Malo: Earth, wind, and … nuclear
House Bill 25-1040, a bill that would classify nuclear power as clean energy, has passed through the state House and Senate and is on Gov. Jared Polis’ desk for signing.
We should encourage him to veto it.
Nuclear power plants are dangerous. We got lucky at Chernobyl and Fukushima. The 1979 film “The China Syndrome” was a fantasy, but we really don’t know what would happen in the event of a full nuclear meltdown.
It costs tens of billions to build a nuclear power plant, and it generates energy at 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt hour. Wind power goes for two or three cents per kilowatt hour and solar eight to 10 cents.
Currently, the only process we’ve figured out to deal with nuclear waste is to bury it. We should have learned in 1969 when the oil and gas industry exploded a nuclear device underground near Rulison, burying radiation doesn’t make it any less of a contaminate.
Uranium isn’t a renewable resource. It has to be extracted, and it’s rare enough we could run out. In the past, uranium has been mined in the Delores River Canyon and Cañon City. As of 2019, there are no active uranium mines in Colorado.
Why are we even considering nuclear when wind and solar are so much safer, cheaper, and readily available? I suppose the nuclear option is superior to fossil fuels because the only emissions come during plant construction, but there are many other negatives.
Fred Malo, Jr.
Carbondale
