Bush administration has forgotten lessons of Three Mile Island
March 27, 2008 by Tyson Slocum
The anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident is a somber reminder of the fatal flaws of nuclear power and the unresolved dangers nuclear energy poses. However, despite the lessons learned from that catastrophe, the Bush administration is attempting to jump-start an industry that has been stagnant for almost three decades.
It’s almost as if the Bush administration forgot what happened March 28, 1979, when feedwater pumps failed at Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pa., leading to a partial core meltdown and the release of significant amounts of radiation. Prior to this event, mounting public concern and disastrous cost overruns led to the cancellation of most proposals for new reactors. Three Mile Island was the final blow.
Almost 30 years later, the flaws that halted interest in nuclear power have not changed. Cost, security, safety and waste proliferation are lingering problems that have yet to be resolved. Nuclear power is still dependent on taxpayer handouts for survival; plants still face safety shortcomings and lack of protection from terrorist attacks. Nuclear power is not a clean energy source, producing low- and high-level radioactive waste at every step of the process – from uranium mining to energy production.
What has changed since Three Mile Island? The nuclear industry has targeted not just ratepayers to bear the financial risk of these boondoggles, but is looking to saddle all taxpayers with the cost of guaranteeing the loans used to build new nuclear reactors.
Despite the president’s endorsement, nuclear power is not a solution to global warming. We have a 10-year window before global warming reaches its tipping point and major ecological and societal damage becomes unavoidable, says NASA scientist James Hansen. Even if a nuclear energy project was given government approval today, it would take about 10 years for the plant to start delivering electricity. The attempt to revitalize nuclear power is distracting us from cleaner, safer alternatives, such as renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Let’s remember Three Mile Island so that we don’t make the same mistakes.
The reason why Public Citizen has lost the interest of the public is its insistence on trying to pump the same dry well. People understand that not one person was injured, much less killed, by the accident at Three Mile Island. Articles like this merely confirm PC’s schizophrenia.
The world is turning to nuclear energy as the one essential part of the solution to global warming. PC’s refusal to deal honestly with environmental problems is driving it relentlessly into irrelevance.
[...] the unresolved dangers nuclear energy poses. However, despite the lessons learned from that … credit : [...]
Public Citizen’s position on nuclear power is in alignment with all the leading national environmental organizations. We are not outliers on this issue. Our stance, like that of our allies, is informed by not just safety issues, but security issues, cost issues, waste issues, uranium mining issues, and weapons proliferation issues. We view nuclear power holistically. We understand that in operation a reactor emits virtually no CO2, but neither does solar, wind, or wave energy. We oppose the expansion of nuclear power with the knowledge that robust energy efficiency combined with renewable energy can meet our energy demand. It is technically feasible to eliminate both finite fossil fuel and uranium based energy sources from our energy sector and still meet our demand by 2050.
It is our job and your job to make this politically feasible by working together to end massive coal and nuclear subsidies and incentives and demand that legislation like the renewable energy production tax credit, set to expire at the end of this year, is both extended and expanded to solidify invest in the technologies that should be tapped to move us into a clean and sustainable energy future. Let’s agree that if we can curb global warming without expanding a technology that requires a emergency evacuation plan, taxpayer backed loan guarantees, and a geological repository to contain its by-products of hundreds of thousands of years, then we should be making every effort to do so.
Tyson, thanks for the information. Actually, I’ve known PC’s views on the subject for a long time. You may have noticed that “all the leading national environmental organizations” are losing both membership and influence. It used to be that such self-righteous organizations could simply attribute moral superiority to themselves based on their allegiance to ideological positions that related vaguely to some aspect of the environment and their fans would cheerfully agree.
But times have changed. Many people, I would say those who have take the trouble to educate themselves, realize that “all the leading national environmental organizations” have failed in their stated goals. Instead of reducing environmental degradation in the world, they simply have shifted it from wealthy countries to poor ones. We see that their only accomplishment has been to salve the consciences of overconsumers by allowing them to support symbolic gestures. Thus the absurdity of jet-setting movie stars and rock musicians opposing the only practical alternative to fossil fuels.
