Nuclear Power is Not the Answer
Taxpayers alert! The atomic power corporations are beating on the doors in Washington to make you guarantee their financing for more giant nuclear plants. They are pouring money and applying political muscle to Congress for up to $50 billion in loan guarantees, to persuade an uninterested Wall Street that Uncle Sam will pay for any defaults on industry construction loans.
Since 1974, there has not been a filled order for a nuclear power plant. Following the Three Mile Island near-melt down, many spills and shutdowns, then the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, the electric utility bosses found a negative Wall Street and a protesting public in their communities too much to overcome. They dropped nuclear power like it was a radioactive hot potato.
It was just too financially risky, bogged down with delays and cost over-runs, with too many spent fuel rods filling pools at the plants because no permanent storage sites for deadly radioactive wastes had been certified. Big time financing also dried up. Finally, risks of sabotage and nuclear proliferation became prominent national security problems in the post-9/11 era.
But the atomic power industry does not give up. Not as long as Uncle Sam can be dragooned to be its subsidizing, immunizing partner. Ever since the first of over 100 plants opened in 1957, corporate socialism has fed this insatiable Atomic goliath with many types of subsidies
Still, it’s tough to have to admit that after over half a century, this coddled industry still can not pursue its capitalist path into the market standing on its own feet.
So for years, the Nuclear Energy Institute, mouthpiece for the industry, dangled new, smaller, allegedly less risky (on paper, at least) designs as a way back.
Then the big break came-global warming fed by the burning of coal, oil and gas. Violá, atomic energy, its proponents declared, produces no greenhouse gases (apart from massive coal fuel emissions to enrich the uranium). “Nuclear power can be the answer.” This became the hyped theme for millions of dollars in advertisements and propaganda reports.
During its fallow period of the past quarter century, the atomic power industry’s lawyers worked over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to severely contract the stages and restrict the mode of participation in public hearings and court reviews by people protesting the proposed construction of plants in their communities.
Now on Capitol Hill this fall, the stage is set for the industry’s oligarchs to connect with the government’s autocrats for the final shackling of taxpayers.
This July, Senator Pete V. Domenici (R-NM) turned his back on the huge solar energy potential of his sunny state and got the Democrats to accept a provision in the energy bill to provide for tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer loan guarantees for 100% of a plant’s Wall Street loans. That’s right, the industry argued that 90% was not enough because Wall Streeters did not even want to risk 10% of their dollars to the verdict of the marketplace!
All these goodies are on top of existing federal government subsidies for any regulatory and litigation-linked delays (for which you the taxpayers will pay $750 million for the next six nuclear plants). Once producing electricity-(imagine a more complex way to boil water than atomic fission), these companies received further payments from the U.S. Treasury in the form of production tax credits.
First out of the box is Constellation Energy, which operates two reactors at Calvert Cliffs, Maryland. They want to build a $4.5 billion giant. The catch: “Without the federal loan guarantees, this whole thing will come to a stop,” said George Vanderheyden, a Constellation official. This bold demand comes after the company got the County Commissioners to give it 15 years of local tax reductions totaling $300 million.
Big capitalists are rarely capitalists any more. Big business has its bulging muscles focused on Washington, D.C., for handouts, giveaways, subsidies, bailouts no matter how many record profits they register.
Intel, Microsoft, Apple are feeding from the trough, along with the older giants. Can anyone name one company in the Fortune 500 that doesn’t get some largess, some special privilege at the expense of taxpayers? Why, they’ve perforated the tax code in so many ways, these multinationals overall are on their way to tax-exempt status. (See David Cay Johnston’s brilliant book Perfectly Legal published by Penguin USA.)
For sheer brazenness, however, the atomic power lobbyists know few peers. They remember, as the previous Atomic Energy Commission told them decades ago, that one significant meltdown could contaminate “an area the size of Pennsylvania.”
They know that no insurance companies will insure them at any price, which is why the Price-Anderson Act hugely limits nuclear plants’ liability in case of massive damages to people, property, land and water.
If the government wishes to guarantee energy loans, they can start with loans to residences and small businesses to make their premises much more energy efficient. Many jobs are there all over the country. Or, if need be, they could temporarily guarantee renewable energy “infant industries” that would replace fossil fuels and nuclear with many practical variants of solar power.
Instead, unless the House of Representatives quashes the Senate giveaway, the national security risks inherent in atomic power, complete with growing transportation on the rails and highways of radioactive wastes, will multiply. So make your Representative in the House especially, Cong. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), listen to your arguments.
