Is nuclear part of a solution to climate change? [Opinion] - HoustonChronicle.com

Is nuclear part of a solution to climate change? [Opinion] - HoustonChronicle.com: Forty years ago this month, the United States dodged a major bullet with the Three Mile Island disaster in Pennsylvania. The fright was good for us, since it put the brakes on enthusiasm for nuclear power. Now, as presidential candidates discuss a Green New Deal, it is easy to envision renewed interest in nuclear to reduce our nation’s impact on global climate. After all, it produces no carbon dioxide emissions beyond those associated with the construction of power plants. And nuclear power is not burdened with the indirect health effects associated with the mining and combustion of coal for electricity, nor does it destroy mountaintops in West Virginia. Nevertheless, we should be cautious about nuclear. We’ve seen two big examples of the dangers of nuclear power beyond the partial meltdown of a reactor at Three Mile Island, located near Harrisburg in Dauphin County. The 1986 disaster at Chernobyl left about 1,000 square miles of land uninhabitable by humans for the foreseeable future, including dangerous levels of Plutonium-239 in the soil. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years. Imagine the same for a nuclear power plant near you. For central North Carolina, where I live,