Editor:
There have been many scares over the years that turned out to be harmless. Some of them cost many millions of dollars, even billions, but none are as big as the baseless fear of adding more peaceful nuclear power plants.
Nuclear power has an excellent safety record. In the half century we have had nuclear power plants, not one person has died of radiation due to those plants. If one stood bordering railroad property while all the spent nuclear fuel in the country went past, one would get less than one fourth of the radiation of one chest x-ray.
Yet politicians pose as heroes while preventing such harmless transportation. At the same time they are preventing our nuclear power industry from expanding. I guess they would rather have more global warming plus electrical shortages rather than risk having the first U.S. death in 50 years from radiation at a power plant.
Coal smoke particles smaller than 2.5 microns kill 30,000 each year, according to studies done by C. Arden Pope III at Brigham Young University, but apparently the politicians don’t see those pollution deaths as a problem.
Special railroad cars for spent nuclear fuel are being designed with high-tech methods of avoiding derailments, but if there were a derailment, there would be no need to evacuate tens of thousands as with some chemical spills. Keeping the public back 50 feet would be more than enough while repairs were made.
While Utah politicians (and others) obstruct our economy by blocking expanded nuclear power, our allies and even potential enemies add more nuclear and thus strengthen their economies.
They then will buy our best companies as we become a second rate economic power.
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