Nuclear power Does not solve global warming.
Take too long:
To ensure that global warming doesn’t lead to catastrophe, we have to act with a sense of urgency and begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions now. Otherwise, if emissions continue to grow over the next few years, natural feedback cycles could be triggered, moving us past a point of no return. Unfortunately, each new nuclear plant takes ten years or more to construct, and a large-scale transition to nuclear power would take decades—time we don’t have to spare. Other solutions, including switching to wind and solar power, and using energy more efficiently, can be adopted much more quickly.
•Requires Vast Industry Expansion
In order to generate enough nuclear energy to replace the U.S. energy supply currently derived from coal—US need to build more than double the number of existing nuclear plants in the country. And that doesn’t take into account that under business-as-usual scenarios, domestic coal use would continue to increase. It also doesn’t account for the need to build even more nuclear plants to replace old ones that need to be phased out. Ultimately, we’d be talking about hundreds of new nuclear plants, which could total more than a trillion dollars with individual plants costing $5 billion or more. Varied state and regional permit processes, likely legal challenges, and political opposition from locals would present the nuclear industry with a logistical nightmare and make construction of this many plants nearly impossible. Of course, there’s no indication that the industry actually intends to build the number of plants needed to make a significant dent in global warming. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports that in the next few years, it expects to receive only 21 new nuclear plant applications.
•Diverts Resources From Other solutions
Over the past 50 years, nuclear power has been by far the largest recipient of government energy subsidies, yet nuclear industry advocates continue to ask for more handouts. From 1948 to 1998, the government awarded nearly $75 billion in handouts to the nuclear power industry while spending less than $15 billion on renewable energy and only about $12 billion on energy efficiency measures. Unfortunately, the nuclear industry is asking for tens of billions of dollars of additional subsidies, even though, at an estimated 6.7 cents per kilowatt hour, nuclear power is substantially more costly than wind power, which can now be derived for 3.5 to 4 cents per kilowatt hour. To tackle the global warming fight effectively and get the most bang for our buck, we should focus subsidies on increased wind power generation and the even more affordable alternative of encouraging energy efficiency. Nuclear power is simply a diversion.
The Market does not support nuclear power
•Many loans will result in default
One of the reasons that private lenders won’t fund new plants is that such loans often result in default – which happens when the plant’s operation does not produce enough revenue to pay off loans for construction. That’s why the industry wants government to back such loans. But according to a May 2003 US Congressional Budget Office report, the risk of default on loan guarantees for new nuclear plants is “very high – well above 50 percent.” That means that taxpayers could be stuck with the bill for more than half of the loans we guarantee—a risky proposition indeed.
•The nuclear industry is already heavily subsidized
The nuclear power industry has already benefited from taxpayers’ generosity. Indeed, for too long, government subsidies have been the only thing keeping the industry afloat. A full 59 percent of all research dollars in the energy sector from 1948 to 1998 were spent on nuclear research—money that could have encouraged energy conservation or sped our conversion to energy sources such as wind and solar. US Congress should not now be considering an additional $50 billion dollars to subsidize nuclear plant construction, when priorities such as wind and solar remain underfunded (wind and solar tax credits in 2006 totaled less than $1 billion).
•A blank check for fiscal irresponsibility
Congress is considering enacting loan guarantee language that would give the Department of Energy, which has mismanaged similar programs in the past, a blank check to award loan guarantees to nuclear construction projects without congressional oversight. Without Congressional oversight that can guarantee money is being well spent, the Department of Energy could hand out loans to projects that are likely to fail—increasing the already-high risk of default. Removing Congress from this process is a bad idea and just increases the financial risk to taxpayers and the potential subsidies for the nuclear industry.
Nuclear power is not Safe
•Plants Aging and Failing
NRC records show that commercial nuclear plants experienced nearly 200 significant reported safety problems between 1986 and 2006. Some of those were extremely serious. For example, in March 2002, a six inch hole was discovered in the aging reactor vessel at the Davis-Besse reactor in Ohio. This left only a thin layer of stainless steel to prevent a catastrophic loss of the reactor’s coolant which could have resulted in a core meltdown and release of highly radioactive materials into the environment. Despite these problems, the federal government is moving to relicense plants that already are beyond their designed lifespan.
