Nuclear Power

Vienna. -- West European governments and nuclear-energy companies are seeking to fill the dangerous vacuum left by the collapse of a central supervisory authority over the civil atomic-power industry of the disintegrated Soviet Union.Hans Blix, the director general of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, has offered help to the republics joining the Commonwealth of Independent States that has replaced the Soviet Union. Sweden is helping Lithuania establish an independent nuclear-power authority; and British Nuclear Fuels and France's Cogema have opened negotiations with East European countries over the fate of mounting nuclear wastes which Moscow has refused to accept for processing despite its contractual obligation to do so.At stake is the future of 62 largely obsolete Soviet-designed nuclear-power plants, most of them in Europe and 17 in the fledgling Eastern and Central European democracies.

Since 1989, the opening credits to "The Simpsons," the longest running animated series on TV, has featured a short bit of animations showing the buffoon patriarch Homer sacked out at his post in the control room at a nuclear power plant. It's probably no coincidence that when the show was first going into production, the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station was in the national spotlight for being shut down in the aftermath of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors finding a real-life nuclear operator asleep at his post in the control room.

After reading Dan Rodricks ' "Despite tragedy, nuclear still way to go" (March 27), I am gratified that there are still thoughtful editorials and letters to the editor in support of nuclear power, despite the situation in Japan. Having had almost everything possible thrown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, there are still no deaths connected to the damaged reactors, proving again that nuclear power generation is the safest form of energy known to date. Yet thanks to a not always benevolent Mother Nature, thousands of people are dead or injured, and the majority of media coverage has diverted national attention away from the Japanese people's needs and suffering to focus on the "nuclear disaster.

We should expect a horrific human toll from any exchange of hostilities between Iran and Israel ("Nuclear saber-rattling," Jan. 6). Steps toward avoiding that, such as your editorial call for an intricate U.S.-Tehran agreement, are morally well-intentioned. But it wouldn't disturb our rest if these were Buddhist monks developing nuclear power for Nepal. Why not? Because common sense says their benign intentions are trustworthy and they respect human life. The Tehran mullahs have rebuffed (to say the least)

While Jay Hancock documents the uncompetitive cost of offshore wind farms, there is one aspect of the cost equation that is not considered "Offshore wind farm is a bad idea that ought to be killed, March 27). Wind power generation actually does not replace other sources of energy, which must be operationally available when there is insufficient wind to generate useable amounts of power. When electrical energy requirements increase in response to economic and population growth, virtually every planned megawatt generated by future wind installations must be matched by an increase in reliable power generation capacity to insure a dependable supply system capable of meeting demand at all times.

As a strong proponent of renewable energy, I read "The fantasy of wind power for Maryland" (March 8) and then wondered why it took so long for Jon Boone to inform the reader that the wind doesn't blow all the time. Of course, his agenda became clear: "Throwing vast amounts of the public's treasure down the rathole of wind is to deny investment in infinitely more effective technologies -- such as nuclear -- that will preserve the energy requirements of modernity." How could the author claim to be a "longtime environmentalist" and support nuclear power, the most dangerous and toxic of all energy sources?

In "Calvert Cliffs 3 makes no sense" (March 10), Ellen Vancko is adamant that Maryland state government should not in any way underwrite or subsidize a third reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear facility. Yet while she eschews support for nuclear energy, she implies that it, unlike other forms of renewable energy, will have an effect on "climate change. " Based on that, Ms. Vancko would be more than willing to subsidize the proven inefficiency and lack of cost-effectiveness of solar and wind power — to the detriment of a proven, efficient and world-wide major energy source: nuclear power.

Ajax Eastman's Feb. 7 piece, "Wind power advocates full of hot air," presents the vastly distorted impression that the Maryland environmental community is divided on the issue of offshore wind power. This is not true. All of the state's major environmental groups — the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Sierra Club, Environment Maryland, the National Wildlife Foundation and the Maryland League of Conservation Voters — firmly support Gov. Martin O'Malley's Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act. Ms. Eastman loses credibility among mainstream environmental advocates by supporting the expansion of expensive, dangerous nuclear power plants instead of offshore wind power development.

In Tim Wheeler's article about offshore wind ("Study boosts offshore windmills," Feb. 9), Jeremy Firestone comments: "Yeah, you're going to kill some birds, and yes, there are probably some places you don't want to put wind turbines." These remarks understate the complexity of the biology that will be affected by his proposal. A committee of the National Research Council has concluded that industrial wind installations alter entire ecosystems, doing more harm than just killing birds and bats, and further, that there is insufficient understanding of ecology even to estimate their adverse effects.

