California’s New Nukes War
A major pro-nuke “surge” against the renewable solution to global warming is about to erupt in California.
State assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) has moved for a statewide vote to allow new nuclear power plants to be built in the Golden State. He wants to repeal the 1976 law requiring a solution to the nuke waste problem before new reactors are built. A business cartel says it wants to build a new reactor near downtown near downtown Fresno. (For more information on the California situation, visit http://www.a4nr.org/)
So the nation’s biggest state may soon be at war over new nukes. In essence, it’s King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes and Gas) versus Solartopia. The core issue is who will control our energy: corporations, or the public.
The irony is that we stand at the brink of the greatest technological revolution in human history. But we’re being dragged away from it by Big Money’s push for a technology with fifty years of proven ecological disaster and financial failure.
Green energy is poised to remake our world.
Wind power is the cheapest form of new generation now available. There are sufficient wind resources between the Mississippi and the Rockies to generate, with available technology, 300% of the electricity we use. There’s enough in North Dakota, Kansas and Texas alone to do 100%.
Solar technologies ranging from green architectural design to desert power towers to photovoltaic cells that go on every rooftop are booming toward a multi-billion-dollar mainstay of our electric supply. Bio-fuels based on sustainable, organic practices can transform our transportation sector. Tidal, wave, geothermal, ocean thermal and a wide range of other green production processes stand at the brink of epic profitability.
Meanwhile, increased efficiency and revived mass transit are the cheapest, cleanest ways to salvage the energy we waste. In concert, these revolutionary green technologies are poised to bring us to Solartopia, a post-pollution planet powered totally by energy harvested in harmony with our Mother Earth. They promise an abundance of efficient supply with the power to boom our economies and save our ability to survive on this planet.
But here’s the hitch: renewable energy has the “flaw” of tending toward community control. In the long run, a true Solartopian revolution must involve re-shaping our corporate culture into one based on sustainability, accountability and grassroots democracy. Though some astute corporations are cashing in, in the long run green technologies are the door to decentralization…and economic democracy. A green-powered Solartopia will own its energy supply at the grassroots. Wind, solar, bio-fuels—they hold the keys to community control.
Against all that, new nukes are the ultimate weapon of mass distraction. There have been numerous rationales put forth for building more reactors. Except to an entrenched corporate power elite, none of them make any sense.
Some advocates claim new reactors can fight global warming. In fact, through their own “normal” emissions, in the construction process, in mining, milling and enriching fuel, in decommissioning, in managing radioactive waste, in accounting for inevitable catastrophic accidents and terror attacks, in weapons proliferation, and much much more, atomic reactors are a global warming nightmare.
Some also claim nukes will generate cheap electricity. But fifty years of proven failure (the first commercial reactor opened at Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1957) says exactly the opposite. Overall, the nuke power experiment has been a trillion dollar disaster, with explosions, melt-downs, cost overruns, expensive failures, massive subsidies, undoable insurance, deregulatory bailouts and much more on the debit sheet.
Overall, at its ultimate corporate root, the new nuke push is a coup d’etat, a rightist putsch to prevent the community ownership of our Solartopian energy supply.
The irony in California could not be more obvious. The only way the industry can build new nukes is for the community to NOT require a solution to the radioactive waste problem.
The world was told fifty years ago that such a solution was “just around the corner.” It was also told atomic energy would be “too cheap to meter.”
These two biggest of all 20th Century industrial lies are about to be rationalized and atomized by a corporate King CONG desperate to hold power.
But the vision of Solartopia burns bright and real.
Humankind now possesses all the technology we need to solve global warming and bring us a world of post-pollution prosperity. The new nuke surge just declared in California is an early test in the larger war for a sustainable future.
The question about to be asked in California, and worldwide, is: Do we have the will to win Solartopia for ourselves and our children?
Harvey Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030 is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and senior editor of www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.
Their law that says they must clean up the mess they already made is a good one. I hope they stick with it. If I was a Californian I would be taking a closer look at assemblyman Chuck Devore to see where his fianancing is coming from.
