Comments about ‘Environmental groups, tribes protest nuclear power plant along Green River’

The ironic thing is, by opposing a nuclear power plant they are implicitly supporting more coal or gas-fired power plants (which are the only plants that produce as much power as a nuclear plant).

Look, if you want clean electricity for now and the future, you have to support nuclear power. No other non-fossil-fuel source is big enough to keep up with growth in demand.

Anyone who thinks nuclear power plants is clean energy or anywhere close to it is a fool. Nuclear energy is 50,000 years of destruction of the water and the land they sit on hide or their waste in. Coal powered plants are a lot less toxic and not the environmental enemy it has been portrayed to be. Fossil fuel waste can be recycled and is natural, nuclear waste cannot be recycled or cleaned.

The energy commission knows a lot more about the hazards of nuclear reactors and radiation the most of the general public that power plant developers are releasing to back their claims. These companies are a business who's motive is money, not the environment. The naivety of the public is astounding to their ignorance of nuclear power.

Its the things you can't see being dumped on the environment that we have to worry about, not the things and particulate you can see. All the damage ever committed to our environment has been done by covert and secret dumping of toxic waste by corporate business, and catalytic converters (NOX emissions), not power plants burning coal or oil.

Nuclear is too costly and risky.

Decisions made today will impact our grandchildren's energy, given that power plants stay in operation at least 50+ years (think about our coal-fired power plants from the 1960s still belching pollution that the EPA wants to regulate due to air quality).

As solar prices continue to fall, over the next 50 years, solar panels on homes and business buildings will become commonplace.

Consequently, diversification and flexibility of our energy system are needed. That is, we need more price-stable, low-risk forms of energy (wind and solar, given that they have no fuel costs, they are price-stable and predictable -- and no pollution, so no carbon taxes or EPA restrictions and no nuke waste maintenance or railroad costs for transporting coal).

AND we need flexibility in the system to accommodate the variability of renewables (so when the winds die down or when the sun sets), other fuels can ramp up to take their place (today, that is natural gas; eventually energy storage will also accomodate price-stable energy's variability).

Nuclear cannot be easily ramped up and down to meet the future incorporation of variable, price-stable energy and need for flexibility.

If the tourist have to ask, "Why do we have nuclear power plants here?", maybe we should put big signs up explaining it to them.....

Nuclear Power Plants..... here because you are!

Because WE use the electricity. OH.... and because we refuse to dam more rivers or burn more coal/oil/gas. Because solar/wind cannot provide a base load. Because we can't wait for 50 years to turn the lights on. Because nuclear power produces the smallest amount of pollution of any power source per kilowatt.

So where can people find out more about this project so more reasoned arguments can be made for and against?

I'm wondering if the Des News would be interested in researching a bit about the proposals that have been made for Green River to increase their econopmic base and the resistance to such from residents of Moab. I know Legacy Highway in Davis County had Moabites against it and they would never even use it. People against this should realize they use electricity too.