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Stewart
Brand has become a poster boy for a "nuclear renaissance" that has just
suffered a quiet but stunning defeat. Despite $645 million spent in
lobbying over the past decade, the reactor industry has thus far failed
to gouge out major new taxpayer funding for new commercial reactors.
Stewart
Brand has become a poster boy for a "nuclear renaissance" that has just
suffered a quiet but stunning defeat. Despite $645 million spent in
lobbying over the past decade, the reactor industry has thus far failed
to gouge out major new taxpayer funding for new commercial reactors.
In
an exceedingly complex series of twists and turns, no legislation now
pending in Congress contains firm commitments to the tens of billions
reactor builders have been demanding. They could still come by the end
of the session. But the radioactive cake walk many expected the industry
to take through the budget process has thus far failed to happen.
The full story is excruciatingly complicated. But the core reasons are simple: atomic power can't compete, and makes global warming worse.
In
support of this failed 20th Century technology, the industry has
enlisted a 20th Century retro-hero, Stewart Brand. Back in the 1960s
Brand published the Whole Earth Catalog. Four decades later, that cachet
has brought him media access for his advocacy of corporate technologies
like genetically modified foods and geo-engineering.....and, of course,
nuclear energy.
In response to a cover interview in Marin County's Pacific Sun, I wrote the following to explain why Stewart is wrong wrong wrong:
If there is a warning light for what Stewart
advocates, it is the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which much of the oil
industry said (like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl) was "impossible."
Then it happened. The $75 million liability limit protecting BP should
be ample warning that any technology with a legal liability limit (like
nuclear power) cannot be tolerated.
Thankfully, there is good
news: We have true green alternatives to these failed 20th-century
ideas. They're cheaper, safer, cleaner, more reliable and more
job-producing than the old ways Stewart advocates.
Stewart and I have never met. But we have debated on the radio and online. Thank you, Pacific Sun, for bringing us to print.
Stewart's
advocacy does fit a pattern. He appears to have become a paladin for
large-scale corporate technologies that may be highly profitable to CEOs
and shareholders, but are beyond the control of the average citizen,
and work to our detriment. Because he makes so many simple but costly
errors, let's try a laundry list:
1. Like other reactor
advocates, Stewart cavalierly dismisses the nuclear waste problem by
advocating, among other things, the stuff be simply dumped down a deep
hole. This is a terribly dangerous idea and will not happen. Suffice it
to say that after a half-century of promises (the first commercial
reactor opened in Pennsylvania in 1957) the solution now being offered
by government and industry is...a committee!!! Meanwhile, more than
60,000 tons of uniquely lethal spent fuel rods sit at some 65 sites in
31 states with nowhere to go. Like the reactors themselves, they are
vulnerable to cooling failure, terror attack, water shortages,
overheating of lakes, rivers and oceans, flooding, earthquakes,
tornadoes and hurricanes, and much more. This is no legacy to leave our
children.
2. Equally disturbing is the industry's inability to
get meaningful private liability insurance. The current federally
imposed limit is $11 billion, which would disappear in a meltdown even
faster than BP's $75 million in the Gulf. According to the latest
compendium of studies, issued this spring by the New York Annals of
Science, Chernobyl has killed some 985,000 people, and is by no means
finished. It has done at least a half-trillion dollars in damage. The
uninsured death toll and financial costs of a similar-scaled accident in
the U.S. are incalculable, but would clearly kill millions and bankrupt
our nation for the foreseeable future.
3. Stewart points out
that there are also risks with wind and solar power. But clearly none
that begin to compare with nukes, coal or deep-water drilling. If
reactor owners were forced to find reasonable liability insurance, all
would shut. A similar demand for renewables and efficiency would leave
them unaffected.
4. Renewable/efficiency technologies today are
cheaper, faster to deploy and more job-creating than nukes. It takes a
minimum of five years to license and build a new reactor. The one being
done by AREVA in Finland is hugely over budget and behind schedule.
There is no reason to expect anything better here. Among other things,
the long lead time ties up for too many years the critical social
capital that could otherwise go to technology that can quickly let the
planet heal.
