[NukeNet] Nuclear Power Is Not Today's Solution for Global Warming -- SF Chron -- GO --JON BLOCK!!

[Mary Olson]

On U.S. Energy Policy - Nuclear Power Is Not Today's Solution for Global
Warming:

San Francisco Chronicle, by Jon Block (Union of Concerned Scientists),
October 2, 2007

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/02/EDBJSHS4A.DTL&hw=Jon+Block&sn=001&sc=1000>

For the past year, former Environmental Protection Agency head Christy
Todd Whitman has been working as a paid spokesperson for the nuclear power
industry. As part of the industry's multimillion-dollar public-relations
campaign to promote new nuclear plant construction, she recently wrote an
Open Forum piece for this paper touting nuclear power as a key solution
for global warming. 

Whitman's prescription for our nation's energy future is misguided. Her
glowing description of nuclear power's benefits ignores serious issues of
nuclear plant safety, security against sabotage and terrorist attack and
waste disposal. To effectively address global warming, we need to deploy
solutions that achieve the largest emissions reductions with the least
cost and risk. Nuclear power today does not meet these criteria. 

Nuclear power plants are not as safe as they should - and could - be.
While the United States has strong safety regulations, they are not
consistently enforced by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the
federal oversight agency. In 2002, for example, after several deferred
inspections, operators of the Davis-Besse reactor near Toledo, Ohio,
discovered that boric acid had eaten a football-size hole in the reactor
vessel. If it had gone undetected for another several months, it could
have caused a worse accident than the 1979 core meltdown at Three Mile
Island. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident. Regulatory
complacency for the past three decades permitted the deterioration of U.S.
reactor safety systems to reach the point where, on 38 occasions, it took
more than a year to restore requisite safety levels. 

This lack of meaningful nuclear industry oversight is potentially
life-threatening. A major accident could kill thousands of people and
contaminate large regions for thousands of years. Congress needs to ensure
that the NRC enforces its own regulations before additional nuclear power
plants are built. Whitman would do well to acknowledge this need and call
for improved oversight, because a nuclear accident would derail any
increase in nuclear power capacity.

Nuclear plants also pose serious security risks. Nuclear plants store
highly radioactive waste in fuel pools and above-ground canisters. Both
are potential terrorist targets. A large aircraft flown into a fuel pool
could cause a fire that would release sufficient radioactivity to
contaminate tens of thousands of square miles. Above-ground canisters
could be hit with grenade launchers, which are readily available. On-site
storage needs to be made more secure. 

The waste is accumulating at U.S. reactor sites because there is no
permanent underground repository for it. Highly radioactive waste must be
isolated for at least tens of thousands of years, if not longer. The U.S.
government already has spent billions of dollars studying the suitability
of a site at Yucca Mountain, Nev. However, technical questions remain
unanswered, and the facility may never be licensed. 

Historically, nuclear power has been plagued by cost overruns, making it a
financial risk. The first round of U.S. nuclear reactor construction from
1966 to 1977 experienced 200 percent to 380 percent cost overruns.
Problems included difficulties with concrete pours and welding, increased
capital costs and evolving designs during construction. Today, similar
issues are dogging new reactor construction in Finland, Taiwan and China. 

Wall Street was rightly worried about the industry's sorry track record
when it pulled the plug on nuclear investments decades ago. Investors are
still reluctant to back the industry's self-proclaimed renaissance, even
with the subsidies in the 2005 federal energy bill for six new reactors.
So now the industry is looking for federal loan guarantees to sweeten the
pot. Provisions tucked into both the Senate and House versions of the new
energy bill would require taxpayers to bail out nuclear plant loan
defaults that could amount to as much as $50 billion in the short term.

The most sensible strategy to reduce global warming is to quickly deploy
the cleanest, fastest, lowest risk solutions first. Conservation and
increased efficiency by energy producers and consumers are the cheapest
and quickest measures by far. Likewise, a wide range of renewable energy
resources, including wind, solar, geothermal and tidal power, have
enormous potential and are inherently safe-and they would encourage
economic development. Prudence dictates that we pursue many options to
reduce global warming. As a part of that effort, nuclear power research
should continue, but with a focus on enhancing safety security and waste
disposal.

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