THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 279, October 28, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
NUCLEAR POWER REALITY CHECK
By Roy Innis
ENVIRONMENTALISM, NUCLEAR POWER, & U.S. ENERGY NEEDS: ENVIRONMENTALISTS & THEIR POLITICAL ALLIES IN
CONGRESS SEEK TO PLACE MORE OBSTACLES IN THE PATH OF NUCLEAR POWER, WHICH GENERATES TWENTY PERCENT OF
AMERICA'S ELECTRICITY -- THE ANTI-NUCLEAR PROPAGANDA DISSEMINATED BY THE ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT:
NUCLEAR HORROR STORIES & ALTERNATIVE ENERGY VISIONS, MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, BEAR VERY LITTLE
RESEMBLANCE TO REALITY
FULL STORY:
Abundant, reliable, affordable energy makes our jobs, health, living standards and civil rights possible.
Remember that when you read about people losing their jobs or having to choose between heating, eating, paying the rent
or mortgage, giving to charity, or covering healthcare, college, car, or retirement costs. Remember it when Congress makes
more hydrocarbon energy off limits – or puts more obstacles in the path of nuclear power, which generates a fifth of
America’s electricity.
I recently visited nuclear power plants and a fuel reprocessing plant in France, which gets almost 80% of its electricity from
uranium. And I’ve read some shockingly ill-informed claims about nuclear power and its supposed alternatives. Here are
some essential facts.
Reliability. Nuclear plants generate electricity over 90% of every year, shutting down only occasionally for maintenance,
repairs, and changing fuel rods. Wind turbines can be relied on just 30% of the time, on average – and just 10% of the time
during hot Summer days, when air conditioners are on high, but there’s barely a breeze.
Operational safety. Three Mile Island was the “worst accident in U.S. history.” But it injured no one and exposed
neighboring residents to the radioactive equivalent of getting a CT scan or living in Denver for a year. It led to major
improvements in nuclear plant management, operation, and training.
The Chernobyl disaster was due to its shoddy design, construction, maintenance, and management. According to the
World Health Organization, “fewer than 50” people died as a direct result of this massive meltdown and fire, and nearly all
were employees and rescue workers.
Storage of used nuclear fuel. The U.S. Energy Department spent 25 years and $10 billion studying the Yucca Mountain site
in Nevada, before concluding that it would meet all safety standards. In fact, the largest expected annual radiation dose for
someone living near this geologically stable site would be less than 1 millirem – compared to 1,000 millirem from an
abdominal CT scan.
America’s 104 nuclear plants generate enough electricity for nearly 75,000,000 homes – and produce about 2,000 tons of
“spent” uranium fuel annually. So Yucca will be able to hold all the used fuel from the past 50 years, plus another 35 years
of used fuel, without expanding on the original design.
Spent fuel and other wastes (high-level defense wastes, plus low-level wastes like protective clothing) are solid materials.
There is no liquid that can leak into rocks or groundwater. Liquid wastes, like water used in reactors, are treated and reused.
Transportation safety. Shipping containers are constructed from layers of steel and lead, nearly a foot thick, and carried on
trucks or rail cars. (The 25 to 125-ton containers are too heavy to go in airplanes.) They’ve been slammed into concrete
walls at 85 mph, dropped 30 feet, burned 30 minutes in 1475-degree fires, and submerged in water for hours. They haven’t
broken or leaked.
Over 3,000 shipments of spent fuel have traversed 1.7 million miles, with no injuries, deaths, or environmental damage.
Only one significant accident occurred. A semi-truck overturned while avoiding a head-on collision, and the trailer and
attached container crashed into a ditch. No harmful releases of radioactivity ever occurred.
That hasn’t stopped imaginative writers from saying “catastrophic” accidents could put “millions” of Americans at risk of
exposure to “deadly radiation” or even death, especially if an airplane crashed a cargo of nuclear wastes into a city.
They’ve been watching too many Hollywood movies, where every car accident becomes a raging inferno.
Theft and terrorism. The notion that spent (or even fresh) power plant fuel could be stolen and turned into a powerful
bomb is likewise more Hollywood than reality.
Those pesky little atomic numbers and enrichment levels are confusing, but important. Weapons grade materials are
plutonium, uranium 233, and highly enriched (better than 20%) U235. Power plant fuel is slightly enriched (under 4%)
U235. Spent fuel is U238, which cannot cause a chain reaction.
Turning spent fuel into a bomb would require sophisticated reprocessing facilities, which terrorists are unlikely to have.
Even a “dirty bomb” (radioactive materials around a non-nuclear explosive) would cause more fear than actual damage.
And the U.S. nuclear industry’s commitment to safety applies to plant design and management, shipping and storing
wastes, and guarding against theft and terrorism.
The bottom line? We need the electricity that nuclear power provides, and we can get it safely. Just try to imagine life
without all the things that require electricity. Remember the pain, inconvenience, and financial losses you or people you
know suffered when storms or blackouts knocked out the electrical power.
Consider the warnings of experts: We are dangerously close to experiencing major brownouts and blackouts in many
parts of the United States, especially in our western states, because we haven’t built the power plants and transmission
lines we need for a growing population that depends on electricity 24/7/365.
We need to conserve more, install more insulation and better windows, and use more efficient light bulbs, computers,
servers, heaters, and air-conditioners. We need more wind and solar power, where those sources make economic,
practical, and environmental sense. But we also need a lot more affordable, reliable electricity from nuclear power plants.
Ponder how far our heating, cooling, communication, and other technologies have come in just 100 years – and where
we’re likely to be 50 or 100 years from now. However, we’re not there yet.
Futuristic technologies – like solar generators orbiting above the Earth, beaming electrical power to urban receivers – for
now, are pure science fiction. They’ll be reality about when Scotty beams Captain Kirk back to the Enterprise. We need
to work on them. But we need real energy for real people, today.
Otherwise, homes, factories, offices, schools, and hospitals will go dark. Bread winners will go jobless. Energy prices will
soar even higher. Families won’t have basic necessities, much less luxuries. And poor and minority citizens will see civil
rights gains rolled back, because only energy and a vibrant economy can turn constitutionally protected rights into rights
we actually enjoy.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Roy Innis is Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, Co-Chair of the Campaign to Stop the War on the Poor, and
author of Energy Keepers - Energy Killers: The New Civil Rights Battle.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity