Correspondence
Correspondence CHAIN REACTION IN AN OTHERWISE laudable article concerning the viability of the nuclear electric power industry ("More Nukes, Please," April 2), William Tucker overstated the...
...Artificially cheap energy is not a birthright afforded by the Constitution, but an addiction of our society, fostered by incumbent politicians...
...The Sierra Club and the Audubon Society have both ended up opposing windmill farms at specific locations...
...Puzzle number three, clue T: "Truman bureaucrat falsely accused by Whittaker Chambers" (two words...
...Machines off our shores can, and soon will, add immensely to our available capacity, far outstripping nukes in both cost and ease of installment...
...HARVEY WASSERMAN Greenpeace USA Bexley, OH WILLIAM TUCKER RESPONDS: Mr...
...It's insufficient punishment, however, since it appears the bill may well pass in some form...
...Wasserman, California has made a heroic effort to develop wind power and now has over 100 facilities supplying 1,400 megawatts—3 percent of the state's power needs...
...It also severely limits compensation anyone can claim from the government in the case of such an accident...
...Despite the fondest fantasies in Washington and our state capitals, there is no such thing as a free lunch...
...They are saving embattled farms with lease payments while sacrificing less than 5 percent of cropland...
...The industry desperately denies wind power's status as a major factor in our future...
...As a former U.S...
...A NECESSARY EVIL DAVID TELL HITS many of the right notes in his criticism of McCain-Feingold ("Shut Up, They Explained," March 26...
...Democrats supported the campaign finance "reform" effort in the first instance only because they thought it would benefit their party at the expense of the GOP Their evident confusion now about where the advantage lies under a hard money regime is condign punishment for that bad faith...
...DAVID W TAYLOR Thorofare, NJ AS A CALIFORNIAN, I thoroughly enjoyed William Tucker's article on nuclear electrical power...
...That legislation imposes unconscionable restrictions on free speech that merely begin with its curbs on money-raising activities...
...Correspondence CHAIN REACTION IN AN OTHERWISE laudable article concerning the viability of the nuclear electric power industry ("More Nukes, Please," April 2), William Tucker overstated the potential energy available from existing nuclear power plants by referring to Einstein's famous relationship between matter and energy...
...There have been problems with killing migrating birds...
...The equation E=mc2 refers to the conversion of matter to energy...
...Tucker used some dubiously optimistic cost numbers to compare nuke-generated electricity with various fossil fuels...
...It also fails to acknowledge that political parties have real, valuable functions in our system beyond federal electioneering, and its provisions would seriously harm the parties' ability to play that beneficial role...
...Princeton University's fusion reactor is the only reactor that has managed to actually realize net energy gains in the proportions hypothesized by Einstein...
...Nuclear power is neither cheap, nor safe...
...The claims for Three Mile Island, the only accident in nuclear history, totaled $70 million...
...But he ignored modern wind machines that now generate mass quantities of electricity at 2.5 cents/kilowatt-hour, and going down...
...The increasingly contorted efforts that government makes to maintain cheap energy as the underpinning of our economy will eventually end in catastrophe...
...The energy of the nuclear fission of enriched uranium is transferred to the moderator (usually water) by the collision of thermal neutrons released in that fission with a water molecule...
...If you really want a healthy, free, and competitive economy, you should be advocating for the repeal of Price-Anderson and an end to the many other subsidies of the nuclear power industry, as well as the oil industry...
...We would be far better off if the government stopped selecting and subsidizing winners in the energy business and instead let the marketplace create a truly competitive energy economy...
...But it is the world's fastest-growing and cheapest new energy source...
...Many of the best sites have already been developed...
...Every nuclear plant must buy $200 million worth of private insurance each year...
...RICHARD C. BERRY Centerville, OH REVISIONISTS AT WORK LEE BOCKHORN'S ARTICLE on the whitewashing of Alger Hiss is dead on, except for one point ("Don't Know Much About Hiss," April 2...
...Not a single reactor would exist today without the protection of the Price-Anderson Act, which gives immunity to nuclear power plant designers, manufacturers, and operators from liability for any nuclear accident...
...Army air defense technician, with knowledge and experience around nuclear weapons, I can state with some authority that I would rather live near a nuclear reactor, or a missile site, than a mall...
...McCain-Feingold's deprecations of our cherished First Amendment rights remain reason enough for Republicans to oppose it...
...In response to Mr...
...CHARLES E. NORRIS Torrance, CA THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE of William Tucker's article is a distortion of reality...
...Under the new bill, the nuclear industry insures itself without liability coverage from the government or taxpayers...
...But even under the most optimistic scenarios, the contribution will be no more than marginal...
...FRED UNGER Berkeley, MA WILLIAM TUCKER'S SCREED for the dying nuke power industry was astonishing on a number of levels...
...After providing the most clear and honest coverage of the California energy problem of any media outlet I've seen, it's disheartening to see The Weekly Standard slip into publishing such blatant propaganda...
...But the qualitative difference remains...
...If there is an accident anywhere in the industry, each facility can also be assessed $10 million a year for up to nine years...
...Do we want the whole Mojave Desert covered with 400-foot towers plus the high-tension transmission lines necessary to carry power to population centers...
...American presidents take an oath to uphold the Constitution...
...This increases the temperature of the water itself...
...Unger is describing the old Price Anderson Bill, which was revised in 1988...
...With current technology, our western states can generate over 100 percent of the electricity they need with wind turbines sited on farmland between the Mississippi and the Rockies...
...DENNIS THONE Blair, NE...
...The energy business is hardly a level playing field...
...The nuclear power industry could not exist without the blanket immunity from liability that is afforded to no other business in the country...
...this energy is then transferred through a secondary heat exchanger (boiler), which generates the steam to turn the turbine...
...No insurance company in the world is willing to insure against the expected catastrophic losses in a nuclear accident...
...Most important was its complete failure to mention the four words that doom reactor technology: wind, solar, efficiency, and conservation...
...The answer listed: Alger Hiss...
...Not to say that the recycling of spent reactor fuel modules and the permission from the government to proceed with research and design of "breeder" reactors, which produce fuel for other fission plants, would not approach the appearance of unlimited energy...
...Taylor is correct in noting that the stored energy in radioactive material is not completely converted to electricity—just as the stored energy in carbon bonds is not completely converted when burning coal, oil, or natural gas...
...The common comparison is that a handful of uranium contains more potential energy than a 100-car freight train of coal...
...I recently purchased the Random House Crostics Volume IV puzzle book by Michael Ashley...
...President Bush should do precisely that by vetoing the bill if it reaches his desk...
...Also there are scenic considerations...
...With over 100 working reactors, the total coverage is $9.7 billion...
...Such a conversion does not take place in a U.S.-designed nuclear power plant...
...This number does not require adjustments for the storage of nuclear waste, potential health effects, or the loss of capacity in incidents like the February 3 fire at San Onofre Unit Three, which knocked out a quarter of California's reactor capacity in an instant...
...The campaign to whitewash Hiss is not limited to a few websites, left-wing magazines, or even the NYU Library...
Vol. 6 • April 2001 • No. 30
