Morgan can now help Maryland go nuclear

Wow! Morgan State University has stepped up to lead Maryland toward its clean energy future (“Nuclear energy is the answer to Maryland’s energy challenges,” Oct. 29).

With a $5 million grant, Morgan will now offer graduate and postgraduate degrees in nuclear engineering. This means Maryland will now have both the technical skills and the trained workforce to lead it in its quest for Net Zero.

Do not underestimate the potential this has for Maryland. While many organizations in Maryland are fighting to make Maryland a clean energy state, none until now have focused on the creation of sustainable clean energy. Offshore wind, while potentially a source of energy, will never create reliable, sustainable energy. Energy efficiency, while clearly necessary, will only reduce and never eliminate the need for a sustainable clean energy source.

In effect, Maryland has only been nibbling around the edges of what must be done to become a clean energy leader. They have declared the desire to do so. They have set goals. They have never laid out a plan to build a team to do so. This is that necessary first step.

To create a clean energy economy, one needs to be able to create its own clean energy. This grant to Morgan is the first major step in that direction. By itself, it will not be enough. Without it though, the goal would have been all but unreachable.

Why? Because to date Maryland did not have the capacity to understand and explain to the public the need for reliable nuclear energy. Now, or very soon, they will.

Why is that not enough? Because knowing is not doing. Maryland still needs to create the capacity to create or evaluate its own clean energy sources. Right now, no one in Maryland is charged with doing so. That capacity will have to be created in Annapolis. Soon though, there will be a substantial pool of trained nuclear engineers to fill such a post as soon as it is created.

It isn’t everything. But it is far from nothing. As the saying goes, “Every journey begins with a single step.”

Congratulations and best wishes to the Morgan nuclear engineering program.

— Bill Temmink, Joppa

Can Trump be like Lincoln?

I was very upset with Armstrong Williams’ Second Coming of Trump article, so I began reading The Owner’s Box on Sunday (“Trump should take a lesson from Lincoln in second term,” Nov. 17) with trepidation, but was pleasantly surprised.

I particularly liked that “Merit and character should inform President Trump’s appointments. We cannot afford … ON-THE-JOB training amid the multiple existential threats confronting the United States” (emphasis mine).

Another sentence caught my eye concerning the “folly of Senate Republicans in eagerly agreeing to recess appointments by Trump to circumvent the customary constitutional requirement of Senate confirmation of principal officers of the United States.”

Finally, Armstrong Williams mentioned the importance of the media, (which includes the free press), to “spotlight and check his missteps or else his second term will capsize.” This leads into how President-elect Trump should not stoop to pettiness, vilification, or revenge. Then, maybe, Mr. Trump will leave “footprints in the sands of time.”

— Denise Lutz, White Marsh