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Hidden Nuclear Handout Seen in Climate Bill
NEW YORK - Major environmental groups are up in arms against attempts in the U.S. Senate to pass a bill that they believe includes a thinly-veiled attempt to promote the interests of the nuclear industry under the guise of climate protection.
"This is a covert attempt to bolster a failing nuclear power industry in the name of addressing climate change," said Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, an environmental group opposed to the use of nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuel-based energy sources.
The climate change bill, sponsored by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. John Warner (R-VA), is likely to be discussed by the Senate in the next few weeks.
In a statement, Blackwelder and leaders of five other environmental organizations and public interest groups described the Lieberman-Warner bill as "the biggest federal handout in the history of the nuclear industry over the past 50 years."
They fear that, if approved, the bill would not only cost billions of dollars to U.S. taxpayers in subsidies for the nuclear industry, but would also slow down efforts to fight climate change and its adverse impacts on the national economy and the environment.
"The bill contains nearly half a trillion dollars that can be accessed by the nuclear energy industry under a vaguely entitled category for 'zero and low carbon energy technologies,'" according to FoE.
Because funding for renewable energy like solar and wind is identified separately in the bill, critics say it the so-called "zero and low carbon energy technologies" category is clearly meant for the construction of nuclear plants.
"It's significant that the authors of the bill tried to conceal the nuclear funding under ambiguous language," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, a Washington, DC-based advocacy group. "Why are they hiding? Because the environmental movement in this country is serious about addressing climate change and will not tolerate a reversion to dangerous, dirty, and expensive nuclear energy."
Environmental groups have repeatedly warned against reversion to nuclear energy use because nuclear reactors are considered dangerous and extremely expensive, take many years to build, require massive amounts of government funding, and produce toxic waste that cannot be safely disposed of for hundreds of years.
The George W. Bush administration has continued to assert, however, that increased use of nuclear energy is safe and lessens reliance on fossil fuels.
In their joint statement, environmental groups reiterated their criticism of such views and held that other than enriching the nuclear industry, the Lieberman-Warner bill does not adequately address the rising levels of carbon emissions and the dangers posed by climate changes.
"After 50 years of unresolved safety and waste disposal issues, it perplexes many Americans why Congress would support massive subsidies for the nuclear industry," said John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA.
To Passacantando, the nuclear industry is "a dirty and dangerous distraction" from real global warming solutions. "When both Wall Street and Warren Buffet think nuclear is a risky investment," he said, "Congress should not waste American tax dollars to further subsidize this 1950s technology."
In criticizing the Lieberman-Warner bill, Sandra Schubert, an activist with the Environmental Working Group, argued there was little support for nuclear energy outside of its own industry because the technology has never been "financially or environmentally viable."
In the coming days and weeks, activists plans to turn the heat up on senators who are supporting or undecided on the provisions of the bill that say would support the nuclear industry.
© 2008 One World.net
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69 Comments so far
Show AllWow! Half a trillion dollars is getting close to some real money.
Rather than opposing the bill itself, maybe the strategy should be to get its definition clause for "zero and low carbon energy technologies" revised. That kind of funding could provide quite a boost for some real improvements.
This bill is just another sneaky attempt to provide big money to the nuclear industry and promote continued rapid growth. No matter how the nuclear industry promotes it, nuclear power generation is NOT a solution to our problems.
It's the waste, stupid!
Light pollution currently cloaks the night sky over 70% of America. One thing we don't need is more easily available, cheap, nuclear generated electricity to illuminate more empty buildings at night and destroy the last few remaining areas of America where dark skies still exist and the magnificent Milky Way is still visible.
Seventy percent of the current nighttime lights are unnecessary. We could permanently turn them off, save billions of dollars per year, live quite safely, and conserve vast deposits of fossil fuel here in America and elsewhere.
Please see my solution to light pollution and ways to stop poisoning our night sky with wasteful light pollution.
http://www.darkskyinitiative.org
Wind and Solar power could use that money. Way safer and less expensive environmentally than potentially nuking ourselves with another shoddily maintained nuclear power plant.
This bill is just another sneaky attempt to provide big money to the nuclear industry and promote continued rapid growth. No matter how the nuclear industry promotes it, nuclear power generation is NOT a solution to our problems.
It's the waste, stupid!
Light pollution currently cloaks the night sky over 70% of America. One thing we don't need is more easily available, cheap, nuclear generated electricity to illuminate more empty buildings at night and destroy the last few remaining areas of America where dark skies still exist and the magnificent Milky Way is still visible.
