Health Means Life; Health Means Freedom

by George Lakoff

Five Reasons NOT to Invest in Nuclear Power

by Robert Alvarez

Yesterday, President Obama announced that the Energy department will provide an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to the Southern Co. for its proposed nuclear power plant near Augusta, GA. “The loan guarantee program for new nuclear power plants not only will further the nation’s commitment to clean energy, Obama said, “but also will assist in creating jobs in American communities.” Unfortunately, nuclear energy isn’t safe or clean and it’s too costly for the nation.

 

Barack Obama speaks about creating new energy jobs. He announced plans to fund two new nuclear power plants. (Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty)

News coverage has been mostly supportive and, in some cases, bordering on cheerleading. In his blog for the Atlantic magazine, Editor Daniel Indiviglio laid out “five reasons to cheer Obama’s ambition.” Let’s take a closer look at these “five reasons.” 

Reason #1: “Nuclear power is a known quantity. The U.S. has been successfully using this energy source for a very long time.”

Nuclear power is certainly well known to Wall Street, which despite its recent debacles, has refused to fund power reactors for more than 30 years because of their financial risks. Reactor construction costs climbed as high as 380 percent above expectations during the boom period for nuclear in the 1970s. Nuclear investors eventually wrote off about $17 billion. Consider the 1979 Three Mile Island Accident, in which TMI investors lost about $2 billion in about an hour, when the reactor core started to melt. Nuclear energy has depended primarily on the financial burden being born by the tax payer and rate payer. This is hardly a success story.

Reasons #2 & #3: Semi-Shovel ready, Jobs now — Jobs later

A new nuclear reactor might provide 800 near-term jobs and as many as 3,500 new construction jobs later. This is comparable to the number of home weatherization jobs created in State of Ohio last year. Unlike energy conservation, in which jobs are created relatively quickly, nuclear reactor construction jobs may take several years to come about.

Reason #4: Probably not very costly

Costs for nuclear power have nearly doubled in the past five years. Currently reactors are estimated to cost about $8 to $10 billion. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office estimate these loan guarantees have more than a 50-50 chance of failing — something Energy Secretary Chu told the news media yesterday he was unaware of before signing off on them. Because of the way the $54.5 billion in loan guarantees are structured, the Federal Financing Bank (otherwise known as the U.S. Treasury) will provide the loans. Guess who will be left holding the bag if things go south?

Reason #5: Preparing for America’s Energy future

Assuming that all $54.5 billion in nuclear loan guarantees being sought by Obama are successful — this will provide less than one percent of the nation’s current electrical generating capacity. Replacing the existing fleet of 104 reactors which are expected to shut down by 2056 could cost about $1.4 trillion. Add another $500 billion for a 50% increase above current nuclear generation capacity to make a meaningful impact on reducing carbon emissions. This means the U.S. would have to start bringing a new reactor on line at a rate of once a week to once a month for the next several decades.

Meanwhile, Obama has pulled the rug out from under the nuclear industry by terminating funds for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal site in Nevada. After nearly 30 years of trying, disposal of high-level radioactive waste is proving to be extremely difficult. So Obama has convened a “blue ribbon” panel of experts to go back to the drawing board and recommend what to do two years from now.

The accumulation of spent power-reactor fuel is expected to double at reactor sites and poses new safety issues, which will be the reality for several decades to come. Spent fuel pools currently contain about four times what their original designs envisioned and may be more vulnerable to terrorist attacks than reactors. In 2004, a National Academy of Sciences panel concluded that drainage of water from a spent fuel pond by an act of malice could lead to a catastrophic radiological fire. One thing is certain. Republicans and Democrats do not want to restart a national radioactive waste dump selection process that’s guaranteed to anger voters before the 2012 elections and beyond.

Nuclear Energy is an intriguing idea until you start to think about it.

 

 

do people really think that spent nuclear waste is safe enough to put down as a layer on the ground on children’s playgrounds? versus rubber tires or wood chips? I think not, and when it comes to energy, solar, water, wind, and geothermal are the ways to go, not nuclear.

Tell Cable News: No More PR Pundits Channels disguise corporate propaganda as ‘analysis’ NEW YORK -

February 17 -

 Scores of pundits appearing on cable news networks are paid corporate lobbyists and PR flaks–and the networks aren’t disclosing their corporate ties. In a new report in the Nation (3/1/10), reporter Sebastian Jones writes: Since 2007 at least 75 registered lobbyists, public relations representatives and corporate officials–people paid by companies and trade groups to manage their public image and promote their financial and political interests–have appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CNBC and Fox Business Network with no disclosure of the corporate interests that had paid them. Many have been regulars on more than one of the cable networks, turning in dozens–and in some cases hundreds–of appearances. For example, during the collapse of insurance giant AIG–and the ensuing government bailout–some pundits appearing to discuss the story were, unbeknown to viewers, actually working for AIG, as lobbyists or public relations advisers. And as the healthcare debate unfolded throughout the past year, a number of pundits and former lawmakers have made numerous appearances to talk about health insurance reform–all the while employed by insurance and pharmaceutical companies. In almost all cases, viewers had no way of knowing the affiliations of these guests. The allegedly liberal-leaning MSNBC, writes Jones, had the most egregious instances of airing guests with conflicts of interest. Only on MSNBC did Todd Boulanger, a Jack Abramoff-connected lobbyist working for Cassidy and Associates, go on a TV rehabilitation tour with no identification of his work, all while he was under investigation for corruption. (He pleaded guilty in January 2009.) Only on MSNBC was a prime-time program, Countdown, hosted by public relations operative Richard Wolffe and later by a pharmaceutical company consultant, former Gov. Howard Dean, with no mention of the outside work either man was engaged in. And MSNBC has yet to introduce DynCorp’s Barry McCaffrey as anything but a “military analyst.” Some networks have written policies demanding that contributors and analysts reveal their conflicts of interest. But it’s hard to take those guidelines very seriously; as Jones points out, one MSNBC official suggested that their idea of disclosure might be to post relevant information about their guests on the MSNBC website. In a media system already dominated by official sources from government and big business, why are cable channels relying on paid spokespeople and lobbyists as commentators? And why are these channels hiding the affiliations of their pundits? Join FAIR to demand answers and accountability. Sign our petition to MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CNBC and Fox Business Channel, demanding that they come clean about their corporate-sponsored pundits.

