[Znów (listopad 2008) premier D. Tusk i jego “filary” (czyżby sami TW i agenci?) gadają głupstwa o zabudowaniu Polski elektrowniami jądrowymi. Jest to straszna mieszanka głupoty z serwilizmem. Komu tak służą? Może poniższy tekst pokaże ludziom myślącym o Polsce, jaka to jest zbrodnicza głupota. MD]

power politics

Nuclear Revolution?   by Michael Welch

It’s been 29 years since an order for a nuclear power plant was placed in the United States, and 34 years since the last plant was completed and commissioned. It is difficult to imagine how an apparently stagnant industry has continued to exist without selling and delivering its primary product, nuclear power plants. Without any new plants in development or going online in the United States, how has this industry managed to survive for almost three decades?

There is a contingency of individuals who zealously believe in nuclear-made energy, and who perpetuate their dream in the public mind. They range from naval-trained nuclear submarine technicians, to physicists and engineers employed by the nuclear industry, to the common person

who puts their faith in the worn promise that any technical obstacle to safe nuclear energy can be overcome. But by themselves, these supporters are not enough to keep the industry alive. The U.S. government makes huge amounts of subsidies available to the industry, keeping nuclear power plant research profitable. In turn, some of those profits are invested in public relations campaigns designed to bolster faith in nuclear energy - keeping the cash cow intact.

The nuclear industry has a long history of relying on public relations campaigns, starting with the Atoms for Peace program in the early 1950s. The idea of this effort was to quell public terror of nuclear weapons by providing a distraction - the unfounded promise of cheap and safe nuclear power for electrical generation. (And not only electricity - I recall my dad talking about plans to use nuclear explosives for construction excavations.) Not only did this campaign kick off the nuclear electricity industry, it set the stage for the next half-century of propaganda from the industry. The industry has an uncanny ability to seize upon every opportunity to promote itself, most recently claiming to be the best answer to global warming. And these campaigns pay off with public poll results swinging back toward nukes with each effort, and ultimately with huge government subsidies.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 provided more than $13 billion in tax breaks and subsidies to the nuclear industry. And the Bush Administration plans on spending an additional $80 million this year and has requested $405 million for next year on a proposal to reprocess nuclear reactor waste into new nuclear reactor fuel and into bomb-making materials. Without selling even a single new plant in the United States, and with relatively measly investments in public relations, nuclear companies are still making enough money to make it worthwhile to keep trying - and nearly every penny comes from taxpayers.

Time & Cost Overruns

Without government assistance, nuclear energy would be dead. According to The Economics of Nuclear Power, a May 2007 report prepared for Greenpeace International, financial institutions have not been willing to fund further development of nuclear energy because of the massive amounts of capital required for constructing nuclear plants compared to other technologies. And it’s not just the initial estimated cost that is the problem - it is also the time and cost overruns that have historically been part of nuclear energy projects.

Average construction time for the 48 reactors built worldwide between 1965 and 1970 was about five years. More than 30 years later, this figure hasn’t improved. Today, the average time required for constructing a nuclear power plant is about seven years. The report cited U.S. Department of Energy data, which showed that predicted construction costs for 75 of the U.S. reactors currently in operation totaled $45 billion. However, the final costs for their completion came in at $145 billion - more than triple the original cost estimates. What other industry could survive under those kinds of cost overruns?

Industry Uncertainty

For most energy technologies (and similarly, for most other businesses), lessons learned over time make designing and building power plants easier and cheaper. Not so for nuclear energy. Even after 50 years of commercial use—long enough to call the technology “mature”—a lot of uncertainty exists about which nuclear power plant designs and construction methods are best. New designs—funded by taxpayer research and development (R&D) dollars—continue to be rolled out, eliminating the possibility of plant standardization that would allow an economy of scale to curtail overruns. Considering this, it’s doubtful that lead times and cost overruns will ever improve much, if at all.

The Greenpeace report also points to this uncertainty: “The European Investment Bank noted that ‘very few nuclear power stations have been built in the last few years and thus the cost

of recent plants does not seem a good reference to assess future costs. Additionally, any future development of nuclear energy will be based on the new generation of reactors, and the cost of

the new generation is uncertain at this stage.’”

Ironically, the point of new-generation reactor designs is to avoid the very uncertainty that introducing new designs may end up causing. The industry wants streamlined design approval, and it wants reactors that are more generic and can be used anywhere with little modification. But first,

the designs need to be tried, and then modified, and then newly tried elsewhere, and so on. It seems a vicious cycle, and because of the long learning period, doomed to always having unacceptable lead times and cost overruns.

