To the editor:
Using clean energy to produce the majority of our electricity is a great goal. The New York State Climate Action Council goal is for all new homes built starting in 2030 to only use electricity as the fuel for heating using heat pumps. No use of natural gas or heating oil. The New York State CAC also has the goal that only new electric vehicles are sold starting in 2035.
The issue with this goal is to assess the most realistic and reasonable methods to generate and meet our future electricity needs. Solar is fantastic in the southern part of the USA, lots of sunshine. Not so much in New York. I know this first hand because of the solar panels I have which are only producing about 75% of the electricity that I was told they would produce. These are ground-mounted panels are set at the optimum position and angle with clear line of sight to the sun.
Solar farms require large amounts of land and are a blemish on our landscape. Most of the solar farms are being built on farmland. This will have an impact on the supply of food that was once grown on these farms.
Wind power is unreliable because you never know when there will be sufficient wind to drive the wind turbines. The wind turbines also have to be located in areas that are prone to wind.
While I support the use of solar and wind to generate electricity, I believe it can only reasonably be a supplemental source of electricity due to its output being inconsistent and unreliable as well as financial cost and environmental impact. New Yorkers need a major source of electricity where the output is consistent and reliable. That is nuclear and natural gas-fired power plants.
Unfortunately, we do not hear anyone in our federal and state governments talking about nuclear power. The new Generation 3 and 4 nuclear power plants are smaller, safer and more reliable than the previous generations of US reactors.
I hear a lot of people say that nuclear is dangerous and to look at Chernobyl. The reason Chernobyl was a catastrophe is because the Russians did not enclose their reactors in containment buildings.
People also speak of the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear incident. This reactor went into operation in 1974 and this was the USA’s most serious nuclear accident. The average radiation dose was 1 millirem above the usual background dose. To put this in context, exposure from a chest X-Ray is approx. 6 millirems and the area’s natural radioactive background is 100-125 millirems per year. The Three Mile Island leakage of radiation was due to a stuck valve. Lack of sufficient sensors failed to quickly detect that it was stuck open.
The Generation 3 and 4 reactors have addressed essentially all of the safety issues of the early generation of nuclear reactors. The safe and reliable Indian Point nuclear power plant was generating 1,040 megawatts of electricity for New York. It is now shut down and was replaced by 3 natural gas-fired power plants.
I do not hear anyone talking about the environmental impact of the mining that is required to get the materials to build solar panels and batteries. This is significantly more devastating to our environment than the mining for nuclear fuel. There are methods in place for the storage of spent nuclear fuel. The amount of waste that is generated is far less than what most people believe it to be.
Yet, I hear no talk or plans about how solar panels and batteries for EV vehicles and homes will be disposed of in an environmentally safe manner. We can’t keep kicking this issue down the road. This needs to be addressed now.
The US Federal and State governments need to educate Americans on the true facts of the following:
1. Quantify the environmental impact of mining for nuclear fuel.
2. Identify the types of nuclear fuel used in the Generation 3 and 4 reactors and how it differs from the early generations of reactors.
3. Describe the differences and risks associated with each generation of nuclear reactor.
4. Describe how and where spent nuclear fuel is processed and stored.
5. Quantify the overall lifetime cost of nuclear power; from the mining of the fuel to the decommissioning of the reactors.
6. Quantify the environmental impact of mining for the minerals to build solar panels and batteries used for storing electrical power for electric vehicles and homes.
7. Identify where the minerals for the aforementioned materials are sourced.
8. Quantify the overall lifetime cost and methods relating to solar panels; from the mining of the materials to their recycling.
9. Quantify the overall lifetime cost and methods relating to EV and house batteries; from the mining of the materials to their recycling.
10. Quantify the impact of wind turbines on large birds (i.e. Eagles, Hawks, and Vultures), specifically how many they kill each year.
11. Quantify all costs, methods and issues with recycling wind turbines, particularly the wind turbine blades.
You also have to take into consideration where most of the solar panels that are currently installed in the USA are manufactured. It is not in the USA. The Tariffs that were in place for foreign made solar panels were just removed. This will make it very hard for US manufacturers of solar panels to fairly compete.
I am a firm believer that we should be moving towards more use of clean energy. However, the process should be evolutionary, not revolutionary as is now being done. A reasonable approach to provide interim electrical power is natural gas-fired power plants. Once new nuclear power reactors are built, the natural gas-fired plants could be phased out in a reasonable timeframe. The nuclear reactors could be built on the same site as the gas-fired power plants and could utilize much of the same infrastructure, thereby reducing the overall cost.
One more point is I hear no plans to significantly upgrade our electrical grid system. We need a new system that will be able to distribute all of the electricity that we will need to fuel our homes and vehicles.
Food for thought.
Larry Dysinger
Town of Chester