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July 2007
Letter to the Editor
Nuclear Proponent
Dear Sir,
I totally disagree with the hypothesis that nuclear power plants are an albatross for TVA. The real blunder by TVA was failing to complete the nuclear power plants that they were working on, and I attribute that failure to David Freeman.
Although I have never worked at a civilian nuclear power plant, I have operated reactors and have been associated with nuclear plants for over 30 years. You imply that nuclear reactors are not safe. This is simply not true. I have eaten, slept and worked within 50 feet of operating power reactors. Land-based reactors are even safer, with several feet of reinforced concrete to mitigate nearly everything from a plant problem to a jet liner hitting it.
The failures you mention were not of nuclear power, but of politics and the catering to unwarranted fears caused by a minority of vocal activists opposed to change and nuclear power. If you want the real tragedy, it’s the thousands of people who die each year due to the pollutants emitted from coal, oil and gas generating plants who would be alive today if we were using relatively clean nuclear power plants to produce that power.
Bottom line: nuclear power plants are made to produce power. They do it cheaper, more reliably, cleaner and safer than any other method of producing vast amounts of power today. The only reason fossil plants could do it cheaper in the late 1980s and 1990s was that oil was dirt cheap. It will no longer be so.
Sincerely,
Roy Hurni
Feedback: ruble@businesstn.com
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