Why Must Nuke-Power Lemmings Again Flock To The Radioactive Seas?

[RestoreGore]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/10/429/

Why Must Nuke-Power Lemmings Again Flock to the Radioactive Sea?
by Harvey Wasserman


It’s baaaaaack. The fifty-year multi-trillion dollar failure of atomic energy has resumed its lemming-like march to madness.

Why?

Isn’t the definition of insanity the belief that if you do the same thing again and again you’ll somehow get a different result?

The first commercial reactor opened in Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1957. America was promised electricity “too cheap to meter.”

That was a lie.

America was promised there’d soon be consensus on a safe way to dispose of high-level radioactive waste.

That was a lie.

America was promised private insurance companies would soon indemnify reactor owners—and the public—against the consequences of a catastrophic meltdown.

That was a lie.

America was promised these reactors were “inherently safe.”

Then America was told no fuel had melted at Three Mile Island.

Lie and lie.

Then they said nobody was killed at Three Mile Island

Another lie.

They said it took six years for acid to eat through to a fraction of an inch of the steel protecting the Great Lakes from a Chernobyl at Davis-Besse, Ohio. That’s a lie too.

Now they say they say nukes are economically self-sustaining.

But de-regulation stuck the public with the capital costs, and hid the true amortization for the long-term expenses of rad waste disposal, plant decommissioning, on-going health impacts and likely melt-downs by terror and error.

Now they say nukes can fight global warming. But they ignore huge radon emissions from uranium mill tailings, huge CO2 emissions from fuel enrichment, and huge direct heat that results from nuke fission itself, not to mention the long-term energy costs of decommissioning and waste handling.

All reactors are pre-deployed weapons of mass radioactive destruction for any willing terrorist. Had the jets that hit the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 hit nukes instead, the death toll and the (uninsured) economic losses would be beyond calculation.

It could be happening as you read this.

They say a new generation of nukes will be “inherently safe,” which is exactly what they said about the last one. Limited construction experience with this “new generation” already shows massive cost overruns. There is no reason to believe these will be any safer, cheaper, cleaner or more reliable than the last sorry batch.

snip

Clearly, there will be no easy end to this madness. But atomic energy’s bio-economic clock has clearly run out.

Basic sanity, ecological truth and the smart green money are all on our side.

Our challenge is to put them in charge before more Three Mile Islands or Chernobyls—or a nuclear 9/11—irradiate the asylum.

Harvey Wasserman is author of SOLARTOPIA: OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030 (www.solartopia.org). Read more of his columns at www.freepress.org

[closeupready]

1. So true. As are the claims that 3-mile island was a success story.

which (surprise) I learned here on DU in the energy forum. :eyes: (Oh, I just noticed, that's where this was posted (came- in from latest,greatest).)

Well in another thread here in this forum then.

[RestoreGore]

2. And how about this line...

"But in 1952 a Blue Ribbon Commission told Harry Truman the future of America was with solar power."

And we know why this was not heeded. And now the nuclear lobbyists including Cheney are using the climate crisis to cash in just like they use everything else. The future of America is STILL with solar power if only people would open their eyes.

[Solo_in_MD]

3. The ariticle was not particulary good or use, but there were some good comments

1) We have to cut way back on carbon, nuclear does that
2) Any solution is a dlended one of multiple sources. Different locales wiil have different possibilities
3) Alternate/renewable energy is not ready for the full load, though it is growing in market share and reducing in cost
4) We need to kee looking at better and more efficient means of energy use, creation, and management
5) Nuclear waste can be managed, esp if nuclear is the bridge technology

[RestoreGore]

4. And why is renewable energy not ready for the full load?

Because government influence has pushed nuclear energy down our throats instead of working to promote renewable energy. And that needs to change.

[Solo_in_MD]

6. Large cities mostly

Renewable/alternative sources are growing in capacity and flexability while reducing in cost. A very good thing. So is conservation. Unforturnately there is not enough there to power dense urban environemnts.

Its not clear that the current alternative power sources will ever reach the level needed. However, new technology may find more and better ways.

[RestoreGore]

16. Well, I believe they will n/t

[Dead_Parrot]

22. When?

Before the rains fail in Oz for the 7th year running? Before the last snows vanish from Kilimanjaro? Before the Arctic becomes ice-free? Before the Great Barrier reef dies completely? Before Florida slips under the waves? Before a third of all species are reduced to footnotes and old photographs?

