Nuclear Power

NUCLEAR POWER: PROGRESS OR FOLLY

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything
save our ways of thinking and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophes.

- Albert Einstein

Has commercial nuclear power been the answer to our energy needs, or has it proven to be an endeavor which has spread its plague throughout the world? Has it beneficially served the needs of the public, or has it served the selfish interests of the few while damaging our environment as well as people’s lives? When we consider accidents such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and others, the answers to these questions are obvious. Forbes Magazine referred to the nuclear power program as “the largest managerial disaster in U.S. business history.” The nuclear industry has spent $200 billion on its failed dream. Thirty years of nuclear power and the industry is still encumbered with routine radiation releases, safety hazards, cost overruns, increased maintenance costs, and a dependence upon federal subsidies. This is to say nothing of the future problems we must face as a result of the nuclear industry.

The nuclear power establishment wanted us to believe (and probably still does) that nuclear power is inexpensive, clean, and safe. It is obvious now that everything they told us has proven to be blatantly false. Nuclear power has been nothing short of a tragedy to our planet and its people. Here are clear examples of the disturbing propaganda broadcast to the public by the nuclear power industry.

An official of the Edison Electric Institute stated in 1983, “Every major scientific panel convened to study nuclear waste has found that there is no technical or scientific reason why America cannot safely dispose of it.” The following statement from a 1984 advertisement put out by the U.S. Committee For Energy Awareness is good for a laugh: “The volume of waste is very small compared to the waste from other industrial processes. Therefore, it is much easier to control, contain, and dispose of.” From experience, we now know these claims to be pure, unadulterated propaganda.

Inexpensive? In the beginning, the nuclear establishment told the public that nuclear power could produce energy so inexpensively it would be “too cheap to meter.” A 1984 survey by the Atomic Industrial Forum found that coal-powered plants operate for 3.4 cents per kilowatt/hour, whereas nuclear power plants cost 4.1 cents. Presently, nuclear power costs have risen to roughly 10 to 15 cents per kilowatt/hour. According to the January/February, 1991 issue of Public Citizen, founded by Ralph Nader, the cost of closing down, cleaning up and dismantling 124 of the worn-out nuclear reactors (called “decommissioning”) over the next 20 to 30 years may climb as high as $100 billion. Critical Mass Director Ken Bossong said, “Decommissioning the nation’s nuclear reactors is an enormous hidden cost of nuclear power that threatens to saddle consumers with a debt that will total tens of billions of dollars.” Think about it — they want us, the taxpayers, to pay for cleaning up their mess! And who will dare calculate the expense of nuclear power in mere dollars and “sense,” when done so from the perspective of the effects the nuclear industry has had upon human health and our global environment! In its wake throughout the years, the nuclear industry has left canceled reactors, thousands of contaminated sites, overwhelming amounts of nuclear waste, and human beings who have suffered and died from the effects of radiation exposure. Inexpensive?

Clean? Nuclear power is one of the dirtiest energy forms ever devised. Although nuclear power plants do not exude visible black smoke as do some factories, each of our nation’s nuclear reactors releases harmful radioactivity into the air and water as part of their “normal” operating functions! In addition, each nuclear reactor produces about 30 tons of lethal high-level radioactive waste per year – with no safe or permanent procedure for getting rid of it!

The accumulated radioactivity dumped into the Atlantic Ocean totals over 1 million curies. Plutonium dumped into the North Sea from 1960 to 1990 was enough to cause 250 million people to develop cancer. After 100,000, years it will still be lethal to 15 million people. Nuclear power contaminates the environment at every step of its process (called the fuel chain), from mining and milling through processing, enrichment and fuel fabrication, electrical production and radioactive waste storage. Everywhere nuclear power research and production have gone, our tax dollars have followed to clean it up. There are thousands of contaminated sites that the Department of Energy (DOE) has accumulated since 1942, when the Manhattan Project and the development of the bomb were first undertaken.

