True cost is high for nuclear energy

Nuclear energy proponents are touting their fallacies again. They don’t seem to realize that tons of fossil fuels are typically used (for electricity and heating) in constructing and operating mining and milling processes necessary for nuclear plants.

This includes massive numbers of truck and cart hauls of uranium ore and wastes. Low-level radioactive dust infiltrates the air and waterways everywhere this transporting takes place. Small amounts of mutagenic or carcinogenic radioactive isotopes like xenon, krypton, argon and tritium are often discharged into the air from nuclear plants’ stacks, too.

Nuclear cheerleaders espouse the low cost of the actual energy generation from their process compared to other fuels, but they conveniently leave out the cost of building the actual plant. A new nuclear plant realistically costs almost $11 billion now. That and other factors make a nuclear plant’s 7.5 cents per kwh energy cost more than many of the renewable-energy generation methods — and that is with stupefying taxpayer subsidies for nuclear.

These taxpayer subsidies include the biggest share of U.S. Energy Department research and development costs, $54 billion for 100 percent guaranteed federal loans, outright construction funds, waste clean-ups (like our own region’s $ 2.3 billion program), storage facilities security, 90 percent of a potential companies’ liability costs, a bloated Nuclear Regulatory Commission with a $930 million annual budget, higher health insurance costs for us all due to related disease, $150,000 federal compensation and full-time nursing care for impacted nuclear industry employees, and all kinds of local and state governmental employees required to permit and monitor radioactive operations.

If solar energy would have had the money that went to nuclear the last three decades, the United States could now be using the sun for most of our daytime energy and the cleanest natural-gas power plants for our nighttime and other backup needs.

JOEL PRUDHOMME Grand Junction