Sellin' Nukes, Dissin' Wind
By Kelpie Wilson
From: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/060505A.shtml
Sunday 05 June 2005
Twenty years after Chernobyl, the pro-nuclear lobby has decided that it's time to glue a happy face on nuclear power
again. Simultaneous pro-nuclear public relations campaigns have plastered their briefs in the US and British media
markets in the last couple of months. Time will tell whether they stick.
Jonathan Leake and Dan Box reported in New Statesman (The Nuclear Charm Offensive, 5/23/05) that a sudden flux of news articles about nuclear power right around the UK election last month was preceded
by months of planning and the retainer of expensive PR consultants.
"Nothing had occurred politically," they said. "There had been no reports, scandals, technical breakthroughs or new
policies. What had happened was that a group of journalists had taken the bait offered them by a few canny public
relations experts."
But good PR can't take all the credit because the growing prominence of global warming is a golden opportunity. If the
world is to avoid catastrophic global warming, we must start reducing CO2 emissions immediately. Nuclear lobbies tout
their product as "carbon free" even though the mining and processing of uranium ore involves considerable amounts of
greenhouse gasses. Still, a nuclear plant over its life may emit less than a third of the CO2 of a gas-fired power
plant.
One of the strategies for making nuclear power look good is to compare it with its top "carbon-free" competitor - wind
power. Nuclear is reliable where wind power is intermittent; nuclear is strong and solid where wind power is weak and
dispersed.
The comparison cuts both ways. Nuclear is not always reliable - plants are often shut down for repairs, sometimes for
months at a time - and that is just the beginning of a long list of negatives that includes: no place to safely store
radioactive waste; security concerns about terrorist attacks and nuclear proliferation; the depletion of high-grade
uranium ore; and the potential for accidents like Chernobyl.
Still, for a true-blue pro-nuker, that list of negatives is hardly daunting. Peter Schwartz and Spencer Reiss, in their
article Nuclear Now! (Wired, February 2005) blow off the long-term waste storage concern, calling it an exercise in science fiction: "We
don't need a million-year solution. A hundred years will do just fine - long enough to let the stuff cool down and allow
us to decide what to do with it."
But for nuclear power alone to effectively stabilize carbon emissions at current levels would require seven times the
world's present inventory of 440 reactors - that's 3,080 new thousand megawatt reactors (see Elizabeth Kolbert, The Climate of Man, Part III, The New Yorker, May 9, 2005 for background on how I derived this figure). The US is already generating 2000
tons of high-level radioactive waste a year. This waste does not "cool down" significantly in the space of a hundred
years and there is no indication that we will have any better idea of how to store it a hundred years from now. Most of
it now sits in uncontained pools of water at reactor sites around the country. What will we do with seven times as much
or more?
On the depletion of high-grade uranium ore, Schwartz and Reiss recommend stretching the supply by reprocessing spent
fuel, which also happens to be the way to make the bomb-grade fissionable material that is the core of the nuclear
proliferation threat. For these writers, the solution is simplicity itself: "... create a global nuclear fuel company...
[t]his company would collect, reprocess, and distribute fuel to every nation in the world, thus keeping potential bomb
fixings out of circulation." Even without deliberate targeting by terrorists, a large distribution network of bomb-grade
materials practically guarantees that there will be a normal transportation accident some day with horrible
consequences.
After blithely disposing of these nuclear pitfalls as mere engineering problems, the Wired authors address the negatives
of wind and solar, calling them "‘false gods' - attractive but powerless." Their biggest concern is that these
technologies require a lot of land area to deploy: "... a run-of-the-mill 1,000 megawatt photovoltaic plant will require
about 60 square miles of panes alone. In other words, the largest industrial structure ever built."
To Schwartz and Reiss then, nuclear waste disposal is a negligible problem while installing solar panels on millions of
roofs, along roadways and over parking lots is an insurmountable challenge. They call solar and wind "pie in the
emissions-free sky," while nuclear power is "proven technology."
Peter Schwartz is a member of the Global Business Network consulting group, along with Stewart Brand, one-time
sustainability guru and editor of the 1970s Whole Earth Catalog. Schwartz is also a co-author of the Pentagon report
released last year that warned of the possibility of abrupt climate change. These futurists are an important current
within the "geo-green" movement that is bringing environmentalists together with neo-cons to promote US energy
independence along with reduced carbon emissions. However, it is now becoming clear that the thrust of this movement is
a nuclear revival and not the development of truly green, renewable power.
