Let's Join Japan and Junk New Nukes

Published on Wednesday, May 11, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Let's Join Japan and Junk New Nukes

by Harvey Wasserman

Japan will build no new nuclear reactors. It's a huge body blow to the global industry, and could mark a major turning point in the future of energy. (Photo: Toru Namayaka/Getty Images)
Says Prime Minister Naoto Kan: "We need to start from scratch… and do more to promote renewables."
Wind power alone could--and now probably will--replace 40 nukes in Japan.
The United States must join them. Axing the $36 billion currently stuck in the 2012 federal budget for loan guarantees to build new reactors could do the trick.
Wind potential alone between the Mississippi and the Rockies could produce 300% of the nation's electricity. That doesn't include solar, geothermal, ocean thermal, sustainable bio-fuels and the many more renewable sources poised to re-shape the Amercian energy future once the prospect of new nukes is discarded.
Japan was set to build 14 new nukes before Fukushima. Six of Japan's total of 55 reactors were shut by the earthquake and tsunami. Three at Kashiwazaki remain shut from the seven that were hit by an earthquake less than five years ago. Kan wants three more closed at Hamaoka, also in an earthquake/tsunami zone.
Japan's reactor fleet remains the world's third-largest, behind the US and France. The General Electric and Westinghouse nuclear divisions, builders of nearly all the commercial reactors in the US, are at least partly controlled by Japanese companies. Reactor Pressure Vessels and other major components are built there.
Four California reactors also sit in earthquake zones vulnerable to tsunamis. San Onofre, between Los Angeles and San Diego, has 7.5 million people living within a 50-mile radius. Its two operating and one dead reactor sit less than a mile from the high tide line.
Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo, sits near a series of earthquake faults, including one newly discovered less than two miles from the two reactor cores there.
Numerous other US reactors are perilously close to earthquake faults, including two operating at Indian Point, 35 miles north of Manhattan. The Perry reactor, on Lake Erie east of Cleveland, was damaged by an earthquake in January, 1986.
Massive quantities of heat have poured into the global eco-system from the multiple explosions, partial melt-downs and spent fuel fires at Fukushima, contributing significantly to global warming.
Highly radioactive fallout has been found miles from the site. Millions of gallons of extremely contaminated water have poured into the ocean.
Radioactive fallout has also been detected in rainwater, milk and on vegetables throughout the United States, threatening the health of millions of Americans, especially small children and embryos in utero.
Now Fukushima Unit Four appears to be on the brink of physical collapse. Fission may be continuing in at least one spent fuel pool, and possibly in one or more cores. Radiation levels are high enough at the site to guarantee certain near-term death to workers, many of whom have come to consider work at Fukushima to be a virtual suicide mission. A definitive end to the disaster could be years away.
Kan's decision to shut Hamaoka and then to cancel future nukes came as a shock. Widely criticized for weakness in the wake of Fukushima, he has now redefined Japan's energy future.
Though dependent on imported fossil fuels, major Japanese corporations have substantial investments in wind, solar and other Solartopian technologies. This will push them to the forefront of Japan's energy future.
Likewise Germany. In the wake of huge public demonstrations and a major electoral defeat, Prime Minister Angela Merkel has shut seven old reactors and says ten more will go down by 2020, making Germany nuke-free. For decades Germany has been pushing wind, solar and other green technologies harder than any other industrial nation, with enormously profitable results.
In the US, renewables are also booming, while the reactor industry has been taking hard hits. Just this week a major French-operated component factory proposed for Virginia has been pushed back two years--which means likely cancellation. A $5 billion taxpayer-funded facility in South Carolina to produce plutonium-based Mixed Oxide reactor fuel faces a lack of customers, and growing doubts about the project's viability or real purpose.
Overall, Fukushima has complicated an already dark financial picture. A Texas project meant for Japanese financing is now all but dead. So, too, is one proposed for Maryland by the French.
While the Obama Administration continues to push for those $36 billion in loan guarantees, it's unclear what reactor projects are in credible shape to accept them.
Meanwhile ferocious battles to shut old reactors in Vermont, New York, New Jersey and elsewhere are heating up. With roughly two dozen of similar design to Fukushima Unit One now operating in the US, the public demand for more shut-downs continues to escalate.
We need to finish the job and get to a green-powered Earth.
Nuclear power makes global warming worse, and spells economic as well as ecological doom.
The industry can't get private financing, can't get meaningful liability insurance, can't deal with its wastes, can't compete in the marketplace, can't guarantee us we won't suffer a Fukushima of our own, can't provide a reliable energy supply into the future.
What lies before us once we kill these loan guarantees is a Solartopian reality powered by the sun, wind, tides, waves, earth's heat and more.
Those countries like Germany, Denmark and now Japan that head definitively toward a nuke-free future are in the process of turning toward survivability and prosperity.
Let's kill that loan guarantee package, shut the dying nukes like Vermont Yankee and Indian Point, and join them in truly green-powered future.

