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October 11, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Renewables Outshine Nuclear; Reactor Futures Slammed by Investors’ S&P 500

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020
By Christine Manwiller

As renewable energy sources become more cost effective, nuclear power is being seen as a losing investment. In its November 2019 report “The Energy Transition: Nuclear Dead and Alive” S&P Global Ratings stated, “Renewables are significantly cheaper and offer quicker payback on scalable investments at a time when power demand is stagnating.” Indeed, current international energy investment trends favor renewables, largely because nuclear power is not considered “clean.” Building nuclear reactors is hugely expensive due to increasing construction costs, and the complexity of meeting safety requirements imposed after Fukushima. Significantly, the S&P report even tells investors that nuclear power would not exist without “massive government support.”

S&P also advises against investing in small modular reactors (SMRs), which may eventually be permitted, but which can’t be developed without government funding. Although SMRs are considered a low initial investment, the reactors’ safety can’t be assured, high-level radioactive waste leaves the same disastrous legacy, while renewables are far less expensive and quicker to bring online.

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, On The Bright Side, Quarterly Newsletter, Renewable Energy

October 11, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Bribery Scandals Prove Nuclear Industry Must Cheat to Beat Safe Renewables

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2020
Excerpted from Op/Ed by Tim Judson, David Kraft and Pat Marida, Augusta Free Press, 8 Sept. 2020

In Ohio, Republican House Speaker Larry Householder has been arrested, along with his chief of staff and three lobbyists. They were charged as co-conspirators in a [$60 million] bribery and racketeering scheme involving the passage of a controversial nuclear bailout. In Illinois, House Speaker and state Democratic Party Chair Michael Madigan is under investigation, while the state’s largest utility company, Commonwealth Edison (ComEd, a subsidiary of Exelon) is cooperating under a deferred prosecution agreement and paying $200 million in fines. The investigation includes ComEd’s maneuverings to attain a nuclear bailout….

Mr. Householder and his co-accused funneled dark money to statehouse candidates, all but one of whom voted for the bailout after getting into office. Then they conspired to kill a ballot measure seeking to repeal the bailout….

In Illinois, ComEd admitted that it provided $1.3 million in payments to associates of Speaker Madigan from 2011 through 2019. ComEd admitted that the payments were to curry favor with Madigan over matters important to the utility, including the nuclear bailout….

The $200-million slap-on-the-wrist that ComEd is paying in fines is less than one year’s worth of the $2.4 billion bailout it secured from the Illinois legislature….

[T]he Illinois and Ohio subsidies are among the smaller ones: $7.6 billion for Exelon in New York; up to $3 billion for Exelon and PSEG in New Jersey; and a proposal for up $500 million per year for Exelon and FirstEnergy in Pennsylvania … have power companies done the same in other states, where even larger subsidies are on the table?…

Aging, uncompetitive nuclear reactors cannot keep up with the technological leaps and bounds and plummeting costs of renewable energy….

It’s time for lawmakers to repeal the nuclear bailouts and let the people of their states choose their energy future in an atmosphere free of corruption. If public opinion is any guide, they will always choose clean, renewable energy over dirty nuclear.

See full article: https://augustafreepress.com/corruption-scandals-expose-nuclear-industry-for-what-it-is/

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, On The Bright Side, Quarterly Newsletter, Renewable Energy

January 10, 2020 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

11,000 Scientists Warn of Climate Emergency

Nukewatch Winter Quarterly 2019-2020

The world’s people face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless there are major transformations to global society, according to a stark warning endorsed by 11,000 scientists from 153 nations. The alarm was published in the journal BioScience on the 40th anniversary of the first world climate conference, which was held in Geneva in 1979. The urgently needed changes include ending population growth, leaving fossil fuels in the ground, halting forest destruction, and slashing meat eating. The authors set out a series of urgently needed actions:

• Use energy far more efficiently and apply strong carbon taxes to cut fossil fuel use.

• Stabilize global population—currently growing by 200,000 people a day—using ethical approaches such as longer education for girls.

