I totally agree with the Forum letter from Robert Hargraves in which he advocates the use of nuclear energy to produce future needed electrical power (“Fission power promises a check on climate change,” Dec. 2).
Fission does produce dangerous radiation. However, I understand there are new reactor designs that alleviate many of the problems and dangers. He states some people fear that all radiation causes cancer. That is, of course, not true. We are being constantly flooded with what is known as electromagnetic radiation. It is true that some of these rays are dangerous: alpha radiation (produced in a reactor), X-rays, ultraviolet and infrared.
Visible light rays and radio waves are generally innocuous, but can be dangerous under certain circumstances. Ordinary light, called white light, is generally innocuous but some forms can be dangerous. Looking directly into bright sunlight can cause blindness. Visible light is made up of six colors: violet, blue, green, yellow, orange and red (hence the beautiful rainbows).
Two forms of light can be very dangerous: Ultraviolet light is absorbed by the skin and it can cause sunburn and melanoma. Infrared can produce intense waves of destructive heat energy. Ironically, alpha rays and X-rays, which can cause cancer, are regularly used to kill cancer cells and often save lives.
We couldn’t exist without the electromagnetic spectrum. Imagine: no light, no heat, no radio or TV, and worst of all, no cellphones. How could anyone possibly live without a cellphone?
BOB CATTABRIGA
West Lebanon
Forum contributor Robert Hargraves references “the pointless shuttering of reliable fission power plants like Diablo Canyon” (“Fission power promises a check on climate change,” Dec. 2). If the decision was “pointless,” then blame should be shifted to the executives on the 32nd floor of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s corporate headquarters, for they alone made that decision, based on their analysis of declining marketability for its nuclear power.
Elsewhere, Hargraves calls fission power “cheap.” In the case of Diablo Canyon, it has proven to be neither cheap nor reliable.
The plant’s original budget was $380 million. It ballooned to $5.7 billion due to seismic miscalculations and construction errors made by the utility — all paid for by captive ratepayers. More recently, PG&E used $100 million in customer money to replace the aging main stator — a key component of its electric generator — in Unit 1. Twice now, in less than a year of operation, the replacement has failed for the same reason — leaking hydrogen. Unit 1 went off line in July (two weeks ahead of a heat wave) and again in October for 46 days, including several days during a state power emergency.
Thus, not only is money being wasted, but nuclear power wasn’t available when it would have been most needed.
Nuclear power is simply counting on too many eggs in one basket, and it doesn’t take a radiological disaster (the stator unit is on the non-radioactive side of the plant) to disable and render the system useless. PG&E’s own sworn declaration before the California Public Utilities Commission indicates that customers are paying more than $1.25 billion in over-market costs for Diablo’s power every year the plant continues to operate, and that number increases annually.
Prudent money and investments are now moving to create a flexible and redundant system of renewable generation and storage, and nuclear power does not fit that mix. It is a dinosaur technology for which the waste problem has yet to be solved.
DAVID WEISMAN
San Luis Obispo, Calif.
The writer is outreach coordinator for the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility.
President Donald Trump just got fired from his job, the most hurtful loss in his long, lying life. And he does not have what it takes to rise above this setback, handle it like an adult. Never has, never will. He’s dumping salt down our water wells and plowing salt into our growing fields to ensure his successor has the roughest time possible in his new job.
Way to set up for 2024.
If Trump could muster the spine to look beyond his own infantile needs, I would lay off him. He can’t, so I won’t. He’s still undermining our election process in our constitutional democracy and making a lot money doing it — money, which, by the way, goes largely into his own pocket, not to finance the bogus legal challenges he insists on forcing into courts.
Somebody recently hoped that I would in years to come highlight President-elect Biden’s good points — past, present and future — with the same enthusiasm I have trumpeted Trump’s bad ones. You bet. Tell ’em when they’re right, and tell ’em when they’re wrong, every one of them, Republicans and Democrats. Equal opportunity truth-teller.
Speaking of truth-tellers, during our “second week of post-election controversies,” David French wrote in Time magazine that “two realities are increasingly clear. First, Donald Trump is growing increasingly unhinged in his quest to retain his grip on power. Second, only conservative media can prevent vast segments of the GOP base from descending further into the miasma of conspiracy theories.”
So that means the letters to the editor I write may not make much of a difference, and maybe neither will what Democrats say in mainstream media. But unless right-wing media start telling the truth, there are large numbers of voters who will never get the right message.
ROBERT ROUDEBUSH
North Haverhill