Isn’t it ironic that just today (Monday, July 17th) Japan suffered two devastating earthquakes. One of them damaged a nuclear power station that sent radioactive material into the nerby ocean.
And this goofball Devore in California wants to build more in his state??? Too bad Californians are so blind to the fact that only the Green Party speaks of alternative energy like solar and wind. Yes, too bad for everyone that the Greens are looked at as some wide-eyed utopians with no chnace to make a difference. Maybe if they were given a chance by the voters, men like Devore would be speaking to the wind.
Hmmmm….money talks, common sense walks.
Good luck Californians!
Great article. Nuclear is a dead end for many reasons, such as weapons proliferation and the fact that hot nuclear waste is just about impossible to safely store. The only reasons it’s being pushed are that (1) it involves a lot of lucrative, oversight-free government contracts and taxpayer guarantees for any cost overruns, and (2) established energy interests are afraid of true renewables like solar and wind and sustainable biofuels.
Rather than build nuclear power plants, we should be building solar panel manufacturing complexes and electric car factories, as well as mandating energy efficient technology in all areas (for example, Toronto just switched to LED lighting, saving massive amounts of energy). The cost difference is immense: a solar panel production plant can cost $100 million and will generate 30-40 MW of long-lived solar panels per year. A single nuclear plant takes years to construct, costs billions of dollars, and creates a huge mess that has to be cleaned up at the end of its life.
It’s good to remember that there is no single magic bullet that will solve the clean energy problem. In the southwestern USA and much of the Third World, solar is the way to go, along with energy storage systems (i.e. batteries). In the more northerly climates and on the Great Plains, wind power may be more viable than any other clean power source. Denmark’s giant offshore wind turbines are another example of how to do wind - and some tapped-out oil drilling platforms are now being converted to offshore wind turbines! In the American South, there is lush biomass production, and that area is a natural for local, sustainable biofuel production.
The energy revolution will have to be led locally, outside of the control of Wall Street. Currently, most energy production is in the hands of a very small number of very wealthy people (coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear). Promoting nuclear maintains the status quo in the energy business, while promoting real renewables (solar, wind, and sustainable (fossil fuel free, organically grown) biofuel) will stand the entire energy system on its head. That’s the real reason the established interests (electric utilities, financiers, fossil fuel corporations, and their owned politicians) are pumping nuclear while ignoring solar.
The country\people\society who masters the technology of renewable energy will the leading country\people\society in the world.
Non-renewable sources will run out, that’s by definition. You can argue about when, but not the fact that a resource that is being used and which is non-renewable will eventually run out.
The long-term, steady-state solution is renewable energy sources. The US can either be a backwards nation that spent its intellect and money developing the non-renewables that will by definition be obsolete one day, or we can spend our intellect and money becoming the leaders in the renewable energy resources that will one day be what everyone uses.
Once I saw a seminar that illustrates the problem of nuclear waste storage very well. The seminar was in how do you put up signs or otherwise mark a site such that people would know 10,000 years from now that there was dangerous plutonium buried there and that it should not be dug up. Think about it for a minute. The Pyramids in Egypt are what, about 5000 years old. We are lucky we found the Rosetta stone and can even read the writing.
My policy on nuclear power plants is ZPG, Zero Pollution Growth. We have about 100 plants in the nation and as one grows old and gets decommissioned, you can build another one to replace it. It could be a bigger or smaller one, but it should be a safer design than the one it replaces.
Nuclear energy is the worst idea, ever.
Solar energy collector more benign than PV systems …
http://www.dlsc.ca/
one of the biggest arguments against new nukes- on top of the extreme cost and high opportunity costs, the fact that there isn’t enough uranium in the world to fuel enough nukes to make a difference, the fact that human error is unavoidable and disaterous when dealing with this technology, and the WMD proliferation issues, is the SECURITY ISSUE IN THE AGE OF TERRORISM>
An aquaintance of mine, a former Special Forces Master Sargeant did the force on force security testing with the NRC. He trained people to pretend to be terrorists and — after letting the plant know what day they would be coming– attempt to break into the plants and simulate sabotage. His teams were successful in 19 out of 20 cases. The NRC’s response- they classified the results of the testing, disbanded the program, and left security testing in the hands of the private companies that provide security at the plants. This has resulted in situations so bad that guards at the nuke here in central North Carolina put their jobs in jeopardy by becoming whistle blowers.
