Letter: Nuclear power not worth the mess it creates

Monday, Dec. 11, 2006 | 7:32 a.m.

Regarding the Las Vegas Sun's Dec. 3 story, "Reid's rise to power may be bad news for Yucca backers":

Nuclear power and Yucca dump advocates made some questionable statements. Urging Sen. Harry Reid to stop opposing the Yucca dump, a waste industry spokesman said, "The majority of this country is in favor of nuclear energy." He must have been referring to a September 2006 poll conducted for the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the industry's well-heeled lobby arm in Washington, by a former NEI vice president.

But that biased poll (showing 68 percent in favor of nuclear power) is contradicted by a June 2005 ABC News/Washington Post poll showing 64 percent opposed to building new atomic reactors. In a summer 2006 Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, when asked how best to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, 52 percent chose alternative energies such as wind and solar power, while only 6 percent chose building more nuclear power plants.

The article stated, "Some environmentalists believe nuclear power is a key component of the climate change debate because it is a cleaner energy source. And if you go nuclear, you need a place to store the waste." But last year nearly 300 environmental organizations sent a letter to Congress opposing nuclear power as a global warming solution.

We can either build new reactors, or we can address the climate crisis, but we can't do both: Nuclear power is so expensive and time-consuming, it would foreclose real solutions to global warming such as energy efficiency and renewables. The "nuclear relapse" would generate enough radioactive waste worldwide to fill a Yucca-sized dump every three years. This is utter madness.

Kevin Kamps, Takoma Park, Md.