Letter: More practical alternative fuels must be priority

Thursday, July 28, 2005 | 9:34 a.m.

On July 22 Frank Perna responded to my letter, in part, as follows: "In his letter, Rychtarik said, 'Regardless of Nevada's stand on Yucca Mountain, the nuclear waste storage site will probably come to pass.' I believe such statements are defeatist and a resignation to the Bush administration's apparent policy of allowing political expediency to determine whether Yucca Mountain opens instead of the president's promise of sound science."

The problem here is that one must deal with reality, and the reality is politics and pragmatics, not defeatism. Perna also talks about safety issues only in the context of nuclear but says nothing about safety and other problems associated with 6 billion people on our planet burning fossil fuels. Nuclear waste is already here to stay. If you have 80,000 tons of waste, will 160,000 tons make that much of a difference?

The manner by which this waste is stored on-site in America today is far less safe than in some place like Yucca Mountain. Local nuclear waste storage was not designed for the long term. There is hopeful science, but no "sound science" when it comes to storing nuclear waste for thousands of years.

What is more important than the fight over Yucca is taking the politics out of the funding for alternative fuels research and allocating far more funds to many more scientists than the current administration proposes. Rather than fund NASA to put a man on Mars, how about we put one in a safe alternative-fuel vehicle here on Earth first?

RICHARD RYCHTARIK