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"What if Deepwater Horizon was a nuclear plant? Extracting fossil fuels from ever-more-difficult environments is a dangerous business, a truth underlined spectacularly by the explosion at the Massey mine in April that killed 29 miners or the Deepwater Horizon spill that has left the Louisiana coast a blackened brackish mess. Not in decades has the nuclear option looked more attractive. Earlier this year, the government extended funding to build two new reactors at the Vogtle plant * in Georgia, likely the first reactors to go online since 1996, and a lot more may be in the works. Oil and coal disasters like Massey and Deepwater Horizon may be some of the best arguments for nuclear power."

"The lesson from Deepwater Horizon isn't that oil is bad and nuclear is good, says Mark Gimein in Slate, it's that, despite our best efforts, accidents happen Slate's Mark Gimein says the BP oil disaster demonstrates why we need to end our pursuit of nuclear power. On first glance, the BP oil spill seems like a good reason to push for more nuclear power, says Mark Gimein at Slate's The Big Money. Nuclear doesn't pollute the air, and it certainly doesn't "turn our beaches black." But, when you look deeper, the real lesson from the BP disaster is that "things go wrong, in unexpected ways, at unexpected times, to catastrophic effect," no matter how many levels of "failsafe" mechanisms we install. Which is why this disaster is a compelling argument against nuclear power. Imagine if Deepwater Horizon had been a nuclear reactor. Here, an excerpt:"

"With regard to our energy independence, the BP oil disaster should be a call to action. Everyone knows we are dependent on fossil fuels coming from foreign sources yet; no one to date has the will to do anything serious and credible about it. Nuclear energy is the Holy Grail of clean, safe and affordable energy that America can produce and exploit without detriment to the environment. I recently had the pleasure of meeting Glen L. Mc Cullough, Jr., the former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Glen wrote a terrific paper entitled, "Five Smart Energy Steps for America." This is what Glen said with regard to nuclear power:"

"Just once, it would be nice if a president would level with Americans on energy. Barack Obama isn't that president. His speech the other night was about political damage control -- his own. It was full of misinformation and mythology. Obama held out a gleaming vision of an America that would convert to the "clean" energy of, presumably, wind, solar and biomass. It isn't going to happen for many, many decades, if ever. For starters, we won't soon end our "addiction to fossil fuels." Oil, coal and natural gas supply about 85 percent of America's energy needs. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects energy consumption to grow only an average of 0.5 percent annually from 2008 to 2035, but that's still a 14 percent cumulative increase. Fossil fuel usage would increase slightly in 2035 and its share would still account for 78 percent of the total. "

"The recent acceptance of $8.3 billion in taxpayer-backed loan guarantees by the builders of the Vogtle nuclear reactors seems like good news for Georgia electric customers. The taxpayers of the entire country will now share in the costs and risks that had been on the shoulders of the customers of the utilities building the two reactors. But don't celebrate too soon. There are more loan guarantees in the pipeline - a total of $54.5 billion, none for Georgia reactors. These guarantees mean that you and I will repay the lender if the project cannot. The $54.5 billion would amount to an exposure of more than $500 for every American family. Some in Congress want unlimited nuclear loan guarantees, which translate to unlimited taxpayer exposure. For each of these loan guarantees, Georgia taxpayers will be exposed to the risks of new nuclear construction in such places as Texas, Maryland and South Carolina. Before long, the costs Georgians have passed on to taxpayers elsewhere through the Vogtle loan guarantees may be outweighed by the economic exposure that they will take on to help build reactors elsewhere."

"If we take seriously the protection of human health, we have to phase out coal- and nuclear-powered electricity. Coal kills hundreds of Ontarians and triggers more than 100,000 illnesses (e.g., asthma attacks) annually. It is also the most climate-destructive fuel around, emitting twice as much carbon as natural gas does. Whether the issue is respiratory disease or global warming, coal is a catastrophe. But nuclear is extremely unhealthy as well. A scientific review by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment found all functioning reactors release radioactive materials on a routine basis. A 2008 German government study showed children (younger than five) living within five kilometres of a nuclear plant are at elevated risk for leukemia. And Scientific American recently reported nukes harm the climate: "Nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy, when reactor construction and uranium refining and transport are considered.""

