nuclear-news

Gas better than nuclear, with its nuke wastes

 Step on the gas for power needs  Daily Herald Tribune Brock F. Smith 15 Oct 09  “…………Nuclear power is dirty, dangerous and expensive.I cannot understand why the Minister is even considering this when Alberta is awash in natural gas and oil.

If our government wants to create jobs, why don’t they push the use of natural gas? If the rigs started drilling again for gas, thousands and thousands of jobs would be created all over the province.The province should be pushing to convert cars from gasoline to natural gas, build natural gas refuelling stations and help build the proposed pipeline to Prince Rupert.

A natural gas-fired electric plant produces half the pollution of a coal-fired plant. If the heat can be utilized, a small natural gas-fired electrical generator is quite economical for a concentrated area.Bruce

Power is going to leave us stuck with the dirty radioactive spent rods for thousands of years, as there is no facility for long-term storage of them in North America.Presently, the spent rods are put in a nuclear swimming pool and water is pumped around them 24 hours a day for 10 years. Then, if they are cool enough, they are encased in a cement silo on site and air-cooled for another 20 years. So far, they are just left there as there is no long-term storage and nobody knows how to make long life waste packages (50,000 years plus).One of the problems is that the spent rods keep giving off heat for another 50,000 years, so if they are buried deep in the ground there has to be some system of ventilation or they will heat up again.

LETTER: Step on the gas for power needs – Grande Prairie Daily Herald Tribune – Alberta, CA

October 15, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1