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When I was younger no Citroën Deux Cheveux or Volvo Estate parked on the streets I grew up in was complete without its smiling sunny sticker proclaiming "Nuclear Power? Nein Danke!" As emblems of radical chic went it may not have ranked with a scar inflicted during the Battle of Cable Street or a shrapnel wound from the Spanish Civil War but for Aberdeen University

During the presidential campaign John McCain stated that a partial solution to the energy crises would be to build 45 new nuclear plants. The suggestion did not generate a dialogue among either party and for good reason. There has not been a new nuclear plant built in the United States for 28 years. As a result, we have no nuclear "equipment" to technology supply source. Even if it was agreed to build one, it would take a half dozen years, to "tool up" to buy the necessary "hardware."

There is much to be welcomed in the new report from the Committee on Climate Change about how to cut emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. But it is wrong to suggest that nuclear power has any role to play. When environmental and hidden costs are factored in, nuclear power is one of the most expensive ways of generating electricity (see www.mng.org.uk/gh/no_nukes.htm#subsidies ).

You have been consistent in foisting the problem of radioactive waste off on Nevada, a state that has no nuclear reactors and has given more than enough to the national effort through atomic bomb tests and a landfill for radioactive waste. Based on its past record, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to make a positive licensing decision. As you recognize, a waste repository in Nevada was chosen for political reasons. It will likely die for political reasons. Why wait for the N.R.C.'s verdict? It makes more sense to safely store waste at reactor sites for the indefinite future while the radioactivity declines to safer levels. Marvin Resnikoff

The 2009 legislative session will address the need for more base-load electricity generation in Missouri. Ameren Corp. serves 1.2 million Missouri electric customers representing nearly 50% of Missouri's total consumption. They expect demand to increase 30% by 2020. Ameren is seeking the necessary licenses and funding to construct a second nuclear unit at their existing Callaway nuclear facility near Fulton, MO. Some changes to Missouri laws regulating electric utilities may be needed in order for Ameren or any utility to finance new base-load plants.

AS WE END another year, we may also find ourselves at the beginning of the end of the nuclear weapons era. We will soon find out how seriously Barack Obama will pursue his exciting vision for a world without nuclear weapons. When he does, he will go up against formidable opposition, possibly including his own secretary of Defense. Robert Gates has been an ardent advocate for building a new generation of nuclear weapons. Fortunately, Obama appears to recognize that nuclear weapons are relics from a time when Russia dominated U.S. security strategy and terrorism did not.

Nuclear policy is a major component of United States foreign relations and security policy, and the U.S. approach to the North Korean nuclear issue is also realized within this framework. The starting point for the nuclear policy of the Barack Obama administration, which is soon to take office, differs from that of the George W. Bush administration in two respects. First, it fully acknowledges the failure of U.S. nuclear policy since the end of the Cold War. The more than 30 kilograms of plutonium extracted by North Korea is a problem, but the amount of nuclear material possessed by a total of over 40 countries throughout the world amounts to no less than 3,000 tons, a quantity sufficient to make 250,000 nuclear weapons.

Most of the 20 speakers at last week's public hearing in Richmond on a proposed uranium mine in Southside Virginia had the same talking points. They're worried about the mine's effect on the environment and particularly the surrounding streams and groundwater. Members of a legislative panel will hear those identical concerns when they travel next month to Pittsylvania County, home to an estimated 60,000 tons of uranium, for a second hearing on the issue. So far, no forum has been scheduled for Virginia Beach, which gets its drinking water from Lake Gaston, located downstream from the mine site.

Today, we face a new year, a new administration and a new era with the potential to begin the end of nuclear weapons. President-elect Barack Obama has invited Americans to share their vision of America and the world they want to see through his Change.gov Web site. At this critical time in our history, with so many complex issues and priorities not being addressed, I submit this New Year's wish - a wish for our children and their future. President-elect Obama: The people have spoken and have elected you to be the agent of change for our children and their future. The challenges, while great, are only exceeded by the opportunities.

Bill Wattenburg is a well-known San Francisco radio talk show host and former University of California, Berkeley, nuclear science professor. He is a strong proponent of nuclear power plants. Recently, he suggested we build Diablo Canyon Reactors 3 and 4 near San Luis Obispo, on the coast. Diablo Canyon is the crown jewel of nuclear power plants. This plant, owned and operated by Pacific Gas & Electric Co., has produced enough power for more than 2 million homes since it went online in 1985. Diablo Canyon has a record of the safest and most efficient nuclear power plant, with a record for providing power at less than one-half the cost of the statewide average.

Unlike G I Crawford (Letters, November 27), even the UK government's Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) believes that " if nuclear waste storage is to address the need to protect humans and the environment for hundreds of thousands of years, while long-lived radionuclides decay to safe levels, then stores will have to be actively managed over these long timescales". Further, it argues that "storage places considerable burdens on future generations, in terms of store management, provision of funding levels, capacity to monitor and inspect the waste, repair and refurbish buildings, equipment and waste packages and maintain security" (Defra, June 2008).

Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire and Attorney General Rob McKenna have sued the U.S. Department of Energy over delayed work at the Hanford nuclear reservation. Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings are concerned the lawsuit will hurt sensitive cleanup budget negotiations. State and federal officials must work harder to come to an agreement.

Now that the impacts of global warming are being seen in the droughts, floods, and severe storms Americans are experiencing across the country, our leaders in Washington have finally begun to acknowledge the seriousness of the climate change problem. Unfortunately, some members of Congress continue to distract our country from establishing safe and long-term solutions by instead exploiting the crisis to promote nuclear power.

Sometime in the near future, Topic A in San Antonio will be whether or not to move forward with a several-billion-dollar investment in additional nuclear energy. CPS Energy has invested $206 million on preliminary design and engineering to build two new nuclear reactors in Bay City and that money will run out at the end of the year. The debate over whether to move forward will be divisive because of the high costs of the project, which will almost certainly increase electric bills. The fact is that San Antonio, like every other city in America, is at a crossroads: Do we bet our future on the old energy drivers - coal, fossilized fuels and nuclear - or do we invest substantially in energy efficiency and renewable sources such as wind and solar? Put another way, how green, both economically and environmentally, is our future?

A few comments regarding Mickey Garcia's letter published Nov. 18: One more person pushing France as an example of how nuclear power can save the world. No mention of France having to temporarily shut down 25 percent of its nuclear power plants due to impending overheating (possible meltdown) during the very hot European summer of 2003. No mention of France having similar problems during the summer of 2005. No mention of the likelihood of an increasing number of such shutdowns brought about by higher ambient temperatures as a result of global warming. No mention of three radioactive leaks in France this last summer that contaminated local rivers, one in a famous wine region.

After a tragedy we often ask: Why did this happen? How did this happen? Could we have prevented it? The tragedies of Sept. 11, 2001, still raise these questions. In looking ahead as much as looking back, imagine how much worse those losses would have been if the terrorists had used a nuclear weapon. For decades, nuclear weapons were thought to make us safer by deterring the first strike by another nation. Today we need to re-evaluate the roles and dangers of nuclear weapons in the world. Let's ask ourselves: Does it help the United States to have nuclear weapons? Would the whole world be safer if no one and no nation had even one of these weapons? Is the mere existence of nuclear weapons a threat?

As industry lobbyists and campaigning politicians are busily pushing nuclear power as "a clean safe alternative" to fossil fuels, a landmark article by Lester R. Brown of the Earth Policy Institute shows conclusively that nuclear power is a "bad deal" any way you look at it. Amory Lovins and Imran Sheikh, in a recent analysis, 'The Nuclear Illusion," sets the cost of electricity from a new nuclear power plant at 14 cents per kilowatt hour, while the cost of electricity from a wind farm is half that. Why the huge difference? In addition to fuel costs, capital operations, transmission and distribution expenses, nuclear power must also pay for waste disposal, insurance against accidents, and plant decommissioning. The U.S. leads the world in nuclear power generation, with 104 reactors producing 101,000 megawatts, compared to second-ranked France which produces 63,000 megawatts. The estimated cost of constructing a permanent, safe waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, ballooned from $58 billion in 2001 to $96 billion by 2008, and this repository could not be completed before 2017, meaning that high-level nuclear waste must be stored at reactor sites at least until then.

The study conducted by the anti-mining New Mexico Environmental Law Center, cited in the article "Economics of New Mexico's uranium mining debated," isn't a question of comparing apples to oranges, but the academic equivalent of comparing apples to automobiles. The latest salvo by the Environmental Law Center, in an ongoing effort to thwart mining and use of nuclear fuel, refutes the careful and exhaustive study done by New Mexico State University's Arrowhead Center, a non-biased study on economic impacts of the uranium industry in New Mexico centered on numbers, not emotion.

Among the first things that President Obama will have to decide when he assumes office is whether to continue President Bush's and the Pentagon's plans to install missile interceptors in Eastern Europe. Let's hope that he rejects those plans. Otherwise, all that will be accomplished will be to increase tensions with Russia, which, not surprisingly, will provide the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex with new excuses to increase their perpetually ever-growing budgets.

The state Senate is likely to consider legislation that restores elements of Initiative 297, which dealt with Hanford nuclear reservation cleanup but was ruled unconstitutional in the federal courts. In 2004, Washington voters passed Initiative 297 with the highest vote total of any initiative in state history, more than 70 percent. Its key goal was to stop the dumping of mixed hazardous and radioactive waste in unlined dirt trenches at Hanford. Aware that a plume of over a million gallons of radioactive and other hazardous chemical waste is entering the groundwater and is headed for the Columbia River, voters adopted a common-sense standard: Quit dumping until the stuff already there is cleaned up. Soon after the Bush administration took power, it proposed a budget for the Department of Energy that showed a marked slowdown in cleanup activities, even while it proposed adding more to the unlined trenches. The long-term solution, a vitrification plant that would encase the waste in glass for storage, was far behind schedule. It was this threat that prompted I-297.