Seventy percent of the current nighttime lights are unnecessary. We could permanently turn them off, save billions of dollars per year, live safely, and conserve vast deposits of fossil fuel here in America and elsewhere.
Please see my solution to light pollution and ways to stop poisoning our night sky with wasteful light pollution.
http://www.darkskyinitiative.org
Phone or email your two senators NOW and tell them to vote AGAINST the Lieberman-Warner Bill (S. 2191) that will be voted upon next week. If you don't know your senators' phone numbers phone the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121.
Not only will this bill divert funding from renewable energy development, it will create a huge disincentive for investment in renewable energy. Would you invest in renewable energy production knowing that its competition will benefit from a half a trillion dollars of corporate welfare ? No you wouldn't, and neither will anyone else.
My concerns are not theoretical or academic. I am an investor in renewable energy production. If this bill passes, I will no longer invest in renewable energy production.
The money is allocated, it's there; it's just going to the wrong place.
Half a trillion dollars will make a lot of NUCLEAR WASTE!
"a thinly-veiled attempt to promote the interests of the nuclear industry under the guise of climate protection."
Excuse me, but encouraging nuclear power as an alternative to coal IS climate protection.
Maybe you're against nuclear power for other reasons, but just for the sake of argument, can't you at least admit that if (hypothetically) there were no problems with safety, waste disposal, terrorism and proliferation, nuclear as an alternative to coal would make sense as anti-global warming policy? If you can't admit that, well, there is no point in arguing with you, I guess. But anyway, some of us don't think the safety, waste, security and proliferation problems are necessarily unmanageable, and are worried about energy and global warming, and hence do support the idea that nuclear should be part of the solution.
No need to veil that, I think.
Fossil fuel industries have been making obscene amounts of money and becoming ever more powerful over the last few years while the nuclear industry has languished. So when Wall Street takes an anti nuclear approach it doesn't mean they are correct in any environmental sense, it's just typical support for their darling fossil fuel industry, and typical of the ongoing trend in which the powerful become more powerful, still.
The government constantly pours money into the worst, most destructive industries--logging, coal, oil, automotive, etc. While nuclear energy is far from perfect, it is much cleaner and releases much less carbon than coal and oil.
Wind and solar are better, but there is massive resistance to energy sources that are not proprietary. Such is the sad reality.
@Mark Abram -- Agreed, Mark. While there are unquestionably valid concerns about using nuclear plants to produce electricity, there does also seem to be a large element of "political correctness" involved.
No question, if a bill is sponsored Sen. Joseph Lieberman or Sen. John Warner then, of course, its good for a small number of wealthy donors to those senator and bad for the country and everybody else.
Mark and J Stevens, This is about a massive propaganda campaign to convince us of the things you write about. That nuclear is "greener" then coal. Why coal? Why don't they compare it to wind or wave or solar? Why don't they tell us about the massive amounts of fluorocarbons emitted in the filthy process of enrichment? Or the horrible consequences of mining? Or the impossible task of waste storage and the decommissioning costs and risks? Or the terror risks?
This propaganda campaign is an attempt to stick the greedy snout of the nuclear industry deeper into the Federal trough. They are ripping us off. If it's so safe, we shouldn't need to insure it through Price Anderson. If it's so inexpensive we shouldn't need to subsidize the research, mining, enrichment, construction, insurance, decommissioning, and of course the waste storage.
Of course it's cheap. We are picking up the bill.
Don't forget. We have to go to war against one country (Iran - but not really) because the Ford administration sold them a nuclear power plant. Meanwhile the Bush administration is busy selling them to Saudi Arabia and India. This is a huge scam.
Please stop writing posts that simply repeat the industry propaganda.
nukes = corporate profits + cancer forever = dead planet
You can of course call your Senators. But if you really want to change this you better be planning to 'out-bribe' the nuclear industry.
Yes, the nuclear industry is trying to use concerns about global warming to revive their dead-duck of an industry. So yes, you'll see their bought-off shills in the Senate trying to use a popular bill to fight global warming as a back door attempt to funnel money to the people who've bribed them.
The answer of course is to back up a step and look for energy sources that are the most environmentally friendly. Thus while wind, solar and nuclear are all 'zero-carbon', if you back up and look at the bigger picture of overall environmental impacts and risks, its clear that there are big differences between them.
So of course the nuclear power industry people will want to focus only on the argument that the need is for 'zero-carbon' energy sources, and ignore the bigger picture issues like what do you do with radioactive waste that we remain deadly for tens of thousands of years.
When you build a solar power source, no one needs to worry about how to warn people 5000 years from now that this might be the most deadly site on the earth.