FOR 50 YEARS, THE NRC HAS PROVEN ITSELF UNWILLING TO PROTECT THE SAFETY OF THE PUBLIC. THEY ARE NOT TO BE TRUSTED
I have had a small solar electric system on 3 places that I have lived since 1980.
If you can afford a new cars payments you should look into grid tie solar electric systems for your house. (tip: look in the yellow pages under solar energy)
It isn’t just California that needs good luck, If a major nuclear leak occurs there, the prevailing winds blow eastward.
We could space the Australian designed power towers miles apart, all along the coast lines of the United States. One tower will produce the electrical needs for ten thousand homes. They use wind /solar for generating electrical power. We could have every nuke and coal fired plant shut down in ten years if we wanted to do it. Of course the oil boys will not allow that.
If sun rays were adequate weapons of war, we would have been using solar power years ago.
Just one very good reason for not building more nuclear power plants and for shutting down those already in operation, is written on today’s Common Dreams article about depleted uranium.
Jimsenter, have you heard the latest? Our government did do something right. They had people invent companies, then they obtained permits to legally purchase nuclear waste and bought enough of it make a dirty nuke bomb. Also, hundreds of illegals are working in nuclear power plants as janitors. Amazing.
The “big money people” want nuclear energy only if the bulk of the investment, all the liability, and all the cost of disposal of waste be provided by the taxpayer.
The fundamental block to nuclear power is that no sane investor will willingly assume the risks.
If Congress refuses to accept bribes to further destroy the taxpayer’s portfolio; additional nuclear power will remain talk.
Evelyn Smith: A male friend of mine who had served in the US Air Force observed the security around the nuclear plant near Crystal River, Florida and told me how easy it would be to sabotage. I am NOT high tech but his explanation was so clear and I won’t publish it as this info would be dangerous in the wrong hands… but the fact is, these places are NOT secured.
PS When I lived in the Florida Keys my boyfriend knew people in Miami who were in drug rehab, and told me that addicts work at the nuclear plants as security guards, etc. That’s like pilots flying drunk… security r’not U.S.
evelyn smith: If sun rays were adequate weapons of war, we would have been using solar power years ago.
well said.
this is an excellent article. i just reread 1984: the purpose of warfare is to maintain the class structure of society.
the same can be said about energy production, as this article points out.
until we confront and dismantle the hierarchical nature of society, nothing will change. for 150 or 200 yrs, technology has given us the ability to adequately feed, clothe, house, etc., every single person on this planet, yet it doesn’t happen. now we are on the threshhold of democratizing energy production, but it won’t happen.
the people who run this planet will destroy all life, even the possibility of life, on this planet before they will give up power.
www.wsws.org
newageartist you put it well.
“Yes, too bad for everyone that the Greens are looked at as some wide-eyed utopians with no chnace to make a difference. Maybe if they were given a chance by the voters, men like Devore would be speaking to the wind.”
They might be given a chance by the voters if the Greens were first given a chance in the press. The corporate press is not likely to go against thier brothers in the Energy sector. How do we get CommonDreams broadcast on the air coast to coast? That’s what’s needed as a first step for any change to take place here in Amerika. Land of the afraid and home of the ignorant.
Siouxrose, my two older brothers lived in the everglades for a couple of years after WW11, They later had a small aircraft overhaul company in Florida and once customized a PBY “Cat” for Jacques Costeau.
Boy, there was a man to admire. It was a fun time when he and his family came to town. He wrote books abut the enviroment and warned us of the dangers.___ few listened.
You would have liked Bob and Bud, they were swell guys and they would have liked you also,___ I’m certain.