TRUTHOUT – The atomic energy industry has suffered another astonishing defeat. Thanks to its loss, 2010 again left the “nuclear renaissance” in the Dark Age that defines the technology.
But an Armageddon-style battle looms when Congress returns next year.
The push to build new nuclear plants depends now, as always, on federal subsidies. Fifty-three years after the first commercial reactor opened at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, no private funders will step forward to pay for a “new generation” of nukes.
So the industry remains mired in unsolved waste problems, disturbing vulnerability to terror and error, uninsured liability in case of a major catastrophe and unapproved new design proposals.
Two new reactor construction projects in Europe – one in Finland and the other at Flamanville, France – are sinking in gargantuan cost overruns and multi-year delays. To financiers and energy experts worldwide, it’s a clear indicator that the “rebirth” of this failed technology is a hopeless quagmire.
Meanwhile, the 104 reactors currently licensed in the US are leaking radiation and facing escalating grassroots attack. Vermont’s new governor, Peter Shumlin, is committed to shutting the Yankee plant there, and public demands to close plants, including New York’s Indian Point and New Jersey’s Oyster Creek, among others, have reached a fever pitch.
Most importantly, advances in green technologies are leaving atomic power in the dust. Numerous new studies now show it is significantly cheaper to build new generating capacity with photovoltaics, wind and other renewable solartopian sources than to go nuclear. That gap will only grow in the coming years.
But Barack Obama proposed some $36 billion in new nuke loan guarantees to add to the $18.5 billion set aside by the Bush Administration. Earlier this year, Obama handed $8.33 billion of that money to a Georgia utility that broke ground on two new nukes at the Vogtle site, where two old, trouble-plagued reactors still operate.
The nukes are being built in Georgia – along with two more in South Carolina – because those states’ ratepayers are being forced to foot the bill as construction proceeds. The companies’ returns are guaranteed even if the reactors never operate. Georgia has already suffered crippling rate hikes of $1 billion and more to pay for a construction project likely to wind up as little more than a moribund mausoleum.
Nonetheless, even amidst a major economic crisis, the White House and its pro-nuke allies have been pushing hard to fund still more of these radioactive boondoggles.
Click to continue reading about the fight against Congress’ push for new nukes.
© COPYRIGHT TRUTHOUT, 2010
Article by Harvey Wasserman for Truthout
Huzzah! The concern I’ve heard most, tohguh, has to do with containment of used reactive material. Should we bury it in the desert? submerge it in the ocean? Launch it into outer space? (My choice ) Any way we choose, someone is going to be upset.Goog sez: Unfortunately nuclear energy is a great person I think Goog would prefer nuclear energy to be kind of a dick.