For more facts and updates on the situation in Congress, contact Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, 1600 20th Street, NW Washington, DC 20009or visit citizen.org or call (202) 588-1000.
It won’t take many of you to stop this madness, just as citizens helped stop expansion of nuclear power in the Seventies.
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book is The Seventeen Traditions.
I would rather have our country outfit every home and building with wind and solar with this $50 Billion request, at no extra cost to the individual. It’s the way we have to go. In years ahead, the oceans are going to start leeching all the radioactive material that our government along with the Soviets and others have been skuttling from their naval ships at the bottom.
I’m in favor of more community- and local-destiny with regard to energy procurement and management. Nuclear power is the most autocratic form of energy around, and in this era of corruption/ineptitude, the answer is clear: no.
Mr. Nader, you are always sticking up for the truth, and this topic is so important! Thank you!
Nuclear fission plants are possibly one of the most under-rated threats to the planet at this moment. They must be shut down immediately.
I would encourage everyone who is interested in SUPER ADVANCED ENERGY DEVICES BEING RELEASED TO THE WORLD to please watch this video. Dr. Steven Greer’s efforts, along with many major world representatives and scientists, may very well bring hope for a brand new world of non-polluting energy technology.
WATCH THIS VIDEO!!!
On strategies for releasing advanced technologies…
Bio-Diesel is the answer. Not nuclear.
Where is Billy__y4, ____ or Nuker Bill?
WEll, hang on everyone, Billy will show up and we will be able to read his wisdom, of why nuclear power is the only option. Hurry up Billy, you are killing us with antisipation.
“I would rather have our country outfit every home and building with wind and solar with this $50 Billion request, at no extra cost to the individual. ”
It’s less than $170 per head.
Biodiesel may be what the corn growing lobby wants, but I’ll take solar on my roof, a windmill at my city hall with some sort of bird guard around it, and a hydrogen power plant in my basement.
Corn based fuel is nice if you are willing to tell other people they have to starve to death in order for you to fuel your SUV.
SUPPORT SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGIES SCIENTISTS!
Scientists are busily at work, and all they lack is the funding (and in the low millions, not high BILLIONS), for what may amount to extremely accessible and inexpensive energy sources that do not damage the environement.
Spend an hour sometime, do a google for cutting edge discoveries in sustainable technologies- educate yourself, spread the word. Then, pester your elected officials to support these efforts- it is an answer!
NUCLEAR POWER AND URANIUM MINING by Dr. Helen Caldicott
(Published in the Adelaide Advertiser, June 29, 2007)
“Contrary to industry propaganda nuclear power contributes substantially to
global warming. Fossil fuels used to mine and enrich uranium, construct and
decommission the reactor, transport and store the intensely radioactive
waste for eons of time produce global warming gases. Presently a gas fired
electricity generator emits three times more CO2 than a similar sized atomic
reactor, but as the supply of high grade uranium ore declines, a nuclear
plant will, within decades, generate as much CO2 as a gas fired generator.
Uranium supplies are finite. If global electricity was nuclear generated
today, only nine years supply of uranium remain.”
Why spend untold hundreds of billions on a temporary fix for our energy needs? Uranium, just as with fossil fuels, is a finite commodity and will run out. Has the wind ever stopped blowing, the sun shining, or the tides moving? Geothermal is just as long lasting. We surely will need to continue using nuclear, but only until we can replace it with much better options, and eventually all nuclear plants should be eliminated. Not one penny more should be directed toward new construction. Just as with the oil industry, the nuclear industry has had a free ride at taxpayers expense, while also making enormous profits by gouging our citizens. Let them spend their own damned dime!!!
I don’t quite comprehend the logic of those against wind power because of a few dead birds. What do they amount to compared to the thousands of humans killed, maimed, or sickened well into future generations by use & proliferation of nuclear WMD like atomic bombs, insidious DU (depleted uranium), and human error caused nuclear ‘accidents’?
One concern which must always be taken into account is the fact that every device, machine, or other construction of humans throughout history has broken, malfunctioned, or failed. We shouldn’t even consider taking such a chance against a 100% certainty of massive permanent disaster when there are other options available, should we?
Powell/Nader 2008
Trying to check the math on that $50,000,000,000.00 Do we divide by the population of 300 million, or by households w/ an average of four persons?
