Nuclear waste mgmt hampers alternative energy

An Op-Ed in today's New York Times by Stephanie Cook asserts that the Energy Department is so overwhelmed with the maintenance of over 1000 cold war-era weapons sites that it can't focus on alternative energy. For the Energy Department, "approximately two-thirds of its annual budget, which is roughly $27 billion, is spent on...managing the thousands of facilities involved in producing nuclear weapons during the cold war, and the associated cleanup of dozens of contaminated sites." The piece also claims that the continuing link to nuclear weapons labs prevents more energy money from actually going into the development of alternatives. It proposes that nuclear waste be the provenance of another governing body, and suggests a few.

For me, this editorial is a reminder that the solutions to our energy problems are highly complex. I worry for this administration; even if it has the best of intentions, it still has to catch the tiger by its tail. No one else has done this, and I see why. The complexities and dependencies created by past obligations and precedents are so strong. The article also reminds me that it is always the people, often in the form of government, who pay for the externalities of nuclear. Isn't it time that we moved forward to forms of energy that will not leave us with legacies that we will be paying for later?