5. Like others who doubt the possibility of a
green-powered Earth, Stewart posits the straw man of reliance on a
deployment of solar panels that would blanket the desert and do
ecological harm. In fact, the National Renewable Energy Lab estimates
100 percent of the nation's electricity could come from an area 90 miles
on a side, or a relatively modest box of 8,100 square miles. But as we
all know, that's not how it will be done. Solar panels belong on
rooftops, where there is ample area throughout the nation, and an end to
transmission costs. Likewise, wind farms do not "cover" endless acres
of prairie, their tower bases take up tiny spots that remain surrounded
by productive farmland. In this case, currently available wind turbines
spinning between the Mississippi and the Rockies could generate 300
percent of the nation's electricity. There's sufficient potential in
North Dakota, Kansas and Texas alone to do 100 percent. Cost and
installation times put nukes to shame. The liability is nil, as is the
bird kill, which primarily affects obsolete, badly sited fast-spinning
machines in places like Altamont Pass. Those must come down, and there
will certainly be other surprises along the way. No technology is
perfect, and we need to be careful even with those that are green-based.
But as we have seen, further threats on the scale of Chernobyl and the
Deepwater Horizon cannot be sustained.
6. As for GMO crops,
Darwin was right. Plants evolve to avoid herbicides just as bugs work
their way around pesticides (which Stewart correctly decries). Now we
see that "super-weeds" are outsmarting the carefully engineered
herbicides meant to justify the whole GMO scheme, bringing a disastrous
reversion to horrific, lethal old sprays. Chemical farming may be good
for corporate profits, but it can kill global sustainability. In the
long run, only organics can sustain us.
7. Stewart mentions that
he is paid only for speeches. But a single such fee can outstrip an
entire year's pay for a grassroots organizer or volunteer. What's
remarkable is that the nuclear power industry spent some $645 million
lobbying for its "renaissance" over the past decade--more than $64
million/year. It has bought an army of corporate lobbyists and
legislators. Yet only a handful of folks with rear guard environmental
credentials has stepped forward to fight for the old fossil/nuclear/GMO
technologies.
Stewart is certainly welcome to his own opinions.
But not to his own facts. Pushing for a nuclear "renaissance" concedes
that it's a Dark Age technology, defined by unsustainable costs,
inefficiencies, danger, eco-destruction, radiation releases, lack of
insurance, uncertain decommissioning costs, vulnerability to terrorism
and much more.
That the industry must desperately seek taxpayer
help, and cannot find insurance for even this "newer, safer" generation,
is the ultimate testimony to its failure. By contrast, renewables and
efficiency are booming, and are a practical solution to our energy
needs, which the corporate clunkers of the previous century simply
cannot provide.
It's been a long time since the Whole Earth
Catalog was published. Its hallowed founder should wake up to the
booming holistic green technologies that are poised to save the Earth.
They are ready to roll over the obsolete corporate boondoggles that are
killing Her. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the disasters in the coal
mines and the Gulf remind us we need to make that green-powered
transition as fast as we possibly can.
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Stewart
Brand has become a poster boy for a "nuclear renaissance" that has just
suffered a quiet but stunning defeat. Despite $645 million spent in
lobbying over the past decade, the reactor industry has thus far failed
to gouge out major new taxpayer funding for new commercial reactors.
In
an exceedingly complex series of twists and turns, no legislation now
pending in Congress contains firm commitments to the tens of billions
reactor builders have been demanding. They could still come by the end
of the session. But the radioactive cake walk many expected the industry
to take through the budget process has thus far failed to happen.
The full story is excruciatingly complicated. But the core reasons are simple: atomic power can't compete, and makes global warming worse.
In
support of this failed 20th Century technology, the industry has
enlisted a 20th Century retro-hero, Stewart Brand. Back in the 1960s
Brand published the Whole Earth Catalog. Four decades later, that cachet
has brought him media access for his advocacy of corporate technologies
like genetically modified foods and geo-engineering.....and, of course,
nuclear energy.
In response to a cover interview in Marin County's Pacific Sun, I wrote the following to explain why Stewart is wrong wrong wrong:
If there is a warning light for what Stewart
advocates, it is the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which much of the oil
industry said (like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl) was "impossible."
