The Friday op-ed "FirstEnergy bailout would derail progress on energy policy" by Heather Taylor-Miesle and Chris Zeigler failed to discuss the reason why it is important for Ohio citizens to pay a small amount of money to continue to operate our two nuclear units.

Global warming due to greenhouse gases is real. The science is well-understood. As a society we face a dire future (see the results of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control, 2018) if we fail to act and to act quickly. This is the time for us to develop a strategy for how we can decarbonize our energy supply as quickly as possible while minimizing the cost.

For the U.S. that implies both federal and state commitments. For Ohio, the two nuclear plants represent 90% of our carbon-free electricity generation. Most of the remainder is hydropower with only small contributions today from wind and solar.

The difference in electricity cost between those nuclear plants and natural gas plants is just a few cents per kilowatt-hour, which is the result of the extraordinarily low cost today of hydro-fractured natural gas. If we shut down the operating nuclear plants, we will set back any future plan to decarbonize our energy supply by a decade and any future solar, wind or nuclear units constructed to achieve a future goal will be substantially more expensive than these existing plants.

This is not a perfect bill but it is the best option we have available to preserve the principal noncarbon-producing energy resource that we currently have.

Richard Denning, retired professor of nuclear engineering, Upper Arlington