Or just after?

[RestoreGore]

24. When people on all sides stop using it as a political issue

So based on the reality of the situation and theh fact that human nature is corrupted it may just be too late. I hope not.

[TheWraith]

8. Because they're not technically feasible.

Solar power, despite decades of hype and promises, is stuck at very low efficiencies and power densities. Wind is vastly better, but you would need hundreds of large turbines to replace even a single nuclear reactor, let alone supplant all other forms of energy. I'm all for more wind power, but it'll never do the job alone. And there's practical limits on how much hydro power we can produce, simply by how many rivers we're willing to dam up.

[RestoreGore]

17. That is what all nuclear lovers say

Solar is just as feasible as any other form of energy and we are just seeing it come of age now, and it will pass nuclear energy. I have faith in that.

[NickB79]

29. Ah, faith

I know a guy at work who believes the End Times are almost here, and that he and his family will be Raptured away soon. He has faith in his beliefs.

His faith doesn't stop me from laughing my ass off at his stupidity.

[jpak]

5. The first comment is hilarious....

<snip>

Yeah Harvey! F— Nuclear power. We should get Congress to enact a law banning the use of any form of energy that the President cannot pronounce

<snip>

lol!!!111

[TheWraith]

7. Another solar power lemming distorting the facts.

"Isn’t the definition of insanity the belief that if you do the same thing again and again you’ll somehow get a different result?"

I don't know. Isn't expecting solar power, having been at roughly the same level of practicality for 60 years, to suddenly save us a bit of the same thing?

"The first commercial reactor opened in Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1957. America was promised electricity “too cheap to meter.”"

So marketing hype is now a threat to human life? Better eradicate the solar industry then.

"America was promised private insurance companies would soon indemnify reactor owners—and the public—against the consequences of a catastrophic meltdown."

Nuclear reactors are, in fact, insured.

"Then they said nobody was killed at Three Mile Island"

Nobody WAS killed at TMI. Care to offer proof that they were?

"Now they say nukes can fight global warming. But they ignore huge radon emissions from uranium mill tailings, huge CO2 emissions from fuel enrichment, and huge direct heat that results from nuke fission itself, not to mention the long-term energy costs of decommissioning and waste handling."

Okay, I hate to break it to you, but radon is naturally occurring gas. That uranium breaks down to radon whether it's in the ground or not. Furthermore, CO2 emissions have nothing inherently to do with the technology, and the heat produced by nuclear fission--more specifically, the heat released into the environment--is like a glass of water in the ocean compared to the normal heat from the sun.

"All reactors are pre-deployed weapons of mass radioactive destruction for any willing terrorist. Had the jets that hit the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 hit nukes instead, the death toll and the (uninsured) economic losses would be beyond calculation."

Alright, aside from the blatant and completely shameless fearmongering, another thing this person failed to note is that nuclear plants can be and are designed to withstand catastrophic damage specifically including an airliner slamming into them. They tested that exact thing awhile back, with I believe a CANDU type reactor containment building in Japan. The result was that some chips spalled off the inside wall, and that was it.

Furthermore, if it were really that easy, and that devastating, don't you think that the guys who actually had the jets on 9/11 would have done that instead of hitting some buildings?

Last but not least, let's not forget a few other facts:

There hasn't been a fatal nuclear accident in 20 years.

Every day, 435 nuclear reactors operate safely. That's more than you can say for coal, oil, or other types of plants, which are never safe, even when they're operating properly.

The worst case scenario for a full scale nuclear meltdown is one percent of the lives claimed every year in this country by smog. Nice to have some perspective.

And last but not least, coal power, which you don't see nearly as much complaint about, releases MORE radioactive material directly into the air than a nuclear plant puts into deep storage. Look it up if you don't believe me.

Look, I don't mean to come off as cheerleading nuclear plants, but given the choice between living near a nuke plant and living near a coal plant, I know which one I'd choose in a heartbeat, and never regret it. And I'm more than a little annoyed by the anti-nuclear crowd, not just for their blatant and really extreme twisting of the facts, but for the fact that if they'd been a little more reasoned and less interested in fearmongering, we'd have a lot less coal power in this country today, and a lot more clean energy, a fact that some environmentalists are waking up to today.