Coal and oil replaced by nuclear? This seems to be a perfect example of "out of the frying pan into the fire."
Whether nuclear is "greener" than coal is either a purely ideological/religious question, or else depends on whether the safety, security, and waste issues are manageable.
What is objectively true is that coal is the most carbon-prolific energy source whereas nuclear is essentially carbon-free (comparable to wind or solar, which are not absolutely carbon-free either).
Comparing nuclear to coal and leaving out "renewables" is appropriate because for new or replacement gigawatt generating plants today, in general the three available choices are coal, gas and nuclear. Gas is increasingly limited, expensive, supplies uncertain, and needed as a home heating and transportation fuel. That leaves a choice between coal and nuclear. Sometimes part of the demand can be satisfied by wind, and in the future solar will be a competitive alternative. But if you need a gigawatt of day/night, all-weather electricity, you basically have to choose between ordering a coal plant and a nuke. Those are the real world alternatives that are available today.
I would describe the article here as a thinly-veiled attempt to disguise anti-nuclear political correctness as muckraking, premised on the pretense that the subset of "environmentalists" who are also committed to an anti-nuke posture somehow own the climate change issue.
Many of us who hold progressive values and are deeply concerned about global warming, pollution, and other issues also understand that over the next 10-30 years either coal burning and hence carbon emissions will greatly expand, or else nuclear power will greatly expand. That is a choice that has to be made.
Whereas expanded nuclear power will cause local and regional catastrophes only if people screw up, expanded (or just not drastically reduced) coal burning will cause global catastrophe with total certainty.
glenn goodman, you are merely repeating the propaganda of another industry. Environmentalists brought nuclear capacity to a halt, yet have done nothing about coal. Believe me, the coal CEO's have had a thirty year snicker over that one. As a result, CO-2 levels are out of control, fish are loaded with mercury, autism is rampant, air quality pathetic, and the planet is all but doomed.
At the root of the problem is that the complexity of nuclear power allows its potential dangers to be so grossly exaggerated that we worry about what could happen (with nuclear) to the complete exclusion of what is happening (with fossil fuels).
Why is it that the worst energy source is the most prolific? New coal plants are going up all over the world with barely a whimper of protest.
I would love to see a combination of conservation, wind power and solar power solve our environmental problems, but the fact that these measures do not allow for exploitation by powerful and corrupt industries means there is such resistance that change won't happen in time.
Let the nuclear power people get filthy rich providing an inferior energy source. That stinks, but it is better than letting the fossil fuel industry get filthy rich for the absolute worst energy source while the planet draws its last breaths.
glenn goodman May 27th, 2008 1:35 pm -- "Please stop writing posts that simply repeat the industry propaganda."
How does that dismissive characterization of somebody's differing viewpoint help your arguement? Whether you realise it or not, it actually tends to support Mark Abram's underlying point about some aspects of the debate itself.
_
P.S.: For the record, I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the "pro-nuclear club". I just happen to think that our currently available practical options are limited. But I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.
What's the problem? Has our Pentagram depleted it's arsonal of Depleted Uranium that it uses on the world's children? Is there a danger that America might actually Leave One Child Behind?
this is yet another gargantuan hand-out to an industry that can't get private funding, can't deal with its waste, can't compete in the market and will only make global warming worse. this bill, and all other hand-outs to the nuke power industry, must be stopped. see us at www.nukefree.org.
harvey wasserman.
it amazes me that virtually none of the articles on nuclear power published in the US talk about breeder reactors. this is an area like education: we are falling behind and are already paying dearly for our foolishness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
Too many of you posters have turned this into an argument on the virtues of nuclear power. The real issue is: does a sixty year old industry that the world's most successful investors won't invest in deserve unprecedented amounts of taxpayer-funded subsidies ?
A half a trillion bucks invested in developing solar, wind, wave and geothermal would likely result in 100% of power production from renewables.
Nuke industry propaganda portrays renewables as being limited to photovoltaic arrays and wind turbines. There are a number of other superior renewable technologies being developed such as thermal solar that have the potential to deliver more power than current methods. Geothermal is another technology that can be further developed.
All of these technologies will stop being developed if S. 2191 passes. No other power source will be able to compete with corporate welfare on that scale.
I am not trying to be dismissive or disrespectful of anyone. I am however very distressed to see so many people falling for this PR campaign to paint nuclear as green. (It is really just a money grab). Nuclear is about a third as green as coal - if all goes well! If all doesn't go well it is the most destructive force imaginable. And why do we let them compare themselves with coal? How do they compare with wind? Very badly.
Investment people will not touch nuclear. Insurance people will not touch nuclear. If the lies they are telling us are true, then it shouldn't need our tax money to survive.
