So it turns out that some Utah legislators stand to make big bucks on a decision they may decisively influence to bring nuclear power to Utah. We’ve done without this monstrously bad source of power all these years.
Most fundamentally, we still don’t know how to handle nuclear waste without it constituting a huge threat to humans and all other life on the planet. The hottest of the hot stuff can last for hundreds of thousands of years, half-life. The stupidity of such a decision is topped only by the venality of those who would sell such stuff to their own neighbors and their own children.
It seems that everything we have in this geologically gorgeous state is for sale. Including the votes of our legislators. Sell enormous amounts of water. Degrade forever our land, air and water. And put us all at nuclear risk in this time of terrorism. It seems our most dangerous terrorists are the clowns we send to the legislature.
We are now coming to be known not only for our legislators of easy virtue, but as the nation’s nuclear one-stop-shop state. One big nuclear mall. EnergySolutions (Envirocare) will stuff nuclear material in a tube and save it for the children of our children’s children, until now, hugely shipped here from other wiser states.
Now, with nuclear power, we can bury our own radioactive rubbish along with the rest of the nation’s garbage. The Bush administration continues to make overtures toward testing in our Southlands. Uranium is mined here as well. And though heretofore we’ve wisely left nuclear power out of our state, now, for a price we will regret forever, we will continue the degradation of that portion of the earth given us in stewardship.
If some of our legislators want to go whole hog, perhaps their constituents might want to return them to the farm, where their snouts can be in their own swill.
Ed Firmage
Salt Lake City, Utah
#1 by Richard Warnick - November 4th, 2007 at 10:23
Today’s Salt Lake Tribune has a revealing profile of Aaron Tilton, the flim-flam man pushing for nuclear power plants in Utah. He’s a college dropout, a spectacularly unsuccessful businessman and Viagra salesman with zero knowledge of nuclear power.
#2 by Misty Fowler - November 5th, 2007 at 22:34
We’re also saving up huge debt for them. What’s a little extra burden?
#3 by glenn - November 7th, 2007 at 03:53
So the French are crazy, produce 75% of their electricity using plants Americans engineered with modifications. They re-process their waste Ed, and then store what they cannot, in lands in their country. At some point remediation will improve, as will nuclear power itself, hopefully leading to controlling fusion reaction.
Meanwhile, Utah could cover the Sevier Desert with Solar panels, could then do what the French are going to do with their excess nuclear power.
Use the electricity to compress air which is easily stored, and can then be utilized to power compressed air vehicles. theaircar.com
Storage of the compressed air could ironically be done as it is currently done in Finland, by compressing and storing the air in sealed mine shafts, that would be piped directly to stations to refill the air powered vehicles. At the end of each shaft would be an air turbine to produce electricity back during peak times. Any means of producing excess electricity could be stored this way, turning a “static” energy source into a mobile, or “kinetic” energy source that could be used for clean transportation.
It is all matter of will, the question is, will we?
It can be done. If the ski industry can spread pipes all over the mountains for snow-making, it would be no big deal to do the same to run cars.
The Australians are building a compressed air vehicle based on the Wankel rotary design.
Meanwhile, oil is 100 a barrel, and the Canadian buck, based on this ridiculous commodity, sat at 1.10 American this morning.
If we cannot see that the need for change from this paradigm is dire, from so many perspectives, we may then be consigned to the scrap heap of history, an interesting experiment that failed to follow through on its precepts. America.