Loved the articles, but I get so sick of the nuclear industry insisting that it is cheap and green, when it is so neither.

David Fleming's article "Why Nuclear Power Cannot Be a Major Energy Source," for the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, describes in detail the enormous amount of fossil energy necessary to mine uranium, extract and prepare it for use in a nuclear reactor, build the reactor, and, when its life is over, to decommission it and look after its radioactive waste. He states that "when the energy costs of construction and decommissioning are taken into account, nuclear reactors, averaged over their lifetimes, produce more carbon dioxide than gas-fired power stations (per unit of electricity generated), until they have been in full-power operation for about seven years." Furthermore much more potent greenhouse gases than CO₂, are used in the fuel cycle.

The nuclear industry gets about $9 billion a year in federal subsidies, trailing only oil and coal in federal energy aid. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 gave the industry an estimated $12 billion more in tax breaks, and now nuclear industry lobbyists inserted a provision into the Senate energy bill of more billion dollar taxpayer subsidies through loan guarantees. The 1950s Price-Anderson Act capped industry liability at about $10 billion in the event of an accident, though a major nuclear meltdown could easily run fifty times that. The industry's greed--and/or fear of the non-viability of building reactors--seems to know no bounds. Even the Congressional Budget Office recognizes the proposed additional subsidies as a bad idea.

Experts say building nuclear plants is so financially risky that the only way they would be considered is if the federal government guarantees investors against loan defaults or other problems--putting the burden on taxpayers. And even if building proceeded at breakneck speed, the time and cost involved make it doubtful that enough plants could be built to make a dent in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050, while the waste problem remains unresolved, as well as the fact that reactors make great terrorist targets.

The billions funneled to the nuclear industry would be better spent cleaning up and decommissioning existing reactors while we still have the energy to do so and investing in renewable energy.

Wanda Ballentine

St. Paul, MN