More nuclear plants would lead to bigger, dirtier headaches. Ohio must turn to sun | Opinion

“Spent nuclear fuel is extremely radioactive and is reduced to only half of its original radioactivity in thousands of years and it may take some fuel a million years to be safe for humans.”

John Lytle retired from consulting as a professional chemical engineer for 38 years, specializing in environmental issues.

Ohio Sen. Jerry Cirino had some glaring errors in his Aug. 31 guest column.

The Kirtland Republican argued that we need a lot of modular nuclear power plants built in Ohio to generate all the electricity we will need in the future. 

He even goes so far as to state, “The future of electricity generation is undoubtedly nuclear energy.”

Cirino is wrong! 

Although he makes some good arguments for their use, such as being close to users and being secure, small modular nuclear reactors would present significant drawbacks.

Nuclear power generation, he argues, requires extreme safety precautions. 

These modular facilities would be close to cities, making safety very important. They would still have to feed into a local grid that is overloaded and aging. 

They could provide good baseload power, but they could not be modulated based on demand. Additional facilities, such as natural gas generation, would be needed. Then there is the nuclear waste problem. Spent nuclear fuel is extremely radioactive and is reduced to only half of its original radioactivity in thousands of years and it may take some fuel a million years to be safe for humans.

Ohio should look to our star

Opinion Ohio doesn’t have enough energy to power the future. That must change

Opinion: Ask Fukushima or Chernobyl if nuclear is as clean, secure as Ohio senator claims

Solar uses the sun’s extraordinary power to generate clean, safe, and close electricity.

The Google Sunroof program estimates that solar panels on all viable roofs (86%) in the city of Columbus could generate 8.1 million megawatts per hour.

Transmission would not be a problem because the electricity would be used by each building first with any excess sent into the grid. Backup electricity would be needed for nighttime, but with batteries and some natural gas generators, it would be much safer, it would use no new land area and it would begin the needed process of reducing fossil fuel use.

Current Ohio law, as an example, does not allow a homeowner to install more solar generation than he has used in the recent past.

If Cirino is truly interested in safe, sustainable power generation, I suggest he convince his colleagues in the Ohio legislature to pass laws allowing more solar power generation to be installed on homes and commercial buildings to power our future.

John Lytle retired from consulting as a professional chemical engineer for 38 years, specializing in environmental issues.