nuclear-news

Wisconsin legislators are seeking repeal of a 33-year-old moratorium on building nuclear reactors here without having first found a solution for managing high-level radioactive waste. Since no solution is in hand, the state is permanently saddled with three large reactors on Lake Michigan (one at Kewaunee is closed), another shut-down reactor on the Mississippi River near La Crosse, and a research reactor on Madison’s University of Wisconsin campus. Radioactive waste just keeps accumulating onsite.

Yet in spite of the problem of corrosive, hot, cancer-causing, deadly waste that is radioactive for 1 million years, the Legislature has been captured by industry lobbyists who love a good yarn like the one about clean, safe, cheap nuclear power.

At a state Senate committee hearing Jan. 5, several dozen people testified for and against the repeal (S.B. 288), and the “what could go wrong?” crowd spoke up for a theoretical future of safe and cheap reactors. They forget that reactor safety costs an astronomical amount of money. Others complained that the Yucca Mountain, Nevada, waste dump proposal was canceled for political rather than scientific reasons, not recognizing that their own bill is thoroughly political and frighteningly anti-scientific. In fact, the Yucca Mountain plan faced over 290 unresolved scientific roadblocks that stood in the way of licensing approval at the time it was canceled.

At the hearing, Al Gedicks testified against the repeal bill with brevity and punch……..“The idea that nuclear power is clean defies common sense. Would a truly ‘clean energy’ source produce ‘one of the most hazardous substances on earth,’ according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office?

“Dr. Arjun Makhijani at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research emphasizes that: ‘An objective assessment of the facts leads to the clear conclusion that nuclear power is already economically obsolete, quite apart from a number of other considerations. The same amount of money can produce far greater CO2 reductions with wind and solar energy than with nuclear.’”……. http://host.madison.com/ct/opinion/column/john-laforge-nuclear-power-might-be-safe-or-cheap-but/article_7d1ae5bc-40db-55d4-ac23-79f8bb62761b.html