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The writer is a native of Rappahannock County and now a resident of Culpeper.
double today’s electricity costs. Solar power is not without problems adversely affecting the environment. The Battelle Institute in Columbus, Ohio, prepared a study on solar power for the Swiss Department of Energy and Transportation.
The proposal would provide for 40 solar thermal power stations to be built in Switzerland by the end of the century. Environmentalists are opposing the proposal on the grounds that they do not want to see the Alps dotted with solar collectors.
Many experts feel that our most viable option for energy independence is the Nuclear Breeder Reactor. The breeder can be construed as a “new source" of energy in the sense that the use of thorium and U-238 would produce 2,000 times more energy than the worldwide reserves of fossil fuels.
It takes a ton of uranium ore to provide two ounces of uranium U-235 in the fuel for conventional nuclear reactors in operation today.
Uranium-238 is a byproduct of today’s enrichment process. It cannot be used as a fuel but can be converted into plutonium-239 by a breeder reactor.
In fact, there is enough of this useless waste stored at Paducah, Ky., to be worth over $20 trillion as fuel if converted by breeders. That sum represents more than 12 times this country’s gross national product. An added benefit is that no more mining for nuclear fuels would be needed for decades.
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