•No Place for Waste
Every plant generates highly radioactive nuclear waste and we have no place to safely store it. Currently, much of the spent nuclear fuel is stored in pools of water adjacent to the reactors. If a pool were accidentally or intentionally drained it could lead to a serious fire spewing highly radioactive material into the air. A report from Brookhaven National Laboratory found that such an incident could cause as many as 28,000 cancer fatalities, cause $59 billion in damage, and render 188 square miles unfit for habitation.
•No Control Over Nature
Nuclear plants are also vulnerable to natural disaster. In the summer of 2007, an earthquake damaged a large nuclear plant in Northwestern Japan, caused 50 problems and spilled radioactive water into the Sea of Japan.
Nuclear power plants are not secure
•Targets
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, hijackers had originally planned to crash a plane into a nuclear power plant on September 11 but changed their plans. This could have been catastrophic since, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, none of the 103 operating nuclear reactors was designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 767 jetliner. 21 of those reactors are located within five miles of an airport.
•Infiltration
Nuclear facilities have limited security forces and there are serious questions about whether those forces are capable of fending off a terrorist attack. Only this summer guards were fired after they were found to be sleeping at the Peach Bottom nuclear plant in southcentral Pennsylvania. Security guards at only one of four nuclear power plants are confident their plant could defeat a terrorist attack, according to interviews conducted by the Project on Government Oversight.
•Theft
The theft of nuclear material from a reactor, storage facility or enrichment plant could allow terrorists to build a dirty bomb or a nuclear device. It takes less than 10 kg of enriched uranium and less than 3 kilograms of plutonium to build a nuclear bomb. The technology for bomb making is now widely available.
For the first time in decades, the nuclear power industry is considering building new nuclear reactors in the United States. They claim that nuclear power is a solution to global warming, but that’s just not true. Indeed, nuclear power costs too much, takes too long, and is too risky when better alternatives are available.Private markets won’t provide the funds for new reactor construction because nuclear power is too expensive and financially risky, so the industry is working to get taxpayers to foot the bill through a loan guarantee program that its allies in US Congress are trying to insert into various pieces of legislation. Industry executives have admitted that without these loan guarantees, there will be no more nukes. Friends of the Earth is fighting to keep these loan guarantees out legislation.
Under the guise of fighting global warming, the nuclear power industry and its allies in US Congress are pushing a plan to construct the first new nuclear power plants in the U.S. in decades, and this plan’s lynchpin is to pass federal legislation making taxpayers the unwilling financial underwriters of new plants, through federal loan guarantees.
Did you know that experts estimate that we would need to triple our number of nuclear reactors to make a serious dent in global warming? With just over a hundred reactors currently online in the U.S.A., and at a cost of around $5 billion per reactor, that would require at least $1 trillion (assuming we didn’t replace aging plants). Given that cost, and the fact that it takes up to ten years to build a new plant, it would take decades to start meeting the threats of planetary climate change with nuclear power. And that’s not even taking into consideration the risk taken by the public with triple the threat of nuclear disaster.
We can fight these provisions and win. Nuclear power’s allies got the loan guarantees into the Senate’s version of the energy bill, but activists drove them from the final congressional package. Now, nuclear boosters in US Congress are looking to other pieces of legislation in which to insert these nuclear loan guarantees.
We may feel like we are playing “whack-a-mole” with these loan guarantees in the coming months, as they keep popping up in different pieces of legislation — but it’s worth the effort. Industry experts say that new plants won’t get built without the loan guarantees, so the stakes couldn’t be higher for all sides.
The nuclear industry is spreading the notion that energy security and global warming call for a rebirth of nuclear power, yet the energy source’s true costs make this idea worse than ever.
The nuclear industry’s lobbying has been so successful that US Congress is considering massive loan guarantees for the construction of the first new nuclear power plants is over 30 years. A huge giveaway to the industry should be off the table as long as nuclear power creates more problems than it solves.
Nuclear power is not a solutoin.
Dont buy the big nuclear lie.
– from friends of the earth
More details
http://www.foe.org/No_Nuke_Loans/nuclear_gobble.pdf
http://www.foe.org/No_Nuke_Loans/loan_guarantee_controversy.pdf
http://www.foe.org/No_Nuke_Loans/Wall_Street.pdf
http://www.foe.org/No_Nuke_Loans/Foreign_Corporations.pdf