Then, we put solar panels and wind systems on every roof, or are there regionally more appropriate technologies, first and foremost conservation measures? These all would arguably be a subsidy to the renewable, non-nuke sector, but it’s time for that sector to get a chance at the trough! That $50,000,000,000. is spent in less than 1/2 a year in Iraq. The blanket decentralized approach appeals to me in a big way. I’m sure the regional utilities will not be pleased: they hatre competition!
Re-read, or read anew, Fritz Schumacher’s ‘Small is Beautiful’.
Astounding with the legitimate furor over nuclear proliferation, nuclear waste that no one wants nor knows how to manage, that the elected representattives are seriously considering the nuke card. Maybe not so astounding….
On three, we all call our reps…. one two three
no nukes!! and, while we are at it
impeach Cheney/Bush
out of iraq
campaign finance/lobby reform
corporation NOT a person
Powell/Nader 2008! Surely you jest? While it might be arguable that Nader allowed Bush & his gang of thugs to steal the presidency, there is little doubt Powell was instrumental in formulating the ‘big lie’ that got us engaged in an illegal pre-emtive attack on Iraq. Only an idiot would consider Powell to have any credibility left, and only someone with less intelligence than a bedpost would EVER consider voting for him.
Sorry about getting personal there, worldbfree, but the truth is the truth. Have you researched what a Kucinich/Edwards ticket would mean?
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have already endorsed more nuclear power as a solution to climate change.
It is quite true that the loan guarantees are important to the nuclear renewal. Note that these are guarantees not a grant. If all goes well it doesn’t cost the government a dime.
Far more important, however, is the revision to the liscencing procedures and the insurance being offered for regulatory delay. (The insurance itself is relatively small potatoes but the government is saying-we promise not to hold up your construction without cause and here is our good faith money.)
There is plenty of fault to go around for the cost overruns and delays during the orginal nuclear build but regulatory delay, mandated design changes and intervenor lawsuits were a major part of it.
The idea of solar panels on individual homes is actually a good idea if a reasonable funding mechanism can be found (75% tax credit?). At least in the sunny climes. It relieves pressure on the grid during peak demand. Solar is much more expensive than nuclear but, if sufficient manufacturing capacity is available, it can be implemented much more quickly. The economics of individual solar are much more attractive than central utility solar generation.
Paul: The Japanese believe they can extract uranium from seawater for $200/pound. This is not strictly a renewable resource but it is enough for a millenium.
Computer power is an extraordinary thing. The improved organization can reduce the need to expend energy unneccessarily, while increasing productivity.
Henry Ford’s mass production concept was similar in that it was a process revolution. You see that kind of thing at youtube for instance. Not much new technology, but totally new interaction on the part of people being organized around the technology. It increases brainpower and education exponentially, while reducing cost and effort.
Along with solar power and the reorganization of agriculture, the computer revolution should reduce America’s absurd destruction of itself through overwork and overactivity, while actually raising standards of health, education and productivity.
The main thing to do is get rid of the SUVs and at least 50% of the cars on the road.
Mr. Nader can score some quick political points by writing an article against nuclear power, and throwing Chernobyl in there, as no nuclear discussion is complete without bringing up the Russian dinosaur. Why not write the article about the dangers of coal? The nuclear industry has been effectively hindered. Much of those exorbitant costs Mr. Nader mentions are due to the hype regarding the dangers of nuclear energy. 150 new coal plants being built in the US alone and Mr. Nader is still talking about the nuclear industry. At least nuclear power has the benefit of spewing less carbon, soot, mercury, arsenic, etc . While Mr. Nader and others talk about the potential dangers of nuclear power, coal is the one that will render the planet uninhabitable in a few decades. Why worry about the long half life of radioactive materials? Burning coal will prevent us from experiencing ANY long term consequences.
Conservation first, then solar, wind, geothermal, tide, etc. backed up by local natural gas generators when necessary. Biodiesel may have some benefit, but ethanol from corn will likely not only raise the cost of food excessively, but will ultimately wash away one of our most important natural resources: our soil (I’m a corn/bean farmer). Modest ethanol use (10%) has some benefits. E85 is nuts.
It is wonderful to hear that Japan will attempt to mine uranium from the oceans, so they can continue to operate all of their many nuclear plants, in a land area of Earth where massive earthquakes are all too frequent.
There are many excellent articles available on the internet, which detail how Solar/wind power can easily give us all of the electrical power required at a very affordable cost. With wind/solar/geo-thermal/tide power, we don’t have the real dangers posed with nuclear power or have to store the deadly wastes forever. Nuclear and coal powered power plants are disasters waiting to happen. Coal powered isn’t even waiting, it’s worse than nuclear.
