Avoiding the wrong lesson
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Shanghai Daily, September 22, 2011
The reactor disaster in Fukushima is so fresh in our memories that it may seem incomprehensible to think that the history of that tragic (and still unfolding) event in Japan could ever be rewritten and distorted.
But history tells us that the nuclear power industry is very adept at revising the facts about every major reactor disaster.
Consider the Three Mile Island (TMI) reactor crisis in the United States. Thanks to years of industry propaganda, many Americans now assume that the panic that followed in the wake of this near-disaster situation derailed the nuclear power industry in the United States, halting its forward momentum in its prime.
Panic was not the issue after the Three Mile Island. The US nuclear power industry was already dead in the water by the time of the TMI accident. The culprit was not unreasoning panic on the part of the public. What killed nuclear power more than a quarter of a century ago was cold, hard economics: Nuclear power was just too expensive to build.
Remember the promises made about nuclear power? First it was "atoms for peace." But we now know that our nuclear arsenal was the priority. Then it was too cheap to matter. But the truth is that nuclear power has been a financial fiasco.
Little has changed since then, including the nuclear power industry's enormous lobbying influence and public relations clout.
While Wall Street continues to take a pass on financing risky reactors, US President Barack Obama and bipartisan Congressional supporters continue to cheer-lead the so-called "nuclear renaissance" even as the worst industrial disaster in history continues to play out in Japan. The possibility of an accident, we were told, was next to impossible. But we've had three major incidents in 30 years.
Not really clean
Now "clean" is the mantra in support of nuclear power for politicians and environmentalists alike who think only of reducing CO2. Is nuclear power a clean energy source? Not so much.
The evidence paints quite a different story: routine, low-level, radioactive emissions, tritium leaks into water supplies, thousands of tons of fish each year annihilated at water intakes, thermal pollution of lakes and streams, tens of thousands of tons of extremely toxic high-level nuclear waste generated with thousands more to come.
The industry began trumpeting the "nuclear renaissance" in 2003.
Yet, not one nuclear unit has been built in the United States. The average price for one reactor increased from an estimated US$3 billion in 2002 to US$10 billion in 2010 - not including the inevitable cost overruns that have plagued nuclear power construction since the beginning.
In 2009, Citigroup Global Markets wrote: "Three of the risks faced by (nuclear plant) developers - construction, power price and operational - are so large and variable that individually they could bring even the largest utility to its knees." This analysis is playing itself out now.
In Florida state, Progress Energy announced in 2006 that a reactor would cost US$6 billion in 2006. By 2010 it was estimated to be over US$22 billion.
We've been down this road before - and it is truly the road to financial ruin. Ratepayers were saddled with an estimated US$200 to US$300 billion in cost overruns from completed nuclear plants from the 1960s through the 1980s; nearly US$50 billion for abandoned plants.
Due to industry whining during the deregulation craze in the 1990s, claiming that nuclear power couldn't compete in deregulated markets because of the high cost of nuclear power, ratepayers once again bailed out the nuclear industry to the tune of US$40 billion.
So, how does nuclear power essentially defy the financial law of gravity and continue to be touted by indefatigable boosters?
According to the Institute for Southern Studies, the industry has spent an estimated US$640 million on lobbying. The goal has been and continues to be not to reduce financial risk but to shift it to taxpayers and ratepayers.
What have we learned after 60 years with nuclear power? The bottom line comes down to this: Nuclear power is an extraordinarily expensive and dangerous way to boil water. Don't take our word for it, just ask the people in Fukushima.
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