• End the destruction of nature and restore forests and mangroves to absorb CO2.

• Eat mostly plants and less meat, and reduce food waste.

• Shift economic goals away from GDP growth. Responding to a separate assessment called the Emissions Gap Report, UN Secretary General António Guterres said, “There has never been a more important time to listen to the science. Failure to heed these warnings and take drastic action to reverse emissions means we will continue to witness deadly and catastrophic heat waves, storms and pollution.” —Somini Sengupta, New York Times, Nov. 26; and Damian Carrington, The Guardian, Nov. 5, 2019

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Renewable Energy

October 29, 2019 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Wind Power Surpasses Nuclear Capacity in the US

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2019

On Sept. 20, when millions around the world were marching to raise awareness about the climate, a major milestone was passed in the race to replace fossil fuels with renewables. The US now has more wind power, as measured in megawatts (MW) of generating capacity, than nuclear power. From April to July 2019,  the total generating capacity from the country’s 57,000 wind turbines was up to 97,960 MW, according to the American Wind Energy Association. The World Nuclear Association figures show that total generating capacity from the remaining 96 nuclear reactors in the US is now 97,722 MW. That is, 238 MW less than wind! Likewise in Britain, early in 2018, wind farms provided more electricity than the country’s eight nuclear power stations, marking the first time wind has overtaken nuclear over a fiscal quarter, the Guardian reported.

—Timmon Wallis, nuclearban.us; Sept. 20, 2019, The Guardian, May 16, 2018

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, On The Bright Side, Quarterly Newsletter, Renewable Energy

October 23, 2019 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

The False Promise of Nuclear Power in an Age of Climate Change

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2019
By Robert Jay Lifton and Naomi Oreskes
Fort Calhoun reactor in Nebraska was surrounded by Missouri River floodwaters in June 2011. Photo by Nati Harnik/AP

Editor’s note: This article from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was originally published in the Boston Globe.

Commentators, from Greenpeace to the World Bank, agree that climate change is an emergency, threatening civilization and life on our planet. Any solution must involve the control of greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out fossil fuels and switching to alternative technologies that do not impair the human habitat while providing the energy we require to function as a species.

This sobering reality has led some prominent observers to re-embrace nuclear energy. Advocates declare it clean, efficient, economical, and safe. In actuality it is none of these. It is expensive and poses grave dangers to our physical and psychological well-being. According to the US Energy Information Agency, the average nuclear power generating cost is about $100 per megawatt-hour. Compare this with $50 per megawatt-hour for solar and $30 to $40 per megawatt-hour for onshore wind. The financial group Lazard recently said that renewable energy costs are now “at or below the marginal cost of conventional generation”—that is, fossil fuels—and much lower than nuclear.

In theory these high costs and long construction times could be brought down. But we have had more than a half-century to test that theory and it appears have been solidly refuted. Unlike nearly all other technologies, the cost of nuclear power has risen over time. Even its supporters recognize that it has never been cost-competitive in a free-market environment, and its critics point out that the nuclear industry has followed a “negative learning curve.” Both the Nuclear Energy Agency and International Energy Agency have concluded that although nuclear power is a “proven low-carbon source of base-load electricity,” the industry will have to address serious concerns about cost, safety, and waste disposal if it is to play a significant role in addressing the climate-energy nexus.

But there are deeper problems that should not be brushed aside. They have to do with the fear and the reality of radiation effects. At issue is what can be called “invisible contamination,” the sense that some kind of poison has lodged in one’s body that may strike one down at any time—even in those who had seemed unaffected by a nuclear disaster. Nor is this fear irrational, since delayed radiation effects can do just that. Moreover, catastrophic nuclear accidents, however infrequent, can bring about these physical and psychological consequences on a vast scale. No technological system is ever perfect, but the vulnerability of nuclear power is particularly great. Improvements in design cannot eliminate the possibility of lethal meltdowns. These may result from extreme weather; from geophysical events such as earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis (such as the one that caused the Fukushima event); from technical failure; and from unavoidable human error. Climate change itself works against nuclear power; severe droughts have led to the shutting down of reactors as the surrounding waters become too warm to provide the vital cooling function.