"How does a federal ruling finding that the Obama administration does not have the legal authority to abandon Nevada's Yucca Mountain waste site affect U.S. nuclear energy policy? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's board ruled last week that the administration does not have the legal right to withdraw its license for the proposed nuclear waste repository site. President Obama has already yanked funding for the site, and many aspects of the project are being ramped down. The Energy Department plans to appeal the commission's ruling. "

"Writing in a recent issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Madhusree Mukerjee wonders why, at a time President Obama is demanding that BP fully compensate Americans for the Gulf disaster, his administration is simultaneously "leaning on the Indian government to render its citizens unable to claim damages from U.S. power-plant suppliers in the event of a nuclear accident." Pursuant to the controversial nuclear commerce deal that the Bush administration negotiated with India, the United States would like India to adopt nuclear liability limits analogous to those in the U.S. Price Anderson Act, which caps corporate liability for a U.S. nuclear accident at $11 billion. A proposed Indian law would limit corporate liability in that country to $110 million."

"The Pickering nuclear power plant is killing fish by the millions. Close to one million fish and 62 million fish eggs and larvae die each year when they're sucked into the water intake channel in Lake Ontario, which the plant uses to cool steam condensers. The fish, which include alewife, northern pike, Chinook salmon and rainbow smelt, are killed when they're trapped on intake screens or suffer cold water shock after leaving warmer water that's discharged into the lake."

"Paul Spence says the nuclear industry expects to pay the full cost of decommissioning a new generation of nuclear power stations (Response, 15 June). But his words about "our full share of waste management and disposal costs" were carefully chosen. The consultation document reveals that EDF considers their full share of these costs to be around 20% of the total. As our report Nuclear Power? No Point! highlighted last year, nuclear is only responsible for 4% of the energy consumed in the UK. More energy can be saved by energy conservation measures in homes and businesses. Focusing on the nuclear industry takes resources away from building new renewable capacity, which, given sufficient political will, could provide more than enough electricity for the UK. Darren Johnson Green party spokesperson on Trade and Industry * EDF's claim that they "have not asked for subsidy for new nuclear" is not all that it seems. The nuclear industry, owned by British Energy (in turn owned by EDF), will be receiving huge sums of windfall profits under government proposals for a floor price on carbon emission allowances. British Energy will greatly expand its profits for no increase in nuclear power production, all subsidised by electricity consumers."

"Here in the West, uranium mining continues its wobbly resurgence. In recent years, it has sputtered through the peaks and valleys of pricing to once again climb in importance and output. The graph-line of this revival seems to correspond with the vicissitudes of our love-hate relationship with fossil fuels. In 2003, a time of cheap oil, there were only 321 uranium miners working in the West, producing 779 tons of uranium that year. In 2008, there were over 1,500, who produced about 1,500 tons. In 2006, the Pandora mine south of Moab, where I live, reopened with just 10 employees. This year, it has 57. Recently, however, it lost one. Hunter Diehl, a 28-year-old Moab man, died in the mine this May, crushed by rock falling from the mine's ceiling. It was the first uranium mining death in the country since 1998, and the first since uranium's fickle resurgence."

"AFTER MORE than 20 years, four administrations and billions of dollars spent, Yucca Mountain is the one place in America that a new Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future cannot look to put this country's nuclear waste. Created by the Obama administration after it jettisoned the Nevada project, the commission, which will meet for the third time in July, is to make its recommendations two years from now -- rendering any action unlikely until after the 2012 elections. We must wait two years -- for what, exactly? "

"BP's apocalyptic Gulf gusher has put our ability to survive in serious doubt. We have no reason to believe an end to the crisis is near---or even in sight. Nor can we begin to calculate the damage to our Mother Earth…to her oceans, to the core of her being…and to each of us as individual organisms. Only one thing IS clear: we cannot ultimately survive without a rapid conversion to a Solartopian economy that is totally green-powered. That transformation will be forced by biological imperatives, not money or markets. The powers that be studiously avoid the core reality that this disaster stems from the ability of large corporations to make all of us pay for their irresponsible greed. The black poisons killing our global body gush from a system that grants corporations human rights but does not demand human responsibility. It is suicidal to allow corporations to deploy technologies they cannot mange or insure and then make us pay for their greed. "

