About 45 students gathered at the SUB on Wednesday to continue the long-standing debate over the benefits and pitfalls of nuclear energy.
The UNM College Republicans brought a Sandia National Labs employee to the SUB to speak to curious students about the future of nuclear energy.
Kevin McMahon, a manager at Sandia, discussed the benefits of nuclear energy in light of the grim ecological and economic circumstances brought about by the country's dependency on fossil fuels.
Eric McInteer, a member of the College Republicans, said most people have a negative view of nuclear energy fueled by a lack of concrete information.
"Our country's facing huge energy challenges, and we're also concerned about climate change," he said.
McInteer said nuclear energy could benefit the state.
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"Here in New Mexico, there's two things that are going to bring jobs really: energy and defense," he said. "This is one thing that can strengthen our economy while protecting our environment."
Bob Anderson, co-director of Stop the War Machine, said there is no such thing as safe nuclear energy. Students are being misguided along with the rest of the country, he said.
"I think that we could probably spend a couple of trillion dollars more and we could probably build some more power plants, but I don't think that's the way to go," Anderson said. "It could be very dangerous."
Anderson said nuclear power production and the waste it produces are a huge problem for the country already. People who promote nuclear energy say that it poses no threat if safety mechanisms have been put in place to protect the population from its toxic output, but history has proved differently, he said.
"If we look back, there have been no nuclear power plants built since Three Mile Island disaster," Anderson said. "They try to say that was all safe and now we can go beyond that, but the recent research in looking at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl reports a great number of cancers in humans, animals and the natural world around these sites where there have been meltdowns and disasters. So, this nuclear power is not safe at all."
McMahon said the incident at Three Mile Island is seen by the scientific community as a success, not a crisis.
"What actually happened at Three Mile Island is that there was a failure of the system, but . the containment system helped the plant such that there was no damage. There was no significant release of radioactivity whatsoever," McMahon said. "Now, you can Google this to your heart's desire and see what the numbers are, but the fact of the matter is that if you were living within three kilometers of the plant on Three Mile Island, you received the equivalent of about a whole set of dental X-rays in radioactivity."
Arman Salehian, president of the College Democrats, said he agrees with the Republicans on the country's need to move away from dependency on fossil fuels.
"Nuclear energy is predominantly very clean, so I definitely support that; however, we definitely need better storage and disposal mechanisms," Salehian said. "We have roughly close to 60,000 metric tons of nuclear waste in the Yucca Mountain facility. Currently, our only major holding facility only has the capacity for 70,000 (metric tons), and I believe the Obama administration actually has said that they will not use the Yucca facility anymore. We'll actually be using a facility here in New Mexico right outside of Carlsbad."
Anderson said that most people aren't aware that the country is turning New Mexico into a dumping ground for toxic materials. The ecology of the state could suffer if the country expands its nuclear energy production, he said.
"It looks like the whole nuclear industry is targeting the Southwest here, such as New Mexico and Texas, as a nuclear waste dump," Anderson said. "For people in New Mexico, this is going to be a real disaster if we go down this way."