Harvey Wasserman's Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org. He and Bob Fitrakis have co-authored four books on election protection, including Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election?, As Goes Ohio: Election Theft Since 2004 , How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008, and What Happened in Ohio

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Health and the Nuclear Gamble

Image via Wikipedia

Published on Sunday, March 27, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Health and the Nuclear Gamble

by Robert Dodge

The world has anxiously watched the events in Japan unfolding this past two weeks after the horrific earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster. The feelings are magnified out of a sense of helplessness in aiding the victims in Japan mixed with concerns for potential effects and implications to our own health and communities. In assessing the devastating effects of natural disasters, we must pause as we consider the potential for catastrophic effects of man made disasters, specifically from nuclear power plants.
The radiation effects of this disaster are unknown at the present time with greatest concern for the firefighters and those workers and people in the immediate vicinity of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Unfortunately the news has gotten worse on a daily basis and has not been entirely forthcoming or transparent. We have moved from reassurance of no leakage to a small fissure in the containment chamber to the leaking of critical water from the cooling pools with variable releases of highly radioactive isotopes to the probability of a breech of the containment vessel that houses the nuclear core. The latter posses the greatest threat.
Fortunately the risk and radiation detected at our shores appears nominal at the present time. However our own National Academy of Sciences has stated that any exposure to radiation increases a person’s risk of cancer. There is no safe level of radiation exposure. The amazing fact is not that the radiation that reaches our shores is described low level at the present time but that it reaches us at all traveling 5000 miles from Japan. This underscores the interconnectedness of our planet and energy decisions made anywhere in the world. With nuclear power and all of its safeguards, it remains imperfect and with the fragility of human technology there always exists the possibility of a nuclear accident with its risk of radioactivity release.
These invisible radioactive isotopes are intensely toxic to humans. Our bodies when exposed to them incorporate them into our cells as though they were life giving molecules. This is coupled with their extended half lives where they can persist for years promoting health risks. Thus far Iodine 131 and Cesium 137 have been the 2 isotopes confirmed at present. Iodine 131 has a half life of 8 days and is taken up by the thyroid gland where it emits radioactivity increasing the risk for thyroid cancer. Cesium 137 with its half life of 30 years is handled by the body like potassium which is rapidly disseminated throughout our entire bodies where it can cause burns, radiation sickness, cancer particularly of the soft tissues and death.
The other isotopes of concern are Strontium 90 and Plutonium 239. Strontium 90 with its half life of 29 years is utilized by the body like calcium depositing it in teeth and bone where it can cause cancer of the bone, bone marrow and soft tissues around the bone. Finally Plutonium 239 is the most dangerous isotope. Its cancer causing ionizing radiation risk can be either as an external hazard from outside the body or internal hazard by ingestion or inhalation where it is presents a significant lung cancer risk. Once it circulates through the body, it exposes the blood, kidneys, liver, and spleen to its cancer causing alpha particles.
At the present time, Iodine 131 has been found in the drinking water in Tokyo at levels 200% above the allowable for infants and children who are the most vulnerable to its cancer causing effects. Milk and food within the region are showing radioactive contamination. The water within the Reactor 3 which is a mixed oxide fuel reactor of plutonium and uranium has shown radiation levels 10 thousand times that typically seen.
As physicians our ability to respond to these potential toxins is woefully inadequate focusing mainly on supportive care and comfort measures while observing for the delayed effects of these agents. As with most serious illnesses in medicine, prevention is the best practice. As physicians, it is our obligation to do whatever we can to prevent illness.
If there were to be a meltdown, there is the potential for an astonishing release of radioactive material. We are talking about the radiation potential of about 1000 Hiroshima bombs in only one core. Chernobyl was comparable to 400 Hiroshima’s.
As the world grapples with this latest complex compound disaster, a serious reflection and reconsideration of our own nuclear power industry is in order. Nuclear energy is too risky, dirty and too expensive. Are these risks to the health of our children and community ones we are willing to take? We need investment in safer energy sources in particular renewable sources. As long as nuclear power plants exist, prevention of nuclear accidents is paramount. We also must have local disaster preparedness efforts and make ourselves aware of them.

Dr. Robert Dodge is a family practice physician in Ventura, California. He became active in the peace movement as a college student at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the 1970′s where he majored in molecular, cellular and developmental biology. He is a Board Member and Nuclear Ambassador of, Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles (www.PSRLA.org),and Board Member of Beyond War (www.beyondwar.org).

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Are The Magnetic Poles Flipping?