"The weaknesses of federal regulatory agencies have been exposed by recent high-profile accidents. Guest columnist Tom Carpenter fears the Department of Energy will reduce its oversight of cleanup at the nation's nuclear waste sites.\n\nBy Tom Carpenter\n\nSpecial to The Times\n\nPREV of NEXT\n\n \n\nRelated\n\nMillions of gallons of oil gush continue to rush unabated from BP's mile-deep well in the Gulf of Mexico, and 11 workers are dead from the massive explosion that caused the biggest oil spill in decades. Weeks before this event, the news was dominated by the preventable explosion that killed 29 West Virginia coal miners.\n\nIn both cases, the not-so surprising news was that the mine and the oil rig had abysmal records of safety violations before the explosions yet were still allowed to operate by the captive regulatory agencies.\n\nWhere is the government accountability? It is the government's job to assure that ultra-hazardous industries operate safely and responsibly.\n\nIs nuclear next? The Department of Energy sits on the nation's biggest nuclear nightmare. Its inventories of highly radioactive and toxic wastes defy comprehension. Washingtonians are familiar with the DOE's No. 1 accomplishment, the Hanford nuclear site, which holds the lion's share of the nation's radioactive detritus. Suffice it to say that the escape of even a small fraction of such material into the environment would constitute a Chernobyl-sized catastrophe."

"Connecticut has two sites for nuclear power reactors that can be used for the salvation of Connecticut's current inventory of high-wage unemployed manufacturing and construction workers, and for long-term, high-paying plant operations jobs after two 10 year periods of construction. Connecticut can have the low-cost power to bring manufacturing back to the state! Now that is job opportunity, direct and resultant. Can Dominion tell us what subsidy or guarantees it would t need to construct such plants? Will it? Can and will the appropriate White House czar certify the availability of such stimulus funds for a sure-thing job-creation initiative that fills Connecticut's future electricity demand free of carbon emissions? Will Connecticut act now? Will our state's manufacturing workers and worker unions demand it?"

"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will consider whether to allow for the first time nuclear waste processors to "blend" higher level radioactive waste with the lowest level radioactive waste at a hearing on June 17. Low-level radioactive waste is generated by universities, hospitals, and commercial nuclear power plants, and is classified as Class A, B. or C depending on the concentration of the waste's radioactivity (with Class A having the lowest concentration). The proposal before the Commission would allow Class A waste to be mixed with more radioactive Class B and C waste and still be classified as Class A. If the proposal goes through, "blending" would allow utilities, processors, and waste disposal sites to avoid existing environmental and safety requirements for how they dispose of the hotter waste."

"Most people would agree with Harvey Hughey's proposal to go nuclear ["Follow the Navy -- Go Nuclear"] if they considered only the short term, 50-year design life of nuclear power plants. In that 50-year period, barring accidents, nuclear power is relatively clean. The picture changes dramatically, however, when the long-term, multi-million-year half-life of uranium and many of its derivatives are taken into account. We still have not solved the storage problems associated with highly radioactive materials, including spent fuel rods, and the Yucca Mountain storage project seems to be a no-go. Those materials are now stored in temporary holding tanks at nuclear plants across the country -- which is a major accident waiting to happen. Neither have we solved the problems associated with decommissioning 50-year old nuclear power plants, all of which are so radioactively contaminated they cannot be recycled or bulldozed into a hole in the ground. The costly protocol is to encapsulate each site under a great dome of concrete that naturally fractures and allows water to penetrate and contaminate streams and aquifers."

"In his June 3 letter, Dr. Forrest Remick uses deceptive and even inaccurate statements to suggest I wasn't straight about nuclear power. His many letters to newspapers suggest he is an unabashed cheerleader for nuclear power. While claiming we need an honest discussion, Remick ignores and distorts important facts. Not surprising. Remick worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). NRC typically promotes nuclear power at the expense of public interests. I discovered most NRC employees defend the nuclear industry they supposedly regulate, shamefully dismissing serious threats and harms. The Gulf disaster should remind everyone why people like Remick must be challenged and why it's critical to stop funding dangerous, dirty, and costly nuclear power altogether."

"In the article ["Cardin criticizes Obama for offshore drilling, says oil spills could hurt Bay," April 28] it states that Sen. Ben Cardin supports nuclear energy and that Cardin said that nuclear power plants would help protect the environment. The article then states, "'It also would end the reliance on oil from countries unfriendly to the U.S.,' he said." This is incorrect. Nuclear power plants generate electricity. Less than 3 percent of U.S. electricity is oil- based. Therefore, additional nuclear power plants would essentially do nothing to replace the need for foreign oil or any oil for that matter."

"The more one hears about BP's ruinous catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the more one has to worry about the risks inherent in the proposed in situ uranium mining in nearby Weld County. Both BP's extraction of oil and Powertech's extraction of uranium depend on piping systems to bring the desired substance to the surface. The piping system Powertech proposes to use involves many injection wells to push chemically treated water down through the Laramie Fox-Hills aquifer, which thousands of people depend on for water, and into the uranium ore body. Many more extraction wells will be used to pull the dissolved uranium and other dangerous heavy metals to the surface."