A coal plant releases about 74 pounds of uranium-235 each year, enough for two or more nuclear bombs. This material could be collected and processed from coal ash, perhaps without attracting much attention. More radioactive heavy metal is released into the environment every two years by coal burning than the total spent fuel waiting to be buried from all US nuclear power production and most US nuclear-weapons production. Coal supplies about 24 percent of world's energy needs. Natural gas provides 22. 1 percent, and this percentage is expected to grow in coming years.
Natural gas is relatively clean burning.
Newspapers sometimes record houses and pipelines blowing up. A million miles of such gas pipelines lace the earth. The Bush plan calls for many more miles to take gas to market. In an essay that appeared in an edited form in Foreign Affairs, Messrs. Beller and Rhodes also note that renewable energy sources have problems. Hydropower submerges large areas of land, often displaces rural population, kills fish, and raises a risk of catastrophic failure.