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Obama Loves Nukes
Grant this much to President Obama: he does not pander to mass opinion. In his first year in office, he stood with Wall Street even after its reckless greed produced an economic collapse that left most Americans calling for bankers’ heads. Now, even as the Fukushima power station threatens to unleash the greatest nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl, Obama continues to champion an expansion of nuclear power in the United States. On day five of the Fukushima disaster, the Obama administration reminded Congress that it wanted to triple the amount of taxpayer-funded loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants—and this is after having reduced renewable energy loan guarantees by half last autumn.
US President Obama pauses during a news conference at the conclusion of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington last year. If anything demonstrates the blind spots in Obama’s oft-stated support for clean energy—and the nation’s need for a bold alternative vision—it is his response to the Fukushima crisis. (Charles Dharapak/AP)
If anything demonstrates the blind spots in Obama’s oft-stated support for clean energy—and the nation’s need for a bold alternative vision—it is his response to the Fukushima crisis, which at press time had made tap water in Tokyo, nearly 200 miles away, unsafe for infants to drink. The Fukushima disaster has led such previously firm proponents as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the government of China to announce that they will halt or pause planned expansions of nuclear power; but it’s full speed ahead for Barack Obama.
Testifying to Congress on March 16, when partial meltdowns were reportedly under way at three of the six reactors at Fukushima, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that US nuclear plants are safe and that the president wants to build more of them. Indeed, Chu added, the administration is proposing $36 billion in taxpayer-guaranteed loans to entice private industry to do just that. What’s more, this $36 billion would be over and above the existing $18.5 billion in loan guarantees approved under the Bush administration.
As health, education and other social services are being sacrificed on the false altar of deficit reduction, $54.5 billion is a massive amount of money. Worse, Obama is shoveling money at nuclear at the very time he has diverted funds from renewable energy. As ABC News revealed in November, the Obama administration last year “quietly drained” more than half of a $6 billion fund intended to provide loan guarantees for cutting-edge wind, solar and other renewable energy projects. Instead, the funds helped to finance the “Cash for Clunkers” program and an unrelated education initiative.
An internal White House memo, obtained by ABC, warned that green-energy supporters would be “upset” by the diversion. Actually, “livid” is the word chosen by Richard Graves, who volunteered for candidate Obama in 2008 and now blogs for the youth-run website It’s Getting Hot in Here. Calling Obama and Chu “tone deaf,” Graves pointed out that they are allocating many times more money for nuclear than for renewable energy. “Are they just trying to piss us off and lose the next election?” Graves asked on behalf of young climate activists. “Because, they are doing a heckuva job.”
“The administration’s [clean] energy…. policy is not about picking one energy source over another, in fact it is about setting a bold but achievable clean energy goal, and providing industry the flexibility on how best to increase their clean energy [production],” responded Clark Stevens, a White House spokesman. Separately, the administration has claimed that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in February 2009, made “the single largest investment in clean energy in U.S. history,” funding more than 7,000 projects and leveraging $21 billion in private and federal investments.
Obama’s nuclear boosterism is part of a larger meta-narrative dominating discussion of the Fukushima disaster here in the United States. Yes, Fukushima is scary, the narrative goes, but it is far away, our own nuclear plants pose little danger and, besides, neither our economy nor the fight against climate change can succeed without more nukes. Even the usually sensible nonprofit journalism enterprise ProPublica is publishing articles implying that anything less than a Chernobyl-scale disaster amounts to only “limited” impact.
The supreme tragedy here is that more nuclear power is not only unnecessary but downright unhelpful to securing America’s, and the world’s, economic and environmental future. Countless studies have shown that the enormous financial cost and long construction times of nuclear power plants make them the costliest, slowest way to supply electricity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (which is exactly why investors demand loan guarantees rather than risk their own money to build new nukes). From society’s point of view, it is far more effective to invest in energy efficiency in the short to medium term while accelerating the development and mass deployment of solar, wind, biomass, geothermal and other truly green energy sources. Authoritative studies commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace International have shown that the United States and the world could leave both fossil fuels and nuclear power behind and shift to a green energy foundation by 2050 if the right mix of government policies were adopted.
