A Different Kind of Nuclear Debate

James L. Davis

As a nation we are quickly painting ourselves into a corner with a rather broad brush when it comes to energy production. Coal fueled power plants are one of the villains of choice of the environment and the prospects of new coal powered plants being built are sure to raise the hackles of those determined to reduce humanity’s carbon imprint on the world.

While the facts of global warming are less a topic for debate and more a grim reality, what is also a reality is the fact that the United States requires an astronomical amount of power to maintain the standard of living we have become accustomed to. Whether our energy consumption is ethically responsible or not is another subject for debate, a debate that we could participate in on our TVs, cell phones or computers, if we so choose.

But whether it is ethical or not, asking the nation to alter its course substantially is perhaps a nice idea, but it is an idea that probably won’t get very far.

With that said if we decide as a nation that coal is now too dirty a fuel for us to burn, then what are we going to replace it with? Solar or wind power sounds wonderful, but replacing our power plants with wind farms at this point in time and with today’s technology is the equivalent of chasing butterflies, it sounds blissfully sweet but doesn’t accomplish a whole lot.

Emery and Carbon County have everything at stake when it comes to the debate over the future of power production in this country. Strip away our coal mines and our coal fired power plants and you are left with a two-county area that in many respects will become abandoned because without the coal industry, there will be little in the way of jobs to keep anyone here.

Much has been made of the prospects of building nuclear power plants near Green River and the Salt Lake Tribune in an Oct. 26 editorial lambasted Green River Mayor Ed Bentley for suggesting that Green River would be in support of an industry that would bring jobs to Green River. The mayor was blasted for what the Salt Lake Tribune all but termed a morally incorrect viewpoint and in the same article suggested that as plans of the nuclear power plant became more known that “arguments against this poisonous industry become a little stronger.”

There is no doubt that for many taking the possibility of a nuclear power plant off the table is the only thing to do, but the fact of the matter is if we continue taking alternatives to coal powered plants off the table, what are we left with? Chasing butterflies.

In his KUED-TV news conference last month Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said “You have to keep the nuclear option on the table because it’s a carbon-free source of power.”

His statement mirrors a 2003 study by MIT which stated “The nuclear option should be retained precisely because it is an important carbon-free source of power.

In the study Dr. John Deutch stated: “Fossil fuel-based electricity is projected to account for more than 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. In the U.S. 90 percent of the carbon emissions from electricity generation come from coal-fired generation, even though this accounts for only 52 percent of the electricity produced. Taking nuclear power off the table as a viable alternative will prevent the global community from achieving long-term gains in the control of carbon dioxide emissions.”

For the mayor of Green River to be ridiculed for saying that the Green River community would support an industry that could potentially bring thousands of high paying jobs to the community flies in the face of reality. What is the mayor supposed to say, “No thanks, Green River would prefer to stay impoverished.”

The tourism industry for Green River will only take it so far and for it to be suggested that the city hitch its wagon exclusively to the tourism trade is presumptuous. That decision should be left to the community of Green River.

While it is certainly easy to demonize the nuclear industry (just as it is becoming increasingly easy to demonize the coal industry), there are nations that rely heavily on nuclear power to provide for their energy production and manage the plants quite nicely.

While there has been much talk of nuclear power coming to Emery County, as was reported last week in The Emery County Review, so far the talk is just talk. There are no plans on the table to be reviewed, so the county doesn’t have an opinion on the subject, pro or con. As a community and a region we should be thinking seriously about our position on nuclear power and decide if it is the great evil it is being portrayed as or a viable alternative for us as an energy producing region.

The Castle Valley history as an energy producing region necessitates the need for a decision on the matter, because like it or not, as a nation we continue to paint ourselves into a corner where coal power and the carbon footprint it leaves behind will become yet another villainous energy source that must be done away with. And if it is then those of us who call the Castle Valley home may well find ourselves chasing butterflies.

Little Kindnesses

Cardell Sackett

I want to preface this by letting you know I have a wonderful wife. She is everything I want to be, and most everything I am not. When we first dated, there was a feeling so immense inside that made me want to be the best person I could be. There was also a realization that if I were ever to measure up to the stature of Manhood I had hoped too, or reach my full potential in this lifetime, I would need someone like her by my side.

She has never failed to be my strength when I needed, and my conscience when I really didn’t want it but needed it. In our 26 years of marriage, we have of course had discussion on which we may not have agreed, but we talked things out till we came to a conclusion and in a way that I have never had anything thrown at me or holes in our walls. I remember two years after we were married she had a terrible day but it was my birthday, and in-spite of caring for the 13 babies she was doing day care with, she found time to make me a red velvet cake. I, on the other hand, had a grinding school schedule, lived away from home and only got home once in every three weeks. I had finished some finals, had worked over 50 hours and had 19 units in school which brought me home wanting nothing more than to sit on a couch and crash.

