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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - February 25, 2010
Major Fallout Predicted Over Obama's Nuclear Power Proposal
by: Grace Huang
truthout|Report
While President Obama has announced an offer of $8.3
billion in loan guarantees for two new nuclear reactors,
worries about potential cost overruns, health risks and
safety concerns lead many to believe his proposal may
cause far more harm than good - assuming that the reactors
can be successfully built.
Should the builder borrow money and then default on the
loan, the Obama administration's guarantee means that the
lenders and investors would not suffer the financial loss.
Instead, taxpayer money would be used to cover the cost.
Administration officials have said that the companies
involved would pay fees to cover the possibility of default
and that these loan guarantees would not cost taxpayers
money. However, both the Congressional Budget Office and
the Government Accountability Office have estimated that
the risk of default on a guarantee for new nuclear reactor
construction could be as high as 50 percent.
Construction of nuclear reactors also consistently run into
large cost and deadline overruns. The company that built
the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia,
where the two new reactors would be, initially estimated
construction costs of $1 billion for four reactors. By
1989, that number had risen to $9 billion for only two
reactors. Now, the estimate for the two new reactors is
approximately $14 billion.
It is also difficult to finish building nuclear reactors
on time. According to The New York Times, an analysis
prepared for the German government in 2009 showed that of
the 45 nuclear reactors under construction, 22 have run
into delays. Some reactors overshot their budgets and
deadlines or had faulty construction to the point that
the projects were completely abandoned, losing billions
of dollars in the process.
"The reason that we haven't built nuclear reactors for
decades isn't that everybody's afraid of them, but that
nobody will invest in them," said Josh Dorner, a Sierra
Club spokesman. "When Wall Street won't invest in some-
thing, that should tell you how bad it is."
"[Nuclear energy] is the most socialized energy in the
world and would not exist except for public money," said
Eric Jantz, staff attorney at the New Mexico Environmental
Law Center (NMELC), a nonprofit, public interest law firm
that focuses on environmental issues.
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A large amount of criticism and concern about nuclear
energy particularly focuses on the unresolved problem of
disposing nuclear waste, as no safe long-term solution
has yet been discovered. Waste is currently stored in
water pools before being moved to dry casks left on site
at the nuclear plants. While the canisters used for storage
are secure in the short-term, the waste itself is still
highly toxic and sites need to be monitored and guarded.
Peter Bradford, a consultant and former member of the US
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said storing waste like
this for a very long period of time is not viable. "The
danger is what happens when the waste gets out of the
canisters," he added.
In his speech, President Obama mentioned appointing a
bipartisan panel to examine the issue of nuclear waste.
"We need to accelerate our efforts to find ways of storing
this waste safely and disposing of it.... And these plants
also have to be held to the highest and strictest safety
standards to answer the legitimate concerns of Americans
who live near and far from these facilities. That's going
to be an imperative."
Despite this unsolved problem, proponents say nuclear
energy is still a good alternative because it is a clean
source of power with no carbon dioxide emissions. However,
individuals like Jon Block, another attorney at the NMELC,
said that this conclusion overlooks all the harmful
byproducts of the process.
"The nuclear industry speaks very proudly about how green
their reactors are, but it doesn't factor in chemical
emissions or the people at our end who are involved in
mining and moving it, fabricating it, enriching it," said
Block. "At every link, most people are being dosed."
Studies have a hard time definitively stating that
emissions from the production of nuclear energy lead to
higher rates of cancer in the immediate population, as
causality is hard to pinpoint and a large number of
potential factors make it hard to isolate individual
variables.
However, Navajo miners in New Mexico involved at the
beginning of the nuclear chain in mining uranium have
shown very high rates of lung cancer. According to The
Los Angeles Times, the cancer death rate on the reserv-
ation doubled from the early 1970s to the late 1990s,
while overall cancer death rates declined in the US during
the same time period. While a definitive link has not been
established, researchers say "exposure to mining byproducts
in the soil, air and water almost certainly contributed to
the increase in Navajo cancer mortality."
Another worry is the danger of a nuclear plant or a waste
site being hit in a terrorist strike. "With a missile
launcher that could be held on your back, at a distance
of half a mile, someone could penetrate one of those
canisters," said Block. "Then the puff of cesium that
comes out would cause devastation and spread radiation
within a one mile radius."
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According to NuclearBailout.org, though Mohammed Atta, one
of the 9/11 hijackers, said that he had considered target-
ing a nuclear facility instead of the World Trade Center,
nuclear reactors are still "not required to be protected
against air attack."
As seen with Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, an accident
could also be devastating. Nuclear reactors need a large
amount of water to keep them cool. However, when there
isn't enough coolant, the reactor is in danger of overheat-
ing and could suffer severe core damage. Large amounts of
toxic radioactive material could then be released into the
air. Because of cutting costs at reactors in an effort to
stay competitive, however, safety measures and security
alike are inadequate.
"When money is the bottom line, safety is somewhere in
second, third, or fourth place," said Block. "But you
can't afford that if you're guarding the most dangerous
material on earth. If there's going to be a nuclear
renaissance, then there has to be a safety renaissance.
You don't see that right now."
This pledge from the Obama administration comes at a time
when it is trying to get bipartisan support for broader
environmental and energy policies. While this concession
on nuclear energy signals to Republicans that the
administration is willing to compromise on some issues,
President Obama still emphasized the need for supporting
other alternative clean energy sources.
"Even when we have differences, we cannot allow those
differences to prevent us from making progress. On an
issue that affects our economy, our security, and the
future of our planet, we can't keep on being mired in
the same old stale debates between the left and the
right, between environmentalists and entrepreneurs,"
he said.
Last year, the House passed legislation on climate change
that included a cap-and-trade measure, but the bill has
since languished in the Senate.
President Obama has said that compared to a similar coal
plant, the new nuclear plant would cut carbon pollution by
16 million tons each year - the equivalent of taking 3.5
million cars off the road.
However, environmental groups have advocated other methods
that would work better, while being more economically
beneficial.
"Particularly when government resources are concerned, this
money spent on nuclear energy could be spent on something
better, cleaner, safer, with other benefits as well,"
argued Dorner. "If we invested this money into retrofitting
people's homes and buildings, we would have an immediate
cut in emissions, and it would save people money in the
long run."
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