Very well put, Kem Patrick.
The difference between nuclear pollution and pollution from coal is that nuclear pollution lasts forever.
If we keep burning coal, ezeflyer, “forever” is about a hundred years away, if that.
Well, Jacques Costeau gave us 80 years max in 1975. So what does that leave us?
Of couse Costeau didn’t have a clue that the military of every major nation would start spreading DU all over the place, killing any and everything a microscopic speck touched. I give us thirty to forty years max. Less than twenty if the phytoplankton die off sooner than they presently are.
Great piece Ralph, as always!
The world needs you now like never before. How about the government waste of repairing New Orleans, when clearly from ice cap melting, that repair will be underwater in about twenty years…
I wish you would also take the bold step of talking about unpopular subjects such as population control. Guaranteed to land you on the front page of the corporate NeoCon papers! If you can’t win their attention with reason, be melodramatic! Their ridicule would backlash as everybody is sick of the current Republicrat corruption and you could retrace your position back later.
Nader/Gore
(i don’t like gore, but what do you think?)
Don’t loose the faith baby,
pacplyer
Up until I read this, I thought nuclear power was OK. Thanks Ralph for finally clearing that up. There must be many more like me who have never given nuclear power a second thought. Fortunately, we have Ralph to tell us that this stuff really is dangerous. Who knew? Don’t forget, it was also Mr. Nader that told us cars were dangerous. There’s a lot of stuff like this going on that nobody knows about.
Disregarding my earlier comment (well…not entirely) , I still believe RN a thoughtful concerned citizen. I am also pleased to see him weigh in properly on the subject at hand. Thanks jtstevens & KEM for pointing out coal, and likewise DU, are likely much more immediate threats. Are we between a rock and a hardplace, nukes vs. coal? Nukes are the source of DU, so if we knock out nukes we reduce the threat of global contamination. Then the coal pollution gets us. Knock out the coal and nukes are with us forever.
How about we keep the coal under tight constraints for now, gradually eliminate nukes & coal powered plants, and redirect the funding for both (prior corporate/industry…subsidy/welfare)toward renewables. Think of the hundreds of billion/trillion dollar monkey we will get off our backs?
I think it kind of falls into line what we need to do.
The first step is energy efficiency, probably our greatest potential for energy savings. Being conscious of your personal energy ‘footprint’ is the beginning. Just start by looking around your house and determining if there is one light you can do without. Other things will follow. Recycling is a big part of this too, you know.
It only requires 5% of the energy to melt down & reshape an aluminium can as it does to drag the ore out of the ground, smelt it, and make a new one. Basically a twenty to one savings.
Next, since around 50% of our energy needs are devoted to transportation, we need greater efficiency in this area also. Want to drive a big gas-hog SUV? Fine, well you’re going to have to pay through the nose for being socially unconscious, and where is your moral right to complain? How could the people in this administration & government have strayed so far off the beam as to offer a tens of thousands of dollars tax break for buying a Hummer? Duh! How efficient are those? When I see someone driving one in the city I go,”Let me off this road, because there went an idiot!” The real lunacy is that about six times out of ten (just an estimate by personal observation) they are driving alone.
Congress is in the process…hold it a minute…I started to say they are in the process of increasing the CAFE standard, but it will likely be forever before these guys (with very few exceptions) learn how to get something done beneficial to the public at large, and govern toward the common good. We can’t afford to wait until the corporate oil & auto industries become ‘deciders’, and decide that if they don’t come around it is their lives that are threatened, too, or become so dangerous to the public good nationalization of these industries becomes the only sensible option. This is a social contract, to living beings, that must be honored.
Next step is to massively fund renewables and offer no impediments to them hooking up to, and running an account on, the main grid. You add you get credit, detract get a bill. The savings will eventually outweigh the initial outlay. Once a ‘break even’ point is realized nukes & coal (hydrocarbons) are out the door. They won’t like it, but we aren’t asking; we’re DEMANDING!
The political & financial ramifications are the stumbling block, but those are subjects for another day.
Thanks for the article and contact info. Mr. Nader. You’ve had my vote twice. I would love to have solar but can’t afford it. It’s a shame that my electric bill couldn’t be put toward purchasing solar instead. Even our own cooperative doesn’t seem cooperative in changing it’s course of direction.
