Nuclear is the most viable energy source

There have been several articles lately touting renewable energy as a solution to our energy needs (“Finding the energy,” Jan. 25). It just ain’t going to happen.

Back to fundamentals. We now use 100 quads of energy yearly. It rolls off the tongue nicely but is an astronomical number, 100,000 trillion BTUs, or British thermal units, which is the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 pound of water 1 degree — appropriate as most of our energy starts out or ends as heat. This is equivalant to 5.5 billion tons of coal.

But for the hope of massive injections of government money, renewables wouldn’t get off the ground. Doing the simple arithmetic shows why. I’ve done it for solar and find that to equal the Lake Anna plant in Louisa County would take 50 square miles of solar collectors. Fifty square miles of anything is expensive.

I haven’t done it for wind because I’d have to know the sites’ wind variations and the characteristics of the generating system. Wind power suffers just as a sailing ship does – too little wind power means no motion, too much causes damage.

As I’ve said many times, nuclear power is the only safe, clean, inexpensive route. We should reduce regulations so we can build a new plant in three years. We now have 109 plants operating and need at least another 100 now. Let’s get on with it.

Corbin Dixon

Waynesboro