Ed Barak: It’s time to get back to nuclear energy

Winona Daily News reports on renewable resources and the nuclear power generation.

The greatest deterrent to nuclear plants seems to be unwarranted fear of the process.

Natural uranium is made up of U-235 and U-238. Only

U-235 is fissile – that is it will split in half with a large release of energy.

Reactor-grade uranium is only 3 percent U-235 while weapons grade must be enriched to over 90 percent

U-235, so a reactor simply can not explode. However, a reactor can melt down, as Three Mile Island showed. A series of human mistakes caused an industrial accident, but none were injured. The Soviet Chernobyl disaster was again human mistakes, and, if construction of that facility had been up to standards, it would not have happened.

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