Image via Wikipedia By Opeyemi Parham



Wow. "Waving Overwhelming Wonder". That is the skill that I am honing as I bear witness to a world in chaos.
What May Be Coming Next has many possibilities.
In El Mundo Bueno *, the Japanese continue to demonstrate awe-inspiring interpersonal connection, and political transparency in dealing with the disaster as it continues to unfold. In el Mundo Bueno we all move forward together with a clear and powerful warning, regarding the dangers of nuclear energy. The entire world begins to move away from such deadly technologies.
In El Mundo Malo, the problematic nuclear reactors have escalating issues. Perhaps more damage, as aftershocks of 5 and 6 (we call those earthquakes elsewhere) continue. Perhaps a meltdown. Perhaps (this being el MUCHO mundo malo) a meltdown, followed by another tsunami, and contamination of the ocean, with radiation.
I do not speak these possibilities as a fear monger, but as an oracle.
With Katrina, we were offered to possibility of looking at our emergency preparedness, our classism, and racism in this country. Did we learn our lessons?
With Haiti, we marveled at the resiliency of a people with the spirit to be dancing on the beaches the night of their catastrophe. Then we sent aid that introduced cholera and worsened their suffering.
With BP Oil, we felt panic as raw crude bled into the gulf waters. We are chafing at the bit to begin drilling again, as gasoline prices soar to $3.50 a gallon, and the corporate villains in that scandal plot new ways to avoid paying damages.
With Haiti, we marveled at the resiliency of a people with the spirit to be dancing on the beaches the night of their catastrophe. Then we sent aid that introduced a Southeast Asian cholera and worsened their suffering.
FACT: the magnetic poles are shifting, possibly preparing for a "flip":
"The last time the poles switched was 780,000 years ago, and it's happened about 400 times in 330 million years. Each reversal takes a thousand years or so to complete, and it takes longer for the shift to take effect at the equator than at the poles. The field has weakened about 10% in the last 150 years. Some scientists think this is a sign of a flip in progress"
from http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question782.htm
FACT: we have no idea what this might look like, feel like or how it will affect humans, other than the likelihood of a period of time when the earth loses it's protection from solar radiation for an unspecified period of time. Maybe minutes. Or hours. Or days.
Learning more about how to protect ourselves from radiation exposure seem EXACTLY RIGHT, right now.
BY THEIR DIETS AND LIFESTYLE, THE JAPANESE ARE WELL EQUIPPED TO DEAL WITH RADIATION EXPOSURE, relative to other parts of the world (like the Ukraine or Three Mile Island)) where radiation exposure has happened; I still trust that the biosphere/Gaia/Mother Earth is being as gentle as possible with us 7 billion humans...
She is saying "wake up, and STAY AWAKE"
My personal response to my own fears and anxieties is to remind myself to breathe, to inform and to share actual facts with as many as will listen. I  listen to that calm, still voice inside of me that is telling me what to do and how to refuel my heart with awe for the magic in my day to day world. I don't believe that the answers are on-line, or in the world of science. We must find them in co-created ways, for ourselves. We must use right and left brains, hearts, and souls to be with all of this change.
I will post the messages that I receive from Spirit, after I go and sweat my prayers for Japan and the World on Sunday, March 13.
                            In love and light-- OPEYEMI (eternally grateful)
* a phrase used by Starhawk in the novel "The Fifth Sacred Thing
--
                       Opeyemi  413-336-1291
                        P.O. Box 264

                        Hadley, MA. 01035  (www.ceremonyheals.com)
         buy Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World 

it will INSPIRE and encourage you!     http://www.hopebeneathourfeet.com   

                                                         

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Despite Spending Millions Lobbying, Nuke Industry Losing.

Image by EasyEcoBlog via Flickr

Published on Sunday, July 25, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Why Stewart Brand is Wrong on Nukes - and is Losing

by Harvey Wasserman

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:

Stewart Brand now seems to equate "science" with a tragic and dangerous corporate agenda. The technologies for which he argues--nuclear power, "clean" coal, genetically modified crops, etc.--can be very profitable for big corporations, but carry huge risks for the rest of us. In too many instances, tangible damage has already been done, and more is clearly threatened. 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.

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org.

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Too Big To Fail Means Too Big

Cover via Amazon

Andrew Lakoff

Our Energy Production System: Too Big to Fail


The eerie timing of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, just a month after the Obama administration announced plans to expand offshore drilling, has been widely noted. But a second coincidence is equally striking. The Congress is currently debating legislation developed in response to another man-made disaster: the financial meltdown of 2008. As attention turns to the regulatory reforms necessary to avoid the next environmental catastrophe, what can we learn from the debate over financial reform?

As in other disasters, the initial response to the financial meltdown was to find the guilty parties. And there were many candidates: the collapse of an inflated housing market, irresponsible lending practices, the negligence of governmental regulators, nefarious investment schemes. The search for such culprits helps only in demanding redress, but also in narrating the significance of the event. However, such a narrow purview distracts attention from a bigger issue: the characteristics of the overall system that made it vulnerable to these specific failures.

In the case of the financial disaster, legislators have finally turned to this latter question. One of the prominent features of the financial reform bill currently under consideration is a focus on "systemic risk." In the context of finance, this term refers to the idea that our collective well-being depends on a complex and fragile system that is potentially vulnerable to catastrophic failure.

The concept of systemic risk points to the regulatory problem posed by the existence of firms whose failure could provoke a collapse of the entire system: firms that are "too big to fail." It is now recognized that the problem of systemic risk requires new forms of government regulation. The goal of such regulation is to provide the financial system with resilience against unexpected shocks so that catastrophic failures such as the 2008 meltdown are not repeated.

What would it mean to apply this lesson to energy and environmental regulation in the wake of the Gulf spill? So far, most attention has been focused on the search for specific culprits. Questions are asked mainly about proximate causes of the disaster: Did the cementing techniques used by Halliburton lead to the initial explosion? Did Transocean fail to install the necessary blowout prevention equipment? Did government regulators neglect to insist on further back up systems for shutting off the flow of oil? Was BP underprepared for a disaster of this magnitude?

The search for a specific culprit in this environmental catastrophe is necessary insofar as it helps us pinpoint who is responsible for the costs of immediate clean up and for the remediation of direct damages. However, it should not be the sole object of inquiry as we reflect on what the spill means for the future of energy production in the US. The danger is that we will focus only on the correction of narrow regulatory lapses and on technological fixes that will allow the expansion of offshore drilling plans to go forward.

Rather, the same broad lessons that were learned from the financial meltdown should be applied to this environmental disaster. New regulatory mechanisms and public investments should focus on the mitigation of systemic risks - that is, on forms of energy production that pose the danger of catastrophic failure to the broader ecological - and economic - system.

In the Gulf Coast, we are learning that the ecosystems in which energy production takes place are complex, interdependent and vulnerable to catastrophic shock. Brown pelicans, sea turtles, bluefin tuna and other endangered species depend on a functioning Gulf ecosystem. The marshlands, coral reefs, and sea-grass meadows that support coastal life are imperiled by ecological shocks such as major oil spills. And the livelihoods of fisherman and resort operators in turn are threatened by the disaster. Offshore drilling in the Gulf is best understood as a systemic risk to these fragile ecologies and local economies.

