To the Editor:

With the recent emergence of nuclear power development plans in the North Country and in NYS, it makes you wonder: why now, and why so little development in the last decades? Maybe.. because of the very high risk and great expense involved.  Maybe.. because banks and insurance companies know about risk, and knew better all these years than to take this risk.  Also, when local communities learned about the risks, they too said no.

Nuclear plants are enormously expensive, take a very long time to site and build, cause excess cases of numerous kinds of cancer in the surrounding area, and leave the community with a pile of very long lasting waste that nobody knows what to do with.  Sounds like banks and insurance companies have been smart in holding off on that risk.

So, what the heck happened? The very real problem of climate change has made everybody  really uncomfortable with the idea (necessity, actually) of burning less fossil fuel. Wouldn’t it be handy if we could come up with a “solution” that would give the appearance of dealing with climate change by somewhat lessening the burning of fossil fuels. 

Hey, how about nuclear power? It’s been a few years since Fukushima. Everybody has long forgotten about Chernobyl and 3 mile Island. Let’s give nukes another shot.. and see what happens. 

When we look around the world at new nuclear technology though, “what happens” looks not so great. In France, the rivers that nukes get their water from are too hot to adequately cool the plants, causing them to shut down. In Hungary and Slovakia, their nuclear plants rely on Russian fuel, and are in a panic when that fuel source is threatened. Russia and China are building nuclear plants in many countries, all dependent on their exclusive fuel source. Not a safe or healthy scenario. The clean up at Fukushima is costing many times what was planned, has been handled in dubious fashion, and isn't done yet.

The nuclear energy  “jobs” claim is way overrated compared to renewable energy job development. New York's "cap-and-invest" policy would invest $4.69 billion in heat pumps, EV charging stations, wind and solar, creating 30,000+ jobs, far more jobs than any nuclear plant would provide, at half the cost of a nuke (using nuclear industry estimates).

Renewable energy can be online producing power much faster, safer and with no (additional) piles of nuclear waste lasting for centuries after.  

Let’s think carefully about this.. maybe not take the risk here in the North Country or in New York State.

Klaus Proemm 

Canton