78-15-A7
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Nuclear Power II[edit]
Transcript[edit]Last broadcast I presented some of the major objections voiced by those who are against the construction of nuclear power plants. Today I'd like to give sane answers to those objections. First the idea that solar and wind power are practical alternatives. The simple truth is they cannot provide the increased electrical power we'll need by the year 2000. As for increased use of fossil fuels, they are too valuable as building blocks for plastics, fertilizer, and chemicals to be burned just to heat boilers in our industrial plants. The big objection to nuclear power is, of course, fear. Fear of accidentally unleashing the dread menace of radiation. And, yet, since the first nuclear power plant went on-line 20 years ago, there has not been a single nuclear injury. The safeguards required by law, including automatic shut-offs and back-up systems, make the odds against a fatal accident 300,000,000-to-l. You have 75,000 times the danger of dying in an auto accident than you have of losing your life in a nuclear mishap. As for radiation, a coal-fired plant emits more radiation than a nuclear powered plant. You even get more from watching T.V. or having your teeth x-rayed. Living next door to a nuclear plant at sea level or on a prairie gives you less radiation than living in mile-high Denver with no nuclear plant around. The cost factor of nuclear power is easy to answer. Yes, the plants cost more to build, but from then on, they run more economically than oil, gas or coal-fired plants. Now comes the sticker--waste disposal. Nuclear plants store most of that in the form of spent fuel rods in water-filled cement pools--on their own property. This was intended as a temporary measure and it's true, most of the pools are pretty well filled. But scientists working on this problem are confident that a permanent solution can be found. For one thing, if we reprocessed that waste we'd recover additional fuel, but Uncle Sam says "no". Our government is afraid this would lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the world. Frankly that is foolish. Much of the reclaimed fuel could be used in our own power plants. The rest, according to scientists, can be vitrified or embedded in blocks of glass and buried deep in rock or salt formations. But what really puts this disposal problem in its proper perspective is the amount of waste we're talking about. At times you get the impression that we're faced with something similar to our garbage disposal, which is millions and millions of tons a day. The truth is, all of the nuclear waste now on hand and yet to be accumulated between now and the year 2000, could be stacked on a single football field and the stack would only be six feet high. Paper, not nuclear waste is our real storage problem. The legal work for the Seabrook plant in New Hampshire alone has generated a five foot shelf of state hearing transcripts; 20 three-inch thick volumes of applications to the federal governn1ent, 12,522 pages of transcripts from the federal hearings; another five-foot shelf of papers filed before the NRC licensing broad; and an unmeasured mass of briefs, environmental impact statements and exhibits. Anybody got a match? This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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