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Obama Faces Hungry Nuclear Industry
At least 31 new plants have been proposed throughout the United States, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) website. Twenty-six of these are already going through the NRC's environmental impact review and site approval process.
Obama has included reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil and promoting alternative energies as key components of his campaign platform.
'I will set a clear goal as president,' he said in his Democratic nomination acceptance speech. 'I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power.' He added that he would also use solar, wind, biofuels, and water as sources of energy.
'Nuclear power represents more than 70 percent of our non-carbon generated electricity. It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power as an option,' Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden wrote in their energy plan.
'However, before an expansion of nuclear power is considered, key issues must be addressed including: security of nuclear fuel and waste, waste storage, and proliferation.'
This assumes that nuclear fuel and waste storage are the only problems with nuclear power, however.
As previously reported by IPS, nuclear power also uses vast amounts of water and releases low levels of radioactive pollution, which one study has correlated with increased cancer rates in Burke County, Georgia.
'One thing I haven't seen them point to, which is the real sticker on this, is the problem of economics. The nuclear executives that want to build don't want to use their own money. You see them hat in hand here in Washington [seeking] loan guarantees. I can't see Congress doing that given we're in the hole financially,' Jim Riccio, a nuclear policy analyst for Greenpeace, told IPS.
The Green Party of the United States said in a statement that it 'rejects President-elect Barack Obama's reckless support for new nuclear power plants, as such an agenda poses unacceptable health and environmental risks and would be fiscally irresponsible in the extreme.'
Many of the companies which are applying for new plants have done so under President George W. Bush's 2005 energy bill, which created government incentives for nuclear expansion and simplified the plant approval process.
'It is crucial for the new administration to continue with these and other efforts to shape a comprehensive energy policy that recognizes the value of nuclear energy and other low-emission electricity sources,' Frank Bowman of the Nuclear Energy Institute said in a press release.
'We must recognize as a nation that we cannot reach our energy goals without the reliable, affordable and carbon-free electricity that nuclear power plants generate to power our homes, businesses, telecommunications, military and transportation infrastructure,' Bowman said.
It is unclear whether Obama plans to continue to support government incentives or deregulation for nuclear power. Obama voted for the 2005 bill, which included tax breaks for oil companies, although he later said he did not support everything in the bill.
Obama appears unlikely to throw the nuclear industry under the bus entirely, however. He was one of the most supportive candidates in terms of nuclear power during the Democratic primary and he has given mixed messages at best regarding his stance on the issue.
'I actually think we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix,' Obama said during the CNN/Youtube Presidential Debate on Jul. 23, 2007. 'There are no silver bullets to this issue... But we're gonna have to try a series of different approaches.'
Obama was asked again about nuclear power during a meeting with the Editorial Board of the Keene Sentinel newspaper in New Hampshire, on Nov. 25, 2007.
'I'm not somebody who says nuclear is off the table no matter what because there's no perfect energy source,' Obama said.
'There are a whole set of questions and they may not be solvable, and if they're not solvable I don't want to invest in it,' Obama continued. 'But if they are solvable, why not? I don't think there's anything we inevitably dislike about nuclear power. We just dislike the fact that it might blow up and radiate us and kill us; that's the problem.'
Riccio believes that Obama is aware of the problems with nuclear power, even if he did not address all of them on the campaign trail. 'Why on the campaign trail would you open yourself to an attack from McCain and say you oppose nuclear power?' Riccio said.
Obama has also been accused by former Illinois constituents of selling out their interests to the nuclear industry while he served as a U.S. senator.
Obama was criticized by residents of Godley, Illinois, who turned to Obama for help after they learned in December 2005 that the nearby Exelon nuclear power plant had been leaking tritium, a radioactive by-product, into the water supply without notifying residents.
The magnitude of the leak did not exceed federal guidelines, but residents were still concerned.
Obama had at first responded to the residents by filing a bill in the U.S. Senate on Mar. 1, 2006, the Nuclear Release Notice Act of 2006, which said it 'shall require' all nuclear power plants to 'immediately notify the Commission, and the State and county in which the facility is located, of [any] release.'
The nuclear industry immediately opposed the bill. The Nuclear Energy Institute attempted to preempt the bill's requirements by offering voluntary disclosure by plants.
After opposition by Exelon executives, Obama changed the provision in the bill entirely, from requiring disclosure by plants, to encouraging the NRC to require disclosure by plants for some leaks smaller than the existing government limits.