The real problem with power is regulatory. If we forced power monopolies to pay a fair price for our excess from wind and solar, we could solve most of our power problem much as Denmark has done. There people buy big wind generators and sell back the excess at a fair price. Here the power companies won't pay it because it threatens their monopoly and they don't have to.
Any so called solution should come after regulations that favor us instead of the companies, and after the nuclear industry is off welfare.
Mark and others who seem to insist nuclear is the way to go:
Look, to adequately discuss the essence of this issue would take more time than I have to write and we all have to read. Let me just point out--with no mean-spiritedness intended--that your comments are like so many others I've read here on Common Dreams over the last 5 years; the result of not thinking an issue through in any detail. In short, you're not likely looking at or seeing the big picture, just individual little pieces of the puzzle. That's fine, but at some point we need to see the whole picture. No puzzle can be completed by looking at a few pieces and ignoring all the other pieces.
Generating energy using any source of fuel, whether carbon-rich or not, is much more complex than most people are willing to admit they fully understand. And no simple, few-hundred-word comment here can explain what I'm trying to say appropriately.
In short, there is no "silver bullet" solution to keeping the human species living at the level we Americans are currently living and have been living most of my 60-plus year lifetime. The only way we can hope to survive our own extinction is to grow up, mature, and realize that we must live according to Earth's agenda, not ours. And that means we must see Earth as "the decider," not us!
Neither coal, gas, oil, nuclear, wind, wave, solar, nor any other source of fuel / energy will allow our species to continue our out-of-control party on planet Earth.
Earth aches deeply, and it is calling out to us loudly and clearly that we must change our ways sooner than later or it will do to us what it has done to at least 99% of the species before us--Extinction!
Every form or source of fuel used to generate energy requires huge human input and money input before it becomes a large-scale enterprise. From prospecting to refinement (yes, even solar) to construction to constant maintenance to eventual decommissioning and deconstruction, no fuel source--no, not even solar--is totally carbon-free or even carbon-neutral. The laws of physics and the laws of geology simply won't allow such simplicity to exist.
I am not pro- or anti- any "way to go." But I am pro-Earth all the way. Having studied Earth and the Cosmos all my life, I deeply and passionately believe that Earth and the universe surrounding it have "learned" (evolved, if you will) to do what they do better than we, the so-called intelligent one, have in our very short span of time here.
We are capable of learning soon how to control ourselves or be kicked off this magnificent rock. Earth is in control here, folks, not us! It's time our species grow beyond our infancy and mature, able to see the BIG picture view of ourselves and the Cosmos we are a very small part of, or we ar...........
http://www.darkskyinitiative.org
CD F$$K YOU FOR MODERATION AGAIN, HOW MANY PEOPLE FROM THE DEPARTMENT ARE MODERATING THIS GD SITE NOW!!!!!!
I have said this and others as well. If it was a level playing field for green and non green electric generating wind and solar and wave ETC would be #1 in the country.
PHONE YOUR ELECTED OFFICIAL AND TELL HIM NOT TO VOTE FOR IT OR ANY OTHER BILL LIKE THIS. GET OFF YOUR ASS PEOPLE
Stargeezer's observation that nuke industry propaganda has successfully harnessed the "silver bullet" is key.
The most successful advertising campaigns (election campaigns are one sub set) provide a simplified answer to a complex question. That answer is often called a "silver bullet".
Its hard to challenge a silver bullet because people turn off when you address reality and bring up the facts. They hate to see the facts get in the way of a good story.
@glenn goodman: Good explanation of your position, glenn. And I certainly agree that any assessment, whether financial, regulatory, or otherwise, needs to be based on a "level playing field". That's more or less what I had in mind in my original posting about the need to focus on the definitive elegibility provisions of this or any other bill. The tricky part seems to be agreeing on specific "greeness" factors and on how much "weighting" should be assigned to each. I just don't think we can totally and automatically exclude nuclear power generation from the equation if it can be managed in ways that meet the criteria.
Mark, the only people who can call themselves "green" and mean it are people who realize that resources and the sinks for waste are finite on this planet and adjust accordingly. The Earth can only take so much toxins from the human industrial system before it keels over. There IS a breaking point, and nuclear waste would bring us closer. There is a finite amount of resources, so ever increasing consumption (or even keeping it where it is) is not only impossible but the more we grow beyond the sustainable point the harder the crash will be. These emissions and waste are COSTS, and our economic system from prices, national indices and the rest does not account for these costs what so ever. You can only be "green" if your lifestyle, mentality and policy choices allow the green of Earth to live on. If you consume it away, or don't question that maybe we WON'T be able to sustain our energy and resources consumption, that it isn't a given in any way, you're aren't green, you're "green". You're a marketing slogan, that's just as deadly as the non-"greens". Global warming is not the issue itself, it's part of a larger issue, the relationship of our economic system to the environment. The environment feeds the economic system with resources (without resources there is no economic system or people anyway) and the environment is a sink for our waste. CO2 emissions are just one part of that.
