Volatile oil prices and global warming news have us all thinking more seriously about the costs and sources of our energy.
Many policymakers are saying that nuclear power must be included in our energy choices. They say that nuclear power is “clean,” since it emits no greenhouse gases. Nuclear energy is also an issue being addressed by our top two presidential candidates.
To quote Paul Harvey, “And now for the rest of the story.”
Nuclear energy cannot be produced without nuclear waste, which brings with it the possibility of unparalleled environmental hazards, the prospect for nuclear weapons proliferation and the risk of terrorist attacks.
While Maine Yankee, Maine’s only nuclear power plant, closed in May 1997, the nuclear waste legacy remains at the Wiscasset site awaiting permanent disposal.
In 1983, the nuclear establishment proposed Yucca Mountain, Nev., just 90 miles from Las Vegas, as one of three possible sites for the national repository for nuclear spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste. By 1986, it was the only site. It was mandated by law to open in 1998.
However, Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute of Energy and Environmental Research, said in an article, “If Not Yucca Mountain, Then What?” that the site is not suited to isolate the waste from human contact for the lifetime of the waste, that water has welled up into the region in the geologic past (and water can be the pathway for the radioactive materials to reach the human environment), and that moving nuclear waste from a temporary storage site to Yucca Mountain could create another nuclear waste site in the case of a transportation accident. He also notes that spent fuel can be used to make nuclear weapons.
In a May 2008 Mother Jones article, Judith Lewis wrote that Yucca Mountain was a “really bad choice.” The federal Department of Energy agreed, but said that the container casks of titanium steel, concrete, etc., will do the job.
Though our tax dollars continue to fund the ongoing construction at Yucca Mountain, there is growing evidence that the site may never be approved for nuclear waste storage.
Makhijani also wrote in Science for Democratic Action, in January 2008, that the nuclear waste from a reprocessing plant located at La Hague, France, pollutes the English Channel and all the way to the Arctic with radioactive liquid. Reprocessing creates more waste than the original fuel cycle. France has plutonium stored in thousands of containers, which are at risk of terrorist attacks.
In the May 29 issue of the Irish Times, an article said the nuclear waste stored in the England at Sellafield, which is located near the Lake District National Park, is more dangerous than Chernobyl. Sellafield has the world’s largest stockpile of plutonium and uranium, and problems through the past 10 years have created a crisis situation.
Greenpeace Russia writes regular updates on the Greenpeace Web site about the dangers of nuclear waste stored in Russia. Russia accepts nuclear waste from other countries to be reprocessed. Nuclear waste problems exist on land and sea. On Nov. 24, 1992, the New York Times published an article stating that Russian authorities disclosed the sites where four nuclear submarines’ reactors were dumped near the Arctic island of Novaya Zemlaya.
In addition to problems of radioactive waste, there is also the cost issue of building nuclear power plants. The cost is so prohibitive that Wall Street bankers are skeptical about loaning money for new plant. They are demanding federal loan guarantees.
Are you ready to bail out loans for nuclear power plants after just bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? And there is the risk that nuclear power plants will be economically obsolete before they are built, which can take 12 or more years.
In the July 2008 issue of the journal, Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists claim that within 10 years, homeowners could power their homes in daylight with solar photovoltaic cells while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen from water to power a household fuel cell. No greenhouse gasses, no nuclear waste, no nuclear environmental pollution, no risk of terrorist attacks.
The nuclear option should be off the table.
Sally Breen lives in Windham, and is a nuclear abolitionist (which includes both nuclear power and nuclear weapons)
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