Click here to sign FAIR’s petition. 

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/592/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2302

 FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints.

No Nukes by Ralph Nader

A generation of Americans has grown up without a single nuclear power plant being brought on line since before the near meltdown of the Three Mile Island structure in 1979. They have not been exposed to the enormous costs, risks and national security dangers associated with their operations and the large amount of radioactive wastes still without a safe, permanent storage place for tens of thousands of years. All Americans better get informed soon, for a resurgent atomic power lobby wants the taxpayers to pick up the tab for relaunching this industry. Unless you get Congress to stop this insanely dirty and complex way to boil water to generate steam for electricity, you’ll be paying for the industry’s research, the industry’s loan guarantees and the estimated trillion dollars (inflation-adjusted) cost of just one meltdown, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, plus vast immediate and long-range casualties. The Russian roulette-playing nuclear industry claims a class nine meltdown will never happen. That none of the thousands of rail cars, trucks and barges with radioactive wastes will ever have a catastrophic accident. That terrorists will forgo striking a nuclear plant or hijacking deadly materials, and go for far less consequential disasters. The worst nuclear reactor accident occurred in 1986 at Chernobyl in what is now Ukraine. Although of a different design than most U.S. reactors, the resultant breach of containment released a radioactive cloud that spread around the globe but concentrated most intensively in Belarus, Ukraine and European Russia and secondarily over 40% of Europe. For different reasons, both governmental and commercial interests were intent on downplaying both the immediate radioactively-caused deaths and diseases and the longer term devastations from this silent, invisible form of violence. They also were not eager to fund follow up monitoring and research. Now comes the English translation of the most comprehensive, scientific report to date titled Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment whose senior author is biologist Alexey V. Yablokov, a member of the prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences. Purchasable from the New York Academy of Sciences (visit nyas.org/annals), this densely referenced analysis covers the acute radiation inflicted on both the first-responders (called “liquidators”) and on residents nearby, who suffer chronic radioactive sicknesses. “Today,” asserts the report, “more than 6 million people live on land with dangerous levels of contamination–land that will continue to be contaminated for decades to centuries.” Back to the U.S., where, deplorably, President Obama has called for more so-called “safe, clean nuclear power plants.” He just sent a budget request for another $54 billion in taxpayer loan guarantees on top of a previous $18 billion passed under Bush. You see, Wall Street financiers will not loan electric companies money to build new nuclear plants which cost $12 billion and up, unless Uncle Sam guarantees one hundred percent of the loan. Strange, if these nuclear power plants are so efficient, so safe, why can’t they be built with unguaranteed private risk capital? The answer to this question came from testimony by Amory B. Lovins, chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, in March 2008 before the [House of Representatives of the U.S.] Select Committee on Energy Independence (rmi.org). His thesis: “expanding nuclear power would reduce and retard climate protection and energy security…but can’t survive free-market capitalism.” Making his case with brilliant concision, Lovins, a consultant to business and the Defense Department, demonstrated with numbers and other data that nuclear power “is being dramatically outcompeted in the global marketplace by no and low-carbon power resources that deliver far more climate solution per dollar, far faster.” Lovins doesn’t even include the accident or sabotage risks. He testified that “because it’s [nuclear power] uneconomic and unnecessary, we needn’t inquire into its other attributes.” Renewable energy (eg. wind power), cogeneration and energy efficiencies (megawatts) are now far superior to maintain. I challenge anybody in the nuclear industry or academia to debate Lovins at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., with a neutral moderator, or before a Congressional Committee. However, the swarm of nuclear power lobbyists is gaining headway in Congress, spreading their money everywhere and falsely exploiting the concern with global warming fed by fossil fuels. The powerful nuclear power critics in Congress want the House energy bill to focus on climate change. To diminish the opposition, they entered into a bargain that gave nuclear reactors status with loan guarantees and other subsidies in the same legislation which has passed the House and, as is usual, languishing in the Senate. Long-time, staunch opponents of atomic power who are leaders in countering climate change, such as Cong. Ed Markey (D-MA), have quieted themselves for the time being, while the Republicans (loving the taxpayer subsidies) and some Democrats are hollering for the nukes. All this undermines the valiant efforts of the Union of Concerned Scientists, NIRS, Friends of the Earth, and other established citizen groups who favor a far safer, more efficient, faster and more secure energy future for our country and the world. Just recently, a well-designed and documented pamphlet from Beyond Nuclear summarize the case against nuclear power as “Expensive, Dangerous and Dirty.” The clear, precise detail and documentation makes for expeditious education of your friends, neighbors and co-workers. You can download it free and reprint it for wider distribution from www.BeyondNuclear.org. It is very well worth the 10 to 15 minutes it takes to absorb the truth about this troubled technology–replete with delays and large cost-overruns–that has been on government welfare since the 1950s.

I completely agree, we should not be investing money into unsustainable energy. The cons greatly outweigh the pros in this “energy” business. I am all for greener energy. Give me a hydrogen generator and or a fuel cell to sustain everything in my life and I would be so happy.