I read with interest The Baltimore Sun’s recent editorial on nuclear power (“Maryland’s leaders warm to nuclear power: Are they wrong?” Feb. 8). I’m sure it will elicit a great deal of anti-nuke response. I would just like to bring up several points.
Nuclear reactor design has changed a lot over the years and continues to improve. New designs are inherently safer than those of the past. But that’s true of almost everything in our lives. For example, the designs for the reactors at the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant are about 55 years old. If you were in a car accident in 1970, the airbags wouldn’t have gone off — because there weren’t any. Is this a good reason to ban automobiles today?
By some estimates, there have been approximately 4,200 deaths attributed to nuclear reactor incidents since 1945 (not counting radiotherapy accidents or Soviet submarine failures). But a study by researchers from George Mason University, the University of Texas and Harvard University found that pollution from coal-fired generating plants was responsible for more than 460,000 deaths between 1999 and 2020.
Meanwhile, in France, 56 reactors provide 72% of that nation’s electricity. They started an ambitious nuclear program in response to the 1970s oil crisis and have been going strong ever since — with no catastrophic incidents. Are the French smarter than us or do they just have better engineers?
— Steve English, Clarksville
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