Our response to disasters is too often limited in extent and duration. Typically the onset of an emergency situation makes it possible to galvanize resources and provide immediate relief, whereas earlier proposals for preventive measures could not muster support. During a disaster, there is a search for the proximate cause in order to attribute blame and seek redress, while the deeper structural causes remain unaddressed. And then, with time, the sense of urgency to deal with the crisis fades, and it becomes more difficult to implement reforms that would reduce vulnerability to future catastrophe.

As we continue to watch the disaster in the Gulf unfold, and seek out its culprits, it is worth attending to the bigger questions the event provokes about the vulnerabilities of our ecosystems, and about the systemic risks posed by our methods of energy production. The energy bill Congress is about to debate is a perfect opportunity to address these risks and vulnerabilities. Building a concern with mitigating systemic risk into the energy bill means investing in resilient forms of energy production, and avoiding sources of energy - such as offshore drilling and nuclear power - that may seem viable in the short term but that threaten environmental catastrophe in the long term.

Andrew Lakoff is associate professor of anthropology, sociology and communication at the University of Southern California, and the editor of Disaster and the Politics of Intervention (SSRC/ Columbia University Press, 2010).

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Loan Guarantees Distort Capital Markets

Obama’s Nuclear Option


Posted on Feb 16, 2010

By Amy Goodman

President Barack Obama is going nuclear. He announced the initial $8 billion in loan guarantees for construction of the first new nuclear power plants in the United States in close to three decades. Obama is making good on a campaign pledge, like his promises to escalate the war in Afghanistan and to unilaterally attack in Pakistan. And like his “Af-Pak” war strategy, Obama’s publicly financed resuscitation of the nuclear power industry in the U.S. is bound to fail, another taxpayer bailout waiting to happen.

Opponents of the plan, which includes a tripling of existing nuclear plant construction-loan guarantees to $54.5 billion, span the ideological spectrum. On its most basic level, the economics of nuclear power generation simply doesn’t make sense. The cost to construct these behemoths is so huge, and the risks are so great, that no sensible investor, no banks, no hedge funds will invest in their construction.

No one will loan a power company the money to build a power plant, and the power companies refuse to spend their own money. Obama himself professes a passion for the free market, telling Bloomberg BusinessWeek, “We are fierce advocates for a thriving, dynamic free market.” Well, the free market long ago abandoned nuclear power. The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation remarked, “Expansive loan guarantee programs ... are wrought with problems. At a minimum, they create taxpayer liabilities, give recipients preferential treatment, and distort capital markets.”

Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a longtime critic of the nuclear power industry, told me, “If you buy more nuclear plants, you’re going to get about two to 10 times less climate solution per dollar, and you’ll get it about 20 to 40 times slower, than if you buy instead the cheaper, faster stuff that is walloping nuclear and coal and gas.”

In his 2008 report “The Nuclear Illusion,” Lovins writes, “Nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options.”


The White House Office of Management and Budget, in the same statement announcing the $54.5 billion for nuclear power, also listed a “credit subsidy funding of $500 million to support $3 [billion] to $5 billion of loan guarantees for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.” Thus, just one-tenth the amount for nuclear is being dedicated to energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. At the same time, the Obama administration plans to cancel funding for the hugely unpopular Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility. Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists told The Christian Science Monitor the Obama administration “doesn’t have a plan for [storing] radioactive waste from a new generation of nuclear power plants. That is irresponsible.”

The waste from nuclear power plants is not only an ecological nightmare, but also increases the threats of nuclear proliferation. Obama said in his recent State of the Union address, “We’re also confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people—the threat of nuclear weapons.” Despite this, plans that accompany what Obama has proposed, his “new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,” include increased commercial “nuclear fuel reprocessing,” which the Union of Concerned Scientists calls “dangerous, dirty and expensive,” and which it says would increase the global risks of both nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.

Both Lovins and the Union of Concerned Scientists debunk the myth that nuclear energy is essential to combat global warming. Lovins writes, “Every dollar invested in nuclear expansion will worsen climate change by buying less solution per dollar.” Obama said that this first tranche of public funding, which will benefit the energy giant Southern Co., “will create thousands of construction jobs in the next few years, and some 800 permanent jobs.” Yet investment in solar, wind and cogeneration technologies could do the same thing, quickly creating industries here in the U.S. that are thriving in Europe. What’s more, the risks of failure of a windmill or a solar panel are minute when compared with nuclear power plant disasters like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

From economics, to the environment, to the prevention of nuclear threats, Obama’s nuclear loan guarantees fail on all counts.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

© 2010 Amy Goodman

Distributed by King Features Syndicate

Vermont's Radioactive Nightmare

Vermont's Radioactive Nightmare

by Harvey Wasserman

Like a decayed flotilla of rickety steamers, at least 27 of America's 104 aging atomic reactors are known to be leaking radioactive tritium, which is linked to cancer if inhaled or ingested through the throat or skin.

The fallout has been fiercest at Vermont Yankee, where a flood of cover-ups has infuriated and terrified near neighbors who say the reactor was never meant to operate more than 30 years, and must now shut.

In 2007 one of Yankee's 22 cooling towers simply collapsed due to rot.

Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has confirmed tritium levels in a monitoring well at Vernon to be 3.5 times the federal safety standard. The leaks apparently came from underground pipes whose very existence was recently denied by VY officials in under-oath testimony at a public hearing. Vermont's pro-nuclear Republican Governor Jim Douglas has termed the event "a breach of trust that cannot be tolerated."