My crash however was my rude comment that I didn’t want any dumb cake; I just wanted to be left alone. She left all right! I couldn’t handle more than 15 to 20 minutes of knowing I had offended her good heart, and I needed to fix it. I apologized and expressed my love to her, and we had some cake.

I was grateful to have someone to express my love to. We need to say “Thank you” much more often. I still open the door for my wife, or any other lady I am around. It is an outward action from an inward appreciation of how special my wife is and women are to men.

Beverly Nichols, in her verse Thank You, expresses my feelings: “It was inevitable, I suppose, that in the garden I should begin, at long last, to ask myself what lay behind all this beauty. When the guests were gone and I had the flowers to myself, I was so happy that I wondered why at the same time I was haunted by a sense of emptiness. It was as though I wanted to thank somebody, but had nobody to thank; which is another way of saying that I felt the need for worship. That is, perhaps, the kindliest way in which a man may come to his God..but to me it is simpler than that. It is summed up in the image of a man at sundown, watching the crimson flowering of the sky and saying-to somebody-’Thank you’.”

Little kindnesses begin within us, and a simple “Thank you” can bring warmth to the soul.
Consider this. (Cardell Sackett is a realtor with Bridge Realty.)

Talking to Your Car and Other Oddities

James L. Davis

I was going to wash my car last week, but I didn’t. It’s not that big of a deal I have told myself repeatedly, yet I am wracked with guilt and every time I walk by the old car I apologize, which is just another reason that I believe I am in need of some kind of therapy.

I am not entirely sure when I started speaking to my automobiles, but I believe it must have been shortly after I bought my first car. My first car was a 1968 Mustang and I loved that old car. I can say that I loved that car even though I am not mechanically inclined whatsoever.

I never rebuilt the engine, I never changed the brakes, and while I did change the oil, I never enjoyed it. I restored the body on the old car, but everything else I hired someone else to do. But when I joined the Air Force and traded the Mustang in on a truck I blubbered like an idiot.
I used to talk to the Mustang when I was racing here and there and when I was behind the wheel of that car racing is exactly what I did. It didn’t matter if I was on the freeway or going down to the grocery store, when behind the wheel I only had one speed and that was top speed. I would pat the steering wheel and whisper, “come on, let’s go,” and we were off.

It should be noted that I never named the car, but if I had named the car it would have been a woman’s name. All of my automobiles have been females, I do not know why, other than I happen to like females. When mentioning that I need to have the tires rotated on my car I will tell my wife “I need to have her tires rotated,” and my wife will nod her head, and possibly roll her eyes, but maybe not. I’ve heard her talk to her car too.

My car that is currently overdue for a bath is another Mustang, this one a 1972 and I haven’t named her either. She sits in the driveway most of the time, waiting for the time that I start sanding out the rust on her body and the fact that I haven’t yet is another source of guilt.

But if I am in need of therapy for talking to my car and feeling guilty for not giving it a timely bath, I am fairly certain that I will not be in therapy alone. In fact, there are quite a few people who will need far more intensive therapy than I ever will.

You’ve probably seen them about. When they wash their vehicle it is less a process of washing off the dirt and more a massage. It almost makes you feel uncomfortable, especially if they happen to mumble sweet nothings to their car as they rub it down.

While I have never been entirely sure how to tell a boy car from a girl car, I had always assumed that cars were girls and trucks were boys, but I’m not sure that is entirely true. It seems that there are quite a few people who own automobiles that can change their gender on a moment’s notice. If the car is running smoothly they will pat the dash and say “good girl,” if it is running badly they will pound their fist on the same dash and suddenly the car is not only a boy, it is a boy dog.

Of course, if there is a need, real or perceived, anywhere in society you can count on some imaginative entrepreneur to try and fill the need. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who wondered about the gender of other people’s vehicles, which is why I was recently driving down the street when I pulled in behind a truck and noticed something dangling from the truck’s trailer hitch.

I was not sure exactly what it was, so I pulled forward and when I thought I knew what it was I pulled even closer because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, which is when I discovered that what I thought it was it actually was.

Dangling from the trailer hitch was a pair of testicles, and no, I am not making this up. I do not believe that Ford, Dodge, Chevrolet or any other truck maker has started to install testicles on their pickups, so I believe the testicles on the pickup must be after market testicles. Which makes me wonder, who manufactures after market pickup testicles and better yet, who purchases them? Because I have always been extremely uncomfortable when asked to pick up feminine hygiene products at the store when shopping and purchasing testicles for my truck, let alone installing testicles for my truck, would be difficult, to say the least. But then, I have bought a bra for my car on occasion.

I found myself wondering exactly at what point the truck owner decided that his or her truck needed testicles to really set it apart from other trucks.

I always thought a lift kit and some mud tires were more than enough to exert a truck’s manliness, but apparently that is no longer the case.

All of which makes me realize that feeling guilty for not washing my car is really not that bad at all.