The
atomic energy industry has suffered another astonishing defeat. Because
of it, 2010 again left the "nuclear renaissance" in the Dark Age that
defines the technology.
But an Armageddon-style battle looms when Congress returns next year.
The
push to build new nuclear plants depends now, as always, on federal
subsidies. Fifty-three years after the first commercial reactor opened
at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, no private funders will step forward to
pay for a "new generation" of nukes.
So the industry remains
mired in unsolved waste problems, disturbing vulnerability to terror and
error, uninsured liability in case of a major catastrophe, and
unapproved new design proposals.
Two new reactor construction
projects in Europe---one in Finland and the other at Flamanville,
France---are sinking in gargantuan cost overruns and multi-year delays.
To financiers and energy experts worldwide, it's a clear indicator the
"rebirth" of this failed technology is a hopeless quagmire.
Meanwhile
the 104 reactors currently licensed in the US are leaking radiation and
are under escalating grassroots attack. Vermont's new governor, Peter
Shumlin, is committed to shutting the Yankee plant there, and public
demands to close New York's Indian Point and Oyster Creek, New Jersey,
among others, have reached fever pitch.
Most importantly,
advances in green technologies are leaving atomic power in the dust.
Numerous new studies now show it is significantly cheaper to build new
generating capacity with photovoltaics, wind and other renewable
Solartopian sources than to go nuclear. That gap will only grow in the coming years.
But
Barack Obama has proposed some $36 billion in new nuke loan guarantees
to add to $18.5 billion set aside by the Bush Administration. Earlier
this year he handed $8.33 billion of that to a Georgia utility that
broke ground on two new nukes at the Vogtle site, where two old,
trouble-plagued reactors still operate.
The nukes are being
built in Georgia---along with two more in South Carolina---because
ratepayers are being forced to foot the bill as construction proceeds.
The company's returns are guaranteed even if the reactors never operate.
Georgia has already suffered crippling rate hikes of $1 billion and
more to pay for a construction project likely to wind up as little more
than a moribund mausoleum.
Nonetheless, amidst a major economic
crisis, the White House and its pro-nuke allies have been pushing hard
to fund still more of these radioactive boondoggles.
As Congress
wound down this fall, the Administration inserted $7 billion in new
loan guarantees into the first Continuing Resolution meant to fund the
government on an interim basis.
That CR was abandoned for a larger Ominbus Budget proposal, into which $8 billion for new nukes was stuck.
But grassroots activists from around the nation flooded Congress and White House with at least 15,000 calls and letters.
Amidst
the chaos of the lame duck session, the Omnibus bill fell by the
wayside. Yet another CR emerged, this one stripped of
earmarks---including all money for new nuke guarantees.
Thus the
industry was once again shut out. In the past decade it has spent more
than $640 million lobbying for federal handouts.
But a vastly
underfunded grassroots movement has held its own. In 2007 the industry
tried to gouge out $50 billion in new guarantees, but was beaten back by
a national campaign (www.nukefree.org) that continues to rage.
The
industry will surely return with its money guns blazing. A far more
conservative Congress will convene in January, and the industry will
pour its usual unlimited steam of lucre into legislative coffers. The
"renaissance" is nothing if not a cash cow for Congressional candidates
and the White House.
But, says Michael Mariotte of the Nuclear
Information & Resources Service, "Once again, taxpayers have been
spared the expense of bailing out the wealthy, multinational nuclear
power industry.
"But the nuclear lobbyists will be back next session, hat-in-hand, even while distributing campaign checks to their allies."
Nonetheless,
he adds, the industry " may have missed its moment. It will become
increasingly difficult for it to justify spending increases when all
indications are that the new Congress will be focused on spending
cuts."
So the battle will resume in January, with the industry
again selling its "renaissance" as a done deal. But if the grassroots
environmental movement can keep up the pressure, and the revolution in
green power proceeds, nuclear power may just be done, period.