Group items tagged

his week's decision by state regulators to pull the plug on a planned coal-fired power plant in southwest Wisconsin sent a clear signal to lawmakers: It's time to abandon Wisconsin's moratorium on the construction of nuclear power plants. Wisconsin can no longer ignore the fact that the need to combat pollution and the demand for cost-effective power are making it imperative that nuclear energy be among the state's options for generating the electricity to meet a growing demand.

Focusing our efforts on nuclear power distracts us from concentrating on energy efficiency and renewable energy - alternatives that provide the safest, cleanest and most dependable means to securing our energy future. We have the ability to meet our energy needs and have a clean and healthy state without nuclear power. If Idaho's leaders scrutinized the drawbacks of nuclear reactors and contrasted those drawbacks with the benefits of energy efficiency, conservation and renewables, Idaho wouldn't be so quick to jump on the nuclear band wagon.

"2 Endorsements of Nuclear Power, but Sharp Differences on Details" (Check Point, Oct. 10) quotes Patrick Moore, who is described as "a founder of Greenpeace and the co-chairman of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a pro-nuclear group." Mr. Moore is a paid spokesman for the nuclear industry who frequently uses the Greenpeace name to give his anti-environment lobbying legitimacy. He has not worked for Greenpeace for more than 20 years. Since then, he has found a new career as a spokesman for a variety of polluting industries, including the logging, chemical and mining industries. Greenpeace continues to strongly oppose nuclear energy, because nuclear power plants remain vulnerable to terrorist attack, because there is no way to deal safely with radioactive nuclear waste and because the enormous taxpayer subsidies required to finance nuclear energy distract attention from real solutions to global warming like wind and solar power.

Nuclear power is a gift from nature. It can be harnessed cleanly and safely but an accident of history got us started down a path that is dangerous and unnecessarily complicated. Today's nuclear power plants were adapted from reactor designs originally intended for production of plutonium for bombs. In the 1950's this plutonium output was considered a bonus, but today it has become an out-of-control nightmare.

Proponents of nuclear power speak of a "nuclear renaissance." The facts show that rather than a renaissance, we face a nuclear apocalypse, heralded by, instead of the traditional four horsemen, five horsemen: cost, proliferation, risk, waste, and water consumption. Consider them individually:

I just completed reading your excellent editorial "Nuclear Waste - Radioactivity In The Backyard" [Monday] and said to myself: "Oh, no! Please tell me that Polk County will not be considered to be the dumping ground for nuclear waste in Florida." Those who say "It has to be in somebody's backyard" are unanimously those whose backyards are not being considered for garbage dumps - whether it's commercial, household or even nuclear.

During the first presidential debate, while reciting their lists of energy sources that each candidate supports, something caught my ear: a discussion of nuclear-waste reprocessing. Twenty percent of our electricity comes from 104 nuclear power plants. Currently, spent nuclear waste is stored in temporary facilities at 125 sites in 39 states. These storage sites are located in a mixture of cities, suburbs and rural areas. The plan is for this waste to be permanently stored at a geologic repository, 1,000 feet below surface, 1,000 feet above groundwater at Yucca Mountain.

McCain's vow to build 45 atomic plants has bold glow of deception The most recent nuclear power plant to go online in the United States was the Watts Bar station in Tennessee, which started producing power in 1996, a scant 23 years after construction began. Thus John McCain's debate claim that, as president, he would somehow push through the construction of 45, count 'em, 45 new nuclear plants without worrying about where they'd be placed or what we'd do with the radioactive waste drew quite a response, at least in me ("There hasn't been a nuclear reactor built in 30 years!" I shouted at the TV).

Energy costs are soaring, global warming is heating up and the U.S. nuclear power industry is hungry for funding to get going again. Is a revival of nuclear power an answer? No, for many reasons. Here are two of them. Nuclear power is not democratic. The entire nuclear cycle, from uranium mining, to nuclear power or weapons production damages the health of communities. It's all lethal.

