Jim Perkins worked as a math teacher for 25 years at Lewiston High School and on nuclear matters in the Northeast as a member of the board of the T.M.I. Nuclear Fund and as a researcher preparing an economic impact assessment of the nuclear plant in Berwick, Pennsylvania, prior to its completion. He is also a former president of the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution.

In an op-ed published in this section by retired professor Leonard Rodberg (“Nuclear energy in New England, once unthinkable, now indispensable,” June 16) the author trumpeted that all six New England governors were “pledging to consider building new (nuclear) reactors.”

Rodberg ignored the fact that no state has ever built a nuclear reactor; most of the fleet was built by private companies protected by Congress for much of the liability of foisting off a dangerous undertaking in states that were compliant enough. The reader is given no definition for “pledging to consider.”

That aside, nuclear power has not proven its worth. People like Bill Gates, who benefit from people using a lot of electricity, have spoken up for more nuclear. And simultaneously, the U.S. is currently waging war against a country that is asserting its right to enrich uranium which is, after all, one of the fundamental steps to a nuclear-powered economy.

The June op-ed asserts that citizens don’t like power lines, as if power lines are not used in every centralized electricity system. It denigrates using batteries as complementary; maybe the author doesn’t drive a hybrid or electric car (with its “battery”). Oh wait, don’t all cars have a complementary battery?

And he asserts that nuclear plants are good neighbors — a point that could be true once they are closed and fully decommissioned, but visit any of the former sites, like Maine Yankee in Wiscasset, and the radioactive spent fuel is still just sitting there despite “assurances” that the federal government will someday “do something.” The land is currently inaccessible. If a nuclear reactor happens to go rogue, like Three Mile Island, or Chernobyl, or Fukushima, a vast tract of land and/or infrastructure can be rendered inaccessible and useless. 

The “undamaged” T.M.I. Unit 1 is closed, but our president has allocated a $1 billion loan of taxpayer money to try to restart it. Bill Gates says he’ll buy all the power. Maybe Mr. Gates should pay the $1 billion and assume the liabilities. 

Over 1,000 square miles in Ukraine is in the exclusion zone within 18 miles of Chernobyl, and additional lands were evacuated after the Soviet Union evaporated.

Within a month or two of the accident and tidal wave near Fukushima, where three different reactors on one site melted down, about the same 1,000 square miles were evacuated, but the Japanese government is trying to entice people back. Earlier this year, it was estimated that the population is about one-sixth what it used to be. Wild boars are back in big numbers, but their meat is too contaminated to eat.

In this century, work on exactly four nuclear reactors in the U.S. has been started, but all four were at sites that had already been approved, so there was not much opportunity for public intervention on the siting decision. Two of the four projects were halted by bankruptcies, and two have been completed. Originally forecast to cost $14 billion, these two came in at about $34 billion, including money taken from ratepayers before the plants were operating.

The opinion that “new” nuclear is “improved nuclear” has no evidence to support it, just assertions. And if the new is safer than the old, perhaps proponents would be willing to identify exactly which of the “old plants” ought to be shuttered.