Nuclear energy unclean, just look at its history

A recent barrage of letters lauding nuclear power as a solution to the climate crisis fails to mention the history and downsides of this technology. To name some:

■ The mining of nuclear fuel, uranium, has contaminated native land and sickened miners breathing radon gas.

■ The uranium enrichment processing cycle exposes workers and communities to contamination while subsidizing nuclear weaponry.

■ The siting of nuclear plants in high-population areas, on high-risk terrain, including Fukushima and Chernobyl, has exacted a high price on human health and land.

■ The failed recycling of spent fuel rods loaded with many radiative isotopes and stored in pools next to operating plants and underground is potentially dangerous.

■ The front-end economic cost of the construction of new nuclear plants is prohibitive.

The decommissioning of older plants, thus securing waste costs for a ludicrous 10,000 years is an impossible commitment.

In New York, the state Public Service Commission is exacting at least $7 billion on utility ratepayers to keep existing nuclear plants running and the shuttered Hudson Valley Indian Point facility maintained. Most of this money goes to out of NY state companies and their contractors.

Even if it may be true that nuclear power decreases carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, it does so at our risk and at a much more expensive cost than energy efficiency, electric vehicles and trains, sequestration of carbon in industrial processes, and truly renewable energy including hydro, wind, solar and geothermal. Fred Pfeiffer

Albany