Miss America Grace Stanke visited Arizona. Touring a nuclear power plant was on her to-do list
What does Miss America do when visiting Arizona? If you're Grace Stanke, you head to a nuclear power plant.
The current Miss America, representing Wisconsin, donned protective garments and entered the containment dome of Unit 2 at the Palo Verde Generating Station west of Phoenix for a nearly daylong tour April 17.
As a nuclear engineering student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Stanke said she already has visited and worked at other nuclear plants, but she called Palo Verde special for its hospitality and welcoming staff.
The complex also is unusual if not unique in other regards, such as producing more electricity than any other power plant of any type in the country and being the only nuclear plant in the world not situated near water.
Touting nuclear energy
Stanke said her visit here was designed in part to help counter negative perceptions about nuclear energy and to promote clean, zero-carbon sources of energy. One misconception, in her view, involves the perceived dangers of nuclear power.
"It's one of the safest forms of energy in America," she said in an interview.
Industry officials, Stanke said, have learned valuable lessons following past radiation-leak incidents at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, at Chernobyl in Ukraine and at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant. She believes the industry's safety record should be viewed in the context of other energy disasters, such as offshore oil well leaks or tanker sinkings, she added.
It's not a universal opinion, of course, with equally vocal proponents advocating the merits of solar and wind power, for example, as well as natural gas, oil, coal and other sources. Nor is it easy to disrupt supply chains overnight or immediately cancel multibillion-dollar investments made in other resource areas.
Critics also complain that nuclear energy isn't so environmentally benign if you take uranium mining and other considerations into account, as the Natural Resources Defense Council noted in a blog.
Even so, Stanke wants to raise raise awareness of the merits of nuclear.
Inside Palo Verde nuclear power plant: What it looks like, how it creates electricity
Debating the impacts of power and waste
Another area she noted involves waste. While nuclear plants such as Palo Verde do generate radioactive waste that need secure storage, the volume is small relative to all of the energy produced, she argued.
"If my life were powered completely by nuclear energy, the entire waste would fit into a soda can," she said.
Much of that waste might even see reuse in the future, she added, though the federal government doesn't currently allow that, unlike some other countries such as France. All of the radioactive waste from Palo Verde's start in 1985 is stored in containment silos in an area roughly the size of a football field.
Stanke's four-day Arizona visit also included talks to grade-school children about science and a meeting with Arizona pageant hopefuls. It was her second trip to Arizona as Miss America, following a prior visit around the time of the Super Bowl.
Poised for career as nuclear engineer
Stanke, who turns 21 later this month, said she expects to work in the nuclear industry after earning her degree in nuclear engineering later this year and relinquising her Miss America crown next year.
Among her other talents and passions, Stanke is an award-winning violinist, has visited about half of the 63 National Parks in America and calls herself a firm believer that peanut butter can make almost every meal better.
Reach the writer at russ.wiles@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Miss America Grace Stanke tours Arizona's Palo Verde nuclear plant
