In the case of Vermont Yankee, it has been providing over 30 percent
of our needs for 20 odd years and now with federal O.K. an extension is
needed. The greenies want to stop our best current source of low-cost
power because of their irrational aversion to the "atomic" hysteria. If
they think at all about replacement sources they always say solar and
wind!
The sun doesn't always shine and the wind does not always blow;
therefore, any electrical output from these sources must be backed up
by conventional energy which relegates solar and wind to a minor role
in the overall electrical energy picture. The Danes have found that due
to the intermittent nature of this green source it cannot be relied
upon for more than 20 percent of what is called the baseload, otherwise
consistent, dependable power cannot be maintained.
OTHER COUNTRIES
Look at the renewable source experiences of other countries. Japan
makes and sells lots of solar panels but these mostly for export. They
subsidize their use at home but have a goal of only 3 percent use by
next year. It is said that Germany, through massive subsidy programs of
their own, supports wind and solar and have managed to develop this
source to about 15 percent of their total electrical load but at the
same time increased their electrical bill by 38 percent in just 2007
alone. Not at all a good cost-to-benefit ratio, a thing the greenies
know nothing about. China of course produces electricity from its
coal-fired power plants and is given a free pass as regards CO2
emissions and Kyoto.
France has been on the forefront of nuclear power for years and is said
to supply 80 percent of its needs this way. Many countries in the NATO
and European group are gearing up to dramatically expand the use of
atomic plants. Britain, France, Sweden, Poland, Finland, Lithuania,
Bulgaria and Romania are planning or already building new nuclear
plants. In the Far East, India and even China have nuclear power
expansion plans.
Alternative methods of power production should be encouraged, but not
with the aid of ineffective subsidies that can provide only a minor
portion of the world's power needs. Our best source of non-polluting
electric power is still the atom and the world is finally overcoming
the irrational fantasy that the atom is not green.
There is concern regarding the nature of the low level waste that
atomic plants produce. In this country the solution to the waste
problem is not science. It is political. France uses reprocessing
methods that are forbidden here and the storage facility at Yucca
Mountain promised for the current waste has been stymied by the
environmental radicals who buy off our congress people with campaign
contributions. So, change here needs to be added to the list of
campaign slogans of last year in order to obtain the energy the U.S.
needs to maintain our American way of life.
President Obama has said that we can expect to see our electric costs
skyrocket when his carbon "Cap and Trade" program is instituted
supposedly to save the world from being overheated by greenhouse
gasses. He estimates this plan will cost $646 million. But just think
of the huge bureaucratic nightmare this would cause, all run by
politicians. In the four years of the European experiment with this
nonsense, the plan failed to generate the funds proposed or a
functioning emissions-permit market. I think it is sad that this whole
scheme is based upon emotional distortions and lies expressed by and
through our politicians, mainstream media and academia just for
personal aggrandizement.
CYCLES
When studying the earths' heating and cooling cycles recorded over
many, many years we find that the solar flux changes on the sun and
that reaching our planet accurately match each other. Instead of
considering this data the political scientists develop predictions that
can't even be successfully back-tested. As for CO2 causing glacier
melting (a nice chimera shown with weeping polar bears) data shows that
melting, with variations, has been on a steady upward rate starting
around 1820 and continues on the same slope in spite of the six-fold
increase in CO2 during the WWII industrial recovery (reference: Soon,
Hoyt and Schatten, Geophysical Research Letters, 32 & 98). This
shows that change in climate CO2 has no effect upon glacier shortening.
Referring to data compiled by L. D. Keigwin (Science 274), which are
not estimates or predictions, show long heating and cooling cycles are
long term and that we are currently warming up from the "little ice
age" which occurred about when Washington was crossing the Delaware
River, all a natural cyclic phenomenon.
There is much data that, in addition to the above that show that the
earth is warming, CO2 is increasing and glaciers are melting, but it is
nothing new. The earth has seen these cycles many, many times in the
past and has survived splendidly. So forget about bankrupting the world
and stop global whining. Accept nature as it exists. Concentrate on
increasing our electrical supply in the most monetarily efficient
manner that can be devised. Get behind the effort to keep the Vermont
Yankee atomic plant producing the electric power we desire. For the
U.S. and the world, promote electric power production via the atom.
Olin Potter lives in Waitsfield.
