Everybody Look What’s Going Down
There’s somethin’ happening here, What it is ain’t exactly clear. There’s a man with a gun over there, tellin’ me I gotta beware. I think it’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound, everybody look what’s going down.
–For What It’s Worth, Stephen Stills, 1966
It was nearly 30 years ago, in 1979, when Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt and John Hall founded Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) to fight against the use of nuclear power. They organized five exhilarating nights of No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden and led a rally of 200,000 people in New York’s downtown Battery Park. Their efforts helped to channel public outrage in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident and strengthen opposition to Big Nuclear Energy.
Now, as Congress considers $50 billion in new loan guarantees to the nuclear industry over the next two years (it has already received nearly $10 billion from the Bush-Cheney Energy Debacle of 2005), as well as extended federal liability insurance, Raitt, Browne, and Nash have reunited to educate the public and a new generation about “what’s going down” and advocate for a saner path. Along with Ben Harper and Keb Mo, the original No Nukes crowd cut a new music video based on Stephen Stills’ For What It’s Worth that links to a petition against the massive nuclear industry handout.
On Monday night, the musicians joined their MUSE co-founder — now Congressman John Hall– and performed for lawmakers who will be debating this critical Energy Bill that is intended to set us on a greener course. Tuesday, they were back on Capitol Hill lobbying against a “virtual blank check from taxpayers” to build new nuclear plants.
While Big Nuclear is touting a self-proclaimed “nuclear renaissance” and promoting the myth that nuclear energy will solve our climate change crisis, MUSE co-founder and Freepress.org/NukeFree.org editor, Harvey Wasserman, explains the top three reasons to oppose the “Nuclear Bailout” in this video. (A more extensive post by Wasserman on reasons for opposition is here).
In a nutshell, after fifty years since the first reactor was built in 1957, nuclear plants can’t pay for themselves. Wall Street doesn’t want anything to do with them –exorbitant cost overruns and construction problems continue to plague them — so the industry is looking to Congress to foot the bill. Secondly, the risk of a terrorist attack — or human error — at these facilities is so great that the industry can’t even get private insurance so, again, it looks to government to limit liability in case of a major accident. Finally, there is no safe way of dealing with high-level nuclear waste. Despite $11 billion public dollars spent on Yucca Mountain, there are still too many unanswered questions about how to safely contain waste that must be isolated for at least tens of thousands of years, if not longer– according to Jon Block, nuclear energy and climate change project manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Block concludes in a recent op-ed that “any glowing description of nuclear power’s benefits ignores serious issues of nuclear plant safety, security against sabotage and terrorist attack and waste disposal.”
As to the notion that new nuclear plants are the answer to the climate crisis, Wasserman notes that greenhouse gasses are created in the mining, milling, and enrichment of uranium fuel; and that “huge plumes of heat” are emitted directly into the air and water by the reactors.
But, most importantly, one must completely ignore the devastating risks that these monstrosities pose to the environment, as the Natural Resource Defense Council writes, “The accidental release of radioactivity, whether from a reactor accident, terrorist attack, or slow leakage of radioactive waste into the local environment, poses the risk of catastrophic harm to communities and to vital natural resources, such as underground aquifers used for irrigation and drinking water.”
Block also sees far better options than the nuclear one: “The most sensible strategy to reduce global warming is to quickly deploy the cleanest, fastest, lowest risk solutions first. Conservation and increased efficiency by energy producers and consumers are the cheapest and quickest measures by far. Likewise, a wide range of renewable energy resources, including wind, solar, geothermal and tidal power, have enormous potential and are inherently safe-and they would encourage economic development.”
Thirty years after MUSE raised public-consciousness about the atomic madness of the 70’s, it’s good to see them back on the job fighting an absurd and illogical nuclear bailout in 2007. Like the song still says, “Stop– everybody look what’s going down.” Don’t accept the latest giveaway to corporate lobbyists, sign the petition today.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.
