Nuclear should be part of energy planning

"Drill, baby, drill” is a fun slogan for those of us who can’t imagine a world without gasoline, and the protests over the Line 3 project cutting through Carlton County show that plenty of people would like to do away with petroleum altogether, as soon as possible. Both extreme positions are wrong, but they each have a point. Our reliance on oil won’t disappear any time soon, but if we don’t start planning for a world without petroleum, we’ll suffer at the unpredictable whims of future oil supply fluctuations.

I compare the problem to the recent avian flu crisis. We eat a lot of eggs for breakfast in our family, but once egg prices went sky-high, we switched to oatmeal. Unfortunately, we don’t have such an option when oil prices spike. We either pay more, or drive less. That has to change, if not now, eventually.

It’s time to think about weaning off fossil fuels. And we should be looking at the benefits of nuclear power.

Of course, we need to consider the risks, too. Modern nuclear power plants generate waste that is radioactive for thousands of years, and we don’t have a plan for safely storing it. In Minnesota, waste is stored onsite at our two nuclear power plants, which is risky. I can’t imagine what would happen if some terrorists attacked the storage casks at Prairie Island or Monticello. Some people would be more afraid to visit Minneapolis than they are now!

So that should be the first problem we work on. Where and how do we safely store nuclear waste? There’s a proposed facility that looks promising (to everyone except the people living near the site in Nevada). But working out the details will take a long time. How do we ship nuclear waste across the country and over the mountains? What if there’s a spill? How do we know we can keep it secure for 10,000 years? Is it worth ruining a whole desert if there’s a catastrophic leak? What if the weather doesn’t cooperate and a flood or earthquake wipes us out? That would not be pretty.

I’m willing to consider those risks, and here’s why: we already have radioactive waste from the roughly 90 nuclear reactors in our country. Adding more shouldn’t make the problem much bigger, just more urgent. And a more urgent problem often gets fixed quicker. Exploring solutions won’t be cheap. But if we do solve our energy problems with safe nuclear power, it will be worth it.

After disposing of the waste, safety of nuclear power plants is the next critical problem. It can be done safely, despite the catastrophes of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. France, for example, generates about 70 percent of its electricity from nuclear power and hasn’t had any major safety problems. They certainly have their issues, but nuclear power has been relatively safe in France. We can do it here, too.

At the same time, we should continue to research safer nuclear power, like fusion. God used fusion to power the stars, including our Sun, and that’s worked out pretty well for us. But here on Earth, fusion has been mostly theoretical and when it has been done, the process is complicated and isn’t close to being viable. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying. It’s a good investment in the long term, but won’t be feasible soon enough to solve our current energy needs.

The biggest hurdle, as is too often the case, will be politics. Oil is big, big business with an immense influence on government policies. And any expansion of nuclear power will be met with resistance from environmentalists. Still, exploring advances in nuclear power is a smart direction to take.

There are other alternatives to our energy problems, like wind, solar, conservation, and recycling. I hope that nuclear power is considered, too, as we continue working on a solution.

Pete Radosevich is the publisher of the Pine Knot News community newspaper and an attorney in Esko who hosts the cable access talk show Harry’s Gang on CAT-7. His opinions are his own. Contact him at [email protected].