But such tactical choices raise a larger political question: can we establish energy policies that serve society as a whole and not merely corporate and bureaucratic interests? At Fukushima, the corporate mindset led the plant’s operator to delay at least fourteen hours before pumping seawater onto the overheating reactors, and even then it did so only after a direct command from the Japanese prime minister, according to the Wall Street Journal. Seawater, after all, would permanently ruin the reactors and thus render the company’s assets worthless. Instead, the seawater delay encouraged a disaster that has blackened, yet again, nuclear’s reputation, as well as the odds of its renaissance. Nevertheless, nuclear boosters are right: something must take nuclear’s place. Let’s make sure that something is truly green.
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Show All"...can we establish energy policies that serve society as a whole and not merely corporate and bureaucratic interests?" No. Very unfortunately, no.
Having commented on nuclear industry articles posted on CD for the past five years, let me preface today's remarks by saying that it has been refreshing to see that ever since the March 11 Japanese nuclear disaster the nuclear induustry shills have not been posting nuke PR talking points on CD the way they have for at least the past 5 years.
The claim that nuke power doesn't produce greenhouse gases is bogus.
Although coal burning creates more greenhouse gas, the mining, hauling and processing of uranium, building and operating the plants, and disposing of nuclear waste burns boatloads of fossil fuel.
Most of the easy to mine, high grade uranium has already been mined, so building more nuke plants will result in burning even more fossil fuel per kilowatt hour generated as we mine deeper, haul further and process longer.
"...the mining, hauling and processing of uranium, building and operating the plants, and disposing of nuclear waste burns boatloads of fossil fuel."
This should be repeated ad nauseum until President Ears can "hear it".
The mere spectre of the horrors of meddling with radioactive materials always brings to mind the cautionary tales of Pandora's Box, or the ending to Mickey Spillane's "Kiss Me Deadly."
I just found out about this two days ago and can't seem to stop talking about it. What does everyone think about thorium reactors as part of changes away from an oil-based economy? Thorium not uranium!
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-08/thorium-reactors-could-wean-world-oil-just-five-years
"The half-life of thorium-232 is about 14.05 billion years."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
This is a highly radio active metal.
With jokers like Mr. JMALH, proves the human race is doomed to destruction.
Rat,
The thorium already exists in nature. Putting it in a reactor makes it go away. Your logic is flawed.
The beauty of a thorium reactor is that almost none of the transuranic elements are produced. This is the material that makes used uranium based fuel somewhat problematic for a million years.
Bill
The uranium already exists in nature. Putting it in a reactor makes it go away. Oh wait, we're left with highly radioactive nuclear waste, spent fuel rods that have no where to go and must be properly housed for hundreds and or thousands of years. The spent fuel rods are being crowded into pools that were designed for far fewer spent fuel rods. Nuclear energy is very unforgiving and there's very little margin for error. The mining and processing of the uranium is most definitely not clean. The problem of nuclear waste remains and just keeps piling up year after year. They tried to dump it all off on Nevada but the population there was not so thrilled with this dubious honor. Nuclear power is insanity.
JJ,
Yes, uranium exists in nature. When you put uranium in a reactor much of it fissions into short lived fission fragments but some of it is converted to plutonium, cerium and americium. It is these long lived transuranic elements that make used nuclear fuel based on uranium a long term problem.
There are a couple of approaches to avoid accumulating these transuranic elements:
One way is to use a reactor with a high energy neutron spectrum. This will fission the transuranic elements. This type of reactor is more expensive and not as easy to control as a low neutron energy reactor.
Another way is to use a reactor based on the thorium-uranium233 cycle. This is a breeder type reactor and does not include uranium238 which is the source of the transuranic elements. This type of reactor can use low neutron energy but cannot include much ordinary water. One reactor that can be used is the Canadian CANDU reactor (all the power reactors in Canada are CANDU reactors). Another reactor that can do this is the Liquid Fluoride Salt Reactor which was developed in the 1960's but is not now used.
With a thorium breeder reactor the main waste is the fission fragments and they don't need to be severely isolated beyond about 300 years.
