Why Atomic Energy Stinks Worse Than You Thought

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2013-2014

By Ralph Nader 

It has been over two years since the earthquake and tsunami that brought about the nuclear reactor crisis in Fukushima — the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. The situation at the six reactors is still grim. Four of the reactors are damaged. Hundreds of tons of contaminated groundwater are reportedly seeping into the ocean every day. Nearly 83,000 people were displaced from their homes in the approximately 310 square mile exclusion zones. On Oct. 9, 2013, an accident resulted in six workers being doused in radioactive water. Accidents and mishaps at the Fukushima site are regular occurrences. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has now asked the world community for help in containing the ongoing Fukushima disaster, as it continues to spiral out of control.

Earlier this week, I participated in a panel discussion in New York City called “The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident: Ongoing Lessons.” The event featured notable long-time experts on nuclear technology discussing the crisis in Fukushima and the current state of the heavily subsidized nuclear industry in the United States. The panel participants were former US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Peter Bradford, former NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, and nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen.

Mr. Bradford presented a detailed power point that showed how competing forms of energy already are leading to the decline of the nuclear industry.

The panel discussed safety concerns regarding the Indian Point nuclear power plant located about 30 miles from New York City. Indian Point has long been rife with safety problems and its location near an earthquake fault is a source of great concern for many New York residents.

In the 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission determined that a class-nine nuclear power accident could contaminate an area the size of Pennsylvania and render much of it uninhabitable. A nuclear disaster at Indian Point would threaten the entire population of New York City and its outlying metropolitan area. The continued existence and operation of Indian Point is like playing a game of Russian Roulette with the lives and homes of the nearly 20 million people who live within a 50 mile radius of the reactor. Consider the difficulty New Yorkers have simply commuting to and from their workplaces during rush hour, and imagine the horror of a mandatory evacuation due to a nuclear emergency at Indian Point. The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that a serious accident could, in addition to massive casualties, “cost ten to 100 times more than Fukushima’s disaster” which would be in the trillions of dollars.

If Indian Point were closed today, there is enough surplus energy capacity to last the state until 2020 as alternative energy sources are developed and deployed. Governor Andrew Cuomo has called for the shutdown of Indian Point, as did Hillary Clinton during her time in the Senate. A principle reason is that an emergency evacuation of the population up to 50 miles around these two nukes is impossible.

So what’s the delay? Mainly, resistance from the nuclear industry and a compliant regulatory agency. The NRC has faltered in its watchdog role by acting to protect and even bolster the dangerous, expensive and unnecessary nuclear industry. The industry’s latest claim is that it avoids greenhouse gases. But as physicist Amory Lovins says, if the investment in nuclear reactors is shifted to renewables and energy conservation, it will produce less demand and more environmentally benign energy by far, and with more jobs.

Anti-nuclear advocates have warned against potential dangers such as earthquakes for decades. Although a new nuclear power reactor has not been ordered and built in the US since 1974, there are currently 65 nuclear stations operating 100 reactors here — many of them aging, many of them near earthquake faults, many of them still not in compliance with NRC fire prevention regulations, all of them significant national security risks. Under President Obama, the first two nuclear reactors since 1978 were authorized to be built at the Vogtle site near Atlanta, Georgia. Commissioner Jaczko was the lone dissenter in the 4-1 NRC approval vote.

To truly understand the cost of nuclear energy, one must consider the absurdity of the uranium fuel cycle itself. It begins with mining and its deadly uranium tailings, then the fabrication and refinement of the fuel, the risky transport of these rods to the multi-shielded dome-like reactors where they are installed, and then firing up the core so it goes critical with a huge amount of radioactivity. Dealing with volatile nuclear reactions requires flawless operation. And then there is the storage and guarding of hot radioactive wastes and contaminated materials that persist for 250,000 years. No permanent site has been located and licensed for that lengthy containment.

What is the end purpose of this complex and expensive chain of events? Simply to boil water — to generate steam to turn turbines to produce electricity.

With all the technological advancements in energy efficiency, solar, wind and other renewable energy sources, there are better and more efficient ways to meet our electricity needs without burdening future generations with deadly waste products and risking the radioactive contamination of entire regions — should anything go wrong.

It is telling that Wall Street, which rarely considers the consequences of gambling on a risk, will not finance the construction of a new reactor without a full loan guarantee from the US government. Nuclear power is also uninsurable in the private insurance market. The Price-Anderson Act of 1957 requires taxpayers to cover almost all the recovery, decontamination and compensation costs if a meltdown should occur.

No other industry that produces electricity poses such a great national security risk should sabotage or malfunction occur. No other means of generating electricity can produce such long-lasting catastrophic damage and mayhem from one unpredictable accident. No other form of energy is so loaded with the silent violence of radioactivity.

Nuclear energy is unnecessary, uninsurable, uneconomic, unevacuable and, most importantly, unsafe. The fact that it continues to exist at all is a result of a ferocious lobby, enlisting the autocratic power of government that will not admit that its product is unfit for use in the modern world. Let’s not allow the lessons of Fukushima to be ignored.

— Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and Green Party presidential candidate, is a lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, The Menace of Atomic Energy, and he contributed to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion. This article appeared in Counterpunch Oct. 14, 2013.