Then it happened. The $75 million liability limit protecting BP should
be ample warning that any technology with a legal liability limit (like
nuclear power) cannot be tolerated.
Thankfully, there is good
news: We have true green alternatives to these failed 20th-century
ideas. They're cheaper, safer, cleaner, more reliable and more
job-producing than the old ways Stewart advocates.
Stewart and I have never met. But we have debated on the radio and online. Thank you, Pacific Sun, for bringing us to print.
Stewart's
advocacy does fit a pattern. He appears to have become a paladin for
large-scale corporate technologies that may be highly profitable to CEOs
and shareholders, but are beyond the control of the average citizen,
and work to our detriment. Because he makes so many simple but costly
errors, let's try a laundry list:
1. Like other reactor
advocates, Stewart cavalierly dismisses the nuclear waste problem by
advocating, among other things, the stuff be simply dumped down a deep
hole. This is a terribly dangerous idea and will not happen. Suffice it
to say that after a half-century of promises (the first commercial
reactor opened in Pennsylvania in 1957) the solution now being offered
by government and industry is...a committee!!! Meanwhile, more than
60,000 tons of uniquely lethal spent fuel rods sit at some 65 sites in
31 states with nowhere to go. Like the reactors themselves, they are
vulnerable to cooling failure, terror attack, water shortages,
overheating of lakes, rivers and oceans, flooding, earthquakes,
tornadoes and hurricanes, and much more. This is no legacy to leave our
children.
2. Equally disturbing is the industry's inability to
get meaningful private liability insurance. The current federally
imposed limit is $11 billion, which would disappear in a meltdown even
faster than BP's $75 million in the Gulf. According to the latest
compendium of studies, issued this spring by the New York Annals of
Science, Chernobyl has killed some 985,000 people, and is by no means
finished. It has done at least a half-trillion dollars in damage. The
uninsured death toll and financial costs of a similar-scaled accident in
the U.S. are incalculable, but would clearly kill millions and bankrupt
our nation for the foreseeable future.
3. Stewart points out
that there are also risks with wind and solar power. But clearly none
that begin to compare with nukes, coal or deep-water drilling. If
reactor owners were forced to find reasonable liability insurance, all
would shut. A similar demand for renewables and efficiency would leave
them unaffected.
4. Renewable/efficiency technologies today are
cheaper, faster to deploy and more job-creating than nukes. It takes a
minimum of five years to license and build a new reactor. The one being
done by AREVA in Finland is hugely over budget and behind schedule.
There is no reason to expect anything better here. Among other things,
the long lead time ties up for too many years the critical social
capital that could otherwise go to technology that can quickly let the
planet heal.
5. Like others who doubt the possibility of a
green-powered Earth, Stewart posits the straw man of reliance on a
deployment of solar panels that would blanket the desert and do
ecological harm. In fact, the National Renewable Energy Lab estimates
100 percent of the nation's electricity could come from an area 90 miles
on a side, or a relatively modest box of 8,100 square miles. But as we
all know, that's not how it will be done. Solar panels belong on
rooftops, where there is ample area throughout the nation, and an end to
transmission costs. Likewise, wind farms do not "cover" endless acres
of prairie, their tower bases take up tiny spots that remain surrounded
by productive farmland. In this case, currently available wind turbines
spinning between the Mississippi and the Rockies could generate 300
percent of the nation's electricity. There's sufficient potential in
North Dakota, Kansas and Texas alone to do 100 percent. Cost and
installation times put nukes to shame. The liability is nil, as is the
bird kill, which primarily affects obsolete, badly sited fast-spinning
machines in places like Altamont Pass. Those must come down, and there
will certainly be other surprises along the way. No technology is
perfect, and we need to be careful even with those that are green-based.
But as we have seen, further threats on the scale of Chernobyl and the
Deepwater Horizon cannot be sustained.
6. As for GMO crops,
Darwin was right. Plants evolve to avoid herbicides just as bugs work
their way around pesticides (which Stewart correctly decries). Now we
see that "super-weeds" are outsmarting the carefully engineered
herbicides meant to justify the whole GMO scheme, bringing a disastrous
reversion to horrific, lethal old sprays. Chemical farming may be good
for corporate profits, but it can kill global sustainability. In the
long run, only organics can sustain us.