I’m used to reading the erroneous claims made by political organizations like PC. Simple arithmetic shows the falsity of your belief that “robust energy efficiency combined with renewable energy can meet our energy demand.” And your reference to subsidies shows that you’ve never looked at the subject seriously. For a perspective on subsidies, please look here.
The fact is that renewable energy only works if it has a backup, and the only backups available are nuclear and fossil. By lobbying against the only energy source that is clean, safe, and reliable, anti-nukes have poisoned the planet. So no one expects them ever to show the courage of intellectual giants like James Lovelock and Hugh Montefiore. Instead, we expect PC and the other Greenpeace clones to continue fading away.
Here’s a scorecard on anti-nuclear groups. I’d be interested in knowing your reaction to it.
Nuclear energy powers the bulk of Western Europe, and they haven’t had any problems on the scale of Three-Mile Island.
Three-Mile Island was simple American mismanagement and ignored safety protocols. It didn’t kill a single person, and a similar or more severe incident hasn’t happened anywhere else in the last twenty years. Yes, that Wikipedia article has sufficient footnotes.
Most of America gets its energy from coal, which has caused more pollution than nuclear power by a thousandfold which is, if anything, an understatement.
Red Craig is in the right, here.
Hi Red Craig,
What simple arithmetic shows the falsity of our belief that energy efficiency and renewable energy can meet our growing energy demand? We’ve put together well-footnoted research that makes a strong case for it
http://www.citizen.org/documents/RenewableEnergy.pdf
And you provide a link claiming that loan guarantees do not constitute a subsidy for the nuclear power industry. That is a radical position, Red Craig. If taxpayers guaranteeing the loans made to the nuclear power industry are not a subsidy, then why is the nuclear industry (and Wall Street) pushing so hard for them? Because developing complex systems like nuclear power is inherently risky, and the industry is looking to transfer as much as the risk as possible to the public, in order to shield their shareholders. That is a massive subsidy - far bigger than what is proposed for competing technologies like wind and solar and efficiency.
And your solution for radioactive waste is . . . what exactly? Wouldn’t it be prudent to at least figure out what to do with the waste generated at the 104 currently operating reactors before building new ones?
Tyson, the arithmetic you’re looking for is at http://gwperplexed.niof.org/challenge.htm and http://gwperplexed.niof.org/pumped.htm.
PC’s brochure on renewable energy is nothing more than a collection of nuggets gleaned from obscure reports, generally taken out of context to support a point the authors never intended.
I don’t think you read the article I linked, because nowhere do I say anything like “loan guarantees do not constitute a subsidy for the nuclear power industry.” Neither you nor I is qualified to infer the motives of utility executives. But if I were an executive, my thinking would be something like this:
“The federal government wants to reduce the use of fossil fuels, but it grants tax credits to fossil-fuel producers and allows them to avoid stringent air-quality standards all in the interest of keeping electricity cheap. Furthermore, the government in the past has allowed politically-motivated litigators to tie projects up in the courts and federal and state regulators to change the design rules even after the plants’ construction had started, driving costs out of sight.
“Now the feds promise they have their act together. Fine, but I think they ought to put some money on the table to back up their promise. Besides, since I have to resurrect an industry that’s been dormant for some decades, I ought to get the same subsidies as renewables get. Okay, if not that much, at least a part of it for the first few plants.”
My solution to waste is what the nuclear nations of the world are moving toward: reprocessing. To put this in perspective, consider: A 1000-MW coal plant generates 300,000 metric tonnes of toxic waste per year, not including the filth that is released to the atmosphere. A comparably-sized nuclear plant produces 23 tonnes per year, enough to partly fill a railroad boxcar. Can you see that 23 tonnes is much less than 300,000 tonnes? But it gets better. Reprocessing the spent fuel reduces the wastes by 97%. So the same nuclear plant will produce only 0.7 tonnes per year. Reprocessing also reduces the time before the waste is harmless to some centuries, because the long-lived wastes are recycled. In comparison, coal wastes stay deadly forever. But the main difference is that the quantities of nuclear waste are small enough that they can be managed securely. Coal wastes are so vast that there’s no way to keep them out of the environment.
