Don’t Drink the Nuclear Kool-Aid

[defendandprotect]

Don’t Drink the Nuclear Kool-Aid

Posted on Jul 16, 2008
By Amy Goodman

While the presidential candidates trade barbs and accuse each other of flip-flopping, they agree with President Bush on their enthusiastic support for nuclear power.

Sen. John McCain has called for 100 new nuclear power plants. Sen. Barack Obama, in a July 2007 Democratic candidate debate, answered a pro-nuclear power audience member, “I actually think that we should explore nuclear power as part of the energy mix.” Among Obama’s top contributors are executives of Exelon Corp., a leading nuclear power operator in the nation. Just this week, Exelon released a new plan, called “Exelon 2020: A Low-Carbon Roadmap.” The nuclear power industry sees global warming as a golden opportunity to sell its insanely expensive and dangerous power plants.

But nuclear power is not a solution to climate change—rather, it causes problems. Amory Lovins is the co-founder and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado. He makes simple, powerful points against nuclear: “The nuclear revival that we often hear about is not actually happening. It is a very carefully fabricated illusion ... there are no buyers. Wall Street is not putting a penny of private capital into the industry, despite 100-plus percent subsidies.” He adds: “Basically, we can have as many nuclear plants as Congress can force the taxpayers to pay for. But you won’t get any in a market economy.”

Even if nuclear power were economically viable, Lovins continues, “the first issue to come up for me would be the spread of nuclear weapons, which it greatly facilitates. If you look at places like Iran and North Korea ... how do you think they’re doing it? Iran claims to be making electricity vital to its development. ... The technology, materials, equipment, skills are applicable to both. ... The president is absolutely right in identifying the spread of nuclear weapons as the gravest threat to our security, so it’s really puzzling to me that he’s trying to accelerate that spread every way he can think of. ... It’s just an awful idea unless you’re really interested in making bombs. He’s really triggered a new Mideast arms race by trying to push nuclear power within the region.”

Along with proliferation, there are terrorist threats to existing nuclear reactors, like Entergy’s controversial Indian Point nuclear plant just 24 miles north of New York City. Lovins calls these “about as fat a terrorist target as you can imagine. It is not necessary to fly a plane into a nuclear plant or storm a plant and take over a control room in order to cause that material to be largely released. You can often do it from outside the site boundary with things the terrorists would have readily available.”

Then there is the waste: “It stays dangerous for a very long time. So you have to put it someplace that stays away from people and life and water for a very long time ... millions of years, most likely. ... So far, all the places we’ve looked turned out to be geologically unsuitable, including Yucca Mountain.” Testifying at a congressional hearing this week, Energy Department official Edward Sproat said the price of a nuclear dump in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain has climbed to $90 billion. Slated to go online a decade ago, its opening is now projected for the year 2020. And even that’s optimistic. Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, wants to block nuclear waste from passing through Utah entirely, and most Nevadans oppose the Yucca waste plan.

The presidential candidates are wrong on nuclear power. Wind, solar and microgeneration (generating electricity and heat at the same time, in smaller plants), on the other hand, are taking off globally, gaining billions of dollars in private investments. Lovins summarizes: “One of the big reasons we have an oil problem and a climate problem today is we spent our money on the wrong stuff. If we had spent it on efficiency and renewables, those problems would’ve gone away, and we would’ve made trillions of dollars’ profit on the deal because it’s so much cheaper to save energy than to supply it.”

The answer is blowing in the wind.



http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080716_dont_drink_the_nuclear_kool_aid/

[ladjf]

1. Nuclear power generation is far too dangerous.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

2. tell that to the 'advanced' societies in Europe

that use it for most of their power generation...

sP

[MadHound]

3. Oh, and what are they doing with the waste?

Hmm, up until recently, many of them were dumping it in the ocean. Now they are shipping it here so that we can dump it in that colossal fuck up known as Yucca Mt.

And don't forget, any Europeans are still suffering the after effects of Chernobyl, increased cancers, increase in birth defects, etc.

And as the summers get hotter and drier, but here and in Europe, many nuclear plants have to shut down because the rivers that they pull their cooling water from drop below usable levels. In the summer, when the electrical load is greatest.

And please don't overlook the fact that Europe is leading the wind turbine movement. Denmark already gets twenty percent of their electrical power from turbines, Germany is moving up fast as are many other European countries. In fact, there is a movement away from nuclear towards wind and solar in Europe.

[Hydra]

5. Yeah, but don't underestimate human error

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3633794

Think of it like Meth- if everyone were doing it, would that make it a sane choice?

[OmahaBlueDog]

4. I like both wind and nuclear better than coal and oil

[TheWraith]

6. Tell me where you're going to put up 50,000 square miles of wind turbines.

That's what it would take to eliminate coal fired power in the US. Not oil, not gas, not anything else, just coal. About 1,000,000 1.5 megawatt turbines, each occupying 32 acres of land, for a total of 50,000 square miles of prime wilderness that will need to be stripped bare for energy generation. And while that compares favorably to the 700,000 square miles solar would require, it's still not good. Contrast that to 250 nuclear plants each sitting on about 30 acres: a dozen square miles.

Why oh why does ANYONE listen to Walmart shill Amory Lovins? This guy is PAID BY BIG COMPANIES to make it look like they're somehow green by bolting a couple solar panels to their roof. He's in the pocket of the freaking status quo, INCLUDING THE COAL AND OIL INDUSTRIES. He wrote an entire book on the premise that we don't really have to worry about oil dependence because it's not a problem that we have.