7. Stewart mentions that
he is paid only for speeches. But a single such fee can outstrip an
entire year's pay for a grassroots organizer or volunteer. What's
remarkable is that the nuclear power industry spent some $645 million
lobbying for its "renaissance" over the past decade--more than $64
million/year. It has bought an army of corporate lobbyists and
legislators. Yet only a handful of folks with rear guard environmental
credentials has stepped forward to fight for the old fossil/nuclear/GMO
technologies.
Stewart is certainly welcome to his own opinions.
But not to his own facts. Pushing for a nuclear "renaissance" concedes
that it's a Dark Age technology, defined by unsustainable costs,
inefficiencies, danger, eco-destruction, radiation releases, lack of
insurance, uncertain decommissioning costs, vulnerability to terrorism
and much more.
That the industry must desperately seek taxpayer
help, and cannot find insurance for even this "newer, safer" generation,
is the ultimate testimony to its failure. By contrast, renewables and
efficiency are booming, and are a practical solution to our energy
needs, which the corporate clunkers of the previous century simply
cannot provide.
It's been a long time since the Whole Earth
Catalog was published. Its hallowed founder should wake up to the
booming holistic green technologies that are poised to save the Earth.
They are ready to roll over the obsolete corporate boondoggles that are
killing Her. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the disasters in the coal
mines and the Gulf remind us we need to make that green-powered
transition as fast as we possibly can.
Stewart
Brand has become a poster boy for a "nuclear renaissance" that has just
suffered a quiet but stunning defeat. Despite $645 million spent in
lobbying over the past decade, the reactor industry has thus far failed
to gouge out major new taxpayer funding for new commercial reactors.
In
an exceedingly complex series of twists and turns, no legislation now
pending in Congress contains firm commitments to the tens of billions
reactor builders have been demanding. They could still come by the end
of the session. But the radioactive cake walk many expected the industry
to take through the budget process has thus far failed to happen.
The full story is excruciatingly complicated. But the core reasons are simple: atomic power can't compete, and makes global warming worse.
In
support of this failed 20th Century technology, the industry has
enlisted a 20th Century retro-hero, Stewart Brand. Back in the 1960s
Brand published the Whole Earth Catalog. Four decades later, that cachet
has brought him media access for his advocacy of corporate technologies
like genetically modified foods and geo-engineering.....and, of course,
nuclear energy.
In response to a cover interview in Marin County's Pacific Sun, I wrote the following to explain why Stewart is wrong wrong wrong:
If there is a warning light for what Stewart
advocates, it is the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which much of the oil
industry said (like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl) was "impossible."
Then it happened. The $75 million liability limit protecting BP should
be ample warning that any technology with a legal liability limit (like
nuclear power) cannot be tolerated.
Thankfully, there is good
news: We have true green alternatives to these failed 20th-century
ideas. They're cheaper, safer, cleaner, more reliable and more
job-producing than the old ways Stewart advocates.
Stewart and I have never met. But we have debated on the radio and online. Thank you, Pacific Sun, for bringing us to print.
Stewart's
advocacy does fit a pattern. He appears to have become a paladin for
large-scale corporate technologies that may be highly profitable to CEOs
and shareholders, but are beyond the control of the average citizen,
and work to our detriment. Because he makes so many simple but costly
errors, let's try a laundry list:
1. Like other reactor
advocates, Stewart cavalierly dismisses the nuclear waste problem by
advocating, among other things, the stuff be simply dumped down a deep
hole. This is a terribly dangerous idea and will not happen. Suffice it
to say that after a half-century of promises (the first commercial
reactor opened in Pennsylvania in 1957) the solution now being offered
by government and industry is...a committee!!! Meanwhile, more than
60,000 tons of uniquely lethal spent fuel rods sit at some 65 sites in
31 states with nowhere to go. Like the reactors themselves, they are
vulnerable to cooling failure, terror attack, water shortages,
overheating of lakes, rivers and oceans, flooding, earthquakes,
tornadoes and hurricanes, and much more. This is no legacy to leave our
children.
