Former Assistant Secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy Ed McGinnis spoke with Joe ‘Pags’ Pagliarulo Wednesday to discuss the safety, efficiency, and affordability of nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuels.
“A lot of people are talking about the positivity of nuclear energy. It sounds evil, until we talk about the energy side of it. Can you dispel any fear I might have when it comes to nuclear energy?” asked Pags.
“We’ve never had safer reactors in our history. They all go through enormous scrutiny,” said McGinnis.
“Chernobyl was an older design. We’ve learned a lot from those incidents. We’ve built new designs that have much more robust safety and security features. These are not your grandparents’ reactors,” he added.
Watch McGinnis and Pags talk nuclear energy above.
I feel nuclear plants are dangerous. My brother worked at Ginna plant along the shores of Lake Ontario in New York. He said if the public only knew about the “leaks” that happened it would blow their minds. Men and Women would have to walk naked thru showers after their work shifts. Yes the pay was great also they gave most earlier retirement due to the higher ups knew most of these workers would die from cancer.
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I’ve always thought Nuclear was the way to go. Could be because I grew up near the Hanford Area in SE Washington and bothered to educate myself a little on the science of it. I also did a paper on Coal Energy vs Nuclear. I learned a lot about the Chernobyl plant (I wish I could cite the book that gave me most of my information but that was over 30 years ago.) Your guest talked about the new safety features and designs which should be even better with 30 years of advancement but the gist of the book I read was that Chernobyl should never had happened. First, the basic design was different from the basic design of a US plant. The soviets used a graphite medium while US plants used water. This meant when things went wrong, their medium caught on fire while in a US Plant the medium would flash into steam and disappear. Secondly, (and this is important), they were doing an UNAUTHORIZED experiment. Even the Soviets knew this was a bad idea and somebody tried it any way. Again, I wish I could remember the book. It was very eye opening. What I thought most amazing from your guest was the uses of spent fuel. Not an ability we had 30 years ago. Thank you for such an insightful guest.