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Nuke Power’s “Renaissance 4.0” Has Already Melted

BY HARVEY WASSERMAN, CounterPunch 24 May 23

Nuclear Renaissance (version 4.0)” is the centralized corporate power industry’s final grab at mega-sums of public money and total control of energy.

Facing a definitive tsunami of cheaper, cleaner, safer, faster-to-deploy renewables, it’s meant primarily to serve the nuclear weapons complex while insulating entrenched centralized power against distributed green social democracy.

The “Renaissance’s” prime medieval reality is the escalated likelihood of another Three Mile Island-Chernobyl-Fukushima disaster at one of America’s lingering 94 reactors.

Most US nukes were designed in the pre-digital 1960s and ‘70s. They are dangerously decayed, with an average age of around 40. They are structurally dubious, seriously under-maintained and inherently unsafe.

None have significant private accident insurance. But a major meltdown/explosion could threaten millions of lives and inflict apocalyptic health, ecological and economic harm.

The Renaissance’s key illusion is that atomic reactors are some kind of magical unicorns, generating limitless cheap clean power while never aging, breaking down, emitting heat, carbon or radiation…and certainly never ever blowing up.

In fact our existing reactors are so hideously complex it’s impossible to meaningfully calculate the odds on which one will explode next …and when. Major disasters at six reactors—Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and the four at Fukushima—have been accompanied by a bevvy of smaller disasters whose impacts have nonetheless been substantial.

After sixty years of operations, the Peaceful Atom still can’t get meaningful private disaster insurance. Nor has it solved its forever problem of safely managing its uniquely dangerous wastes.

Given the realities of a radioactive cloud blowing into Los Angeles, Chicago or Atlanta, or permanently contaminating a few thousand square miles of prime farm and forestland, there are no odds that can counter-balance any possible benefit from the risks being taken to extend the licenses of our current reactor fleet, or to undertake building a new generation whose safety again can’t be guaranteed, and whose costs, deployment times and real risks remain serious unknowns.

Especially when all this comes in the shadow of an astonishingly successful revolution in renewable generation, battery storage and increased efficiency. l

But first let’s follow the money.

Financial disaster has defined the last eight big Euro-American reactor projects. Single nukes in Finland and France, and double projects in England, South Carolina and Georgia, have all gone unimaginably over budget……………………………………………………………..

Thus the French nuclear poster child buys electricity from Germany, with zero reactors.

Likewise, 90+ US nukes can’t compete with wind or solar, can’t manage their wastes, can’t guarantee they won’t below up, can’t get comprehensive accident insurance. Most or all are riddled with serious structural flaws which are rapidly worsening with age…led by embrittlement, a fatal metals flaw likely to let reactors shatter and explode during the inevitable coming melt-down.

But buried amidst the massive “Rennaisance” arer some terrifying medieval realities. Among them are the dozen earthquake faults that surround California’s Diablo Canyon, whose two ancient reactors are riddled with dangerous and structural maintenance failures. Critical oncrete is crumbling at Ohio’s Davis-Besse and Seabrook, NH. Vital intake pumps at South Texas recently froze. Indeed, virtally every one of the world’s 400+ operating reactors suffers individualized problems that seriously threaten another Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima…whose four exploded reactors—like about half those worldwide—were designed by General Electric…………………………….

As for the future, any “Renaissance” involving the old-style first-generation big light water reactors starts with zero currently under construction, and no prospect of any new ones even remotely competing with renewables…or opening for an undetermined but very substantial amount of time.

All this comes as wind, solar, batteries, efficiency, micro-grids and other Solartopian assets plummet in price while soaring in reliability and job creation. As nukes careen into a fiscal pit, green energy exceeds all previous expectations, and is pricing out even fully amortized old nukes.

The “Renaissance” multiplies our peril by keeping old nukes operating ever-deeper into the danger zone, making the unthinkable virtually inevitable. The scale of any potential reactor disaster today dwarfs whatever “long odds” the industry might claim against it happening………………………………….

And then there’s the next Apocalyptic explosion.

Despite their sixty-year history, atomic power still can’t get liability insurance. Instead the taxpayers must absorb liability for a reactor apocalypse. No matter the odds, the consequences of such a disaster—human, ecological, financial—can never be compensated…………………..

In addition to fissile bomb materials and trained staff for nuclear weapons, commercial reactors impose a multi-national death grip against democracy. The corporate world’s greatest fear is a green public with local-owned renewables and micro-grids, can open the door to energy democracy.

Thus Ohio’s House Speaker, Larry Householder, took $61 million in utility bribes to help scam through billion in bailouts for two collapsing nukes. Household awaits sentencing.

But the Renaissance attack on renewables is well known. The Legislature in 2016 slipped a single clause into the Ohio Code that’s killed more than $4 billion in private financing. The anti-green attack has cost Ohioans billions in income and millions of safe jobs.

…………………………………………. The industry’s other Inconvenient Truth is that its much-hyped Small Modular Rectors don’t really exist now….and can never compete.

A pre-cursor to the smaller designs has already exploded at Santa Susana, north of Los Angeles, with catastrophic impacts. Provable new prototypes are allegedly on their way. Massive quantities of public money are being spewed at private hype-stars like Bill Gates.

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t as illustrated in the works of Amory Lovins (The Road Not Taken), Mark Jacobson (No Miracles Necessary) and many many others, there is zero doubt that renewables, efficiency and storage can move our economy to carbon-free, saving billions of dollars and creating millions of jobs.

The question is when.

As of now, this latest “Nuclear Renaissance” is a diversion, a roadblock…and a serious danger. Oliver Stone’s super-hyped promo piece “Nuclear Now” might be far more appropriately titled “Apocalypse Again.”

Harvey Wasserman wrote THE PEOPLE’S SPIRAL OF US HISTORY: FROM JIGONSASEH TO SOLARTOPIA.  Most Mondays @ 2-4pm PT, he co-convenes the Green Grassroots Election Protection Zoom (www.electionprotection2024).  The Mothers for Peace (www.mothersforpeace.org) could use your help in the struggle to shut the Diablo Canyon nukes.   https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/05/24/nuke-powers-renaissance-4-0-has-already-melted/

May 28, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, politics international