But it allowed the NRC to decide which of those leaks, if any, would be required to be disclosed. The bill, S. 2348, never made it out of the Senate.
'When trying to get the nuclear industry to do anything, compromise seems to be in the cards,' Riccio said.
When asked about his support of nuclear power at a campaign stop in Iowa on Dec. 30, 2007, Obama misled audience members about the outcome of the bill.
'The only nuclear legislation that I passed has been to make sure the nuclear industry has to disclose whether they emit anything that might be radioactive and share that with state and local communities. I just did that last year,' Obama said.
However, this is not true; Obama had stripped the bill of language requiring disclosure and it never passed the Senate.
Incidentally, Exelon executives and employees had given over $269,100 to Obama's congressional and presidential campaigns by February 2008, making the industry one of Obama's biggest donors early in his campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
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33 Comments so far
Show AllDon't encourage them! One day this week, DemocracyNow speaks to the issue via a guest who says how expensive nuclear energy is, but so many problems in making it safe, that it may not "go forward" (I hope.).
Obviously, we don't want to see a surge of new nuclear power plants like McCain wanted. But it should remain part of our energy portfolio, along with with clean coal, bio fuels, wind, solar, etc... Why is that controversial? I agree with it. Obama agrees with it. Even Al Gore agrees with it. If France is able to use nuclear power to reduce their emissions while meeting their energy needs, why can't we? None of the doomsday scenarios proposed by scaremongers like Helen Caldicott have come true. It's time to rethink nuclear power.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We have a volunteer to store the nuclear waste in his backyard!
Thanks, Joe!
wull, heck, joe, lots of bad things have happened and others have nearly happened. And one reason other bad things haven't happened is that not that many nuclear factories (I hate the word 'plant' used this way) are operating, and none have been built here for what--40 years? Despite the legality of it, investors and utilities know better, even with Price-Anderson and other massive subsidies. Nukes provide a tiny and shrinking percent of our electricity, while conservation, wind and solar provide larger and growing amounts. It's an absurd and ridiculous idea to think nuclear can help at all with our current problems for the following reasons, among others:
1. every dollar we spend on nuclear is a dollar we don't have to spend on conservation and small-scale wind and solar, which are cheaper and will yield energy far sooner than any nuke at a lower money and carbon construction cost.
2. And even if the costs were higher than other choices, (which I reiterate, they are not) so what? Do people shopping for a Jaguar (the car, not the cat) not buy it because used Pintos are cheaper? (again, the car) A Jaguar is a different product from a Pinto even if they both do the same basic thing—move people from one place to another. Wind and PV are different products than oil and coal and nuclear, even if they do all cause electricity to move through wires, because solar, wind and conservation do it without killing people through black lung, cancer, oil wars and that pesky other thing–the collapse of civilization through climate change. Nuclear has the still-unsolved and maybe unsolvable problems of mill tailings, waste, heat production, enormous water use, limited ore supplies and/or proliferation, long lead times, concentration of power, wealth and generating capacity, and being the most colossal security risk ever conceived. Solar, wind and conservation would be better products at 10 times the cost of the others—luxury vehicles over ugly, sputtering heaps whose gas tanks explode.
3. And make no mistake, to go for nuclear in a big way is to continue to go for oil and coal in a big way, because even if we spent money on nothing else for decades we couldn’t afford the capital costs of nuclear for a significant part of our energy use for many decades. To think otherwise is to be deluded—or just really bad at math. A crash nuke-building program would close out other options, provide fewer jobs and less energy with tremendous ecological and health degradation, (especially visited on Native American lands and people) reduced democracy, and in the end, exacerbate global climate catastrophe.
On the pro side, of course, a few people will make a lot of money for themselves. That’s why it’s controversial. Otherwise, it would be an army with bows and arrows, a 1960 room-sized computer to do addition and subtraction, or an Edsel. Those aren’t controversial at all, because there is no corporate media pumping out lies about them. Everyone recognizes them as an obsolete, useless, wasteful and self- and other-destructive products because no one rich is trying to sell them.
Stop buying it.
...and don't even get me started on clean coal.
Tell the truth, joe, are you a pipe dream salesman?
The failure of nukes are one of the last lessons to be learned in the overall failure of conservatism.
With almost 300K given in bribes to Obama and with their hands out for public funding, Exelon is against disclosure of leaks leaving in total ignorance millions of people exposed to forever lasting cancer causing radioisotopes. It could take a Chernobyl, dirty bombs, or nuke bomb in an American city to finish burying the nuclear monster.
elizabeth shipley
Take a look at Dec. 15, 2008 Counterpunch for an article by Karl Grossman titled:
Dr. Chu's nuclear prescription.
