http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/03-2Don't Jump to Conclusions About Nuclear Reactors: Look at the Facts and Say No
by Erich Pica
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Today, more and more Americans are realizing that nuclear power should not have a part to play in the United States' energy future. Nuclear reactors are neither safe nor clean, and they are so economically risky that Wall Street refuses to finance them, forcing the risk onto American taxpayers. It is time to call for an end to this unsafe, poorly regulated and prohibitively expensive technology.
Nuclear proponents' claims that the industry is clean and safe miss the mark. It takes tons of fossil fuels to mine and transport uranium, leading to about 250,000 tons of CO2 each year during a 1,250 MW plant's lifetime. And, studies show that uranium miners in the American Southwest were exposed to radon 220, a radioactive gas, and as many as one in five developed lung cancer. A current proposal by a private company, Virginia Uranium, to mine in Pittsylvania County in southeast Virginia, overturning the Commonwealth's 30-year ban on uranium mining, has drawn opposition from residents downstream who rely on the Roanoke River Basin for drinking water.
It does not take a natural disaster to cause a nuclear crisis, and the United States is no stranger to these dangers. Three Mile Island is only the most famous example. According to a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, in 2010 alone, mechanical, electrical and human errors caused "near-misses" at reactors in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. That list only includes events that caused plants to shut down, not "routine" safety concerns like the aging drain pipes at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant that were leaking radioactive tritium into the groundwater. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission allowed Vermont Yankee to continue operating for two weeks while workers searched for the source of the leak.
Possibly even more dangerous than the threats posed by reactors, there is still no way to safely dispose of spent fuel and other nuclear waste, which can remain dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years. In an LA Times op-ed last week, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for National Security and the Environment Robert Alvarez summarized a report he cowrote in 2003, which concluded that a fire in a spent fuel pool could do more damage than the Chernobyl disaster, potentially even leaving an area about half the size of New Jersey permanently uninhabitable. Yet, the NRC tried to ignore the report, and spent fuel pools are still spread across the country, including at Indian Point, just 38 miles from New York City. Although reports are shaky, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko told Congress that he believed there was no water in one of the spent fuel pools at Fukushima, and it is possible that there have been fires in one or more of the pools there in the past weeks, greatly increasing the possibility that there will be major long-term health effects from the damaged reactor.
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