighed seriously against the risks of nuclear technology. And the simple fact is, no other alternative fuel — not wind, not solar, not hydro, not “geothermal” — has the potential to immediately (within 10 years) replace coal for our baseload energy needs.

Now, here are several problems with nuclear energy (proliferation, security concerns, cost of extracting uranium, etc.), but only one stands out as a true danger to our health, our environment, and our long-term survival as a species, and that’s the issue of what to do with nuclear waste.

Proponents of nuclear energy tout how safe and clean it is, but don’t talk much about where we put all the waste. Currently, our nuclear waste is in all types of interim storage. Yucca mountain still isn’t fully online, and who knows if it will ever be. Right here in Washington State we’ve got a truly awful mess at Hanford, where the current storage is woefully inadequate and will require $11 Billion to clean up.

So I say this to all the proponents of nuclear energy trying to cash in on our nation’s latest craze for “energy independence”: prove it. Clean up Hanford, and show us that you’ve got a strategy for storing nuclear waste. Until then, count me as anti-nuke.