We are hurting both economically at home and in terms of the young lives lost overseas due to our energy independence.

Bottom line: we have to develop non-carbon based fuel and energy alternatives both to save the environment and have the kind of reliable and affordable energy that would not become a national security nightmare in the long run.

Much work has already been done on solar and wind power. But they are still not economically feasible. They are still too expensive per unit of energy to pose a serious alternative to oil and gas.

Ethanol and biofuels, on the other hand, can be “economically feasible” in the long run but they have another serious shortcoming – they alter the economics of food in America seriously, with unknown long-term consequences, by placing a high premium on the price of corn. And by encouraging the clearing of existing forest areas for expanded corn production, biofuel production also causes the release of CO2 that was stored in live tress for hundreds of years.

Currently the coal-fired utility plants are making a huge comeback. As these lines are written during the last days of March 2007, dozens of coal-fired plants are being constructed in the MidWest for their “economic value.” Press reports suggest that we might end up having about 100 new such plants within the next decade or two.

In this day and age of “greenhouse gas” pollution and global warming, regressing back to the coal plants of the previous century is nothing short of insanity.

Why?

Just consider this -- each 1,500 MW coal-fired plant releases about 3,000,000 (3 million) tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere during three years of operation. If we build 100 of these dinosaurs, they will spit out 100 million tons of deadly CO2 a year!

And how much CO2 a nuclear power plant releases? None. Zilch. Nada. It just produces a few highly radioactive rods for which the technology exists to store safely.

I think it is time we get over our “Three Mile Island” paranoia. Yes, there was a time several decades ago when nuclear plant safety both here in the United States and abroad in places like the Soviet Union left much to be wanted. But those near calls (and in the case of Chernobyl, down right disaster) thought valuable lessons to the experts and they have improved the technology considerably since then.

One important recent development in nuclear technology is called “Pebble Bed Modular Reactor” technology. Author William Tucker in his Wall Street Journal opinion article “Our Atomic Future” describes this technology as follows:

“...nuclear material is reposited in tennis-ball sized graphite-coated spheres that sit in the reactor vessel as in a giant gumball machine. Each ball is a “mini-reactor”... and a collection of them produces enough power... Since balls can be inserted and withdrawn individually, the reactor never has to shut down for refueling. Temperatures do not climb high enough to cause a meltdown and proponents say this eliminates the needs for an expensive containment stricture...”

Such new technologies are geared towards the understandable concern of the local communities for safety and reliability. They deserve our renewed interest and focus.

One traditional objection to nuclear plants was their size and cost of building. Nuclear plants grew from 60 MW capacity (the first civilian reactor in the USA built in 1957 in Shippingport, PA) to its current average size of 1,200-1,500 MW for one reason only – economic feasibility. The experts indeed agree that larger the plant, cheaper the cost of unit energy produced. As a matter of fact, the nuclear energy reactors in Connecticut operate at such a high level of profitability that the CT Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has proposed a “windfall tax” on such utility companies.

But this does not mean that much smaller nuclear reactors cannot be built. That is a spurious argument since it is not true. South Africans, for example, are now building a 200 MW nuclear reactor by using the “pebble bed” technology I explained above. It will be in operation in 2012.

Other examples: Toshiba has offered to build a 10 MW reactor in Galena, Alaska to replace the town's diesel generators “which now produce electricity ten times the normal price,” according to the same WSJ opinion piece. Russians have started building reactors as small as 3 MW to be used in the interior of Siberia. Canada and Venezuela reportedly have similar plans to construct such small nuclear plants for various purposes.

Safe nuclear energy reactors, built with the new “pebble bed” technology in sizes to best fit the local needs, could definitely be the clean, cheap and reliable energy alternative to end our dependence on the Middle East oil. And when we do not need the Middle East oil, the cream of your youth do not have to go over there, fight and die or get maimed for life either. The pain would stop where the energy independence begins.

Nuclear energy cannot move our cars yet. It will not solve our every energy problem overnight. But it can (and to a certain extent, already does) meet our electrical energy needs like no other energy source can. It is time to expand the utilization of this infinite source of energy, together with solar and wind power. We owe it to ourselves, our environment and the next generations to come.