2. Equally disturbing is the industry's inability to
get meaningful private liability insurance. The current federally
imposed limit is $11 billion, which would disappear in a meltdown even
faster than BP's $75 million in the Gulf. According to the latest
compendium of studies, issued this spring by the New York Annals of
Science, Chernobyl has killed some 985,000 people, and is by no means
finished. It has done at least a half-trillion dollars in damage. The
uninsured death toll and financial costs of a similar-scaled accident in
the U.S. are incalculable, but would clearly kill millions and bankrupt
our nation for the foreseeable future.
3. Stewart points out
that there are also risks with wind and solar power. But clearly none
that begin to compare with nukes, coal or deep-water drilling. If
reactor owners were forced to find reasonable liability insurance, all
would shut. A similar demand for renewables and efficiency would leave
them unaffected.
4. Renewable/efficiency technologies today are
cheaper, faster to deploy and more job-creating than nukes. It takes a
minimum of five years to license and build a new reactor. The one being
done by AREVA in Finland is hugely over budget and behind schedule.
There is no reason to expect anything better here. Among other things,
the long lead time ties up for too many years the critical social
capital that could otherwise go to technology that can quickly let the
planet heal.
5. Like others who doubt the possibility of a
green-powered Earth, Stewart posits the straw man of reliance on a
deployment of solar panels that would blanket the desert and do
ecological harm. In fact, the National Renewable Energy Lab estimates
100 percent of the nation's electricity could come from an area 90 miles
on a side, or a relatively modest box of 8,100 square miles. But as we
all know, that's not how it will be done. Solar panels belong on
rooftops, where there is ample area throughout the nation, and an end to
transmission costs. Likewise, wind farms do not "cover" endless acres
of prairie, their tower bases take up tiny spots that remain surrounded
by productive farmland. In this case, currently available wind turbines
spinning between the Mississippi and the Rockies could generate 300
percent of the nation's electricity. There's sufficient potential in
North Dakota, Kansas and Texas alone to do 100 percent. Cost and
installation times put nukes to shame. The liability is nil, as is the
bird kill, which primarily affects obsolete, badly sited fast-spinning
machines in places like Altamont Pass. Those must come down, and there
will certainly be other surprises along the way. No technology is
perfect, and we need to be careful even with those that are green-based.
But as we have seen, further threats on the scale of Chernobyl and the
Deepwater Horizon cannot be sustained.
6. As for GMO crops,
Darwin was right. Plants evolve to avoid herbicides just as bugs work
their way around pesticides (which Stewart correctly decries). Now we
see that "super-weeds" are outsmarting the carefully engineered
herbicides meant to justify the whole GMO scheme, bringing a disastrous
reversion to horrific, lethal old sprays. Chemical farming may be good
for corporate profits, but it can kill global sustainability. In the
long run, only organics can sustain us.
7. Stewart mentions that
he is paid only for speeches. But a single such fee can outstrip an
entire year's pay for a grassroots organizer or volunteer. What's
remarkable is that the nuclear power industry spent some $645 million
lobbying for its "renaissance" over the past decade--more than $64
million/year. It has bought an army of corporate lobbyists and
legislators. Yet only a handful of folks with rear guard environmental
credentials has stepped forward to fight for the old fossil/nuclear/GMO
technologies.
Stewart is certainly welcome to his own opinions.
But not to his own facts. Pushing for a nuclear "renaissance" concedes
that it's a Dark Age technology, defined by unsustainable costs,
inefficiencies, danger, eco-destruction, radiation releases, lack of
insurance, uncertain decommissioning costs, vulnerability to terrorism
and much more.
That the industry must desperately seek taxpayer
help, and cannot find insurance for even this "newer, safer" generation,
is the ultimate testimony to its failure. By contrast, renewables and
efficiency are booming, and are a practical solution to our energy
needs, which the corporate clunkers of the previous century simply
cannot provide.
It's been a long time since the Whole Earth
Catalog was published. Its hallowed founder should wake up to the
booming holistic green technologies that are poised to save the Earth.
They are ready to roll over the obsolete corporate boondoggles that are
killing Her. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, the disasters in the coal
mines and the Gulf remind us we need to make that green-powered
transition as fast as we possibly can.