Not only is there a safe way to deal with waste from nuclear energy, it gives us a solution to the problem of coal waste by avoiding it.
Hi Red Craig,
First, I’ll respond to this statement you made: “Neither you nor I is qualified to infer the motives of utility executives.”
I most certainly am qualified. I’ve followed the industry for 8 years. And they have one duty: provide maximum return and value to shareholders. Plain and simple. Part of that is to shield shareholders from as much risk as possible while providing them with as much reward as is legally possible. And guess what? Loan guarantees are their magic ticket. With a market capitalization of under $16 billion, a nuclear utility like Exelon can’t afford to build a new nuke with a price tag of at least $6 billion. Hence loan guarantees. And Red Craig, I have a major problem with the American Public assuming the bulk of the risk while shareholders stand to reap the benefits. That’s not capitalism - that’s cronyism and corruption. There is no dispute whatsoever that loan guarantees are a subsidy.
And this statement of yours makes no sense whatsoever: “The federal government wants to reduce the use of fossil fuels, but it grants tax credits to fossil-fuel producers and allows them to avoid stringent air-quality standards all in the interest of keeping electricity cheap.”
Huh? Are you aware of pending climate change legislation (co-sponsored by GOP Senator John Warner) that would place a price on CO2 emitted by these coal-fired plants? About sustained efforts across the country to severely limit emissions at coal plants? New source review?
Who will pay for reprocessing? Shareholders of Exelon? Or American taxpayers? Who will provide ultimate insurance for the operations of nuclear power plants - shareholders or the American public? We can go on and on, but there is no other energy source that relies on welfare to the degree that nuclear power does. It’s a socialists dream - which is why they got lots of nukes in France and are trying to build one in Finland, I suppose . . . I’m sick and tired of powerful, profitable corporations unwilling to put their own shareholders on the line for their new projects. The American people were the chumps in the 70s and 80s, duped by nukes, and the nuclear power industry is going back for more.
Okay, Tyson, I’ll accept your claim that utility executives confide their thoughts to you. Still, I don’t think my projection is far off the mark. Pending legislation or none, the facts remain that (a) fossil-fuel producers get tax credits and (b) the air-quality standards on fossil burners are abysmal. Even if I accept your contention that loan guarantees are a subsidy, which certainly stretches the concept, offerring such a “subsidy” only levels the field.
I can’t guess why you have a hard time understanding the concept of keeping electricity cheap through air-quality standards that cause thousands of deaths per month. Maybe I’ve been following environmental issues longer than you have. Every time lawmakers have sought to strengthen the standards, they were beaten back with the argument that cheap electricity was needed for economic growth. Maybe you got into this recently enough that you’re not aware of the history.
Who will pay for reprocessing? Ratepayers. As it is, ratepayers are paying 0.1 cents per KWH for waste handling. MIT estimates that will cover the cost of the throw-away waste handling favored by anti-nukes—I can look up the reference if you like. Recycling fuel is expected to cost more, but it still will be a fraction of a cent per KWH.
I don’t mind your throwing a rant. I do that sometimes, too. But no one was duped. Nuclear power plants get more scrutiny than just about any other industrial project. Where the ratepayers got screwed was by unscrupulous lawyers and political activists who were blinded by a cause they chose to believe in. They tied the projects up in litigation that drove the costs out of sight.
If the US had continued to develop nuclear energy as it could have and should have, hundreds of thousands of Americans would not have died from the resulting pollution. Heavy-metals and toxic chemicals that have poisoned the soil and the water would still be safely underground in coal deposits. Global warming would be farther away and we’d be in a stronger position to deal with it.
The unwillingness of the anti-nukes to admit their culpability in the devastation of the world’s environment doesn’t surprise anyone.