Don't revisit idea of nuclear power plants
Aerial view of the shuttered Shoreham nuclear plant as seen in July 2015. Nuclear power is hugely expensive and a drain on taxpayers, a reader writes. Credit: Daniel Brennan
Don’t revisit idea of nuclear plants
Nuclear power, neither clean nor renewable, is still a bad idea [“NY eyes future nuclear options,” News, Sept. 6].
It’s amazing that we have to reiterate the “no nukes” arguments of the past as if the Three Mile Island and Fukushima accidents never happened. Do we really want to accumulate more radioactive nuclear waste? What can Gov. Kathy Hochul be thinking to entertain these ideas?
As Long Islanders familiar with the Shoreham debacle know, nuclear power is hugely expensive and a drain on taxpayers. My guess is that partisan nuclear industry salespeople are getting in the way of sound decision-making.
We already have proven renewable technologies: wind, solar, battery storage, geothermal and thermal energy networks. The price of renewable energy has dropped a lot in the past decade, and it is safe. This is what New York’s energy future is meant to look like.
— David Bissoon, Bay Shore
Fifty years ago as a college student, I was a senior engineering aide at Ebasco Services, which designed many nuclear power plants in this country and abroad. Regarding cost overruns, U.S. nuclear regulatory authorities require that the design of nuclear power plants be current for the year that construction is completed, not the year it was designed.
This means that design changes may be required right up to the time construction of a plant is completed. Design changes require more engineering effort, coordination, and expense, as the design of one room of the plant affects the design and space planning for other rooms.
Along with inflation, interest on construction costs keeps rising, so years of delays in design and construction can dramatically increase final costs.
By merely protesting the opening of a nuclear power plant, regardless of the reasons, the yearslong delays in opening the plant will result in cost overruns. So, protesters may be complaining about cost overruns they themselves have caused, in part.
— Daniel Okrent, Hempstead
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