© 2007 The Nation
From the standpoint of our “homeland security” (our real security, not the Department of…), it’s hard to ignore the reality that the more nuclear things we have in the “homeland”, the more tempting targets there are to be dreamt about by would-be terrorists.
AMORY LOVINS
See his work on alternative energy from the supply and demand side. It puts nuclear in the dust on a cost-effective basis - not even close - an economic loser in every way except to continue running the existing plants.
Ironically, much of his work was done for the Dept of Defense, perhaps to compare the cost of securing foreign oil versus the alternatives.
One area where most of the alternatives stand out is understated - their high divisibility avoids great financial risks, unlike indivisible nuclear plants with huge sunk costs. Divisibility and diversity mean the supply chain is highly flexible and can change readily under conditions of uncertainty.
The cost of “distributed generation” from alternative sources coupled with serious demand-side management (managing energy use) can be jaw-dropping when listening to one of his lectures.
The main criticism from the energy industry is that Lovins works from the long, not short range, which makes his estimates look good, i.e. it’s not cost-effective to tear down walls just to make them thicker, etc.
Exactly, designing that house right the first time can easily cut the energy bill in half. And that’s what they’re doing with nuclear, planning entire, new units via the climate change threat - representing exactly the long-term cost Lovins proves repeatedly are not cost-effective by any stretch of the imagination.
NOW is the time NOT to build more nuclear.
This is not tree-hugger talk, it’s Wall Street all the way. As Lovins says, if they’d just let the free competitive market they keep talking about out of the closet, nukes and fossil sourced energy would quickly lose ground to the alternatives.
“or slow leakage of radioactive waste into the local environment”…
Folks, I know you may not believe me but I’ll say it and explain:
Undetected nuclear radiation is leaking out into the atmosphere at high amounts, threatening all lifestreams on this planet. Nuclear Plants MUST BE SHUT DOWN IMMEDIATELY! No question.
The radiation is on finer, subtler levels called the “etheric” planes of matter.
If you don’t believe this, there are still other reasons to be frightened about the idea of building more plants. But do some research on Wilhelm Reich’s 1930’s Orgone Accumulator. The US FDA found out he had a cure for cancer, using “orgone energy” (aka etheric energy). The FDA seized his experiments and locked Reich in prison where he then spent the rest of his life.
Few people know about this.
Scientists must understand there is more going on. And we need an update to the 1950’s Geiger Counters, a very crude instrument that cannot adequately detect the etheric radiation.
We have an all out push for nuclear energy but deny that right to other countries. Something is wrong with this picture.
what’s it going to take aside from armageddon for society to back off from it’s energy gluttony. Getting back to simplicity is something that should have started 30 to 40 years ago. I’m sure everyone here is playing some small part in reducing personal over dependency.
I believe that part of our disgust at the current situation is our own participation with it. In general we are all so plugged in to that which we are protesting, that we run the risk of a double standard. The energy I use to work on this computer comes from where? Probably in part from a nuclear plant.
If a power plant were to be built down by the river in the vicinity of your home, if you had fought against it and failed, it might be wise to move.
DEATH, CANCER, TERROR, THREE MILE ISLAND, CANCER, TERROR, CANCER, TERROR, CHERNOBYL, DEATH, CANCER, TERROR, DEATH, CANCER, TERROR, HIROSHIMA, DEATH, CANCER, TERROR, DEATH, CANCER, TERROR NAGASAKI, CANCER, DEATH, TERROR.
THINK ABOUT IT! DO YOU WANT MORE OF THIS?!?
geoff29,
I’ve tried to address that problem in another thread here on CD. The crux of the problem with nuclear is that it a plan can materialize like that in the first place. As a non-locally regulated form of energy, the decision on when/where to build plants in their heydey was committed by politicians who never really had to answer to locals. Imagine if our society, in general, operated that way. That is, locals, activist groups, local politicians, etc. had no genuine power whatsoever — whatever someone in a high castle decreed from on high was the law of the land.