The following is a list of some radioactive elements commonly found in nuclear reactor “low-level” waste (designated low-level by the government and the nuclear industry!): 1) Tritium, with a half-life of 12 years and a hazardous-life of 120-240 years. 2) Iodine-131, half-life of 5 days, hazardous-life of 80-160 days. 3) Strontium-90, half-life of 28 years, hazardous-life of 280-560 years. 4) Nickel-59, half-life of 76,000 years, hazardous-life of 760,000 – 1,520,000 years. 5) Iodine-129, half-life of 16 million years, hazardous-life of 160-320 million years.

The nuclear power industry is producing by-products which could be hazardous for 320 million years. It is indisputable that for generations to come, the by-products of the nuclear industry will live on as a grotesque monument symbolizing the epitome of social and environmental irresponsibility.

Safe? For years the American public has been told that nuclear energy and the radiation routinely emitted by nuclear power plants are safe. It is interesting to note that to the contrary, experts agree that no level of radiation is safe for human beings. Even small doses over long periods of time have been linked to increased cancers, impaired immunity, blood disorders, high incidences of miscarriages and birth defects, developmental abnormalities, and other degenerative diseases. Did you know that nuclear power plants cannot operate without regular, deliberate releases of radioactive water and gases? Now we know that nuclear power plants do not have to blow up or melt down to release radioactive poisons into our air and water. All it takes is their routine, everyday operation to accomplish this. Government and industry have known about this “routine release” of radioactive material for decades. Sadly enough, there are numerous cases where the federal government held back vital information relating to the dangers of nuclear contamination, which resulted in great damage to human health and to the environment.

In 1975, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission authorized a study to assess the risks of a large-scale nuclear accident, hoping to prove that the risks were not as bad as an earlier study had concluded. The report – The Rasmussen “Reactor Safety Study” – concluded that a “worst case” nuclear accident would mean: 3,300 immediate human deaths, 45,000 human deaths from cancer, 45,000 radiation sickness victims requiring hospitalization, 240,000 people suffering from thyroid tumors, and 5,000 children born with genetic defects in the first generation following the accident. According to the Nuclear Information And Resource Service, this report was based on a number of unrealistic assumptions, making it a very conservative estimate of the damage a “worst case” nuclear accident would cause.

Safe? Lets consider what happened at Chernobyl and the smaller, yet no less significant accidents at the SL-1 reactor in Idaho Falls (1961), Brown’s Ferry (1975), Rancho Seco in California (1978), Three Mile Island (1979), The Ginna plant in Rochester, New York (1982) — Case dismissed!

Safe? Inexpensive? Clean?…The Chernobyl nuclear accident forced more than 135,000 people to be evacuated from the area nearest the reactor in Chernobyl, and another 4 million to live under conditions of severe radiological contamination. This accident created hundreds of thousands of refugees, immense damage to human life, the loss of vast areas of productive land, and may end up costing the Soviet Union roughly $400 billion. According to an article in the Times of London, “hospitals in the Ukraine, Byelorussia and adjacent provinces are filled with victims. Whole wards are lined with gaunt, dying children.” The city of Pripyat, where 45,000 people once lived, is now a radioactive ghost town. Norwegian scientists at the State Institute for Radiation Hygiene said in 1990 that radiation from the Chernobyl accident is lingering in their country 10 times longer than predicted!

Let’s do ourselves, our environment, and our children, a great favor – let us never believe anything the nuclear power industry or the government tells us about the benefits of nuclear technology. Let us do everything in our power to stop it from being used in the future.

A matter of vital concern to us all is that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) want to deregulate low-level radioactive waste. Their policies to deregulate this nuclear waste are referred to as Below Regulatory Concern (BRC). BRC means that some of the nuclear waste, which now poses contamination problems, would simply be considered safe – below the level of radioactivity posing a concern to human health.

As absurd as it may sound, if the NRC and the EPA have their way, 30 percent of the “low-level” nuclear waste from power plants could be legally dumped as ordinary non-nuclear trash. It would be legal for BRC radioactive waste to go into local landfills, sewage systems, incinerators, recycling centers, consumer products, hazardous waste facilities, and farmland via sludge spreading. This means that radioactive waste would travel over our highways, waterways and railroads, with no more restrictions than those for your local garbage trucks. Radioactive materials could be recycled and used in consumer products. Everything from the kitchen sink to children’s toys could be manufactured from radioactive recycled material.