[RestoreGore]

18. I wouldn't live near either a coal or nuclear plant

They BOTH kill and it is time for humans to see beyond these choices to what we truly need for the future. It can be done if vision rather than greed is the impetus. And to always assume that because someone is against nuclear power because they are for coal is wrong. I see nuclear and coal in the same boat. Nuclear is no alternative energy to me.

[mark414]

9. has this guy ever heard of a country called France?

[Solo_in_MD]

10. Wel I have, okay wine, so so food and the eat snail.

[mark414]

12. France derives 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy.

This is due to a long-standing policy based on energy security.

France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity, and gains over EUR 3 billion per year from this.

France has been very active in developing nuclear technology, and reactor technology is a major export.

http://www.uic.com.au/nip28.htm

Why The French Like Nuclear Energy
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html

[Solo_in_MD]

13. I was being sarcastic, but the tag does not work in the title (as I just learned)

France made an early commitment to nuclear power and it has paid off for them. Smaller nation with a strong central government they over rode the NIMBY factor including waste, and have kept it well managed overall. T

There are some newer technical approaches (pebble bed and others) coming up that may enabled smaller distributed plants and reduced risks. No single energy source is the answer.

[RestoreGore]

Why can France do that and Iran can't?

Just curious... Oh yes, there's MONRY in it for the ones who are in the circle. Not much in solar compared to the bribes and kickbacks the nuclear industry provides to politicians on the take.

[phantom power]

27. Because brown people are held to a double standard. Iran *should* be able to.

[RestoreGore]

Why can France do that and Iran can't?

Just curious... Oh yes, there's MONRY in it for the ones who are in the circle. Not much in solar compared to the bribes and kickbacks the nuclear industry provides to politicians on the take.

[RestoreGore]

Why can France do that and Iran can't?

Just curious... Oh yes, there's MONRY in it for the ones who are in the circle. Not much in solar compared to the bribes and kickbacks the nuclear industry provides to politicians on the take.

[RestoreGore]

Why can France do that and Iran can't?

Just curious... Oh yes, there's MONRY in it for the ones who are in the circle. Not much in solar compared to the bribes and kickbacks the nuclear industry provides to politicians on the take.

[RestoreGore]

20. Sorry, computer hiccup.

[bananas]

23. It was worth repeating :) nt

[RestoreGore]

19. Why can France do that and Iran can't?

Just curious... Oh yes, there's MONEY in it for the ones who are in the circle. Not much in solar compared to the bribes and kickbacks the nuclear industry provides to politicians on the take.

[hunter]

11. I hear there is a nuclear powered train in France...

It is very fast.

Here in the United States we'll probably be driving our cars around until we can't afford either gasoline or magic ethanol, and then we will stand there drooling and scratching our butts and wondering what the hell just happened.

[NNadir]

14. Great coal shilling.

Mindless, coal shilling, mind you.

You cannot produce one person who was killed by Three Mile Island, but if you could produce ten thousand of them, you could not match the number of people who are killed by air pollution in the next week.

The LIE of course, is that one death from Three Mile Island matters more than the hundreds of millions of deaths that will follow, unremarked by you, from global climate change.

The great circle jerk of self referential crapola from the anti-nukes is being swallowed by the sea, literally.

There are many among those who educate on behalf of nuclear energy who started from the mindless antinuclear position, and our numbers grow every damn day. The number of pro-nuclear people who bought hook, line and sinker into the fatal anti-nuclear LIE is vanishingly small, and consists largely of the senile old fart Gofman.

Read any Stewart Brand lately, lady, or do you only read what you want to hear?

Where by the way, is the first fucking solar exajoule? Hiding with JPak under an empty sack of polycrystalline silicon?

When is the first fucking exajoule of wind power coming? 2020? When you declared yourself Al Gore's spokesperson, did you note in his famous movie how long it might take for climate change to become irreversible? Did he say that global climate change will become important in 2020 or did he say that it is important NOW?

Did he, like a German moron smokescreening for coal, call for a nuclear phase-out anywhere on this planet?

Why do you say NOTHING when Germany begins construction on 26 <em>new</em> coal plants? Do you care or know what that means?

Who will bury THOSE dead the dead from coal? You? Do you care if they found the bodies in the Mexican coal mine disaster of 2006? How many tears have you shed for the Russian coal miners of last week. Do you cry at all for the asthmatic children of air pollution, their lung cancer eaten mothers, and fathers, and grandfathers? Will you have the guts or decency to mourn these people like you shit yourself daily about Three Mile Island?