Yankee is owned by Entergy, a Mississippi-based consortium that also owns New York's Indian Point reactor, which suffered an internal gusher of radioactive water in May, 2009. Another leak has just been found at Oconee in South Carolina. Illinois' Braidwood leaked so many millions of gallons of tritium-laced water that its owner, Exelon, was forced to buy a new municipal water system for a nearby town.

Entergy says none of Yankee's tritium has been found in local drinking water or in the Connecticut River, which supplies the plant's cooling water. Vernon sits near Vermont's southeast border with Massachusetts, across the river from New Hampshire. "The existence of tritium in such low levels does not present a risk to public health or safety whatsoever," says the company's Robert Williams.

But VY is just the latest of more than two dozen U.S. nuclear plants---many built in the 1960s and '70s---to be found with leaking tritium.

Last year at New Jersey's Oyster Creek, tritium was reported leaking a second time shortly after Exelon got it a 20-year license extension. Entergy's Pilgrim reactor, at Plymouth, Massachusetts, has recently leaked tritium into the ground.

The NRC's Neil Sheehan has confirmed leaks involving 27 of 104 licensed US reactors, and says that probably doesn't account for all of them. At Yankee, Oyster Creek and elsewhere, rotting pipes are the likeliest culprit, but no one is 100% certain.

The epidemic has escalated public dismay. Vermont state Representative Tony Klein, chair of House Natural Resources and Energy Committee, says that "when you have public officials that the public depends on for their health and welfare making casual statements that a radioactive substance is not harmful to you, I think that's ludicrous."

For decades the Encylopedia Britannica, National Academy of Sciences and other primary scientific bodies have confirmed that no dose of radiation, no matter how small, can ever be deemed perfectly safe. "There is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial," says Richard R. Monson, associate dean for professional education and professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Thus far the NRC has granted a series of license renewals to aging reactors. But by virtue of a long-standing agreement with Entergy, the Vermont Legislature can deny Yankee's request for a 20-year extension. In the 1990s local groups like the Citizen's Awareness Network (http://www.vtcitizen.org/) helped force down the Yankee Rowe plant on the Deerfield River in Massachusetts, about 25 miles southwest of Vernon. The root cause was concern over embrittlement of the elderly reactor's core, a key to the future of all other aging nukes.

In Vermont, angry debate has also arisen over Entergy's dwindling decommissioning fund, which has been slashed by a declining stock market. Entergy has proposed spinning off plant ownership to a shell corporation whose assets may be even more dubious. But area residents also fear Entergy may be pushing Yankee operations in an attempt to find the source of its leaks.

With VY operating under duress, Katz and others report an increasing wave of concern among local citizens starting to think seriously about how they might evacuate if Entergy keeps pushing. "This plant appears to be leaking from its reactor piping, but they don't really know where," she says. "They don't want to shut down because they're afraid they'll never get back up. Entergy is choosing to protect its bottom line rather than the health and safety of our community."

Indeed, a desperate national industry now pushing for massive federal subsidies to build new reactors may not survive a flood of elderly clunkers being forced to close by the weight of their own contamination. "This is an industry trying to build a new fleet of Titanics while the old ones are sinking," says Katz.

Amidst the gusher of tritium leaks, Governor Douglas wants to postpone the legislature's vote on VY's license extension. But his term expires in November, and all five Democratic gubernatorial candidates are pledged to a Yankee shutdown.

What happens next will be defined by fierce grassroots activism crashing into a flood of corporate money in support of a rickety old reactor being operated with increasing recklessness.

The highly hyped "reactor renaissance"---and much more---may hang in the balance. Stay tuned.

Harvey Wasserman is Senior Advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and Senior Editor of www.freepress.org , where this article first appeared. His SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.harveywasserman.com.

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Wasserman Assails Loan Gaurantees for Nukes

Published on Saturday, January 30, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Will Obama Guarantee a New Reactor War?

by Harvey Wasserman

Amidst utter chaos in the atomic reactor industry, Team Obama is poised to vastly expand a bitterly contested loan guarantee program that may cost far more than expected, both financially and politically.

The long-stalled, much-hyped "Renaissance" in atomic power has failed to find private financing. New construction projects are opposed for financial reasons by fiscal conservatives such as the Heritage Foundation and National Taxpayers Union, and by a national grassroots safe energy campaign that has already beaten such loan guarantees three times.

New reactor designs are being challenged by regulators in both the US and Europe. Key projects, new and old, are engulfed in political/financial uproars in Florida, Texas, Maryland, Vermont, New Jersey and elsewhere.

And 53 years after the opening of the first commercial reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu is now convening a "Blue Ribbon" commission on managing radioactive waste, for which the industry still has no solution. Though stacked with reactor advocates, the commission may certify the death certificate for Nevada's failed Yucca Mountain dump.

In 2005 George W. Bush's Energy Bill embraced appropriations for an $18.5 billion loan guarantee program, which the Obama administration now may want to triple. But the DOE has been unable to minister to a chaotic industry in no shape to proceed with new reactor construction. As many as five government agencies are negotiating over interest rates, accountability, capital sourcing, scoring, potential default and accident liability, design flaws and other fiscal, procedural and regulatory issues, any or all of which could wind up in the courts.

In 2007 a national grassroots uprising helped kill a proposed addition of $50 billion in guarantees, then beat them twice again.

