Letters to Artvoice

WHY DO PEOPLE

HATE THE AUD?

What is it with the old Aud? Why do people so dislike it?

The awesome free sapn structure would cost approximately $100 million to replace. Built as a public works project, it has never had a proper opportunity for reuse. The opportunity for reuse has been limited because of the failure of the local economy and the failure to develop adjoining properties.

Now that Bass Pro is a go for the waterfront and the day when the financial capability to develop a viable reuse of the structure is finally on the horizon, we decide to take the structure down and pay a ridiculous $10 million to do so. Estimated costs to environmentally clean and demolish are ridiculous. Note there is substantial question as to whether the salvage value of the free span steel would exceed the cost of demolition.

The opportunities for reuse of the structure are highly limited by an agrrement that was put into place when the HSBC Center was built.

Carl Paladino

Buffalo

KNOW NUKES

Perhaps “Know Nukes” ought to become the new catch phrase for the anti-nuclear movement (“Getting a Grip,” Artvoice v6n15). Mike Niman is right that nuclear issues have fallen off the consciousness map, but I guarantee they’re coming back. Western New Yorkers ought to be leading the resurgence of resistance against expansion of nuclear power. We have a enough legacy waste here to make us well-qualified to speak about what’s wrong about nuclear power. Today there are 440 nuclear reactors worldwide. Six thousand nuclear reactors are projected to be operational by the end of the century.

There are 14 filthy and significant nuclear sites in Niagara, Erie and Cattaraugus Counties. DOE policy is to leave as much waste in-place as possible; in many instances covering it over and hoping that the rule of thumb holds—that after 50 years people will forget what’s buried underneath. Many of these sites are directly linked to Department of Defense efforts to develop nuclear weapons, largely during the days of the Manhattan Project. The West Valley nuclear waste site, this nation’s most complex mix of nuclear and hazardous wastes, is linked to both the Department of Defense and the nuclear power industry. Spent nuclear fuel rods were reprocessed at the West Valley site, extracting weapons-grade plutonium and uranium to be “recycled” into weapons. There were countless terrible accidents. Today we’re holding back the wastes from encroaching erosion.

Nuclear powers always results in nuclear weapons proliferation. Mike Niman is right that one of the US’s biggest export businesses now is the exportation of technology and uranium for nuclear power plants. The federal government issues permits to mine uranium as though uranium were the new gold rush. Previously mined uranium deposits are huge eyesores on the landscape, without barriers to keep people away, lending to the death of many Native Americans and a lineage of birth defects.

The nuclear industry portrays itself as carbon neutral. Nothing could be further from the truth. High-grade uranium doesn’t use as much fossil fuel to mine and mill, but we only have a limited supply of uranium on Earth. As we use the high-grade uranium we are forced to mine and mill lesser grades of uranium. The lesser the grade, the more fossil-fuel-intensive the mining and milling. These inputs, plus the output called nuclear wastes, which we have no way of dealing with in any responsible, protective manner, make nuclear energy one of the worst choices for supplying future energy needs. Then, of course there’s the issue of just one accident.

For the life of me I cannot understand how Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership makes the world safer. We are exporting the very tools and material that will enable the proliferation of nuclear weapons in every country that feeds demand for energy with nuclear power. Given that Western New York has the only commercial nuclear reprocessing plant ever built in this country, and that it remains a very significant threat to all of us—in spite of the fact that it should have been fully cleaned up and decommissioned years ago—I say it’s time for Western New Yorkers to take the lead and say no new commercial reprocessing of nuclear wastes until West Valley is fully cleaned and the land returned to unrestricted use.

The GNEP couldn’t proceed if new commercial reprocessing were stopped in its tracks. That might give us time to think. And rethink. And come up with a better plan.

Judy Einach

Director, Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes (www.digitup.org)

Buffalo

While I applaud the sentiment of Niman’s recent article, “Know Nukes,” regarding our short memory span with regards to the dangers of nuclear energy, I found it odd that he failed to mention the enormous failed reprocessing plant and nuclear dump in West Valley, 40 miles south of Buffalo and directly upstream of Buffalo’s drinking water supply.

With the Department of Energy continuing to deny responsibility for site cleanup by renaming certain wastes as “incidental” and the Bush administration cutting cleanup funding back to a trickle, readers may have been better served if a local connection to the nuclear legacy was made. The wastes at West Valley will be dangerous for 100,000 years. Agencies squabble over plans while strontium-90 leaks offsite.

Don’t make this some global issue. It’s very local. I hope your readers and Mr. Niman don’t forget, for another 100,000 years.

Seth Wochensky

Springville

Global Warning

North America, Easter weekend, 2007 (record low temperatures all over the country): “Global warming” is a term increasingly used to describe not only the pattern of increased temperature in the most recent years on record, but also to characterize an increasing consciousness of the extent of human impact on global climate change. Since heat waves are only one symptom of climate change, and since there is uncertainty as to the proportion of our contribution to this problem (even in the most impartial, scientific judgment/evaluation of limited data contains some level uncertainty, thus leaving room for argument indefinitely), there is a need to correct the misnomer in all that “global warming” currently implies.

I suggest “global warning.” Global warning means, regardless of whether it can be doubtlessly proven that we caused it, that we are aware that our activities have the potential to affect our environment at large, permanently, and in ways detrimental to our well-being. Global warning encompasses what we already intuit in the collective consciousness: that all erratic weather activity, whether floods, hurricanes, tornados, heat waves or cold spells, may well be a result of our activity. It also recognizes that, whether or not we take direct, individual responsibility for it, the pattern is real, and calls for a profound level of humility on the part of human beings: i.e., that we might well have caused this. With that in mind, we agree to seek answers to the following question: “What are the most prudent steps for moving forward?”

HOCKEY, HOCKEY, HOCKEY

This is in response to your preview of the Eastern Conference first round (“Puckstop,” Artvoice v6n15). As a weekly reader of your paper (and admittedly a Rangers fan) I have a bone to pick with your blurb about the Rangers-Thrashers series. How can you say the goaltending edge would go to the Thrashers? Unless you were watching an entirely different NHL than I have been, Lundqvist has been one of the hottest goalies, if not the hottest goalie, in the league since the All-Star break. I would understand if Lethonen were a proven playoff goalie, but there is no basis on which to give Atlanta the goaltending edge.

That is all. Keep up the good work.

Will Martin

Buffalo