IN SEACH OF ALTERNATIVES.

Byline: John Reynolds For The Register-Guard

George Will promotes nuclear energy in his March 28 Register-Guard column. He spends more time offering a faintly patronizing history of Nevada than in supporting a nuclear waste dump there, and no time at all supporting his statement that `the U.S. should generate much more than one-fifth of its electricity currently produced by nuclear power.'

Far from Will's assertion, the U.S. should phase out nuclear power as soon as possible. Instead, the country needs a wholehearted commitment to renewable energy sources, including solar and wind.

Nuclear power plant waste must be shipped and then guarded for more than 300,000 years, as has been recently determined in federal courts. In the United States, nuclear waste sits in pools at each nuclear plant - including a guarded pool at the shut-down Trojan plant on the banks of the Columbia River.

If the nation ever manages to build that central waste depository under Nevada's Yucca Mountain that Will supports, deadly waste will then be shipped through our cities and farms, giving terrorists a new, slow-moving target. In the few countries where nuclear reprocessing occurs, with its enormous requirement for energy, shipments also become targets. The last Japan-to-France waste transfer attracted worldwide objections.

The threat of global warming has revived talk of an increased role for nuclear power, because it produces so few gases that contribute to global warming. Some advocates even describe nuclear power as `renewable.' Given the obvious environmental and political disadvantages of fossil fuels, is nuclear a better choice?

I believe the answer is clearly no. Nuclear power is renewable only if we accept the plutonium option involving breeder reactors. I can scarcely imagine a worse choice, combining the most severe nuclear-proliferation threats with an increase of hundreds of thousands of years of threat from nuclear waste.

Plutonium is the terrorist's gold. It has a half-life of more than 200,000 years. It should not be under discussion as an answer to our energy supply.

Nuclear power brings with it the extraction of uranium with pollution from mine tailings. It requires enormous amounts of energy in the enrichment process, subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, before it can be used as fuel. Nuclear plants demand extraordinary security because they are such extraordinary targets.

Those advocating nuclear power point to the pebble-bed reactor as a less complex, safer, easier model for the future. We certainly should insist on an improved reactor design as one condition before discussing nuclear power. But another condition must be a vast improvement in waste storage.

In the December issue of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni magazine Technology Review, Matthew Wald explores our options for dealing with nuclear waste. The gist of this lengthy article is: `We don't know how to safely store it forever. Let's leave the solution to a generation that will.'

In other words, stop generating more of this stuff. We are not dealing adequately with the nuclear waste we already have.

While we phase out nuclear power, we must act quickly and forcefully to advance renewable energy. Opponents are those who would lose control of worldwide energy supply - those who now have their hands so profitably on the valves. Their arguments against renewable energy are predictable. They include:

`Solar, wind and biomass cannot possibly supply the world's needs.'

This is patently false. Our daily solar and wind resources are many times greater than our daily energy use. Renewable energy must supply these needs when nonrenewable fuels are depleted. The faster we increase our energy efficiency in cars, homes, businesses and industries, the sooner renewable energy can meet our needs.

`Who wants our farms and forests covered with solar collectors and wind turbines?"

No one does, of course. With photovoltaic arrays on most roofs and turbines in the windiest stretches of land, as well as offshore, we can protect our forests while increasing the incomes of farmers and ranchers who work right around the turbines that pay them welcome royalties.

A study released on March 1 by the Energy Foundation found that rooftop space is not a constraining factor for solar development. Residential and commercial rooftop space in the U.S. could accommodate up to 710,000 megawatts of solar electric power (if all rooftops were fully utilized, taking into account proper orientation of buildings, shading from trees, rooftop ventilation equipment, and other solar access factors). The total electricity-generating capacity in the U.S. today is about 950,000 megawatts.

We must proceed quickly to develop renewable energy resources, because:

Solar and wind are labor-intensive in manufacture and installation, contributing to local economies.

They can be installed almost anywhere, thus are not limited to a few places worldwide.

Once installed, solar and wind have zero fuel costs, contributing to local economies money that formerly went to pay far higher utility bills.

Solar and wind are inherently terror-resistant because they are widely distributed rather than concentrated. Which is a more vulnerable target: one nuclear plant whose rupture would lead to a massive radiation release, or 700 wind turbines spread over 1,000 acres in Eastern Oregon?

Solar energy, in particular, offers some blackout protection, because it can be so easily integrated in the building it serves. My solar water heater, for example, has a photovoltaic-driven pump. When I experience a loss of electricity from the Eugene Water & Electric Board, the sun can still warm my water.

Solar and wind, once in operation, contribute almost no pollution or other environmental damage. Bird kills by wind turbines are an unfortunate exception, and turbine locations away from flyways are a way to reduce, but not eliminate, this threat. This is a huge reduction in pollution from the chain of extraction, shipping, refining, combustion or fission, and waste disposal associated with nonrenewable fuels.

But the most important reason to advocate rapid renewable energy development is its contribution to world peace.

Solar, wind, and biomass resources are spread across the Earth, not concentrated in a few Middle Eastern countries. Indeed, the poorest countries get the best year-round solar resources - those nearer the equator, including Africa and South America.

By definition, nonrenewable energy sources are finite. They are an inherited energy bank account that draws no interest, being steadily depleted.

Renewable sources, by contrast, are a steady, widely dispersed source of energy income, forever. They are our energy future, and with our support, that future can be very close at hand.

Meanwhile, we can use some of our inherited fossil fuels to build the hardware for our renewable energy future.

John Reynolds, an emeritus professor of architecture at the University of Oregon, is a former commissioner of the Eugene Water & Electric Board. He is vice president of the Energy Trust of Oregon Board of Directors and a board member of the American Solar Energy Society.