THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 18, 1996 TAG: 9602170006
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 38 lines
In a Feb. 4 article, I learned that Virginia Power may use it's nuclear reactors in a commercial effort to create a gas that is used ``in nuclear warheads to boost the explosive power of hydrogen bombs.''
The national debt is going to sink us, there's a hole in the ozone layer, the rain forests are disappearing and now we learn our nuclear bombs aren't even powerful enough! Good grief!
Seriously, though, the article goes on to suggest that the aforementioned gas could be extracted and recycled from the 38 metric tons of plutonium that President Clinton has declared surplus from our nuclear arsenal, supplying projected needs through the year 2011. When we are faced with the challenge of safely disposing of so much of the most toxic material known to man, would it really be in the nation's best interest for Virginia Power to profit by creating new radioactive materials instead of the military's need - if there really is one - being supplied by reducing existing waste through recycling?
Safely storing our high-level nuclear waste for the many thousands of years it must be entombed may be the greatest technological challenge facing our society; many experts assert it may be beyond our capability to do so for some time to come, if ever. At the least, we cannot know for certain how long our entombment plans will succeed, regardless of what we predict. Until these problems are solved, recycling existing nuclear materials sounds better than creating new ones.
DANIEL STEINER
Portsmouth, Feb. 7, 1996 by CNB