Arguably worse than their expense, danger, total lack of efficiency from a TCO cost-analysis, etc.: even if they were to run perfectly well, they cannot be community administered, run by a local co-operative, cannot translate to a technology that a homeowner might put on his own property (solar, wind, concievably hydrogen power plants). They’re an inherrently dictatorial technology, and this is why Bush adores them so much. I also find it interesting that GE and Westinghouse both own/owned television networks.
Paul,
You’d never get the permits to build your own home using solar and wind power (and self composting toilets) unless you were extremely well off. So, many of us feel that there’s really nothing left it’s already been taken away as you describe.
Instead what you get is conformity. If you conform, if you wear the shirt with the company logo, if are “on board” with whatever the current trendy idea is, you can own that getaway cottage in rural west virginia for the time being while fuel is still cheap and your job is holding out.
Little boxes on a hillside filled with ticky-tacky.
Everything is being done to keep it that way.
geoff: If we could divide the nuclear subsidy and give that money/guarantee to American households instead, I bet we could do just that. Solar panels on virtually every rooftop and a community-owned windmill or two could easily offset that 15% or so for which we rely on nuclear.
Think of it as the “single payer” solution to energy. Not a 100% solution by any means. But probably enough to wean us off the radioactive teat.
Imagine if our society, in general, operated that way. That is, locals, activist groups, local politicians, etc. had no genuine power whatsoever — whatever someone in a high castle decreed from on high was the law of the land.
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OT, but FWIW this describes the process for opening casinos in Philadelphia. I’m pretty sure that “casino” is Italian for “cash cow”, a lucrative revenue stream that can’t start spewing soon enough for the governor– and those who enjoy gambling, of course. The nominal bottom-up feedback, and the views and influence of neighborhood activists and local politicians, take a distant back seat to the pro-casino state politicians, corporate PR spinners, and casino boosters pushing a win-win scenario all around: the sooner up and running, the sooner the places fill with delighted customers; the sooner profits and revenue start pouring in, the sooner the neighborhood residents will have jobs, jobs, jobs.
The details will sort themselves out.
“Nuclear Power” is a misnomer, something that sounds like something that it is not.
Water and wind turn turbines and generators that directly produce power, solar cells directly turn sunshine into electricity — in these cases we can correctly speak of water, wind and solar energy.
Coal, oil and nuke generate heat to generate steam that indirectly drive the turbines that make electricity. Therefore we speak of coal- and oil-fuled power plants. That we speak of nuclear power plants is a sales pitch for what is basically a primitive power source!
Coal, oil and natural gas have a certain advantage over nuke in that they are part of the livin cycle sustained by sunshine. Nuke is something else, star ashes, and has nothing to do with the cycles of energy of a living planet.
Or to put it in a way a toad could understand: uranium and the trans-uranium elements are all death metals.
50 Billion dollars could put solar cells and small windmills on every roof and make us all energy independent. The oligarchy’s goal is power centralization.
I don’t know if 50 billion could put solar cells that would do the job on every home in America. My calculator won’t do billions so can anyone tell me how much per household that works out to be. I know that when I lived in Washington State it took a hell of a lot of solar panels to make a house run (and remember, all those lead batteries is a problem, making and disposing of them). I lived on the Straight of Juan de Fuca and thought I had enough wind to run a windmill (the wind howled around my house in the winter and it was too cold and windy to sit on the deck in the summer, but guess what, the windmill people told me “not enough wind”.
There is a lot of momentum for nuclear energy since it is being used successfully in a lot of Countries. As I read the news I think the public is getting cozy with it also especially when oil is $90+ a barrel and they might get cozier after seeing their utility bill this winter.
Barn Burner: $50 billion is just what Congress is going to fund right now. To get a more comprehensive figure you’d need to combine perhaps the subsidies of the past 30-40 years, money wasted on Yucca Mt. research, storage costs for the next several thousand years, etc.