Johanna Neumann cites the high cost of a new nuclear reactor as the major reason to not build one ("Let Calvert Cliffs 3 Die," October 14). But she also mentions that reactors are risky, and official statistics back her up. Since the early 1980s, just after the two Calvert Cliffs reactors began operating, Calvert County's cancer death rate jumped from 2 percent below to 16 percent above the state rate. A lot of other factors are associated with cancer, but none are apparent in Calvert County.

The state Board of Public Works gave its unanimous approval Wednesday to a wetlands dredging permit for a company that hopes to build a third nuclear reactor at the Calvert Cliffs power plant in Southern Maryland, even though the project is far from getting off the ground. The board granted the permit to UniStar Operating Services LLC after being told approval would help the company secure the licensing, financing and U.S.-based partner it would need to get the stalled project moving.

Woodlawn High School alumnus Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Johnathan York completed the nuclear power training unit course in Ballston Spa, N.Y. Catonsville resident Jeffrey Winns is his father.

Don't worry, the folks who operate nuclear power plants near Baltimore told us after a Japanese earthquake caused meltdowns and large radioactivity releases there. We don't have severe earthquakes on the East Coast. That proposition got tested Aug. 23, when the 5.8-magnitude quake centered in Virginia rattled buildings as far north as Toronto. The closest nuclear plant to Baltimore is Exelon Corp.'s Peach Bottom facility on the Susquehanna River, 45 miles away. Peach Bottom is built to withstand ground movement equal to an earthquake registering 6.1 on the Richter scale, Exelon said in April, after the Japan catastrophe.

Tucked behind a ruined grain elevator at a pier along an industrial stretch of Baltimore's waterfront lies a still-gleaming white vessel that was once one of the nation's proudest maritime achievements — the only nuclear cargo and passenger ship ever built in the United States. She's the N.S. Savannah, a floating time capsule from the mid-20th century that has made Baltimore her retirement home. For a few brief years during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations she was a nautical superstar, touring the world as an ambassador for the peaceful use of nuclear energy and playing host to royalty.

I leave the water running while I do the dishes, drive a half-ton truck that gets 10 miles to the gallon and, in the energy hog display that my husband finds most annoying, I move from room to room without turning off lights behind me. OK, so I also don't pull out the plugs every day on my appliances not currently in use. This prelude to an Act of Contrition, while by no means complete, was inspired by recent reminders of the terrible cost...

Being a third generation American Ashkenazi I look at the Near-East with American eyes, but with a certain sensitivity arising from my own ethnicity. President Obama and his minions are hell bent on trying to address the Israeli/Palestinian problem, and attempting to show the Arab world America's even-handiness, but ignoring the realpolitik of the region, they have opened Pandora's box relative to Israeli angst. Israel is probably the fourth or fifth largest nuclear power in the world today, with the only democracy in the area and a very large hawkish Russian population.

President Barack Obama made a strong pitch for nuclear power during a visit Tuesday to a business-labor training center in Maryland. Obama announced that his administration is making the first loan guarantee for construction and operation of a nuclear reactor since the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The $8 billion loan guarantee is for new nuclear reactors to be built at an existing plant in Burke, Ga. It would be the first nuclear power plant to break ground in nearly three decades, according to the White House.

Thor, the Marvel Comics superhero, hammered his way into movie theaters over the weekend, saving the world, winning Natalie Portman and grossing about $66 million. Kenneth Branagh's "Thor" is based on Stan Lee's Thor, which is based on the Thor of Norse mythology — god of thunder and protector of mankind. Some pioneering scientists of the early 19th century were so taken with Thor's immortal powers that they named a radioactive element after him. Nearly two centuries later, some modern scientists, including a Nobel Prize laureate, believe thorium could play a major role in saving mankind from global warming.

After reading Dan Rodricks ' "Despite tragedy, nuclear still way to go" (March 27), I am gratified that there are still thoughtful editorials and letters to the editor in support of nuclear power, despite the situation in Japan. Having had almost everything possible thrown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, there are still no deaths connected to the damaged reactors, proving again that nuclear power generation is the safest form of energy known to date. Yet thanks to a not always benevolent Mother Nature, thousands of people are dead or injured, and the majority of media coverage has diverted national attention away from the Japanese people's needs and suffering to focus on the "nuclear disaster.