We must keep an eye on Dr. Chu and hope that back rooms deals with the nuclear power industry do not take place.
the author needs to educate himself on breeder technology. and solar etc. cannot provide the energy the human race needs to avoid an enormous breakdown of the world system, with the consequent horrible deaths of the majority of humankind. but then again this is something wished for by a lot of the luddites, who in their modern incarnation see humankind itself as the problem; mindless positivism run riot.
For your education, read "Carbon Free, Nuclear Free" - you can even download it for free from the following website:
http://www.ieer.org/carbonfree/
Incidentally, who is saying to you or telling you we need nuclear or else to produce the energy we need and to reduce our emissions. Could it be the nuclear industry and politicians embedded to the nuclear industry?
The book "Carbon Fee, Nuclear Free" is written by an independent engineer who looked at emerging technologies - unfortunately because of our filthy, stinkin' politicians - being developed in other countries. The technology exists, and with conservation methods that could be implemented immediately, we can be carbon free and nuclear free.
Also, how can you call us luddites if we are promoting developing new technologies within the wind and solar industries?
Don't ever forget, for the price of the Iraq and Afghanistan debacles, we could have transitioned our entire energy infrastructure to carbon free, nuclear free sources. Make sure you continue to tell our "representatives" that every time you get the chance.
Rastaman Vibrations are Positive!
kloro:
Your comment is as scrambled as the eggs I had this morning. Hysterical, uninformed, fear mongering.
dear kloro,
Conservation, and small scale solar and wind energy can indeed provide everything we need. We—and by that I mean I, the only person I can speak for—are/am not saying we can shut down all coal and nuclear generators and ban all gasoline vehicles by the middle of next year. Intelligent coordination of all sectors of society can indeed get us to a solar economy, however. If we do it now and do it right we may be able to avoid massive upheaval and violence. That is my fervent hope, as it is the hope of every Luddite and neo-Luddite I’ve ever known. We just don’t hold out much hope of it happening that way, because we’re not doing it right, and were not doing it right now—partly, I’m sorry to say, because people spread false despair by saying we can’t. Yes, we can, to coin a phrase.
Do the math. Openly and objectively consider the possibilities after examining—if you need to—your impulse to say something is impossible that you seem not to have investigated fully. Talk to rational proponents of rail, organics, gardening, bicycling, cogeneration, and the thousands of other forms of connected, ecological, humane ways of doing things we have mostly abandoned. Mindless positivism is indeed a bad—and even worse—a very annoying thing. Mindless negativism, however, is the end of civilization. How about a third way: mindfulness?
And by the way, breeder reactors? Really? Speaking of horrible deaths…
The Nuclear Energy Institute,,,what a bunch of Bull S---...It use to be called
The Edison Insitute...They hang this institute thing on their causes to make
it sound like it was Notre Dame University. It is just a bunch of Utility people
in disguise, making like they were a religious Package. Do they have an enrollment
at the Institute of Students anxious to get in? Do they have to take a test to
Qualify for this institute? Do they have a football team? They could get
minority students, maybe...
Bill isn't letting facts get in the way of a good story.
Taxpayer-funded loan guarantees do not obligate the borrower to pay the loan back. Loan guarantees obligate taxpayers to pay the lender if the borrower defaults.
Taxpayer-funded loan guarantees do not guarantee that any nuclear power plant will ever be completed. Loan guarantees obligate taxpayers to pay the lender no matter if the borrower blew the borrowed money at Monte Carlo or actually tried to build a plant.
The states of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas have recently revised legislation to allow utilities to charge ratepayers for nuke plants that might be built some day.
If those plants never get built, the utilities are not required to return the money to the ratepayers.
I have worked in the power production business for three decades and the economic viability of a private company profitting from nuclear power production compared to other means of producing power is poor. Throw in corporate welfare (loan guarantees, etc.)and economic viability improves dramatically.
And just noticed that the insurance companies have demanded and won the right to sit in on health initiative meetings help form health policies.
But I could be wrong !
Can you spell W P P S S aka Whoops
I'm still paying for the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) fiasco.
As for more of these TMIs - I thought that we had enough depleated uranium stockpiled to produce birth defects and mutant children worldwide for ever.