The Below Regulatory Concern policy, if implemented, will lead to increased radiation exposure to the American public (and there is no safe level of radiation exposure), and will save the nuclear industry hundreds of millions of dollars because of less stringent standards placed upon the disposal of their nuclear waste. It can be looked at from this perspective. Disposing of radioactive nuclear waste by burning it in incinerators, dumping it into public landfills, spreading it on farmland, recycling it into consumer products, and pouring it down the sewer is far cheaper than the cost of proper radioactive waste storage and monitoring.

It has always been to the economic advantage of the nuclear establishment to disregard public health. This statement is not unfair simply for the reason that the past records of the nuclear industry do an excellent job of verifying this type of behavior time and again. Are we now going to sit back and let Below Regulatory Concern policies be implemented allowing nuclear wastes to be dumped in our communities? Shall we simply trust that the nuclear industry has taken the best interest of our public health and safety into consideration and made it a high priority?

Where do we start? According to the Nuclear Information And Resource Service in Washington, D.C., locally we can work to pass resolutions and ordinances. On a state level, we can work to pass legislation and regulations requiring regulatory control over all nuclear radioactive materials. Federally, we can work to revoke both the policies and the authority for deregulation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department Of Energy (DOE), and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Let’s follow the excellent examples set by the states of Maine, Vermont, Minnesota, Iowa, and Pennsylvania, who have already been successful in passing anti-BRC legislation.

Solving the nuclear waste problem is becoming increasingly difficult as more waste is continually being produced. The problem can only be solved when we stop creating the waste in the first place. For more information on nuclear-related issues and how you can help stop BRC, please contact the Nuclear Information And Resource Service, as well as the other resources listed below.

Things You Can Do To Make A Difference:

* Educate yourself and become aware of the nuclear power and waste issue. It is much harder to pass laws which endanger the public and the environment when we, the public, are well-informed and aware.

* Educate the public by getting the word out to others. Become a member of one or more of the organizations listed below and circulate their flyers and information sheets around your office, school, or community.

* Encourage your local and state governments to pass resolutions, ordinances, and laws against BRC radioactive waste. A sample resolution is available from NIRS (address listed below). You can also write to your congressional representatives.

* Pressure our political leaders to make the necessary changes in our energy policies so we will have a future to look forward to. Encourage elected officials to support legislation containing the following provisions: A) Tax breaks and other incentives for renewable energy resources (such as solar or wind energy) that are equal to those presently given to oil and nuclear power. B) Increased federal research and development funding for renewable energy resources. C) Increased funding for programs to encourage renewable energy development overseas.

* Look into the benefits of using solar technology for your home energy needs. As more people utilize solar technologies, we will be able to bring the costs down so it will be more affordable.

For Further Information Contact:

* Nuclear Free America (NFA)- 325 East 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218 (301) 235-3575. A clearinghouse for the nuclear-free zone movement. There are over 4,500 nuclear-free zones worldwide in 36 countries. NFA keeps information on nuclear weapons contractors updated annually, and publishes a list of the top 50 nuclear weapons contractors (available free). NFA also publishes the New Abolitionist, 4 issues for $15.

* Safe Energy Communication Council (SECC) – 1717 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Suite LL 215, Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 483-8491. SECC is a national coalition of 10 energy, environmental, and public interest media organizations, working to increase public awareness of the ability of renewable energy and energy efficiency to meet the increasing share of our nation’s energy needs, and also the economic and environmental liabilities of nuclear power.

* Nuclear Information And Resource Service (NIRS) – 1424 16th St. NW, Suite 601, Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 328-0002. NIRS is a watchdog organization focusing on nuclear power, nuclear waste, and radiation issues, and working to prevent the deregulation of radioactive wastes. Also working for greater energy efficiency and alternatives to nuclear energy. Membership is $20/individuals, $50/ businesses or associations. NIRS also publishes the Nuclear Monitor, a biweekly publication ($35 per year).