The light-hearted treatment by some commentators of the leader of the opposition's recommendation to put nuclear energy on the table in our search for alternative energy only demonstrates their lack of awareness of the latest development in the field of portable nuclear power plants.

The Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Argonne national laboratories have designed a self-contained nuclear reactor with tamper-resistant features called SSTAR (small, sealed, trans-portable, autonomous reactor). In addition both Toshiba and Hyperion are currently fine-tuning their commercial roll-out of this product.

Next-generation reactor

This next-generation reactor will produce enough electricity to support 20,000 houses at a projected cost of less than US$2,000 per household and less than US 10 cent per KWh compared with the over US 28 cents per KWh householders currently pay. This reactor is less that the size of a small bathtub which is buried below ground and can last up to seven to 10 years before its fuel cell has to be replaced.

If Jamaica is to move forward, we will need to increase our productive energy use. Currently, our energy input is non-competitive when compared with many of our competitors. The Rusal group, the owners of Alpart Bauxite Mining Company, recently looked at the feasibility of constructing two 90 Megawatt (MW) coal-fired generators at a cost of almost US$280 million. Each of these portable nuclear power plants produces approximately 27MW of electricity. Therefore, at a cost of US$25 million each, for US$175 million, you could have seven of these devices to produce the energy equivalent of the two coal-fired plants without the environmental risk associated with coal.

The People's National Party's progressive agenda speaks to transformative out-of-the-box thinking to address the issues we face today. The problem with such revolutionary approach is that it is always a difficult sell. Nuclear energy is out-of-the-box thinking but it is not far off as some would think.

I am, etc.,

MICHAEL ENNIS

maennis@netcomm-jm.com