Letter: Hydrogen power should be free of nuclear energy

Tuesday, June 7, 2005 | 9:05 a.m.

This is in reference to your May 26 editorial, in which you embraced a hydrogen economy but warned against using nuclear power to produce that hydrogen. The hydrogen economy holds promise for nonpolluting automobile fuel and other applications, but, you are right, it must not be based on nuclear power.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has proposed a $1.1 billion experimental nuclear reactor targeted for Idaho. The hydrogen fuel generator would be built, entirely with federal taxpayer money, as a showcase for Bush's "Freedom Car Initiative," first announced in his 2003 State of the Union speech.

Of course, basing the hydrogen economy on nuclear power would generate vast quantities of high-level radioactive waste, which would dramatically increase the pressure to build Yucca Mountain. Fortunately, as you stated, hydrogen can -- and should -- be generated in genuinely clean and green ways, as through solar and wind power. Nevada happens to be blessed with an abundance of both those natural resources.

The Energy Department at one time proposed running the Yucca dump's ventilation systems with a mountainside of solar panels and a wind turbine farm. If this were possible, then why couldn't the electricity have been generated in the first place by clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar, rather than dangerous atomic power with its forever deadly high-level radioactive wastes? We need to keep nuclear power completely out of the promising hydrogen future.

KEVIN KAMPS Washington, D.C.

Editor's note: The writer works for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a center for citizens and environmental organizations concerned about nuclear power and sustainable energy issues.