Arvy, seeing which source of energy works out the best in the market makes no sense. The economic system completely, 100% ignores costs in the pricing mechanism, which is something economists like Herman Daly have been articulating for decades now. Ecological costs are completely missing in national indices. Look at GDP or GNP. Where do we account for ecological costs like pollution, consumption, overconsumption, soil erosion, desertification, etc? No where! It's the equivalent of wanting to invest in a company, asking for the companies health and someone giving you only the revenues of the company, without the costs. GDP and similar indices give us the "benefits" of industrial activity and ignore the costs. There are costs created, the environment bears those costs, but they're unaccounted for in the economic system. So relying on the market to measure which energy sources to use makes no sense. The environment is ignored by our economic system and the environment is what should determine what source of energy we use. Less consumption and radically changing our economic system and social relations are options, and they need to be considered. Your lifestyle is not a given, unless you think it means more than ruining the only habitable planet we know of to this point in the universe.
I agree with Gless Goodman.
Mark Abram,
if pigs could fly your dreams might come true. The problem is pigs can't fly. Why don't you put as much energy behind backing wind and solar energy?
I have to disagree with those who think that people hate nuclear energy just because it's beautiful. There are real problems and real dangers with nuclear energy and that is why people don't like it.
Grant May 27th, 2008 5:09 pm -- "Arvy, seeing which source of energy works out the best in the market makes no sense."
I don't recall having advocated that. I'm perfectly willing to see elegibility criteria established based on "greeness" factors that take account of ecological costs. I'm also willing to make lifestyle adjustments to accomodate planetary realities. I will admit, however, that my willingness stops somewhere short of freezing in the dark.
The reactors now in the planning and permitting stage are Generation III". They will be standardized models such as "Westinghouse A1000". The new "models" will be safer to operate, easier to train operators on, harder to attack, with some cost reductions from using common designs and parts...but they still will produce high level waste.
Generation IV reactors (in 20-30 years)should include at least some reactors that can "burn" high level waste from other reactors and/or burn unrefined uranium or DU. This could expand the fuel supply to perhaps thousands of years. There would still be low level waste, similar to medical and industrial low level waste. These reactors could also produce large amounts of hydrogen from water to be used as fuel or in fuel cells. These could possibly be built on the sites of coal fired plants or the present 100 reactors that will eventually be decommisioned and simply "plugged in".
Its a way to keep the city lights on, the steel mills, trains, water works and factories going, our homes and apartments heated, and provide fuel for transportation.
I apologize. I just think that market forces are increasingly irrational and have less and less to do with actual reality. The numbers of the market are a human creation, and there is endless information missing, so looking at the market to solve a non-market problem will, in the long run, do more harm than good. I didn't mean to attack you, I just think the idea is more dangerous than people realize.
To me, one of the biggest problems, in addition to the economic system and industrial society itself, is the capitalist mindset that emerges out of it. We take for granted, or don't think about, the fact that the monetary base and economy ALWAYS expands. If it doesn't, we have recession, everyone freaks out. What does it mean though when the monetary base expands? It means that the our ability to purchase natural resources as well as to pollute more is increasing, and the ecological costs aren't even for a second considered by the Fed. They concern themselves with Wall Street and other market issues, the environment is taken for granted. Consumption growth and the differences in consumption between classes are issues, in addition to what I mentioned above, that will need to be resolved. We all aren't going to sacrifice while elites continue their run away consumption, that won't fly. Hopefully the left, myself included, organizes and educates, so people have an understanding of these issues. The sollutions to these problems sure aren't going to come from industry or the out of touch government. Their standard of living is dependant on these issues not being addressed or solved.
Would not burning high level waste be a net energy loss? From what I understand from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, once a source of energy is used there is still small amounts of energy available to do work but you would expend more energy getting to that source of energy than the energy available, being a net energy loss. How can you turn waste into energy without it being a net loss? If using waste for energy wasn't a net energy loss then why create new energy in the first place, we could just recycle the waste?
The planet will not keel over. It will survive as many nuclear catastrophies that mankind can throw at it. Nuclear catastrophe will only destroy the biological elements (including humans) that don't mutate.