Doug Turner argues that politicians opposing a nuclear waste repository inside Yucca Mountain contribute to our nation's energy woes. Advocating increased use of nuclear power, Turner references the French, who are heavy producers of electricity generated by nuclear power plants. He claims their nuclear power is cheap, profitable and environmentally sound. The French pave their highways with material in which they mix radioactive wastes, spreading the hazard across the land. They store radioactive waste in facilities along miles of coastline. Radioactivity leaks into the ocean. Reprocessing creates more waste than there was before the material was reprocessed. But discarding weapons-grade plutonium and uranium would be economically irresponsible.

I heard Dr. Helen Caldicott speak at the U of C on Tuesday night, and was reminded that the entire nuclear industry is madness built upon insanity, and deliberate misinformation. They haven't been able to attract a penny of private investment or insurance for years; yet they manage to convince governments to prop up their reactors with subsidies and taxpayer-funded insurance in the event of a nuclear accident.

It's hard to miss the bandwagon behind solar and wind power to solve our global warming and energy problems. Unfortunately, there is a penalty to be paid for these renewables. The reality is that there is a place in the electric grid for solar and wind, just as there is for hydroelectric and geothermal power. But alone, these alternate power sources do not provide the reliability necessary to prevent the possibility of interruptions in the nation's electric supply

The U.S. Congress has approved a nuclear deal between the United States and India that will allow the U.S. to export nuclear fuel, reactors and technologies for peaceful energy use to India. The agreement, which went into effect Wednesday when signed by President George W. Bush, is virtual recognition of India as a nuclear-weapons state, thus undermining the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty regime set up in 1970.

The idea of building a nuclear power plant has started to take root in Alberta in the last couple of years. However, some issues need to be looked at in great depth before any more steps are taken down this road. If the costs aren't astronomical enough to make Albertans think twice about nuclear power, perhaps the health safety concerns that preoccupy Dr. Helen Caldicott might prove a major source of consternation.

Costly nuclear power won't take us to the future In this article, the St. Petersburg Times summarized the present and past positions taken by the two presidential candidates as to how the United States should meet its demands for energy. Unfortunately, one of the solutions proposed by both presidential candidates is nuclear power.

A recent Corporate Watch Australia survey reveals that many so-called ethical investment funds invest in uranium mining. The number has risen significantly in recent years. Some fund managers justify investment in uranium with questionable arguments about nuclear power and climate change, but the primary reason for the shift is probably BHP Billiton's entry into the uranium industry with its 2005 acquisition of WMC Resources, which owns the Olympic Dam uranium mine in South Australia.

Duane Bratt writes in his Sept. 15 opinion piece, "It's time to go nuclear," that the question of expanding the nuclear industry in Saskatchewan has moved from "should" to "how." Contrary to Bratt's claim, the desirability of nuclear power plants, increased uranium mining and other radioactive waste-producing activities is far from clear and needs more public debate. Around the world, people are rejecting his dream of nuclear expansion. On April 24, the government of British Columbia announced a ban on uranium mining in that province. B.C. also rejects nuclear power as an energy option. In 1980, a report by the B.C. Medical Association warning of health risks was instrumental in enacting an earlier seven-year-long moratorium on uranium mining in that province.

The film depicts the effects of Gulf War Syndrome and depleted uranium's role in long-term health problems for soldiers, their newborns and Iraqi civilians. Friendly Fire, a documentary by Dr. Gary Null, has received critical acclaim for not only bringing to light the long-term physical effects the Persian Gulf War and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the military and government's attempt to cover it up.

We hope Don Gillispie is better at building a nuclear power plant than he is at building relationships. The man pursuing a nuclear power plant in Elmore County isn't doing his controversial cause too many public relations favors. It's not just that he is at odds with opponents of nuclear power; that tension is pretty much inevitable.

The catch: Waste America's realization that it must kick its expensive foreign-oil habit has energized the previously moribund nuclear power industry, which is proudly selling itself as the cheaper, cleaner alternative. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering at least a dozen applications for new power plants, and it expects to receive 23 more applications within two years. Nuclear power should be included in the panoply of preferred alternatives to fossil fuels - along with wind, solar, geothermal, hyrdroelectric energy and anything else that weans the nation from its $700-billion-a-year taste for foreign oil.