When Obama endorsed "safe, clean nuclear power plants" and "clean coal" in this year's State of the Union, more than 10,000 MoveOn.org members slammed that as the worst moment of the speech.

The first designated recipient of the residual Bush guarantees may be at the Vogtle site in Waynesboro, Georgia, where two reactors now operate. Georgia regulators have ruled that consumers must pay for two proposed new reactors even as they are being built.

But initial estimates of $2-3 billion per unit have soared to $8 billion and more, even long before construction begins. Standardized designs have not been certified. On-going technical challenges remind potential investors that the first generation of reactors cost an average of more than double their original estimates.

The Westinghouse AP-1000 model, currently slated for Vogtle---and for another site in South Carolina---has become an unwanted front runner.

Owned by Japan's Toshiba, Westinghouse has been warned by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of serious design problems relating to hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.

The issues are not abstract. Florida's Turkey Point plant took a direct hit from Hurricane Andrew in 1991, sustaining more than $100 million in damage while dangerously losing off-site communication and power, desperately relying on what Mary Olson of NIRS terms "shaky back-up power." Ohio's Perry reactor was damaged by a 1986 earthquake that knocked out surrounding roads and bridges. A state commission later warned that evacuation under such conditions could be impossible.

Long considered a loyal industry lap-dog, the NRC's willingness to send Westinghouse back to the drawing board indicates the AP-1000's problems are serious. That they could be expensive and time-consuming to correct means the Vogtle project may prove a losing choice for the first loan guarantees.

South Texas is also high among candidates for loan money. But San Antonio, a primary partner in a two-reactor project there, has been rocked by political fallout from soaring cost estimates. As the San Antonio city council recently prepared to approve financing, it learned the price had jumped by $4 billion, to a staggering $17-18 billion. Angry debate over who-knew-what-when has led to the possibility that the city could pull out altogether.

In Florida, four reactors have been put on hold by a plummeting economy and the shifting political aims of Governor Charlie Crist. Crist originally supported two reactors proposed by Florida Power & Light to be built at Turkey Point, south of Miami, and two more proposed near Tampa by Progress Energy. State regulators voted to allow the utilities to charge ratepayers before construction began, or even a license was approved.

But Crist is now running for US Senate, and has distanced himself from the increasingly unpopular utilities. With votes from two new appointees, the Public Service Commission has nixed more than $1 billion in rate hikes. The utilities have in turn suspended preliminary reactor construction (though they say they will continue to pursue licenses).

At Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, the financially tortured Constellation Energy has committed to the French AREVA's European Power Reactor, now under serious challenge by regulators in France, Finland and Great Britain. An EPR under construction in Finland is now at least three years behind schedule, and more than $3 billion over budget.

Meanwhile, at Entergy's 30-year-old Yankee reactor In Vermont, a series of radiation and information leaks have severely damaged prospects for re-licensing. The decision will soon be made by a deeply divided state legislature. "It would be better for the industry to let Vermont Yankee die a quiet death in the Green Mountain state," says Deb Katz of the grassroots Citizens Awareness Network. "With radioactive leaks, lies and systemic mismanagement, Entergy is no poster child for a new generation of nukes."

Meanwhile, New Jersey may require operators of the aging Oyster Creek reactor to install sizable towers to protect what's left of the severely damaged Barnegat Bay, which the plant uses for cooling. Though the requirement may not be enforced for as much as seven years, the towers' high cost could prompt a shut-down of the relatively small plant.

This unending stream of technical, financial and political downfalls could doom the "reactor renaissance" to history's radioactive dump heap. "President Obama needs to remember what Candidate Obama promised: no more taxpayer subsidies for nuclear power," said Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "Renewables and energy efficiency provide both greater carbon emissions reductions and more jobs per dollar spent than nuclear. Unlike nuclear power, they are relatively quick to install, and are actually safe and clean."

Indeed, despite Congressional and White House support for these latest proposed loan guarantees, the grassroots fight over both old and new nukes grows fiercer by the day.

In the long run, this alleged "nuclear renaissance" could prove to be little more than a rhetorical relapse.

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.

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Costs of Nuclear Power Prohibitive

Published on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 by The Herald News (Mass.)

Nuclear Power: Too Expensive, Too Risky

by John LaForge

Lofty claims about the benefits of nuclear power are coming from the Nuclear Energy Institute and others.

Meanwhile, news, financial and energy journals make clear that boiling water with uranium is the costliest and dirtiest energy choice. Even Time magazine reported Dec. 31, 2008, “It turns out that new (reactors) would be not just extremely expensive but spectacularly expensive.”

Florida Power and Light’s recent estimate for a 2-reactor system is a shocking $12 to $18 billion. The Wall St. Journal reported on nuclear’s prospects May 12, 2008 finding, “[T]he projected cost is causing some sticker shock ... double to quadruple earlier rough estimates. These estimates never include the costs of moving and managing radioactive waste — a bill that keeps coming for centuries.

Radioactive tritium has poisoned groundwater near at least 14 U.S. reactors, including Kewaunee in Wisconsin. Water under Braidwood, Dresden, Brookhaven, Palo Verde, Indian Point, Diablo Canyon, San Onofre and Kewaunee is all contaminated at levels above EPA and NRC standards.

Nuclear power is so clean that Germany legislated a phase-out of its 17 reactors by 2025. Germany’s 1998 decision was based partly on government studies that found high rates of childhood leukemia in areas near its reactors. In July 2007, the European Journal of Cancer Care published a similar report by Dr. Peter Baker of the Medical Univ. of South Carolina that found elevated leukemia incidence in children near U.S. reactors.

