Author Archives: no_new_nukes_

“Clean” Nuclear Power? The President Knows Better

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In last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama said that “(t)o create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.” Despite his statement, the President knows better.

Nuclear power is neither safe nor clean. There is no such thing as a “safe” dose of radiation and just because nuclear pollution is invisible doesn’t mean it’s “clean.” For years nuclear plants have been leaking radioactive waste from underground pipes and radioactive waste pools into the ground water at sites across the nation. Mr. Obama was prompted to address the issue when radioactive contamination was found in drinking wells and off the nuclear plant site at Exelon’s Braidwood nuclear plant.

In 2006, when the President was serving as a senator from Illinois, he introduced the Nuclear Release Notice Act to address the radioactive contamination of groundwater at several nuclear reactors in his state. Unfortunately, the bill never became law.

Rather than hold nuclear power plant owners accountable for the uncontrolled and unmonitored leaks, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) handed the problem over to the nuclear industry’s lobbyists. Despite the fact that tritium releases to groundwater violate the terms of the nuclear plant’s license, the NRC has failed to exercise its regulatory authority. Instead, NRC has allowed the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) to create a voluntary industry program to deal with the tritium contamination.

Since then, the trickle of operators of nuclear plants acknowledging that they’ve contaminated the ground water at their sites has grown into a deluge. The nuclear plants that have admitted leaking radioactive hydrogen or tritium into the groundwater include: Braidwood, Byron & Dresden in Ilinois; Indian Point & Fitzpatrick in New York; Yankee Rowe & Pilgrim in Massachusetts; Three Mile Island & Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania; Callaway in Missouri; Oyster Creek in New Jersey; Hatch in Georgia; Palo Verde In Arizona; Perry in Ohio; Point Beach in Wisconsin; Salem in Delaware; Seabrook in New Hampshire; Watts Bar in Tennessee; Wolf Creek in Kansas; Connecticut Yankee and most recently Vermont Yankee. This NY Times article explains it all.

This list is likely incomplete and still growing. It remains difficult for the public to track which nuclear plants are leaking radioactive contamination because the NRC has failed to update its website since October of 2007 when it abdicated its authority to the industry’s voluntary initiative.

The President was then less than pleased with the industry’s voluntary regulation of radioactive leaks. Then Senator Obama responded that “(w)hile it’s encouraging that the nuclear industry recognizes it has a special responsibility to keep communities informed of tritium leaks, the voluntary guidelines recommended by the Nuclear Energy Institute would still allow tritium leaks to occur without the public ever finding out about it. The nuclear industry already has a voluntary policy, and it hasn’t worked.”

Obama’s comments now seem prophetic. Recently, just one week after the government regulators extended the operating license for the 40-year-old Oyster Creek reactor in New Jersey, the plant owner admitted leaking radioactive contamination into the plants ground water. This most recent revelation has prompted several members of Congress to ask the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the leaks and how regulators at the NRC have mishandled the issue.

According to Congressman Ed Markey, who over sees the NRC, “(u)nder current regulations, miles and miles of buried pipes within nuclear reactors have never been inspected and will likely never be inspected.” Markey concluded that “(t)his is simply unacceptable. As it stands, the NRC requires-at most-a single, spot inspection of the buried piping systems no more than once every 10 years. This cannot possibly be sufficient to ensure the safety of both the public and the plant.”

If President Obama truly wants a clean energy economy and the jobs that come with it, he should abandon the failed policies of the past. Nuclear power is a dirty and dangerous distraction from the clean energy future the President has promised America.

This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.

Boxer-Kerry Climate Bill Greenwashes Nuclear Power

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Bowing to pressure from the pro-nuclear lobby, Senators Boxer and Kerry have included nuclear power into their bill to address climate change. In their proposed legislation, the Senators claim that “nuclear energy is the largest provider of clean, low-carbon, electricity….” Funny we’ve heard that before. In fact, the bill’s nuclear section reads like it was lifted off the Nuclear Energy Institute’s (NEI) website, despite its lack of veracity.

Over a decade ago, environmentalists challenged the nuclear industry’s propaganda that they were clean and green. As a result, the Better Business Bureau’s ( BBB ) National Advertising Division found that the Nuclear Energy Institute’s ads falsely claimed that nuclear reactors make power without polluting the air and water or damaging the environment. The BBB said that, “The nuclear industry should stop calling itself ‘environmentally clean’ and should stop saying it makes power ‘without polluting the environment.’” The director of the division said such claims were “unsupportable.” The bureau agreed with environmentalists that nuclear fuel is made using electricity from coal plants and that nuclear waste poses a threat to the public health and safety.

