78-15-A6
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Nuclear Power I[edit]
Transcript[edit]The other day I mentioned the added cost people will pay for electricity because of the delays in nuclear power plant construction resulting from demonstrators who oppose nuclear power. California voters, by a 70 percent majority, voted for nuclear power plants but the governor and the legislature have overruled them on the basis that safe nuclear waste disposal has not been achieved. And, Wisconsin has imposed a ten-year moratorium on any new nuclear construction. We were supposed to have 1000 reactors producing power by the end of this century. Utilities were ordering 40 new plants a year. Last year 40 became only four, mainly because obstructionism has stretched out the construction time to 12 years for a single plant and there is no guarantee that, once completed, it will be allowed to operate. We could have as few as 200 plants by the year 2000 but our need for electricity will have doubled. We're not going to get those needed kilowatts from oil or gas which will be declining in reserves by then. But oil and gas shouldn't be used to heat factory boilers anyway. Those two materials are too valuable as ingredients essential to the production of fertilizer, plastics, chemicals and fuel for cars, trucks and planes. And don't look to the exotics--solar energy, wind power, and so forth. It's estimated that by the year 2000 they can produce at best 20 percent of our power needs. Yes, we have the bulk of the world's coal reserves but they are not inexhaustible and besides they would be better used in the chemical industry. Used as fuel, coal produces millions of tons of pollutants in our atmosphere and it is costly to mine, both in dollars and in human lives (100 miners a year lose their lives in accidents) . We come down to the bottom line--nuclear power is necessary. Why is there such opposition in the face of this obvious fact? Well, in part it's emotional. We lump nuclear power and bombs together and try to ban both. Indeed some of the anti-Vietnam war crowd, lacking a cause, have decided this is a good one. There is also the no-growth group who think that somehow we can return to a bucolic yesteryear which those who remember it know was not as simple and pleasant as some would have you believe. No-growth's main drawback, however, is that it sentences the poor and jobless to a perpetuation of their present circumstances. It is true that many people have a legitimate fear of nuclear power. I'm sure only a few still believe a power plant can erupt into a nuclear explosion, wiping out a city. Most are concerned about a so-called "melt down" in which an over-heated core could rupture and release radioactive gas. There is also a worry that proximity to a plant would result in increased radiation, with all its threat to health. Nuclear power did a great deal to get this country through the winter storms two years ago and through last winter's coal strike, especially in New England and the Midwest. On the next broadcast I'd like to give some answers to the problems and the fears I've just described. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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