There is no legitimate energy policy in the goo that oozes out of Washington, as there is no legitimate policy of any type in the goo that oozes out of Washington. Instead, the people formulate and implement the people's policy, the greatest policy. There will be no new nukes. Current nukes will be shutdown at the end of the life cycle of their currently install materials. Electric production comes exclusively from small scale solar thermal and wind installations developed, owned, implemented and maintained locally. Let's look further at the people's transport policy: Overall transport miles will be slashed in half. Of the remainder, rail will supply half. Of the remained of that, personal transport and other road vehicles will be designed, built and maintained in small workshops dispersed across all the states to serve local markets. This is the way it will be simply because the people have now decided to serve their own interests. The elites will have to get out of the way or get run over. A clear choice.
The 34 reactors would only be about 8-9% of US electricity generating capacity, or 15-16% of coal generating capacity. The Obama administration should fast track these reactors by providing money to develop reactor shell forging capacity, choosing standardized modular designs from the best new designs available, and ramp up production to about 20/year until we have a total of 200 operating reactors at total capacity of 260,000 MW.
That would leave about 120,000 MW coal fired in operation that could be concurrently replaced by something like 40,000 - 80,000 wind turbines. Say 15,000/yeaar? 200,000 wind turbines would produce between 300,000 and 600,000 MW. Hey, that might do it! Practical? Also, solar, tidal... to the max.
However we do it, we have to get coal off line, and heat our homes and fuel transportation with GHG free electricity in the 35 years until we hit 450 ppm CO2, and start letting nature take it back down to 350 ppm. We may not have 35 years and another 65 ppm to add before disasters really hit. The more GHG free capacity we build, the more power available when we have to shut fossil off.
We need to stop arguing about money and subsidies, stop playing games with biofuels, CCS and natural gas... and just do it. If you're worried about nuclear safety, tell Obama and the NRC we aren't children and have the right-to-know about emissions and accidents, and the PWR operators need to replace those undersized sump screens pronto.
snydly
If nukes are such a good idea, let them be privately funded and insured---oops, not by AIG...
But they're a bad idea especially facing the ice of the climate change.
The grid is fragile. Centralized power is weak. Diversified power is strong.
I'm hoping Obama was just appeasing the coal and nuclear industries during his campaign. "Clean coal" and "green" nuclear power are as laughable as the "Clear Skies Initiative."
John Perlin, an authority on solar power and sustainability, took nuclear and coal to the woodshed in this post:
http://freesolaradvice.blogspot.com/search?q=perlin+nuclear+power
Here in Appalachia, coal isn't as big of a problem as mountaintop removal. We are Third World America www.wisecountyissues.com thanks to coal.
Sorry, tmullins,
Although I agree with your issue, I don't understand you. Please stop posting this same thing everywhere and join the actual conversation. Or at least post something coherent.
Nuclear power has never been sustainable without massive government subsidy, here or anywhere else, including France. Can we afford to waste more money on it? I would argue no. I would further argue that Mr. Obama is, at least, a pragmatist. We may hope for some moderation of the nuclearist's desperate lobbying for more public dollars in his energy policy. Remember, dollars are harder to come by and it will is going to be increasingly difficult to squander them on a 60 year-old technology that still can't stand on its own, has never delivered on its promises, and has a ridiculously long lead time from bid to generation. Many Gagawatts of Wind & Solar could be built and installed while we're frittering around trying to build five or ten nukes, and going broke doing it.
Regarding this paragraph from the article- "After opposition by Exelon executives, Obama changed the provision in the bill entirely, from requiring disclosure by plants, to encouraging the NRC to require disclosure by plants for some leaks smaller than the existing government limits."-- Anyone who thinks a freshman Senator could put this by Sen. Domenici, a man who had a lobbyist from the nuclear power industry write the germane portion the 2005 National Energy Policy Act, just does not understand how the U.S. Senate works. I give Obama points for having the gumption to introduce it.
With Domenici gone the nuclear industry has lost a very formidable ally and for the alternative energy crowd, the skies have brightened a bit. Tell your Congressional delegation what's important to you, don't just complain on blogs, they don't change anything, they're just a high-tech way of talking to yourself.
Well, let me mumble a bit, then, before I write to Obama yet again, abandoning my former constructive and polite tone to suggest this time that he's a traitorous dog who has peed on and sold his ancestors' graves for power. Anybody got a shoe they haven't sent W? Are those of you who voted for Obama feeling stupid yet? Chagrined? Disillusioned? Or did you all stop paying attention and go back to sleep the moment McCain conceded?