Advocates of nuclear energy invariably downplay the catastrophic events at Fukushima and Chernobyl. They point out that relatively few immediate deaths were recorded in these two disasters, which is true. But they fail to take adequate account of medical projections. The chaos of both disasters and their extreme mishandling by authorities have led to great disparity in estimates. But informed evaluations in connection with Chernobyl project future cancer deaths at anywhere from several tens of thousands to a half-million.

Studies of Chernobyl and Fukushima also reveal crippling psychological fear of invisible contamination. This fear consumed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and people in Fukushima painfully associated their own experiences with those of people in the atomic-bombed cities. The situation in Fukushima is still far from physically or psychologically stable. This fear also plagues Chernobyl, where there have been large forced movements of populations, and where whole areas poisoned by radiation remain uninhabitable.

The combination of actual and anticipated radiation effects—the fear of invisible contamination—occurs wherever nuclear technology has been used: not only at the sites of the atomic bombings and major accidents, but also at Hanford, Washington, in connection with plutonium waste from the production of the Nagasaki bomb; at Rocky Flats, Colorado, after decades of nuclear [bomb core] production; and at test sites in Nevada and elsewhere after soldiers were exposed to radiation following atomic bomb tests.

Nuclear reactors also raise the problem of nuclear waste, for which no adequate solution has been found despite a half-century of scientific and engineering effort. Even when a reactor is considered unreliable and is closed down, as occurred recently with the Pilgrim reactor in Plymouth, or closes for economic reasons, as at Vermont Yankee, the accumulated waste remains at the site, dangerous and virtually immortal. Under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the United States was required to develop a permanent repository for nuclear waste; nearly 40 years later, we still lack that repository.

Finally there is the gravest of dangers: plutonium and enriched uranium derived from nuclear reactors contributing to the building of nuclear weapons. The technology needed to enrich uranium to commercial reactor grade can easily be scaled up to enrich uranium to weapons grade. When commercial uranium reactors operate, the fissioning of their fuel produces plutonium, which ends up in the high-level radioactive waste. Wherever extensive nuclear power is put into use there is the possibility of its becoming weaponized. Of course, this potential weaponization makes nuclear reactors a tempting target for terrorists.

There are now more than 450 nuclear reactors throughout the world. If nuclear power is embraced as a rescue technology, there would be many times that number, creating a worldwide chain of nuclear danger zones—a planetary system of potential self-annihilation. To be fearful of such a development is rational. What is irrational is to dismiss this concern, and to insist, after the experience of more than a half-century, that a “fourth generation” of nuclear power will change everything.

Advocates of nuclear power frequently compare it to carbon-loaded coal. But coal is not the issue; it is already making its way off the world stage. The appropriate comparison is between nuclear and renewable energies. Renewables are part of an economic and energy revolution: They have become available far more quickly, extensively, and cheaply than most experts predicted, and public acceptance is high. To use renewables on the necessary scale, we will need improvements in energy storage, grid integration, smart appliances, and electric vehicle charging infrastructure. We should have an all-out national effort—reminiscent of World War II or, ironically, the making of the atomic bomb—that includes all of these areas to make renewable energies integral to the American way of life. Gas and nuclear will play a transitional role, but it is not pragmatic to bet the planet on a technology that has consistently underperformed and poses profound threats to our bodies and our minds.

Above all, we need to free ourselves of the “nuclear mystique”: the magic aura that radiation has had since the days of Marie Curie. We must question the misleading vision of “Atoms for Peace,” a vision that has always accompanied the normalization of nuclear weapons. We must free ourselves from the false hope that a technology designed for ultimate destruction could be transmogrified into ultimate life-enhancement.

—Lifton is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at City University of New York and among his many books is co-author of Hiroshima in America (Harper Perennial, 1996), and Indefensible Weapons (Basic Books, 1982).

—Naomi Oreskes is professor of the history of science and affiliated professor of Earth and planetary sciences, Harvard University.

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Renewable Energy

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