Bill
Appreciate your comments! I'm trying to better understand this type of reactor, especially the salt reactor.
JMAHL,
The best source to explain the liquid thorium reactor concept is a series of videos on www . energyfromthorium . com. There are a couple of video links besides the liquid thorium reactors. Kirk Sorenson is a natural teacher and his Google talk is probably the best of the bunch.
There is also a lot of information in the forum on that site but it tends to be pretty technical and awash in the details.
The liquid thorium salt reactor would be such a huge paradigm shift from the PWR/BWR/CANDU that are 90% of the world's reactors that it will be a hard sell. The nuclear community is a deeply conservative one and a change this big would be very difficult for them. This would not be a small incremental change that they would be comfortable with.
Fuel reprocessing is optional with the existing fleet of reactors. If it is done, it is done after the used fuel cools for several years. It is done in a facility separate from the reactor. With most concepts of the liquid salt reactor, fuel reprocessing is integral to the reactor design.
Good luck,
Bill
Thanks again, Bill. Probably what we most need to solve our energy problems is paradigm shifting!
Yes we know all that. He, like the other politicians in this sham of a so-called democracy are merely puppets of the Oligarchy behind the curtain. It doesen't matter which brand of kleptocrat is elected, they are all bought and paid for. It's the corrupt system stupid.
Yes, Obama and Chu are not "tone deaf", they can't listen to you or me because they might not hear the next command from the oligarchs that own them.
In general, he people are corrupt, don't you know.
Gee, nobody knew that before. Obama as a Senator received tons of money by Exelon....Obama is a company man.
And that was very apparent to anybody who listened to the content and ignored the hype of Obama's campiagn speeches in 2008.
Ray,
I agree with you. Obama's support for nuclear was low key but clear during the campaign.
I was originally dismayed with his lack of commitment to nuclear after the election. His staff included some fairly strong anti nuclear voices. I was particularly dismayed by his appointment of Jazko and cancellation of Yucca-these were clearly political payoffs to Harry Reid. (I an not a fan of once through fuel but we do need someplace to store fission fragments for 500 years if we are going to reprocess.)
He shifted to a more pronuclear stance after about a year in office. His initial response to the Japanese nuclear mess is continued support. Obama is a political animal and I doubt if his support will be very high profile if at all until after the next election.
Bill
Obama isn't the only nuke lover. We have Westinghouse nuclear up the road and at the University of Pittsburgh you can study Nuclear Engineering. Our paper the P-G editorializes for it. So it was not surprising to see Professor Metzger's OpEd in that paper tout the "culture of nuclear safety": that he thinks prevails in the industry. Well, Fukushima incident is an exception but, "The incident was not due to any design deficiency, inadequate procedures or or inappropriate operator action. It was due to natural events of historic proportions" In other words don't blame us we did everything we could, Never mind that we put the pumps in the basement where they were vulnerable to flooding, never mind that the pumps had cracks, that the whistleblower who bought it up was ignored. Who could blame us for that damn tsunammi? If a nuclear accident didn't threaten to create a 50 mile diameter blister that stays on the face of the earth for the likely lifetime of humanity perhaps we could accept Metzger's assurances that with a few exceptions the nuclear industry has a good safety record. However when we are dealing with the capacity for destruction which can be unleashed by an accident, I don't think that.even the best that men can do is not good enough.
Some things should not be regulated by the government, they should be owned and operated by the government. However, some technologies are only too dangerous to be operated at all. And nuclear power is one of those dangerous technologies.
He loves their graft
"Obama’s nuclear boosterism is part of a larger meta-narrative dominating discussion of the Fukushima disaster here in the United States..."
Obama himself is part of a larger meta-narrative that says, "Government is here to serve the oligarchs. Sit down and shut up, rabble."
Funny, when I read the above comment, I thought it said "Obama's nuclear botulism." I thought, "Wow! That is an accurate simile."
Then I re-read it.
Obama is a charlatan. He's just infinitely more eloquent than the shrub.
Big nuke is just like the MIC, big oil, big ag, big pharma. The K Street system allows Corporate industry to just buy some spin, buy some appropriations, buy a Presidential mouthpiece, buy some non-regulatory regulation.
