In my column three weeks ago, I mentioned energy-producing plans we had available (actually, I left out wind and biomass strategies, which good friend G. S. pointed out). Second on my list, after drilling in ANWR, is nuclear energy.

The only nuclear accident ever to happen on U.S. soil was in 1979. From this event, there were no measurable radiation release into the atmosphere and no deaths. The environmental groups used this "disaster" to halt all nuclear-plant production for the next 27 years.

They became even more emboldened with the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred in 1986. This event shouldn’t even count. It was because of an inferior USSR design, no concern for safety and poorly trained personnel.

To compound this problem, Ronald Reagan was, at the time, bringing this Communist giant to its knees, which halted the ability of this diseased country to provide the resources necessary to prevent such an accident from happening.

Nuclear energy is the best possible option to provide us the protection from fossil-fuel blackmail by the Middle Eastern countries (yes, even our Middle Eastern "friends") as well as by the idiotic leaders and possible future leaders of Venezuela and Mexico.

Why have other countries learned this and we haven’t? While we provide 20 percent of our electricity from nuclear power, our last nuclear plant was built in 1973. By contrast, other countries have been freeing themselves from energy blackmail at a pace that should embarrass us.

Belgium provides 58 percent of its electricity needs through nuclear plants, Sweden 45 percent, South Korea 40 percent and Switzerland 37 percent. It pains me to give the French any credit at all, but they generate 77 percent of their country’s electricity in this fashion, and all this with NO accidents.

Why are we so behind and dangerously dependent on foreign sources? The answer is simple. The granola-bar crowd, with nonsensical groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists, is why.

These groups, with others, have prevented us from developing a very promising energy source through lies, misrepresentations, unnecessary environmental-impact studies, court case after court case, and other obstacles so that it has become foolish for anyone to invest in the construction of nuclear plants. Government intervention and the steamrolling of these obstructionist groups are long overdue.

The facts are these: Nuclear energy is safe, clean (zero carbon-dioxide emissions for you greenies) and a cheap energy source; and it, along with Alaskan drilling, will have us no longer dependent on foreign oil sources.

This fact is even being agreed to by such radical environmentalists as Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, and Bishop Hugh Montefiore, Britain’s longtime board member of Friends of the Earth. As a result of their courageous conversions, they have been ostracized by the very groups they helped to create.

Nuclear waste? Not as big a problem as is being presented. Now that recycling is available, "95 percent of the potential energy that is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle" is recoverable. Also, "within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor." All this information came from an article written by Moore, Greenpeace’s co-founder and former poster boy.

But the best news is that eventually gasoline will be replaced with hydrogen. At present, unfortunately, the most common energy needed to produce hydrogen comes from natural gas and then oil. Nuclear energy is by far a more efficient means to produce hydrogen. In November of 2004 the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory proved that a next generation nuclear plant could produce the hydrogen equivalent of 400,000 gallons of gasoline every day!

The solution is to silence the naysayers and proceed boldly ahead. The excuse many are saying now is that it will take 10 years to implement everything. Unfortunately, these people were saying the same thing 20 years ago.

We would have had energy independence before now if we hadn’t listened to them then. Let’s not let the same mistake be made now. I, for one, can’t wait until the day we have brought the radical Islamic countries, who hate us, to their knees.

———

Tom Sears is a professor of accounting at Hartwick College in Oneonta and serves on the Unatego Central School Board of Education. He can be reached at SearsT@hartwick.edu. His column appears every other week.