COMMENTS AT BOTTOM
Walt
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From Common Dreams:
Published on Friday, September 29, 2006 by the Los Angeles Times
Nuclear Energy: Still a Bad Idea
by Jeremy Rifkin
SUDDENLY, NUCLEAR power is in vogue. At the G-8 summit in St.
Petersburg, Russia, President Bush and Russian President Vladimir V.
Putin announced a far-reaching agreement to cooperate in the rapid
expansion of nuclear energy worldwide and called on other countries to
join them. It was the latest in a series of high-profile initiatives by
the White House to promote nuclear power. Bush argues that the future
energy security of the United States and the world will depend on
increasing reliance on nuclear energy.
A technology that for years suffered ignominiously in scientific
purgatory has been resurrected. Its virtues have been heralded by the
likes of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the famed scientist Sir
James Lovelock and even a few renegade environmental activists. The
nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 and the
horrific meltdown at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986 have
become distant memories. Now, facing rising costs of oil on world
markets and real-time global warming, nuclear technology has been
given a public relations face-lift and is touted, by some, as the
energy of choice in a post-oil era. However, before we let our
enthusiasm run away from us, we ought to take a sober look at the
consequences of re-nuclearizing the world.
First, nuclear power is unaffordable. With a minimum price tag of $2
billion each, new-generation nuclear power plants are 50% more
expensive than putting coal-fired power plants online, and they are far
more expensive than new gas-fired power plants. The cost of doubling
nuclear power's share of U.S. electricity generation — which currently
produces 20% of our electricity — could exceed half a trillion dollars.
In a country facing record consumer and government debt, where is the
money going to come from? Consumers would pay the price in terms of
higher taxes to support government subsidies and higher electricity
bills.
Second, 60 years into the nuclear era, our scientists still don't
know how to safely transport, dispose of or store nuclear waste. Spent
nuclear rods are piling up all over the world. In the United States,
the federal government spent more than $8 billion and 20 years building
what was supposed to be an airtight, underground burial tomb dug deep
into Yucca Mountain in Nevada to hold radioactive material. The vault
was designed to be leak-free for 10,000 years. Unfortunately, the
Environmental Protection Agency concedes that the underground storage
facility will leak.
Third, according to a study conducted by the International Atomic
Energy Agency in 2001, known uranium resources could fail to meet
demand, possibly as early as 2026. Of course, new deposits could be
discovered, and it is possible that new technological breakthroughs
could reduce uranium requirements, but that remains purely speculative.
Fourth, building hundreds of nuclear power plants in an era of
spreading Islamic terrorism seems insane. On the one hand the United
States, the European Union and much of the world is frightened by the
mere possibility that just one country — Iran — might use enriched
uranium from its nuclear power plants for a nuclear bomb. On the other
hand, many of the same governments are eager to spread nuclear power
plants around the world, placing them in every nook and cranny of the
planet. This means uranium and spent nuclear waste in transit
everywhere and piling up in makeshift facilities, often close to
heavily populated urban areas.
Nuclear power plants are the ultimate soft target for terrorist
attacks. On Nov. 8, 2005, the Australian government arrested 18
suspected Islamic terrorists who were allegedly plotting to blow up
Australia's only nuclear power plant. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission found that more than half of the nuclear power plants in
this country failed to prevent a simulated attack on their facilities.
We should all be very worried.
Finally, nuclear power represents the kind of highly centralized,
clunky technology of a bygone era. In an age when distributed
technologies are undermining hierarchies, decentralizing power and
giving rise to networks and open-source economic models, nuclear power
seems strangely old-fashioned and obsolete. To a great extent, nuclear
power was a Cold War creation. It represented massive concentration of
power and reflected the geopolitics of a post-World War II era. Today,
however, new technologies are giving people the tools they need to
become active participants in an interconnected world. Nuclear power,
by contrast, is elite power, controlled by the few. Its resurrection
would be a step backward.
Instead, we should pursue an aggressive effort to bring the full range
of decentralized renewable technologies online: solar, wind,
geothermal, hydro and biomass. And we should establish a hydrogen
storage infrastructure to ensure a steady, uninterrupted supply of
power for our electricity needs and for transportation.
Our common energy future lies with the sun, not with uranium.
Jeremy Rifkin is the author of "The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of
the World Wide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth."
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
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http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0
COMMENTS
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Jeremy Rifkin wrote
> Fourth, building hundreds of nuclear power plants in an era of
> spreading Islamic terrorism seems insane.
This is a great argument against specialization. Rifkin may know a lot
about energy but he discredits himself when he demonstrates he knows
nothing about government propaganda.
> Nuclear power plants are the ultimate soft target for terrorist
> attacks. On Nov. 8, 2005, the Australian government arrested 18
> suspected Islamic terrorists who were allegedly plotting to blow up
> Australia's only nuclear power plant. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
> Commission found that more than half of the nuclear power plants in
> this country failed to prevent a simulated attack on their facilities.
> We should all be very worried.
I don't know about Australia, at best a bungled attempt, at worst, more
propaganda, but the NRC did in fact make that determination, but,
Rifkin neglects to mention, further said that the risk of a terrorist
attack was so low that they dropped virtually all security inspections
around 1998. But lets not draw the wrong conclusions. People (Rifkin)
want to say that the NRC was wrong: witness 911.
Actually the NRC was right- because 911 wasn't a terrorist job,
and the risk remains low today. There has never been a terrorist attack
of the scale of 911 either before of after 911. That's because 911
wasn't a terrorist attack. It was an anomaly; a Hollywood version of a
terrorist attack, written and directed for American Gullibility.
Here is a link to the US Navy list of terrorist attacks. Check it
out and see if you think 9/11 stands out from the rest in any way:
http://library.nps.navy.mil/home/tgp/chrnmain.htm
But Rifkin thoroughly redeems himself with this perceptive observation
regarding the Law of hierarchies:
> Finally, nuclear power represents the kind of highly centralized,
> clunky technology of a bygone era. In an age when distributed
> technologies are undermining hierarchies, decentralizing power and
> giving rise to networks and open-source economic models, nuclear power
> seems strangely old-fashioned and obsolete. To a great extent, nuclear
> power was a Cold War creation. It represented massive concentration of
> power and reflected the geopolitics of a post-World War II era. Today,
> however, new technologies are giving people the tools they need to
> become active participants in an interconnected world. Nuclear power,
> by contrast, is elite power, controlled by the few. Its resurrection
> would be a step backward. Instead, we should pursue an aggressive
> effort to bring the full range of decentralized renewable technologies
> online: solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and biomass.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0929-33.htm
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