I am with a group of home-schooled students who have been studying the effects of nuclear power and nuclear waste. We are deeply concerned with what will happen to our future and our children’s future with the proposed building of nuclear reactors in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and many more in the Southeast. High-level nuclear waste will need to be transported through Asheville in order to get to waste-storage sites proposed in the surrounding states.
Today, Yucca Valley and scattered interim sites threaten the future of our highways and railways. The Department of Energy and the Department of Transportation target less populated areas because they know it is very dangerous if the nuclear waste were to crash or be targeted by terrorism. It would have a devastating impact on people and wildlife for a 50-mile radius—with clean-up costs in the millions of dollars.
The fact is, cleaning up is never complete. Future generations are always affected. I am calling on Asheville to help prevent a risk we do not need to take. As Albert Einstein stated: “Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.”
— Ira Sorensen
Asheville