The nuclear industry’s brazen disregard for the BBB prompted the environmental groups to bring NEI before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC found that

 

[B]ecause the discharge of hot water from cooling systems is known to harm the environment, and given the unresolved issues surrounding disposal of radioactive waste, we think that NEI has failed to substantiate its general environmental benefit claim.

 

Unfortunately those same false claims have now found their way into the legislation offered by Senator’s Boxer and Kerry.

Even Andrew Kadak, “Professor of the Practice” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has acknowledged that nuclear power contributes CO2 to the environment. In a speech before the American Physical Society entitled “A Renaissance for Nuclear Energy?” Kadak bemoaned the fact that the international community had already rejected nuclear power as a solution to climate change. However, Kadak recognized that:

 

For many years, nuclear energy, while arguably a -CO2 emitting energy source, has been judged to be unacceptable for reasons of safety, unstable regulatory climate, a lack of a waste disposal solution and, more recently, economics.

 

If the Senators actually want to abate climate change rather than merely enriching nuclear corporations, we need solutions that are fast, safe and affordable, and that rules out nuclear power. The Congressional Budget Office has already determined that the risk of default on the nuclear loan guarantees congress will supply to the nuclear industry is well above 50%. Is it really the Senator’s intent to support the next taxpayer bailout?

Mid American, a subsidiary of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, has already conducted their economic due diligence on a new nuclear plant and determined that it does not make economic sense to build. If the “world’s greatest investor” will not waste his resources on new nuclear power, perhaps the Senate should listen.

But Warren Buffet’s corporation isn’t the only one who thinks nuclear power is an economic non-starter. In April, Jon Wellinghoff, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, stated that new nuclear and coal plants are not needed. Renewable energy like wind & solar and improvements in energy efficiency will provide enough energy to meet our future energy demands. Wellinghoff concluded that nuclear and coal plants are too expensive.

In June, Moody’s Investor Services released their analysis of new nuclear generation and determined that nuclear power was a “bet the farm” risk. Why should the American taxpayer be expected to support such an investment?

The history of nuclear power plant cost overruns that led Forbes magazine to call nuclear power the “largest managerial disaster in business history” is repeating itself with the current generation of nuclear reactors. Last month, the French nuclear giant, Areva announced that they had lost 550 million euros, a 79% drop in their profits, due to construction delays with their reactor in Finland. According to Areva, the 3-billion euro nuclear plant has now accumulated 2.3 billion euros in estimated losses. Does the Senate really want to repeat this fiscal fiasco in the U.S.?

Nuclear power is a deadly and dangerous distraction from real solutions to climate change and our energy needs. Nuclear power is unsafe, uneconomical & unnecessary. Rather than greenwashing nuclear power, Senators Boxer and Kerry should cut the nuclear title from their bill and work to oppose any attempts to support this failed experiment.

Jim Riccio, Nuclear Policy Analyst

President Obama and Nuclear Power’s Spin Campaign

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Within hours of President-elect Obama’s victory, the nuclear industry was at it again: spinning nuclear power and attempting to put the best light on the industry’s prospects after the loss of their favorite candidate, Sen. John McCain. The President of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), Skip Bowman, congratulated President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden on their victory and then he proceeded to mischaracterize their position on nuclear power.

I wrote all about it over on Huffington Post — check it out!

Atomic Economics & Senator McCain

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Just as Americans are being asked to back the biggest bailout in U.S. history, Senator McCain would again put the American taxpayer on the hook for yet another corporate giveaway.

Senator McCain wants to build 100 more nuclear reactors in the U.S., 45 by 2030. But there’s an important detail that the Senator and his campaign fail to mention.  The economics of nuclear power are so abysmal that many nuclear CEO’s will not construct reactors unless the American taxpayer guarantees they wont lose money.

But the good senator and his campaign should know better.  Senator McCain has been around long enough to actually remember the implosion of the nuclear industry.  If his recollection has failed, his economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin could refresh his memory. When the notion that the American taxpayer should guarantee loans to nuclear corporations was introduced in the Senate, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) then headed by Senator McCain’s economic advisor Holtz-Eakin found that:

CBO considers the risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high—well above 50 percent. The key factor accounting for this risk is that we expect that the plant would be uneconomic to operate because of its high construction costs, relative to other electricity generation sources.  http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/42xx/doc4206/s14.pdf

Senator McCain’s support for nuclear loan guarantees can not be justified by the nuclear industry’s past performance.  According to the Department of Energy, the first 75 reactors built in the U.S. experienced cost overruns totaling over $100 billion and that was before the meltdown at Three Mile Island sent the nuclear industry even further into a tailspin.