To clarify, I was suggesting not a 100% offset, just a mere 15% offset. That’s the magic figure, or thereabouts, for which the US relies on nuclear energy. It is reasonable to argue that we could rely on solar/wind for an additional 15% instead and probably — with a national/concerted effort — conserve another 15%. No nukes required, and less coal as well. I think it’s a reasonable goal, within spitting distance considering that we consume the world’s lion share of energy as it currently stands.
Nucular, as W puts it, oil as Cheney wants it and coal, as the coal miners daughter laments about, are not the real solutions to our energy needs. There are a few renewable, non polluting, and CO2 free ways for us to create energy that we all need.
1. Solar power. The creator of this universe gave us unlimited energy from the star we orbit. The amount of energy the sun emits is enormous. We need to gather and collect it. Solar panels and mirrors refocusing that energey back into a turbine can create a huge energy potential. No CO2 is a by-product.
2. Wind power. The wind cries Mary. There is wind in just about every spot on this planet. Why? because of the suns solar energy creating different temperatures that cause a wind pattern. There are places that no one wants to live, but and because, of the wind patterns. Wind turbines create a little CO2 affect, during manufacturing, but not in their use.
3. Tidal energy. The moon causes the seas to rise and fall twice daily. The mass of the weight of water flowing in and out is also a huge potential that is untapped. CO2 is not involved except for the productions costs.
4. Space solar. Sunlight/starlight from our star the sun, can be more concentrated if collected in space. There is no dilution of energy above the atmosphere. Convert that energy to microwaves, transmit to the earth, and convert to electricity. There may be some em problems, but send it to a remote receiver.
We need more non-polluting sources of energy. We/USA seem to be hell bent for destruction on controlling and gaining carbon resources. Lets take that attitude and direct it towards non carbon solutions. Make war on carbon, not war on……whatever the current blah, blah, blah…is.
Nuclear energy ia an unmitigated fiasco from the destructive and deadly mining process the depletion of fuel grade ore - the unsolveable dangers of waste transportation and storage - the basic nonsense of the equation of energy inputs to energy outputs of wasteful production of electricity from nuclear. Germany with its near artic winters and limited full sun days is achiving its goal of 20% of total electricity from solar by 2020 through a program of well thought out government subsidies. The US has had the knowledge and skills to surpass this German model for the last 25 years. So the question is why are we allowing our government to repeat the falsehood that subsidies for the failed nuclear industry are sound energy policy while subsidies to make solar production economicly viable is pie in the sky socialism?
Al Gore’s book - Inconvenient Truth - was the tool that pried open the nuclear energy coffin and voila! Nuke energy isn’t dead at all, just patiently waiting for the time to ripen.
Mr. Gore, as well as his father before him, befriended and supported the nuclear industry. They really do believe nuke energy is the way to go. They’re of the opinion that science will always find a solution to any nasty side effect.
I’m very cynical about Gore and his role here. He’s a very rich man, he has very rich friends, and very rich tastes (like becoming even richer). He received from the league of Conservation Voters a lifetime score of 68% ( A “D” grade).
Go figure.
Barn Burner said:
“and remember, all those lead batteries is a problem, making and disposing of them)”
We won’t need batteries because we’ll be connected to the grid. Find out how we can meet all our energy needs with clean energy and no nukes. Lots of information online and here on previous postings. Welcome to the forum.
It is unfortunate that most of these thoughtful activists/musicians didn’t raise the alarm when Pete Domenici was muscling his National Energy Policy Act of 2005 through Congress. It forms the foundation for what nuclear supporters are selling as this “revival” of nuclear power. Bottom line, nuclear power never has been economically viable if subsidies and the indemnification provided by the Price-Anderson Act are removed. Mr. Bush’s unwillingness to ask American’s to actually pay for his policies actually helps us here. We are ill advised to waste money on boondoggle projects.