I only hope that we might abandon coal for nuclear in the short term. This would buy us a little badly needed time in which we could come to grips with the concepts of finite energy, straining planet etc. Climate catastrophe is gaining up on us far faster than the public's ability to grasp it or to deal with it. Incredible but true. Our collective mental state is such that we can not grasp the concept of sacrifice or conservation quickly enough. We can grasp the concept of a different energy source. Public opinion was strong enough to halt the nuclear movement is the 70's. That is the level of fear that people need to achieve regarding fossil fuels. Enough to cause an outcry and a halt.
Wind and solar are better options, but they have existed as options for years, yet they are only now barely creeping into play. A company can make a lot more money off of something that can be controlled, like coal, than off of something that is abundant and free, like wind. Corporations decide for us now, and their power far exceeds that of politicians or presidents. So what we are left with is to fight a corporation with a corporation.
The only other hope is for individuals to install their own clean systems. You can do it, I can do it, but MOST people won't because MOST people aren't at all concerned. As someone above noted, what good will it do for a handful of people to live sustain-ably?
Grant:
There is no one on this planet that is green. Even the tribe living in the forest some place has a fire to cook food or stay warm. The second any person who lives in a house it is a foot print or turns on the stove to cook some plastic covered quick meal is making a foot print. Even a vegetarian is not green since the food they buy gets trucked in from across the country. Everyone makes a footprint and the average American if everyone lived on this planet on that level we would need almost 4 planets of resources to do it. The world as we know it is toast and it Bush starts to nuke places it will get even worse.
Here is a Q&A from EIR (my comments in parenthesis)
Q: Aren't nuclear power plants dangerous to public health?
A: In fact, there has never been any nuclear accident in the United States that has endangered the health or welfare of the public. The worst American accident, at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, in 1979, injured no one.
(and some evidence supports this was sabatage, coming on FEMA's first days of existence to discredit nuclear power so oil could be used as a weapon w/o fears of nuclear power)
Q: What about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine in 1986?
A: The severity of that accident was a function of a poor reactor design, and inadequate training of plant personnel. In the United States, oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission provides the standards for reactor design and plant operation, which has contributed to our excellent nuclear power plant safety record.
The new generation of nuclear power plant designs, already being built internationally, feature passive safety systems, which simply shut the plant down if there is an operator error or equipment failure.
By comparison, during 2006, more than 5,000 miners died in China, during the production of the more than 1 billion tons of coal that power its economy. The health of the public in China's cities is also endangered, by the pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
As far as vulnerability to "terrorist" attacks is concerned, there is no public infrastructure that is as well protected as nuclear power plants. There is no scenario under which a release of radiation (which effect in low dosages is, in any case, completely exaggerated), would significantly affect public health.
Q: What do we do with the radioactive waste from nuclear power plants?
A: There is no such thing as nuclear "waste." This is a term used in popular parlance by anti-nuclear ideologues to frighten the public, and its elected representatives. More than 95% of the fission products created in commercial power plants can be reprocessed and recycled. The spent fuel from a typical 1,000 megawatt nuclear plant, which has operated over 40 years, can produce energy equal to 130 million barrels of oil, or 37 million tons of coal.
In reprocessing, fissionable uranium-235 and plutonium are separated from the high-level fission products. The plutonium can be used to make mixed-oxide fuel, which is currently used to produce electrical power in 35 European nuclear reactors. The fissionable uranium in the spent fuel can also be reused. From the remaining 3% of high-level radioactive products, valuable medical and other isotopes can be extracted.
Q: But if the United States goes ahead now with reprocessing, doesn't making this technology available increase the risk that other nations will develop nuclear weapons?
A: No nation has ever developed a nuclear weapon from a civilian nuclear power plant. If a nation has the intention to develop nuclear weapons, it must obtain the specific technology to do so. Israel is an example of a nation that has no civilian nuclear power plants, but has developed nuclear weapons.
The nonproliferation argument—that controlling technology will reduce the risk of weapons proliferation—is an historically demonstrable false one. Nations make decisions based on their security and military requirements, not on which technologies are available.
Q: Isn't it the case that nuclear energy is more expensive than fossil, or "alternative" fuels?
A: The radical escalation in the cost of building nuclear power plants in the late 1970s and 1980s was the result of political actions, not economics. Some plants projected to cost less than $1 billion ended up costing ten times that amount, because anti-nuclear "environmentalists," and legal intervenors were given free rein, using specious and ideological arguments, to delay plant construction for years, sometimes, for decades. Where there has been no political interference, new nuclear power plants have been built in 38 months, on schedule, and on budget, such as in Japan.