The problem with nuclear power is that it can’t exist without massive government subsidy. No intelligent investor is at all interested unless the taxpayer accepts all the risk.
What the investors know is the tremendous risk associated with waste disposal, operation of the plant, security, mining, cooling water disposal, and plant decontamination.
With an equivalent subsidy, wind, solar, geothermal, various waste recovery systems and especially conservation would give better results.
The lead author of this study
http://www.ieer.org/carbonfree/summary.pdf
claims that within 30-50 years we can meet all our energy needs from renewable, NON-nuclear sources. He estimates the cost/investment required at a mere 0.7% of household income over a 30 year period.
And with health insurance premiums rising at 6% a year,I’d also be willing to wager that the health benefits to be realized from eliminating fossil and nuclear fuel power generation (and transportation) would more than offset the loss of household income.
“Trying to check the math on that $50,000,000,000.00 Do we divide by the population of 300 million, or by households w/ an average of four persons?”
What’s the difference? It still isn’t much money.
THEDEED, yes indeed, there are many like you who are unaware of what’s going around.
You are probalby unaware of all the good Ralph Nader has done in the areas of auto safety. It wasn’t autos that he said were dangerous, it was the lack of safety concerns and design flaws by the manufacturers. His work alone is responsible for a great many changes for the better in that respect.
Exactly as Kem says: Nader pointed out that SOME cars are more dangerous than others, and unnecessarily so. Which is precisely the argument Nader is making here. And while that SHOULD be obvious to everyone, it appears to be overlooked by our policymakers, who are presumably kept in ignorance by the fact that they only listen to lobbyists.
To jakenewton: If memory serves me, the study assumed something like 2.3 people per household. But the author spells out his economic assumptions quite clearly. I recommend you go directly to the source.
It’s ironic. What we need, and will need with increasing desperation, are long term environmental solutions, not quick fixes. And here we’re looking at creating vast quantities of waste that will go on being radioactive for generations to come.
NEEDS ?? NEEDS ???
We needed Ralph Nader as President in 2000.
We needed Ralph Nader as President in 2004.
We NEED Ralph Nader as President in 2008.
Never before as we do now.
WISHFULTHINKER, I don’t blame you for believing wind/solar is not very feasible, I thought the same until I’d had the opportunity to read several scientific studies on the subject.
With large grids of solar in land areas where the sun shines more than 330 days of the year, combined with power from the wind which in some ares never ceases, we could be free from nuclear and coal fired plants by the year 2020 if we put our money and minds to it. It is more complicated than that brief paragraph of course, but it is feasible and we should do it.
Cutting grass:
A lawnmower uses gasoline and spews out toxic waste, producing quite a lot of cut grass to dispose of.
A sheep eats the grass, fertilizes the ground with dung, and then produces milk, meat and wool…and it’s a damned fine sight to see a herd of sheep on a beautiful hillside.
Are any knowledgeable people still listening to this guy? Let’s get this country back on track with nuclear energy and stop the coal trains. Even the French (with 80% nuclear electric generation) understand the logic.
Dear nf lobbyist,
Knowledgeable people understand that Uranium refinement, transport, and superfund cleanup takes as many tons of coal/energy as conventional boilers do in the short and medium run. Added to that is the proliferation hazard, that we just don’t need.
Many people have the knowledge that ALL these plants leak SOME radiation because it’s impossible for the containment building not to occasionally vent due to atmospheric frontal pressure changes. Rancho Sacho, (the sister of the Three-Mile-Island Nuke plant) where I was unfortunately downwind of, repeatedly contaminated the surrounding countryside (despite firing employees and coverups) the holding ponds were confirmed “hot” and so were the nearby rivers. Those were just cooling emissions. Atmospheric venting is almost impossible to prove. But thank god it was shut down. Even worse problems were evident at the other sister plant in Battan, Philippines plant and it was never even put on line. (Same company)
Add to that the inevidable consequence of dishonest CEO’s cutting corners to make profits and questionable government storage and disposal policy (instead of waste disposal; how about selling nuclear waste to the munitions industry for profit and thereby foul the whole world? Great idea; it’s a win, win; for corporate criminals and tin-plated Texas dictators!)
No Thank you. Too many dead people (over one-million casualties by some estimates) at Chernobyl and more dying.
Hey “nf”; Why not just use hand grenades to heat your house. It’s a lot safer. The half-life of burning your house down is only one day. However, the soil contaminated by the myriad of deadly fallout from only one nuke-plant mistake is thousands of years.
pac “no-nukes” plyer