nuclear-news

Nuclear’s ‘safe and green’ image is the industry’s devious hoax, https://www.barnstablepatriot.com/opinion/20200103/nuclears-safe-and-green-image-is-industrys-devious-hoax  Dana Franchitto, South Wellfleet,  Jack Edmonston is hardly alone in embracing the nuclear industry’s hoax that such energy is a “safe and green” fossil fuel alternative (“Climate change is scarier than nuclear power,” My View, Dec. 28).Writing in a 2008 issue of Extra, a publication of the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, journalism professor Karl Grossman reveals the links among the media, the government and the industry. For example, nuclear plant manufacturer General Electric owned NBC until 2013, while Westinghouse for years owned CBS. The New York Times systemically promotes nuclear energy. And “liberal,” “independent” National Public Radio “has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from nuclear operator Sempra Energy and Constellation Energy,” according to Grossman.

The lie, lately gaining momentum, is that nuclear energy is carbon-free. Not so. True, up-and-running plants emit no greenhouse gases. However, what the Nuclear Energy Institute and its puppet, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, fail to mention is that the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining and milling to enrichment, fuel fabrication and disposal of radioactive waste are greenhouse gas-intensive, according to Michel Lee, chairwoman of the Council of Intelligent Energy and Conservation Policy. She adds that nuclear power “is actually a chain of highly energy-intensive industrial processes.” Sobering in light of an MIT study postulating the construction of 1,500 new plants in the coming years.

Grossman nailed it: “The only thing green about nuclear power is the nuclear establishment’s dollars.”