(Volckers raising interest rates in response to inflation caused by high oil prices in the late 70's were responsible for much of the over budget costs in the 80's as well)
While it does require less up-front capital investment to build a gas-fired power plant than a nuclear plant, the operational cost over the 30-or-more-year lifetime of the gas plant swings heavily in favor of nuclear power. And compared to coal, the overall economy is not taxed to transport millions of tons of fuel.
So-called renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, are not only inefficient because their energy is so dispersed, (see EIR Jan. 19) for discussion of energy flux density), they are so unreliable that back-up power supplies (fossil or nuclear) must be available for any time it is not sunny or windy. So, not only do consumers bear the expense of inefficiency, the entire electric grid system pays the price of having to provide stand-by redundant power-generating capacity to ensure grid reliability.
It was determined in the 1970s, that alternative, "soft" energy sources would only be competitive with fossil and nuclear plants, when energy costs reached a $100/barrel oil-equivalent price. To bring these uneconomical sources on line before then, political decisions were made to spend $20 billion in Federal subsidies for alternative energy, while Federal expenditures for advanced nuclear technologies came to a screeching halt. It has been this irrational investment policy that has made nuclear power "expensive."
Q: How can the large capital cost of new nuclear power plants be financed?
A: The provision of reliable and affordable electricity,...is not a luxury, but a necessity. For this reason, in the 1930s, the electric utility industry was regulated by Federal and state governments, to protect consumers from financial manipulation and fraud, and to ensure that affordable power would be available to every home, farm, and factory.
The deregulation of the U.S. utility industry, beginning in the early 1990s, has nearly destroyed an electrical energy system that was the envy of the world. Utility companies must have access to low-interest, long-term credit, assurance from government regulators and policy-makers that "environmental" sabotage and delay will not be tolerated; and that a crash effort will be made to rebuild the nuclear manufacturing industry, which has nearly disappeared. These must be approached as a national policy, not dependent upon Wall Street financiers, but by directing resources into infrastructure through fiscal policy.
Q: But the immediate energy crisis is our dependence upon petroleum. How does nuclear energy alleviate that problem?
A: In two ways. In the long term, the only sensible and renewable replacement for petroleum-based liquid fuels is hydrogen. When next-generation, high-temperature nuclear fission reactors (which are under development now in South Africa and China) come on line, splitting water into its constituents elements will make hydrogen available as a versatile and universally available transportation fuel.
In the near term, petroleum consumption could be dramatically reduced through large-scale investment in mass transit and rail. Our decrepit diesel-fueled rail system should be electrified. Half of the nation's truck-hauled freight should be taken off the road and put on the rails. Millions of miles, and hours, of commuters driving automobiles should be eliminated, by using public transportation. A crash program to build conventional intra-city commuter trains, and magnetic levitation (maglev) systems for inter-city transport, would replace finite and polluting fossil fuel-based transport with nuclear power.
(yeah, infrastructure development that could be financed by government printing it's own debt free money that would reduce our dependence on oil. Might even be used to fix some of the bridges before they collapse)
Bush Killed Kermit with a cherry bomb firecracker Billy, then he put the remains in a blender on high speed.
What's red and green and goes 200 miles an hour?
Seriously Billy, heres a link about radiation hazards you should enjoy. Well, actually it kind of scares one from even considering the stupidity of atomic power plants. Maybe you'd rather not read it.
I will say and totally agree with ~Jstevens~ that burning Coal is our worst enemy, but with far less than half a trillion dollars, we could have true clean enegy and more than we'd ever need or use. By doing that, we'd create millions of good paying jobs and not lose any of the luxuries we currently enjoy.
http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html
Dang it, not sure that link is going to open now. Upp, it opens, great.
~Hi ~EVERYONE~ That link I just posted is ___ ("super duper")___. A story of what happened at "Cherry Nobel" and what the entire huge miles wide area is like now and will be for the next 600+ years. Beautiful useless farmland and it's nice and quiet with no traffic. There are dozens of color photos and the story from a young lady who rode her motorcycle all the way through the "DEAD ZONE".
Now someone may explain that we don't have any of those type reactors and that's true. We do have (104) nuclear power plants operating in the United states and there has never in the history of mankind been anything man made that didn't eventually fail, or is subject to do so. ___NOTHING.___ Then add in the possibility of human error. Dear me, you ever seen any human errors?
This is one of her comments as she enters the Dead Zone.
"As I pass through the check point, I feel I have entered an unreal world. In the Dead Zone the silence of the villages, roads, and woods seem to tell somethng to me.... something that I strain to hear.... something that attracts me and repels me both at the same time. It is devinely eerie__like stepping into that Salvador Dali painting with the dripping clocks."
