nuclear-news

The class produced a booklet, Santa Cruz and the Environment, which took a lot of local heat for publicizing the environmental issues affecting Santa Cruz at that time, including the proposed nuclear plant. Investigating the advertised efficient, economical, safe and clean nature of nuclear plants revealed that none of these claims were really true.

A closer look also revealed that nuclear plants were far more expensive to build than conventional plants. Much of the cost of the early plants was covered by subsidies, including about a third of the construction costs coming from the Atomic Energy Commission, which had the conflicting roles at that time of both promoting the use of nuclear energy but also regulating it. The federal government was also subsidizing the insurance, the fuel, as well as the removal and storage of radioactive waste.

Safety is a much more serious issue with a nuclear plant than a fossil fuel plant, simply because the accidental release of radiation can be carried over large distances by wind and water, stays around for a long time, and can produce both immediate and long-term impacts. While there had been a number of accidents in test and experimental reactors at that time, there were few commercial plants in operation such that their overall safety record was good.

The partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, followed by the Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union in 1986 with the release of radiation that spread over much of western Russia and Europe, and then the Fukishima Daiichi disaster in 2011, all contributed to a much greater public concern for the safety of nuclear plants. Ultimately, nuclear plants all depend upon error free construction and operation, and unfortunately humans are not quite perfect.

While nuclear plants don’t produce the visible emissions of fossil fuel plants, they do produce radioactive wastes. Of greatest concern has been the spent fuel, high-level radioactive waste that must be isolated from humans and the biological environment for thousands of years, which is still being stored in tanks in Washington, Idaho and South Carolina. No permanent solution has yet been agreed upon such that California banned any new nuclear plants decades ago until this waste storage/disposal problem had been resolved.

Ten nuclear power plants were proposed through the years along the California’s coastline. Only four were built and three of those have now been closed. Gary Griggs is director of the Institute of Marine Sciences and Long Marine Laboratory at UC Santa Cruz. He can be reached at griggs@ucsc.edu http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_23650404/gary-griggs-our-ocean-backyard-nuclear-plant-santa

alternative energy will solve many inherent problems of the current energy industry. Government spending on the research of alternative energy can help remove some of the barriers to entry to the energy industry. If alternative energy becomes readily available, it would be able to increase the supply of energy, which would in turn decrease the price of energy due to increased competition.

This increase in supply would benefit the overall economy. With the current unemployment rate still at an uncomfortable 7.6 percent, an investment in alternative energy will help create much- needed jobs. The economy would further benefit once alternative energy can successfully lower the price of energy. Because households would spend less the essential cost of daily energy use, they will have extra funds to invigorate the economy.

In addition to economic benefits, alternative energy can solve the problem of pollution. Even with government regulation such as the Environmental Protection Agency, pollution continues to threaten the safety of our planet. With alternative energy, however, oil industries will lose consumers to the new companies. Therefore, they would have less incentive to create energy and along with it, pollution. Because alternative energy will not produce significant amounts of pollution, a climate crisis can thus be averted.

Finally, alternative energy will be renewable, and thus less susceptible to the problem of scarce resources. Today, the majority of energy consumed is nonrenewable. Very soon, those resources will run out. Unlike fossil fuels, the sun will continue to shine, the wind will continue to blow and tides will continue to move.

Clearly, the benefits of investing and the costs of ignoring alternative energy are too great and should become a top priority for the United States.