Now that George Bush and Dick Cheney are held in nearly-universal scorn, there seems to be a creeping complacency in America, that they’ve done all the harm they can and all we have to do is wait 17 months and the bozos will be gone.
That’s not true, there’s plenty of mischief still available to the Terrible Twins and as we saw with the wiretapping bill last month, there are more than enough foolish Democrats willing to abet Bush/Cheney shenanigans.
When Congress reconvenes in a few weeks, it will take up consideration of an energy bill and the Cheney cronies will be pushing for the construction of a new generation of nuclear reactors. Expect to hear that we need – desperately need – more nuclear power as a solution to global warming. All the politicians who’ve been doing the bidding of big oil (“Oh no, we can’t tax ExxonMobil’s billions in windfall profits.”) and big auto (“Oh no, we can’t raise fuel-efficiency standards.”) will now stand in the wells of their respective bodies and tell us that unless we allow another wave of nuclear experimentation wash across the nation, your grandma will die of heat stroke.
To the eternal embarrassment of most of my fellow Vermonters, we have a nuclear power plant in the Green Mountain State. Vermont Yankee was built 35 years ago and should be nearing the end of its life. Its license is set to expire in 2012, but the plant’s owner Entergy Nuclear, has applied for a 20-year extension. It may well get the extension, seeing as last year the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allowed the plant to increase its power output by 20 percent more than it was designed to produce.
Tuesday, still in the midst of high summer electricity demand, Vermont Yankee had to cut its output by half when its cooling towers began to fail under the pressure of the extra water that’s been forced through them since the power boost.
Okay, okay – Vermont Yankee is an old reactor. The nuclear industry says its new generation of reactors will be “inherently safe.” Maybe – maybe not. The problem with a promise like that is we cannot determine its truth unless we allow the construction of the new reactors and they operate safely for 50 years – or have meltdowns.
Since we can’t predict the future, we have to use the past as a guide. We know when nuclear-generated electricity was first developed, we were told we could have it for nothing, as it would be “too cheap to meter.” It was not, is not and never will be. In fact, when the first nukes were built no insurance company on Earth would write a policy to cover one. To fill the gap, the federal government in 1957 agreed to cover losses from a nuclear mishap for the first ten years until everyone saw how safe nuclear plants were. By 1967, still no insurance company would write a nuke policy, so the federal insurance scheme was extended for another 10 years. After that, the extensions were for 12, 15 and 20 years. Congress keeps making the extensions longer as its way of facing the fact that “the invisible hand of the free market” won’t come within a thousand miles of one of these idiotic machines.
While the US has had nukes for a half-century, we have never agree on a place to put the nuclear waste, which will be hazardous to living things for hundreds of thousands of years. We’ve spent $10 billion on a “repository” at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, but it’s not clear that it will ever open. Meanwhile, five decades of nuclear waste sits in “temporary” storage on-site at power plants, accidents or terrorist targets waiting to happen.
In recent nuclear news, a French consortium earlier this month won a half-billion euro contract to build a new sarcophagus over the melted reactor at Chernobyl, scene of the world’s worst nuclear accident. Radiation is leaking out of the site again.
Last month, an earthquake in Japan shut down the world’s largest nuclear power complex which, unknown to authorities (!!!) was built on a major fault line. The earthquake caused a fire at the reactor, tipped over barrels of contaminated material and spilled hundreds of gallons of radioactive water into the ocean.
In France and Alabama reactors have been shut down this summer – again during peak demand – because their water discharges were overheating local rivers. How is that a solution to global warming?
The list of nuclear energy’s deficiencies is almost too long and farcical to be believed and is available to all with the slightest of Googles. A new generation of these disasters should be the easiest of pitfalls for Congress to avoid, but recent history unfortunately suggests that may not be the case.
No New Nukes
Now that George Bush and Dick Cheney are held in nearly-universal scorn, there seems to be a creeping complacency in America, that they’ve done all the harm they can and all we have to do is wait 17 months and the bozos will be gone.
That’s not true, there’s plenty of mischief still available to the Terrible Twins and as we saw with the wiretapping bill last month, there are more than enough foolish Democrats willing to abet Bush/Cheney shenanigans.
When Congress reconvenes in a few weeks, it will take up consideration of an energy bill and the Cheney cronies will be pushing for the construction of a new generation of nuclear reactors. Expect to hear that we need – desperately need – more nuclear power as a solution to global warming. All the politicians who’ve been doing the bidding of big oil (“Oh no, we can’t tax ExxonMobil’s billions in windfall profits.”) and big auto (“Oh no, we can’t raise fuel-efficiency standards.”) will now stand in the wells of their respective bodies and tell us that unless we allow another wave of nuclear experimentation wash across the nation, your grandma will die of heat stroke.
To the eternal embarrassment of most of my fellow Vermonters, we have a nuclear power plant in the Green Mountain State. Vermont Yankee was built 35 years ago and should be nearing the end of its life. Its license is set to expire in 2012, but the plant’s owner Entergy Nuclear, has applied for a 20-year extension. It may well get the extension, seeing as last year the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allowed the plant to increase its power output by 20 percent more than it was designed to produce.
Tuesday, still in the midst of high summer electricity demand, Vermont Yankee had to cut its output by half when its cooling towers began to fail under the pressure of the extra water that’s been forced through them since the power boost.
Okay, okay – Vermont Yankee is an old reactor. The nuclear industry says its new generation of reactors will be “inherently safe.” Maybe – maybe not. The problem with a promise like that is we cannot determine its truth unless we allow the construction of the new reactors and they operate safely for 50 years – or have meltdowns.
Since we can’t predict the future, we have to use the past as a guide. We know when nuclear-generated electricity was first developed, we were told we could have it for nothing, as it would be “too cheap to meter.” It was not, is not and never will be. In fact, when the first nukes were built no insurance company on Earth would write a policy to cover one. To fill the gap, the federal government in 1957 agreed to cover losses from a nuclear mishap for the first ten years until everyone saw how safe nuclear plants were. By 1967, still no insurance company would write a nuke policy, so the federal insurance scheme was extended for another 10 years. After that, the extensions were for 12, 15 and 20 years. Congress keeps making the extensions longer as its way of facing the fact that “the invisible hand of the free market” won’t come within a thousand miles of one of these idiotic machines.
While the US has had nukes for a half-century, we have never agree on a place to put the nuclear waste, which will be hazardous to living things for hundreds of thousands of years. We’ve spent $10 billion on a “repository” at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, but it’s not clear that it will ever open. Meanwhile, five decades of nuclear waste sits in “temporary” storage on-site at power plants, accidents or terrorist targets waiting to happen.
In recent nuclear news, a French consortium earlier this month won a half-billion euro contract to build a new sarcophagus over the melted reactor at Chernobyl, scene of the world’s worst nuclear accident. Radiation is leaking out of the site again.
Last month, an earthquake in Japan shut down the world’s largest nuclear power complex which, unknown to authorities (!!!) was built on a major fault line. The earthquake caused a fire at the reactor, tipped over barrels of contaminated material and spilled hundreds of gallons of radioactive water into the ocean.
In France and Alabama reactors have been shut down this summer – again during peak demand – because their water discharges were overheating local rivers. How is that a solution to global warming?
The list of nuclear energy’s deficiencies is almost too long and farcical to be believed and is available to all with the slightest of Googles. A new generation of these disasters should be the easiest of pitfalls for Congress to avoid, but recent history unfortunately suggests that may not be the case.
© Mark Floegel, 2007