Six Reasons Why Nuclear Power is a Bad Choice
for Energy Independence
(Excerpted from Public Citizen, “The Fatal Flaws of Nuclear Power”, April 2006)
Nuclear Power has been gaining attention as a beneficial source of energy with little adverse effect on climate change and providing a measure of independence from Middle Eastern sources. But the vast majority of public interest and environmental groups are adamantly opposed to nuclear power for at least a half dozen reasons.
The first is cost. Despite its promise 50 years ago of “energy too cheap to meter” it continues to require taxpayer handouts. From 1947 through 1999 the nuclear industry was given over $115 billion in direct taxpayer subsidies and with the limitations on nuclear liability, federal subsidies reach $145 billion. To put this into perspective, federal government subsidies for wind and solar, totaled $5.7 billion over the same period. Cost is important because with the limited amount of funds available to spend on tackling global climate change, the high cost of nuclear takes away from faster, cheaper, and cleaner solutions.
Another is waste. Nuclear power is not a clean energy source. Currently over 2,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste and 12 million cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste are produced annually by the 103 operating reactors in the United States. No country in the world has found a solution for this waste. In mining uranium, from which reactor fuel is formed, large radon-contaminated piles of material known as tailings are created. Twelve million tons of tailings, for instance, are piled along the Colorado River near Moab, Utah, threatening communities downstream. In the case of in situ leaching, a solution is pumped underground to dissolve the uranium and evaporated in slurry ponds. The uranium is then enriched and this process produces toxic hydrogen fluoride gas and large amounts of depleted uranium, a threat to public health which requires geologic repositories to store.
Security provides additional concern in that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear industry are leaving plants vulnerable. Had Al Qaeda gone on with its original plan to crash airplanes into nuclear reactors, a study of the Indian Point, New York, plant found, a worst case attack could cause up to 43,000 immediate fatalities and up to 518,000 long-term cancer deaths. Such a release could cost up to $2.1 trillion and force the permanent relocation of 11.1 million people.
A fourth reason nuclear power is a bad idea concerns safety. Much concern is centered on the NRC’s workforce and its confidence in the agency’s ability to effectively regulate the agency. Nearly half of the NRC’s employees do not feel it is “safe to speak up”. Production is often emphasized over safety. The NRC’s own Office of the Inspector General concluded in one case that the “NRC appears to have informally established an unreasonably high burden of requiring proof of a safety problem, versus lack of reasonable assurance of maintaining public health and safety, before it will act to shut down a power plant.”
Nuclear weapons proliferation is another reason we should question the wisdom of nuclear power as an energy source. As more power plants are built around the world, nuclear material becomes more vulnerable to theft and diversion. Historically, power reactors have led directly to nuclear weapons programs in many countries.
Finally, there is climate change. Nuclear power is too slow, expensive, and inflexible a technology to address climate change and would entail the building of thousands of dangerous new nuclear reactors. These reactors would drain investment away from renewable technologies; clean, safe energy sources such as wind, solar, advanced hydroelectric and some types of biomass and geothermal energy. These technologies can generate as much energy as conventional fuels without significant carbon emissions, destructive mining, or the production of radioactive waste.
-submitted by Leon Wurzer
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