Paul Epstein responds to a recent NYT story on the much-ballyhooed “nuclear revival” with a letter to the editor:

There are many reasons to balk at constructing new nuclear power plants. Safety, storage, and security are significant obstacles, the last two of which may be insurmountable.

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Ten seismic faults lie within a 20-mile radius of Yucca Mountain, located 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. And scaling up nuclear power would require the capacity of one “Yucca Mountain” every 5 to 10 years until the midcentury.

Nuclear plants take a decade to build, and estimates for the cost of a nuclear plant have just doubled from $6 billion to $12 billion.

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Replacing carbon waste with radioactive waste is not healthy and probably not insurable. A better proposal, offered by Al Gore, is to build a cleanly powered smart grid. With a 10-year timetable and a cost of $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion, such a grid would maximize the benefits and minimize the potential consequences for our health and the global environment.

Cleanly powered smart grid, wo0t!