Nuclear power has killed none in North America

Nuclear energy too risky? May 14

Vakil, Covington and King of the Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War trot out the usual, but wrong, catchwords and phrases to conflate civilian nuclear energy generation with the objective contained in the name of their organization.

Agreed: nuclear war is an abomination. All war is.

Peaceable civilian nuclear power belies the physicians’ objections. To wit: Speed/size of construction: France decarbonized its electric grid with nuclear in just over a decade in the 1980s … quick enough now for climate change impacts; Ontario eliminated coal by 2014, substituting nuclear energy; Fuel recycling: FS-SMRs (fast-spectrum SMRs), developed around 1980, can eliminate the longterm radiotoxicity of Canada’s 57,000 tonnes used fuel “waste” in decades, yielding carbon-free FS-SMR fuel for centuries. Recycling banned? Never in Canada. U.S. President Reagan rescinded the reprocessing/recycling ban in 1981. Radiation deaths? None ever in North America from civilian nuclear power.

But physicians save many lives daily with similar ionizing radiation in diagnostics and cancer therapy.

Peter Ottensmeyer, professor emeritus, University of Toronto