What is insulting about the anti-nuclear position is not the ignorance so much as the self proclaimed auror of morality.

There is NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, moral about the anti-nuclear position. At this point, with billions of lives on the line, 470 exajoules of energy called for, and 15 exajoules of so called "renewable energy," - most of it garbage and wood - on the table, the anti-nuclear position remains an appeal to murder.

And they say I'M insulting. Indeed. The anti-nuclear position insults intelligence, more obviously so than ever.

By the way, the sea has been radioactive since it formed. Not having any kind of science education you would hardly know that the sea is now less radioactive than it has ever been. The uranium content is more than 3 billion tons, all of it resulting from the formation of the earth's oceans and crusts. It was radioactive before the first living cell formed, not that any of this is within your grasp.

[RestoreGore]

15. You have a problem with it write the author n/t

[GliderGuider]

25. That's a pretty cheap CYA

You posted it here. Take some responsibility for THAT at least. I've always thought it incumbent on those who repost others' work to be prepared to participate in any discussion it generates, especially when the material is opinion-based. Hiding behind the authors' skirts at the first sign of dissent isn't very seemly.

[RestoreGore]

26. Not to nasty posters I don't

And I think I explained myself above well enough to cover it thank you.

[NNadir]

28. How about the shiller?

There are lots of lemmings who follow the purveyors of ignorance. The lemmings in question are leading the world off the anti-nuke precipe at a rate of about 27 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. It was one thing for the ignoramus Ralph Nader <em>make up</em> the statement that "Plutonium is the most toxic substance known," but this scientifically illiterate statement would have gone no where without thousands of mindless people (not one of them who knows anything about plutonium) to seriously intone this statement as a fact.

And what is the fact. Since trust fund brats began running around repeating this LIE about thirty years ago, tens of millions of people around the world, maybe hundreds of millions of people, have died from air pollution while NO ONE has died from plutonium.

Ignorance dies if it isn't deliberately spread. The moral thing is to vilify both the source of ignorance and those who <em>spread</em> ignorance. Ignorance needs to be confronted, and that is exactly what I am doing here.

[Dogmudgeon]

21. The Tribe has spoken

--p!

[ramapo]

30. Utter and complete failure makes nuclear looks good

The United States, along with the rest of the world, has spent the past 25 years engaged in fanciful delusion. We all know the story. Solar is too expensive, will cost too many jobs. Can't do this, can't do that. Too expensive to filter coal plant emissions. And so on and so on.

Here we are. Coal is king. Cheap and dirty. So what if you have to rape the landscape. It is still cheap and dirty plus there is a lot of it. Yeah, it pollutes the air but it is cheap and we have LOTS of it. It creates jobs getting that stuff out of the ground. That's a good thing...a real good thing. And so on and so on.

Alternative energy has gone next to nowhere in 25 years. I do not believe for a minute that this country could not have committed to the successful development of viable and ultimately relatively inexpensive solar and wind energy on a massive scale. But we didn't and still won't.

So we have coal, coal, coal, natural gas, a bit of hydro and some nuclear to depend upon.

The direct and indirect affects of coal make nuclear look pretty damn good. Yes the worst-case nuclear meltdown catastrophe is horrific. It might happen someday. Probably will, just because shit happens. That's not based on science, just life experience. But the insidious, deadly, daily toll taken by the ever-growing dependance upon coal is mighty horrific too.

I was never a big fan of nuclear energy but we are close to being between a rock and a very hard place. Here in NJ we have the Salem nuke. Lots of controversy. Many want it shut down. Too bad we get a significant amount of our electricity from it. So what is the alternative if it gets shut down? Coal? Conservation? Solar? Wind?

Coal is worse than nuclear. Nobody is serious about conservation. Conservation will come only as a last choice. I shouldn't even use the word chice. Solar? Again...nobody is really ready to bite the bullet, plus it is not without some environmental costs on the backend, though trivial in comparison. Wind? Hey, nobody wants those windmills either.

I predict that between the fantasy, NIMBYism, denial, and downright stupidity, we will keep jerking around for another few decades until nature gets around to making her own rules of engagement and teaches us that we're not so smart after all.