If I say I'm going to give away all my possessions and live in poverty to help the poor, and then take it all back and buy a yacht instead, am I still Mother Theresa?
Do I still have gumption and do I still get the points? (I'm losing, you know, but I'm not so far behind that a few lies and stolen points won't get me caught up.)
Our current path, which Obama's appointments, conflicting statements and above all Senate votes confirm is what he will continue on, will lead to massive upheaval, horrendous violence, reactive tyranny and possibly the end of civilization. That doesn't sound particularly pragmatic to me. You?
Pragmatism demands radical action in dire circumstances--for now, a crash program of building solar and wind--on that we agree--and rail and conservation, and immediate halting of all coal construction. No good money after bad. Gardening, bicycling, mindful changing of lives to fit Nature rather than vice versa.
And by the way Gigawatts are what solar and wind produce. Gagawatts only come from coal and nuke generators. And court orders during the Reagan administration.
"If we don't change our direction we're likely to end up where we're headed." Ruben Snake
Well it seems it has already begun... Bush is sending nuclear technology to United Arab Emirates. Get ready for a world armed to the nuclear teeth.
A small, wealthy Arab country, or terrorist organization, would be more likely to purchase a nuclear weapon from a Russian, Ukranian or Pakistani crook than siphon off material from a nuclear power plant.
You might be right in the short term, but how about 20-50 years down the road when Westinghouse has moved on to bigger more lucrative deals elsewhere and abandons these projects to the wind, as capitalists do?
BTW: Westinghouse has designed what may be the Boeing 747 of nukes. They are going to be eveywhere. China may take 100 of them.
Pardon me, I should have said there has been almost no civilian nuclear construction in decades. Even if you're figures are correct, which I doubt (too late and lazy right now to spend the time researching) they do not include externalities, (pretty much by definition) which are in the end what make oil, coal and nuclear far more effective forces for destruction than for progress.
The construction costs, and therefore, I assume, the GHG emissions (in the form of coal electricity and oil-powered vehicles used to build) are going to be higher than wind and solar, per kilowatt. I’m talking mostly about small-scale residential and solar, not huge generating stations, because it’s easier, less vulnerable to attack and failure, more economically democratic, better ecologically. You also get more jobs per dollar with small-scale wind, solar and conservation; those jobs will tend to last longer and be more evenly and residentially distributed and less hierarchical, which is better for democracy.
The fact that even though there wasn't much nuke construction going on, Watts Bar 1 took 23 years to build (plus planning time) and WB2 will take from before 1985 until at least 2013 ( www.nrc.gov/reactors/plant-specific-items/watts-bar.html ) should give us a clue that the piles of nukes we'd need couldn't possibly be built in time to avoid climate catastrophe--especially if we restore constitutional rights and don't continue on the path toward fascism we have been on. People, oddly enough, don't like nuclear reactors in their neighborhoods and if not lied to by secrecy-obsessed and science-denying government-corporate cabal, or arrested, imprisoned, tortured etc. will prevent many of them.
I refer you back to my previous comment: oil, coal and nuclear are one product (or 3, whichever you want) while solar, wind, rail, cogeneration, small geothermal, small biodiesel and especially conservation (not to mention the inevitable changes in our lives and those of our children like walking, bicycling, and home and local food production and changes in land patterns) are a completely different product and should never be compared in price to the fuelish ones. If you want war, environmental destruction, cancer, terrorist attacks, war, cancer and environmental destruction (and did I mention war and cancer?) for the short time those 3 fuels will last, then obsolete dirty factories to deal with, and a second transition to solar and wind and conservation to pay for, by all means, pay whatever price you want for nukes. If those externalities seem like things you’d rather avoid, solar, wind and conservation are the way to go.
At some point, everything we depend on now didn’t exist. Then a little of it did, then a lot. I’ve been to Titusville, PA, where the first oil well was drilled. Now there are a lot of them. I don’t understand what the fact that x percent of our electricity now comes from wind and solar has to do with our decision. Just because there’s not much of it now doesn’t mean there can’t be soon, and in fact there is absolutely no reason why we can’t rely on solar and wind and conservation to get us out of our current mess. There are many reasons why we can’t—and shouldn’t—rely on nuclear. The only way we could mess up using local, small scale wind and solar is if we spend too much money, time, effort and hope on wasteful, destructive and ultimately short-term “solutions” like nuclear power.