U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., attacked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2005, writing “The nuclear industry and the NRC have automatically dismissed all studies that link increased cancer risk to exposure to low levels of radiation. The NRC needs to study — not summarily dismiss — the connection between serious health risks and radiation released from nuclear reactors.”

The New York Times reported five years ago that owners of nearly half the reactors in the U.S. “are not reserving enough money to decommission them on retirement, according to Congressional auditors, who also say the NRC is not tracking the money carefully.”

In its July 2007 study “Too Hot to Handle,” the Oxford Research Group calls the hope of quickly building new reactors a “pipe dream.” Dr. Arjun Makhijani, the president of the Institute for Energy & Environmental Research, says in his book, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, “Even the leaders of the nuclear industry have said that they will not build new plants without 100 percent federal loan guarantees.”

In his 2008 report “The Flawed Economics of Nuclear Power,” Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, concludes, “While little private capital is going into nuclear power, investors are pouring tens of billions of dollars into wind farms each year.

And while the world’s nuclear generating capacity is estimated to expand by only 1,000 megawatts this year, wind generating capacity will likely grow by 30,000 megawatts.”

The Washington Post reported Nov. 24 that “leading environmental figures, including former Vice President Al Gore, remain skeptical of nuclear’s promise,” because of the high cost of building and the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. Indeed, but leading security and big business figures are skeptical for the same reasons.

The federal Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism has called for halting subsidies that promote nuclear power’s expansion.

In the commission’s Oct. 21 report “The Clock Is Ticking,” recommendation No. 3 is, “The U.S. should work internationally toward strengthening the non-proliferation regime ... discouraging, to the extent possible, the use of financial incentives in the promotion of civil nuclear power.”
And no less than Jeffrey Immelt, current CEO of General Electric — one of the world’s richest nuclear engineering firms — discourages new reactor construction because of financial liabilities.

In the Nov. 18, 2007 London Financial Times, he says, “If you were a utility CEO and looked at your world today, you would just do gas and wind. You would say (they are) easier to site, digestible today and I don’t have to bet my company on any of this stuff. You would never do nuclear. The economics are overwhelming.”

The plague of radiation-induced illness is overwhelming too. Let’s re-write the milk add: Got cancer?

Copyright © 2009 GateHouse Media, Inc.

John LaForge is on the Nukewatch staff and edits its quarterly.

Nuclear Information and Resource Service Request Action

Nuclear Information and Resource Service 

DON'T NUKE THE CLIMATE!

SEND A MESSAGE TO YOUR SENATORS NOW;

CALL THEM AND TAKE ACTION DECEMBER 11 & 12!

December 3, 2009

Dear Friends,

The Copenhagen climate negotiations begin next week, and the world's attention will be focused on the climate crisis.

Whether or not anything substantive comes out of Copenhagen, we who believe in a clean, safe, sustainable and affordable energy future have our work cut out for us.

Too many governments support their nuclear industries and seek to reverse our victory at COP 6 in 2000: they want to declare nuclear power as an acceptable means of addressing climate change.

In the U.S. too many in the administration (we're looking especially at you, Steven Chu!) the media, and in Congress--even some who should know better--are also supporting the nuclear industry.

We need to raise our voices louder than ever now. Take the first step and send a letter to your Senators and President Obama here.

And read on for more actions you can take, and more news from Washington.

It's as if there has been an ongoing collective case of amnesia. Some Senators in particular seem to have forgotten nuclear power's inherent dangers from accidents and everyday "routine" radiation releases, forgotten that there is no solution to the radioactive waste problem, forgotten that uranium mining devastates the environment and surrounding communities. They seem to forget, on a daily basis, the spiraling cost estimates for new reactor construction. How else can one explain recent media estimates of $4,000/kw for a new reactor when utilities' own cost estimates run as high as $9,000/kw?

They seem to suffer not only from amnesia, but wear blinders as well--not even noticing the cover story in the November 2009 Scientific American that lays out a concrete plan for the U.S. to be 100% renewable-powered by 2030!

The good news, however, is that Senators Kerry, Graham and Lieberman appear to be making little progress in selling the notion of adding billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts for the nuclear industry to the Senate climate bill. As we predicted, those Senators who most want to divert taxpayer money to nuclear power are the least likely to support any real climate bill. And those who most want a climate bill recognize that nuclear power is not a genuine climate solution.

That gives us all more time to raise our voices and more reason to keep up the pressure.

1. Send a letter to your Senators and President Obama now, here. This letter will remind them of the inherent dangers and problems of nuclear power and explain that a climate bill that includes nuclear power (and coal, and offshore oil!) is not a climate bill at all--it's a bailout for the energy lobby. We need a new vision for the future, and there is still time to achieve that!

2. Support anti-nuclear campaigners in Copenhagen. If you haven't done so yet, sign the Don't Nuke the Climate petition here. We're closing in on 50,000 signers, let's get there this week! Organizations: endorse the Don't Nuke the Climate campaign here.

3. Support Don't Nuke the Climate Action Days on December 11 and 12. Organize actions outside your Senators' district offices, at Federal Buildings, on campus, wherever is appropriate for you. List your action on the International Action Page here. Let us know about your action (nirsnet@nirs.org), and we'll alert people in your region.

Here in D.C., we'll be gathering outside the Department of Energy headquarters for street theater at 11 am on Friday Dec. 11. Join us if you're in the area!

