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
11/11/2007 @ 10:34pm
RSS