Don’t believe the propaganda put out by the nuclear power industry claiming that nuclear energy is clean energy that is environmentally safe.

 

There are many extremely problematic sides to the nuclear power industry. But you won’t hear about them from the propaganda spewed by the Nuclear Energy Institute. The institute has set up the “Clean and Safe Energy Coalition,” which spends multiple millions of dollars on publicity campaigns meant to make nuclear energy look safe and wonderful.

 

To create nuclear energy uranium has to be mined, which leaves behind highly toxic and radioactive waste on the destroyed land that causes birth defects, cancers, and miscarriages in humans and wildlife. The nuclear power plants create massive amounts of radioactive waste, which remains toxic for many thousands of years. The power plants are not safe in the long term, and they pose an ongoing target for disaster.

 

Nuclear energy is not cheap, is not green, is not environmentally safe, is not sustainable, and is not good.

 

The U.S. government has given hundreds of billions of dollars to the nuclear power industry, and the industry wants more. In fact, the nuclear industry could not exist in the U.S. without billion dollar subsidies in loan guarantees, production tax credits, construction insurance, and direct cash infusion into the accounts of companies involved in building and running nuclear plants.

 

Recently, billionaire investor Warren Buffet’s company, MidAmerican Nuclear Energy Company, abandoned plans to build a nuclear power plant in Idaho after the company analysts concluded that the plant would never stop operating in the red.

 

The 104 operating nuclear power plants in the U.S. supply 19 percent of the nation’s electricity. They are decades old, and the older they get the more dangers they pose. The technology used to build them is outdated, the structures are weakening, and the companies that run them are trying to get as much out of them as possible before the plants have to be decommissioned.

 

In 2006, one of the cooling towers at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant simply crumbled to the ground. In 2002, Ohio’s David-Besse Nuclear Plant was shut down when a basketball-sized corrosion hole was found in the steel cap of the reactor.

 

The book, We Almost Lost Detroit, tells the story about a partial fuel meltdown at a nuclear power plant in 1975.

 

All of the nuclear power plants are continuing to create nuclear waste that will remain “hot” for over 10,000 years – yes, that’s ten thousand years. At any time during at least 10,000 years, if any of the fuel rods are exposed to air for more than several hours, they spontaneously combust, spreading extremely toxic radioactive isotopes throughout a region of the planet. That would bring death, cancer, birth deformities, and miscarriages to humans and wildlife. What are we leaving for our future generations? Or, have we already caused their demise?

 

The government has been trying to build a nuclear waste storage facility in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. 2008 estimates, before cost overruns, to research, build, and run the facility for 100 years range in the area of 100 billion dollars. There is no agreement of how much waste would need to be stored there, or what the size of the facility should be – which indicates that they do not know how much it would cost.

 

Currently all of the nuclear waste at each nuclear power plant is stored on-site at the nuclear power plants, in “spent fuel pools.” If any of these were to malfunction, it would be more disastrous than the meltdown of a nuclear reactor. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s “Report on Spent Fuel Pool Accident Risk” (NUREG-1738) states that a fire in a spent fuel tank could cause 25,000 fatalities within 500 miles of the fire. What could cause such a fire? Some of the causes could be a plane crash, a missile strike, or a natural disaster. Does this pose a threat to you? Find out where the nuclear plants are within 500 miles of where you live, locate them on a map, and draw a 500-mile circle around each one.

 

In 2001, four duck hunters nearly caused a nuclear catastrophe at a nuclear power plant in Maine. The hunters were not aware that lead pellets from their guns were hitting one of the cooling pools where the spent nuclear rods are stored.

 

The construction of the plants takes tremendous resources, including concrete, steel, fuel, land, and water. Any plant that is built and begins operating remains as an environmental hotspot and potential disaster site that could require the permanent evacuation of surrounding communities.

 

There is a direct correlation between the nuclear energy industry and the nuclear bomb industry. Spent nuclear fuel rods have been, and are being, used to make weapons-grade plutonium and enriched uranium. The U.S., Japan, Russia, France, and other countries that have nuclear power plants have used their nuclear waste to build atomic arsenals. Many of the bombs dropped in Iraq contained depleted uranium, a product of nuclear energy plants. The bomb residues have caused rates of cancer, miscarriages, and birth deformities to skyrocket among the people exposed to the residues. 

 

Learn more about the dangers of nuclear energy. Start by considering what happened with the 1975 reactor fire at Browns Ferry, Alabama; and the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island in Western Pennsylvania. Consider the horrors of the 1986 Chernoble disaster that required the immediate abandonment of hundreds of towns and villages.

 

There are nuclear power plants near many large cities, such as New York City. Imagine if a Chernoble disaster happened near New York City, and the entire zone had to be immediately and permanently evacuated and abandoned. To where would more than 20 million New York-area residents move?

 

Say NO! to nukes.

 

“Once-through cooling technology is used exclusively in 48 nuclear reactors with 11 additional reactors employing the technology in conjunction with cooling towers and canals. These reactors, situated on coastal waters, major rivers, and lakes can draw in as much as a billion gallons of water per reactor unit a day, nearly a million gallons a minute, in order to dissipate the extraordinary amounts of waste heat generated in the fission process.

 

The initial devastation of marine life and ecosystems stems from the powerful intake of water into the nuclear reactor. Marine life, ranging from endangered sea turtles and manatees down to delicate fish larvae and microscopic planktonic organisms vital to the ocean ecosystem, is sucked irresistibly into the reactor cooling system, a process known as entrainment.”

– Nuclear Information and Resource Service, http://www.NIRS.org

 

“The average two-reactor nuclear power plant is estimated to cost $10 billion to $18 billion to build. That’s before cost overruns, and no U.S. nuclear power plant has ever been delivered on time or on budget… The sputtering decline of nuclear power has been one of the greatest industrial failures of modern times. In 1985 Forbes called the nuke industry ‘the largest managerial disaster in history.’”

– Christian Parenti, “What Nuclear Renaissance,” The Nation; May 12, 2008; http://www.TheNation.com

 

Natural Resources Defense Council: http://www.NRDC.org

New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution, http://www.NECNP.org

Nuclear Information and Resource Center: http://www.NIRS.org

Physicians for Social Responsibility: http://www.PSR.org

Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Program: http://www.Citizen.org

Redwood Alliance: http://www.RedwoodAlliance.org

Shundahai Network: http://www.Shundahai.org

Sierra Club: http://www.SierraClub.org/nuclearwaste

Union of Concerned Scientists: http://www.UCSUSA.org