A truely wonderful story and she refuses to sell it, or to accept any money for it. She only desires all of humanity fully understands what nuclear power is capable of.
Hi,
Lyndon Larouche follower MiMiCcS can't help it, keeps re-posting the same items...
Here's just one absurd statement from the Larouche propaganda that MiMiCcS is regurgitating above: "So-called renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, are not only inefficient because their energy is so dispersed, (see EIR Jan. 19) for discussion of energy flux density), they are so unreliable that back-up power supplies (fossil or nuclear) must be available for any time it is not sunny or windy. So, not only do consumers bear the expense of inefficiency, the entire electric grid system pays the price of having to provide stand-by redundant power-generating capacity to ensure grid reliability."
Actually, plenty of solutions already exist to the so-called unreliability of wind and solar, simple methods of storing the energy for dispersal when the grid can use it. And of course, with an investment of half-a-trillion dollars, further technical advances will be made. Hard to believe that such a technophilic bunch as the Larouchites would claim (with a straight face) that there is no way to make effective use of wind and solar energy.
Of course, they don't really believe that, they just prefer to bamboozle everyone to fall for massively expensive, dangerous, and centralized power systems that require a huge security apparatus and maintain dependency of the mass of people on the centralized institutions.
Webwalk:
I guess they forgot about wave and the Gulf stream or hydro electric that run 24/7.
I knew this guy who had a stream running through his property. He built a floating 12 volt generator that was attached up stream on each side of the stream by ropes. This was if the water level went up or down it didn't affect his little power plant. Batteries, a Inverter ( changes 12 to 120 volt) and he was off the grid. It ran 24/7/365 and low maintenance.
Looking at the energy options, we seem to have this:
1) From the Corporate point of view, if an option does not lend itself to creating a real profit center, then there is no interest;
2) Also from the Corporate point of view, if development of an option does not require a huge government subsidy for the heavily centralized construction of plant and equipment, then there is no interest; (worse than that, there is HUGE interest in investing money in public relations campaigns to "reeducate" the public and sell them on the virtues of the option that WILL generate those government subsidies).
3) From the Congressman's point of view, if the corporations are not interested, there is no opportunity for those massive political donations (aka BRIBES) that are badly needed to win major elections, so the Congressman is not interested.
So, we (the Public) are bombarded with propaganda AGAINST using renewables. (wind, solar, reuse of biomass, etc.)
Take a look at what Germany has been doing for about half a century to provide heating for at least some of its cities.
Also take a look at the materials provided by a consumer owned electric utility in a mostly rural section of Oregon. Google: Emerald Peoples Utility District. They provide lots of information. Check out their experiment dubbed "Short Mountain." I am glad I live within that district.
I might mention that Obama gets his largest donations from the Nuclear Power Industry. That is why I could never support him for President. I can't support Clinton or McCain either, but the reasons are different.
MiMicCcS Q&A post that expounded on the virtues of nuclear power omitted the simplest and most important question of all:
If nuclear power IS indeed the greatest thing since sliced bread, why haven't private investors been pouring money into it, why haven't private insurers been lining up to insure it, and why is it going to take boatloads of taxpayer subsidies to convince anybody to invest in it and even more taxpayer money to insure it ????
to those that argue that wind, solar, and others cannot meet the load, that is true, for now. But with 500 billion dollars i can't imagine that those techs can't rise to the challenge of Americas energy needs.
Just called all my Reps to say that this bill is radioactive, DONT TOUCH IT!!!!!
In the future I see ahead of us, power (government power and the generation of electricity, two very different uses of the word ("power") will need to be decentralized. LOCAL control will be essential. Moving quickly toward using a variety of renewables to generate electricity HAS to be where we must go. The whole country does not have to be locked in to a giant power grid. (Remember Enron?)
The public needs to re-educate itself.
andersdl: I think Billy answered that question indirectly by stating that coal is the cheapest energy source.
Following TMI, there has been a fear surrounding nuclear power that I believe is greatly overblown. The market, the public, the insurance companies etc. react to that fear and nuclear power is priced accordingly. I think it is time to re-examine the actual risk and in perspective with the risk of our other energy sources.
The best source may be Geo-thermal, even though Billy disagrees and wave and tidal are two other excellent options. Combine those with solar and wind and we don't need coal fired or nuclear at all. With a small percentage of tax dollars we give nuclear we could have ample clean energy and we'd better do it.
Billy, where are you? Did you slash your wrists again or have a stroke?