For instance, the new version of the McCain-Lieberman climate change bill adds in a hefty nuclear power subsidy. This is
a harbinger of what we are likely to see in this summer's episode of the Energy Bill Wars: nuclear advocates will
bargain for new subsidies in exchange for some slightly increased support of solar, wind and energy efficiency.
One of the prizes the nuclear industry wants is a production tax credit of 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour guaranteed for
ten years. This is on top of a package already passed in the House version of the Energy Bill that includes more than $6
billion in subsidies and tax breaks plus the reauthorization of the Price-Anderson Act that caps industry's liability
for nuclear accidents.
According to Public Citizen, nuclear energy has received $74 billion of taxpayers' money for research and development
since 1948. In contrast, fossil fuels have received $30.9 billion; renewables have gotten $14.6 billion and energy
efficiency $11.7 billion.
For the nuclear industry to demand a guaranteed production tax credit is particularly insane in the face of the
struggles of the wind power industry. Here is a power source that, once installed, has NO fuel cost. While the rest of
the world is experiencing explosive growth in wind power, the US has crippled its industry by refusing to provide a
reliable production tax credit. The only credit available has to be renewed every two years. Attached to last year's
failed Energy Bill, it was saved at the last minute by insertion into another piece of legislation, but the uncertainty
created deters serious investment in wind power.
Which industry most deserves our hard earned tax money? Massive deployment of wind power could help revitalize US
manufacturing and bring money into rural areas by installing wind turbines in farmers' fields. Nuclear power employs
only elite contractors and engineers along with a few Homer Simpsons to run the plants.
The newest, most sophisticated geo-green project is coming from General Electric, which has just launched a $90 million
ad campaign for its "Ecomagination" program. The company is committing to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions
company-wide, improving energy efficiency and doubling its R investment in "clean" energy.
These goals were developed with help from the World Resources Institute, a sustainable development think tank. WRI's
president, Jonathan Lash, teamed up with GE's Jeffrey Immelt to write an Op-Ed for The Washington Post (5/21/05) titled:
"The Courage to Develop Clean Energy." The duo called for a dose of good old "American will" to push through a sensible energy policy that would accelerate
development of "wind, solar, clean coal, nuclear power and other resources."
GE owns investments in all of these technologies, so the company stands to benefit no matter which energy alternatives
get the most subsidies. But are they just hedging their bets, or are they secretly hoping that nuclear will win big?
The UK Guardian's Polly Toynbee, in her article, Capitulation to the Nuclear Lobby Is a Politics of Despair, wrote:
"But don't underestimate the immense power of the pro-nuclearists. They will begin with the reasonable claim that
nuclear is just "part of the mix", but the monumental cost of a new nuclear program would devour all the cash - and far
more - needed to develop better alternatives."
Big companies generally prefer big, capital intensive projects over smaller, retail level projects. It is not a matter
of profits so much as it is a matter of control. Oil, gas and coal have fueled imperial ambitions to heights never seen
prior to the 20th century. We may not recognize it as imperialism because there is no single emperor, but we know well
who is in charge. President Eisenhower called it the military-industrial complex and that is still as good a term for it
as any.
Big power fantasies are not limited to heads of governments and corporations. Peter Schwartz wants nuclear power because
"...wouldn't it be a blast to barrel down the freeway in a hydrogen Hummer...?"
But the real choice is not between a high-powered but dangerous nuclear future and a solar-powered, modest granola
lifestyle. We will never build enough nukes to replace the immense legacy of stored sunlight that is fossil fuels. We
are inevitably headed toward a different, decentralized, low energy future. If there is a human impulse toward
imperialism, there is an equally strong human impulse for democracy, and I am optimistic that the future will offer
fewer opportunities for despots and more for democrats.
The real choice then is this: Do we saddle our descendents with the poison forever of nuclear contamination in our
attempts to hang on to a doomed lifestyle? Or do we start learning to live lightly on the planet now, and spare the
children?
***********
Kelpie Wilson is the t r u t h o u t environment editor. A veteran forest protection activist and mechanical engineer,
she writes from her solar-powered cabin in the Siskiyou Mountains of southwest Oregon. Her first novel, Primal Tears, is
forthcoming from North Atlantic Books in Fall 2005.