Restarting Palo nuclear plant would benefit economy and provide reliable energy

Wally Taylor, Chair of the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club, wrote a Nov. 10 guest column stating that restarting the Duane Arnold ruclear reactor in Palo would be a mistake.

I served on the board of directors of Iowa Electric, retiring when IE merged to become Alliant Energy.

Renewable energy in Iowa, primarily wind turbines and solar, are intermittent suppliers. When the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow there is no electricity generated. All electric utilities must have their customers’ usage basically covered by a reliable base load. That has been supplied by coal, which is being replaced by natural gas.

Wind-generated electricity is not a replacement of the base load, nor is it totally clean. Wind turbines are costly to produce and require extensive maintenance and management. They also kill hundreds of thousands of birds each year.

In his column, Taylor stated that temporary facilities to store spent nuclear fuel have become “de facto permanent repositories.” IE paid the federal government tens of millions of dollars to remove and dispose of its spent fuel rods only to be forced to build holding tanks to store them until the government designated a permanent repository, which they have failed to do.

I believe that restarting the Duane Arnold nuclear facility would produce a boon to Eastern Iowa’s economy. Operating safely for almost 46 years, it employed over 500. I also believe locally stored spent fuel would be better managed by an active on-site plant than some custodian.

Henry Royer

Cedar Rapids