March 28, 2024
Letter

Nuclear option missed

I wonder if Scott Denman (“No future in nuclear,” BDN op-ed, July 13) knows the following?

1. There are 440 nuclear plants worldwide; 30 are under construction and 60 new plants are anticipated in next 15 years. Asia is going nuclear while we squander our limited reserves of natural gas.

2. Nuclear and hydro power account for 17 percent of electric power generation worldwide while geothermal, wood, wind, solar and waste account for 1.6 percent. The great bulk of the 1.6 percent is from wood and waste.

3. The equivalent of a tanker load of LNG is required every 20 days to make up for the loss of Maine Yankee energy.

4. “A distributed network of appropriate energy” must be backed up with natural gas electric generation. How many more LNG terminals does this imply?

5. Because we have lost our nerve on the nuclear option we will continue to squander fossil fuels. The United States uses about four thousand billion kilowatt-hours of electric energy per year. Faced with this level of demand, solar- and wind-produced electricity are simply a joke.

Richard C. Hill

Old Town


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