4. Tie in your action with the National Don't Nuke the Climate Call-in Day December 11 or just call your Senators (202-224-3121) on Friday, Dec. 11. Ask your friends and colleagues, congregations and college roommates, everyone you know, to call on Dec. 11 too. Keep the Senate phones busy all day long! Bring cellphones to your action and ask everyone passing by to call their Senators. Bring cellphones to a coffeeshop, bar, food co-op, shopping mall, wherever you go: ask everyone to call….Even if there is no action in your region, call!

We don't have the money to compete with the nuclear industry (which may be the real source of all that amnesia….); so we need to compete with numbers--that means all of us and more. Post this on Facebook, myspace, etc. Tweet it. Send to your lists and your friends. Spread the word….

And if you can help us with financial support this Holiday season to continue building this campaign, we'll be eternally grateful. You can do so here. If you can't, we know how it is, but don't forget to call your Senators December 11: 202-224-3121.

Thanks for all you do,

Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
nirsnet@nirs.org
www.nirs.org

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Wasserman Criticizes Washington Post Nuke Coverage

Image via Wikipedia

Published on Friday, November 27, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

The WaPo's "Nuclear Power Regains Support" is a Big Lie

by Harvey Wasserman

Yet another "perfectly safe" release at Three Mile Island has irradiated yet another puff of hype about alleged "green" support for new reactors.
The two are inseparable.
In 1979, when TMI's brand new Unit Two melted, stack monitors and other critical safeguards crashed in tandem. Nobody knows how much radiation escaped, where it went or who it harmed. Cancers, leukemia, stillbirths, malformations, asthma, sterility, skin lesions and other radiation-related diseases erupted throughout central Pennsylvania. Some 2400 families sued, but never got a full public hearing in federal court.
Unit Two had operated just three months when it melted. By a 3-1 margin, three central Pennsylvania counties then voted that TMI-One, which opened in 1974, stay shut. But Ronald Reagan tore down that wall.
This week TMI's owners were forced to evacuate 150 workers when radioactive dust "unexpectedly blew out of a pipe being cut by workers." Exelon was "trying to determine exactly how and why it happened."
As always, official announcements emphasize that the public was "in no danger." That was an epic lie in 1979. This time Exelon's Ralph DeSantis said things were rapidly "back to normal."
DeSantis then said radiation could be quickly wiped off protective outfits, while "it takes two to three days for radiation to naturally leave the body of anyone who breathed it in."
This is a ghastly lie. Among other isotopes, alpha and beta emitters - especially from radioactive dust - can easily lodge in the lungs and other internal organs long enough to damage cells and cause numerous forms of cancer, often lethal.
Ditto the hype about alleged green support for new reactors. Latest is a carefully contrived piece of industry fluff from one Anthony Faiola, whose "Nuclear Power Regains Support" has just been featured atop the Washington Post. This wafer thin installment in the "former environmentalists deem nukes green" series features a Brit named Stephen Tindale who recently left Greenpeace under strained circumstances.
Greenpeace is as anti-nuke as ever. Like Patrick Moore, another former Greenpeacer now hiring out to the nuclear industry, Tindale's tenure with the organization was stormy, and his defection unsurprising to many still with the group.
But once again the turn of a single activist was a sufficient hook on which to hang a breathless feature.
Faiola cites "only muted opposition" to new reactors in the US while ignoring the inconvenient reality that none are yet licensed for construction. The thousands of No Nukes arrests in the 1970s and ‘80s came at reactor sites like Seabrook, New Hampshire and Diablo Canyon, California, where construction was already under way.
In fact, today's safe energy opposition is far beyond corresponding stages when the first reactors were just being proposed. Its decisive advantage comes from true green renewable and efficiency technologies that are four decades further along, and that have all but priced atomic energy wholly out of the marketplace. Only this media-based stab at federal handouts keeps the prospect of new reactors on life support.
Faiola crows that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission "is reviewing applications for 22 new nuclear plants from coast to coast." Unmentioned is Toshiba-Westinghouse's flagship AP-1000 design, which the NRC says can't withstand an earthquake, hurricane or tornado. Also missing are devastating safety critiques from regulators in Finland, France and Great Britain of the "standardized" reactor being pushed by France's taxpayer-financed AREVA.
Failoa does cover Al Gore's harsh assaults on the economic and proliferation problems of atomic energy. He briefly mentions the catastrophic AREVA fiasco at Finland's Olkiluoto, where construction costs have soared by at least $3 billion. That project is also more than three years behind schedule, with no firm completion date in sight.
Failoa omits the escalating Texas-sized turmoil in San Antonio, whose city council was set to sign on to the construction of a new nuke when it learned the price had jumped by $4 billion - long before the license has been granted.
The story completely skips the DC-based Nuclear Information & Resource Service, which sponsored a statement signed by more than 850 other environmental groups opposing new reactor construction as a proposed means of addressing the climate crisis.
Like this vast core of green groups, Moody's, Standard & Poor, Citibank and a powerful cohort of financial analysts see atomic power as a horrific investment that can only be described as, well, radioactive. The risks of building a new reactor, says a recent Citibank report, "are so large and variable that individually they could each bring even the largest utility company to its knees."
But as sure as radiation continues to pour from Three Mile Island, the hype about "green" support for atomic power will continue to spew, while the core of the environmental movement remains staunchly anti-nuke, especially as the price of Solartopian technologies continues to plummet.
"We can meet climate goals with efficiency and renewable technologies that are cheaper and much less risky than new reactors," says Michele Boyd of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Nuclear power, adds Anna Aurilio of Environment America, "takes us backward."

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.