The Japanese nuclear disaster is a clear example of what happens with laissez faire "self-regulation" by Corporations. Unrestrained greed is the problem. Corporations sell the notion that greed is good, that we should trust them when they (and their Presidential mouthpiece) tell us nukes are safe.
Our entire system is AFU. Rather than bitch, let's fix it.
Corporations vs We The People. (greed vs humanity)
The big corporations have evicerated "We The People," and have direct control over all "regulation" of their industries. They own everything - Supreme Ct, Congress (both aisles), Executive (Obama), media, banks, WTO, world bank, IMF, lobbys, etc. You name it, they own it.
BUT, they are few, and We The People are many. However, our ONLY hope is ..."A corporation is not a person . . ."
We need to 86 the "legal fiction" of corporate personhood. Greed is killing us. There is only one hope.
A 6-word Constitutional Amendment. Repeat, preferably with extreme emphasis, "A corporation is not a person . . ."
Peacemaker,
I like your constitutional amendment. I was thinking "Personhood applies only to living humans" but that would get wrapped around the axle with the prolife crowd. I like your approach better.
Bill
(*responded, thought better of it*)
Someone here had a great suggestion: If nuclear power is so very clean and safe, then they should be built in the middle of cities where no electricity will be lost from transmission.
Let's us see how that goes over for the ruling elite, huh? We can watch the NIMBY(Not In My Back Yard) phenomenon kick in.
Not in the middle of cities, but in the middle of white-flight McMansion exurbs.
All fuel rods must be carefully maintained for Millions of years. There is already a backlog of fuel rods across America that have nowhere to go but be maintained near reactors that are long closed. Lets open new reactors! They are so clean, put them near the nice neighborhoods so the daddy and mommy engineers won't have to commute so far. It won't matter so much anyway when the toxic radius will be hundreds of miles.
DB,
Some of the reactors in the US are quite close to communities.
My family frequently vacations near Southport, NC. The Brunswick nuclear power plant is right on the edge of that lovely town.
The Surry nuclear power plant is just across the James River from Williamsburg and the College of William and Mary.
Bill
RE: Obomba..just heard Jennifer Hudson sing Remember Me, Where You At?
If it isn't our theme song for that betrayer...it will make you cry.
How can we time the impechment to overlap with his not being elected? Better have a good replacement. Is he an automatic or do we get to have another primary?
A Constitutional Amendment that starts "A Corporation is not a person . . ." has been suggested by Gore Vidal, Ralph Nader, and many others, but we must spread the word NOW. There is no more time to delay.
Furthermore, a Corporation is NOT A CITIZEN, either.
"Blind spots"? No, Obama is a peg boy for ONLY the most powerful, deadly corporate interests, in this case, those pertaining to energy. He has no truck with renewable energy like wind, solar, geothermal, or tidal. Such projects go against the corporate interests he represents: Gas, coal, nuclear. No competition allowed in his monopolistic, unified field of obedience.
Where's the 300 million human march when you need it??? DC, anyone?
Obomber IS a deadly puppet, worse than mass murderer, never elected bush, caz obomber keeps on with his deadly lies. Maybe some obomberbots are waking up; the revolution will do that !
You might contemplate that the incredible toughness of the reactors has managed to change even George Monbiots mind:
http://www. .co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima
"You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.
A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.
Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective."
Monbiot thinks that the planet is screwed anyway.
Did no one vet Obama but me? As Senator, he voted for the Cheney energy bill, possibly the worst, most pro-corporate law ever passed.
This article seems accurate and clear to me, although I wouldn't presume (as your title asserts) to guess at President Obama's emotional feelings of "Love" for nukes. I imagine that his mistaken and dangerous policies are motivated by political strategies and so-called "realism" rather than genuine warm feelings about nuclear power plants. Still, your assessment merits being shared widely-- like being sent to every member of Congress and the Senate.
Considering how much of a lying corporate scumbag kleptocrat Obama is he's probably a shoe-in for reelection......
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obomber does love the killing. And, apparently, people are paying attention because a petition asking the Nobel Committee to strip him of the prize was recently made.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/304909#ixzz1HQs4YNsJ