The folks at Oak Ridge are still shoveling it out, hardly changed from when I worked there over 30 years ago. This is classic nuke industry propaganda, designed to reassure and convince that nuclear is the only way to go and that if you don't buy the program you're either a fool or a troublemaker.

Have they got their facts wrong? No. Everything in that article is scrupulously accurate and, and more important, it's true. And furthermore, I agree with it.

But the purpose of the article is not to inform, but to persuade, it points out the obvious advantages of its side in a way that no responsible critic of nuclear energy could possibly dispute, or would want to, but it very cleverly ignores all the disadvantages, drawbacks and potential dangers. The primary issue, what to do with the wastes, is not brought up. It's like those industry commercials that point out that reactors "can't explode like bombs" (true, but they can do other, very ugly things!); or that the radiation we get from a plant is less than from an X-Ray or a flight in a jetliner (again, true, but properly operating and regulated plants are not what we are worried about). In this case, we are told that burning coal disperses more radiation than we actually use in power generation (also true, they've been making the same argument since I worked in the Nuke Propaganda field in the early 70s. They keep on telling us what we already know and not what we need to know. The inescapable conclusion after reading the article is "How could the critics of nuclear power be so UNREASONABLE?".

ANd sooner or later, they can't resist the zinger...

"Today nuclear power plants are not as economical to construct as coal-fired plants, largely because of the high cost of complying with regulations to restrict emissions of radioactivity."

Yep, it's those damn pesky environmentalists. They are always in the way. If it wasn't for them, nukes would be cheaper to build than coal plants. Yeah, right.

The key word is not "construct", it is "operate". Nukes are more expensive to build even without any safety regs, but the fuel is cheaper in the long run, maintenance costs are lower, you can run the plants with less staff (which are trained for you by the US Navy) and they are insured by Federal guarantees and tax dollars. The main reason they are so expensive to operate is the waste processing, which no one wants to "invest" in because there is no profit in it. This is what really has those pesky environmentalists on the rag.

Those of you who have followed my rants on nuclear power here know I'm far from an opponent, in fact, I think nuclear is the only way out of the energy bind we're in now and we need to develop it immediately. But the problem of waste reprocessing MUST be solved before this technology can proceed, and I don't mean solved technically, the technical solutions already exist. We have to make the committment to deal with nuclear waste, and it's going to be expensive and risky, there are safety, financial, engineering and political problems which will have to be dealt with, and in the 37 years I have been following this industry, it has done nothing to deal with them.