U.S. Nuclear Power Plant Construction Cost Overruns

Construction
Started
Estimated Overnight Costs
Actual Overnight Costs
Percent Overrun
1966-67
$ 560/kWe
$1,170/kWe
209%
1968-69
$ 679
$2,000
294%
1970-71
$ 760
$2,650
348%
1972-73
$1,117
$3,555
318%
1974-75
$1,156
$4,410
381%
1976-77
$1,493
$4,008
269%

(Joskow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Economics of Investment in New Nuclear Power Plants in the U.S, EIA Midterm Energy Outlook Conference, April 12, 2005. Note: Figures are in 2002$/kWe )

It was this economic track record that doomed nuclear power in the U.S. and led Forbes magazine to declare that the “failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster of monumental scale.” Really, who in their right mind would guarantee loans to an industry with this track record?  Obviously, not Wall Street!

Last July, six major U.S. Banking institutions (some of which have been bought or are now bankrupt) including Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch & Morgan Stanley sent a letter to the Department of Energy (DOE).  The bankers told DOE that unless the U.S. Taxpayer backed 100% of the debt incurred by nuclear corporations that they would have difficulty “accessing capital markets.”

We believe many new nuclear construction projects will have difficulty accessing the capital markets during construction and initial operation without the support of a federal government loan guarantee.  Lenders and investors in the fixed income markets will be acutely concerned about a number of political, regulatory and litigation-related risks that are unique to nuclear power, including the possibility of delays in commercial operation of a completed plant or “another Shoreham”. We believe these risks, combined with the higher capital costs and longer construction schedules of nuclear plants as compared to other generation facilities, will make lenders unwilling at present to extend long-term credit to such projects in a form that would be commercially viable.  http://www.lgprogram.energy.gov/nopr-comments/comment29.pdf

The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) has also weighed in on these loan guarantees to the nuclear industry. The GAO recently found that the Bush Administration’s DOE does not have the oversight in place to adequately manage the loan guarantee program.  But rather than address the inadequacies identified by the GAO, the Bush administration has accelerated the loan guarantee program.  http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08750.pdf

Senator McCain has already been warned by the CBO, the GAO and Wall Street that building new nuclear power plants is an economic meltdown waiting to happen. Even a subsidiary of Warren Buffet’s corporation Berkshire Hathaway has rejected a new nuclear reactor as economically unsound.

Senator McCain has abandoned his straight talk when it comes to nuclear power.  The Senator needs to  explain why the American taxpayer should be put on the hook for new nuclear plants that the industry would never build if they and their stockholders had to bear the risk.

–Jim Riccio

Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it

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This post was originally published April 26, 2008:

As American nuclear corporations move toward constructing new reactors in the U.S., it’s important that we remember the downside of the nuclear industry on this 22nd Anniversary of the Chernobyl Disaster.

The fact is that none of these corporations would ever construct another reactor if they were held liable for the consequences of the catastrophic accident that could occur. Less than a month after the disaster, NRC Commissioner James K. Asselstine testified to Congress that,

While we hope that their occurrence is unlikely, there are accident sequences for U.S. plants that can lead to rupture or bypassing of containment in U.S. reactors which would result in the off-site release of fission products comparable or worse than the releases estimated by the NRC staff to have taken place during the Chernobyl accident.

That is why the Commission told Congress recently that it could not rule out a commercial nuclear power plant accident in the United States resulting in tens of billions of dollars of property losses and injuries to the public.

The nuclear industry and their propagandists would like the public to forget or ignore this nuclear disaster.  But those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.  

Unfortunately, former Greenpeace activist Patrick Moore is now one of these pro-nuclear propagandists downplaying the consequences of this disaster. In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster,  and prior to pulling a paycheck from the Nuclear Energy Institute and forming CASEnergy, he issued a document entitled:

 “SOME FACTS ABOUT THE CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR DISASTER”
by Patrick Moore, Ph. D.
Greenpeace Foundation of Canada

 

 

Mr. Moore went on to conclude that:

 

The facts concerning the Chernobyl disaster haven’t changed and neither has the nuclear industry. Nuclear power is a dangerous technology that would never be built if corporations bore the true cost and liability for the potential consequences. However, it seems Mr. Moore has either forgotten the facts about Chernobyl or has been paid to ignore them. Neither of which is acceptable.  

For more information on the Chernobyl Accident and reactor risks:

American Chernobyl: Nuclear “Near Misses” at U.S. Reactors Since 1986.
Greenpeace 2007.

Risky Business: The Probability and Consequences of a Nuclear Accident
Greenpeace

CHERNOBYL: Some Lessons  and Implications for Lower Quality Electric Utilities,  Donaldson. Lutkin & Jenrette Securities Corporation, 1986

For additional information on Mr. Moore & his current activities see:

Spinning the Atom in Mother Jones Magazine