Revival or Decline?

By claiming to be the best energy technology to combat global warming (see CO2 sidebar), the nuke industry is working hard to convince the public that it is time to revive nuclear power

in the United States. But it would take 1,500 to 2,000 new nuclear power plants replacing other technologies to make a dent in climate change. And if we were able to immediately bump nuclear energy’s share of the world electricity supply to 70 percent, we would exhaust the supply of uranium before 2020, according to the nuclear research and watchdog group Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS).

With high costs, impracticable construction, dubious usefulness, dangerous operations, and deadly waste, we have an industry that by all rights should have died long ago. Considering that there are no redeeming reasons for the continued existence of the commercial nuclear power

industry, I am left to speculate about why it still breathes: Is it possible that corporate managers in the nuclear energy industry care not whether another nuke plant is constructed in the United States? Maybe they are satisfied with taxpayer money rolling in to keep them in business. Planning - but never building—nuclear power plants is a risk-free undertaking, and no nuclear accidents will result, so it seems like it might be a good managerial choice.

Nuclear energy implementation is in a long-term decline, despite the incredible amounts of money governments hand the industry. While there are 31 nuke plants planned or under

construction worldwide, 119 have been shut down so far. Many others are approaching the end of their useful lives and preparing for decommissioning- another big expense, estimated

at one-fifth to one-third of a plant’s original construction cost. Because of the inherent safety and waste issues, we need to make sure nuclear power stays on the decline. We already know that nuclear power cannot be the answer to climate change, so it is time we stop wasting money on it and instead use those tax dollars to support renewable energy and energy efficiency. It is our choice to make, but we will have to be outspoken and insistent, lest the nuclear industry continue getting its free ride as it has for the last few decades.

Access  Michael Welch, c/o Redwood Alliance, PO Box 293, Arcata, CA 95518 • 707-822-7884 • michael.welch@homepower.com         www.redwoodalliance.org  power politics

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Nuclear Power’s Promise

Electricity too cheap to meter. Ha! This phrase helped launch the unfulfilled nuclear revolution - the first in a long series of lies to the public. If you subtract the subsidies for nuclear power—

the biggest of which is the Price-Anderson Act, which limits liability from accidents—nuclear energy is the most expensive electricity source.

Safe, clean, and harmless electricity. Sure, if you don’t mind the leftovers—plutonium in our environment that remains deadly for eons. Dr. Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said that plutonium "is so toxic that less than one-millionth of a gram, an invisible particle, is a carcinogenic dose. One pound, if uniformly distributed, could hypothetically induce lung cancer in every person on Earth." And just how “safe, clean, and harmless” would the permanently evacuated area be after the next significant nuclear power plant accident? (The Chornobyl explosion contaminated 17,000 square miles.)

Radioactive waste disposal is not a problem. OK, maybe some day they’ll find a technological answer that really works. But the industry has been promising us that fix for about 70 years, and a solution still hasn’t materialized.

The answer to global warming. Not only is this a physical and economic impossibility (see CO₂ sidebar), but our fossil-fueled transportation is the biggest climate change problem we face. Offering nuclear energy as the solution to climate change is a smoke-and-mirrors tactic that distracts from the real issues at hand - finding safe, renewable energy solutions.

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Nukes & CO2

A common claim of the nuclear industry is that nuclear power does not produce carbon dioxide, the major component of human-caused climate change. Strictly speaking, it’s true: The heat released as a result of the nuclear reaction converts water to steam—which is run through a turbine and then captured and condensed again—resulting in practically no CO2 emissions.

But where carbon emissions are concerned, the entire fuel cycle of nuclear energy needs to be considered, as well as a plant’s construction and equipment needs, and eventual decommissioning. Uranium has to be mined and then processed into reactor fuel. After it is used, the irradiated fuel (aka nuclear waste) needs to be stored under highly controlled conditions, or reprocessed into more fuel. This fuel mining, processing, and storage is very energy intensive, and most of that energy comes from burning fossil fuel. Further, much of the equipment used in nuclear power plants is so specialized that it cannot be mass-produced, requiring individual, part-

by-part machining and assembly, which is also very energy-intensive work.

According to NIRS, “Taken together, the [nuclear] fuel chain greenhouse emissions approach those of natural gas [plants]—and are far higher than emissions from renewable energy sources [and] emissions-free energy efficiency technologies.”

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