Media Meltdown

In his article "Money Is the Real Green Power: The hoax of eco-friendly nuclear energy" in this month's Extra!, Karl Grossman is right to call out the New York Times and other media outlets for failing to give more balanced coverage of nuclear power. I think it shows how short our memories are. I can remember watching “The Day After” in high school and imaging how I would be vaporized by the firestorm. The two mortal dangers of nuclear power, proliferation and waste disposal, are as insoluble today as they were 20 years ago.

Nuclear power is not clean power. Just ask workers at Rocky Flatts or Chernobyl. The United States has 50,000 tons of high-level civilian nuclear waste stored at 70 sites around the country. We’re creating 2,000 tons more each year. And we have no place to put it for the next few thousand years. Yucca Mountain, the only site being considered for a long-term geological repository, was supposed to open in 1988, 20 years ago. The stuff is so dangerous they don’t know how to move it there safely, or how to keep it safely buried 1,000 feet below a barren mountain on the fringe of the Nevada Test Site.

Proponents of nuclear power say the solution is right around the corner, but they’ve been saying that for 40 years. Grossman questions the integrity of Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, who he writes is being paid by the Nuclear Energy Institute. But even if a handful of environmentalists have become nuclear advocates based on their conscience that doesn’t mean the whole environmental community is on board. I don’t blame some environmentalists for wanting to at least keep the nuclear option on the table. I have not seen any solid figures yet that renewables and efficiency will be able to pick up the slack from coal. The figures are daunting. The Energy Information Administration reported that of the 4,065 Billion KWh generated in 2006, coal accounted for 49 percent, nuclear 19.4 percent, and renewables 2.4 percent.

Grossman attacks the newspapers for neglecting to mention that nuclear plants have a carbon lifecycle of their own. However, I think its trivial compared to the lifecycle of a coal-fired plant. Coal plants emit 2,249 pounds of CO2 per MWh; oil 1,672, and natural gas 1,135, according to the EPA. Nuclear plants emit zero. Zero! You can see why a Greenpeace activist is beginning to sound like Ike when he gave his “Atoms for Peace” speech. I can’t imagine that mining uranium and building a nuclear plant is going to equal that much CO2, even considering what a gargantuan construction projects they are. Of course, mining coal and building a coal-fired plant isn’t like building a room above your garage.

Yes, nuclear power is a mature, proven technology, but I’ll take my chances that solar, wind, tidal, and other real renewable technologies will become highly efficient and productive over the next decade, the time it takes to get a permit and build a nuclear plant.

The nuclear industry has more than image problems. The 2005 Energy Policy Act analyzed why no new nucs have been built. The reasons included relatively high capital costs, regulatory concerns and risks. Challenges facing nuclear are spent fuel, liability allocation, safety and political acceptance. A 2002 EIA study compared the estimated costs of building a nuclear plant to the actual costs in the 1980s. The estimated cost was a close to $1,000 per kilowatt; the actual cost was more like $4,000 per kilowatt.

Maybe its good for us to have a limit on electricity, like an unhealthy body fat level that if we reach it we should change our lifestyle and diet. I’m definitely not ready to go back down the road toward nuclear holocaust so dumb asses can have McMansions. I’m worried about a terrorist flying a plane into the pool of spent fuel languishing at the nuke plant. I'm thinking of the next Dr. A.Q. Khan who wants to make millions on the nuclear black market.

I applaud Grossman for being a watchdog of the nuclear industry. But I’m not as convinced of the Times' editors' pro-nuclear faith. Just look at the two stories Matthew L. Wald wrote in one week in February highlighting the downsides of nuclear. See “As Nuclear Waste Languishes, Expense to U.S. Rises” and “Report Warns of Threat to Campus Reactors”

It’s such a hoot to hear the Bush administration pushing nuclear energy. Remember what Dick Cheney said about the need to find Saddam’s WMD, “We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”