nuclear-news

Tell it to the Chieftain: Nuclear power plants and Is advanced nuclear a pipe dream?

Zach Hillstrom, Pueblo Chieftain,  https://www.chieftain.com/story/opinion/letters/2024/02/04/tell-it-to-the-chieftain/72438864007/

The risks of nuclear power plants

Nuclear power plants require uranium mined, enriched, refined, placed in fuel rods, and inserted into water in a reactor. They have to be replenished at least every 24 months. This spent radioactive waste must be isolated and stored in vessels on site because there is no safe place to take it. They will remain radioactive for thousands of years, possibly corroding, leaking, and contaminating the environment.

Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, (SMRs) as proposed for Pueblo, generate more nuclear waste than conventional nuclear power plants, according to Stanford University and the University of British Columbia.

Accidents happen. At the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, nuclear weapons’ waste is stored underground, but in 2014, the ventilation system was compromised, releasing contaminated air, according to the EPA. Not only can there be accidents, but these sites pose opportunities for terrorists.

In 1970, Xcel Energy began operating a nuclear power plant adjacent to the Prairie Island Indian Community. According to MINNPOST, in the 1990s, the Minnesota State Legislature approved Xcel’s storing radioactive waste on tribal property. The tribe objected but lost. However, in 2003, it accepted $10 million from Xcel. Sadly, money talks, especially for marginalized communities lacking other funding and Pueblo is in that category.

Pueblo already has a Superfund site just upriver in Canon City. Cotter, the now-defunct uranium processing plant, has 4.5 million gallons of radioactive waste just sitting because the cleanup company went belly up.

Nuclear power’s radioactive waste just isn’t clean. And does anyone who understands the risks nuclear poses actually believe new businesses might come here with their families to live next door to a nuclear power plant? PEDCO, please step up! Bring in some big, clean industries to make up the taxes!

-Marti Osborn, Pueblo

Re: Is advanced nuclear a pipe dream or Pueblo’s saving grace? 

-Joseph P Griego, Pueblo

Frances Koncilija says that Pueblo needs to get its own nuclear reactor. At the risk of taking Koncilija’s argument out of context, “risk” is the operative term when it is proposed to build one of Bill Gates’ next-generation TerraPower nuclear power plants, that is still largely unproven for safety, to undergo controlled nuclear fission within Pueblo city limits. 

Xcel would have to spend $4 billion or more to do this, knowing full well that capital expense would be passed on to their ratepayers, as that’s what investor-owned utilities like Xcel Energy and Black Hills Energy do to make massive profits for their shareholders. Black Hills built their $500 million Pueblo Airport Generating Station, a natural gas-fired plant that their ratepayers have been paying through the nose for. So why, in Frances’ name, would Pueblo need to get its own nuclear reactor? 

Electricity generated at Comanche 3 is exported to Xcel’s customers in the greater Denver metro area. Xcel wants to convert Comanche 3 to a nuclear facility to continue that operational practice. Why doesn’t Xcel instead persuade their customers to accept this proposal nearer their generation territory in northeastern rather than southeastern Colorado? That’s because Xcel’s customers there would most likely tell Xcel in no uncertain terms where to stick their nuclear reactors and the radioactive waste they produce even if the reactors use a safer form of nuclear waste as fuel in the first place.

Xcel Energy and all its apologists appear to argue that Pueblo should buy into this boondoggle because it needs the money, a saving grace also known as a pipedream — an exploitive one at that because Pueblo is expected to take all the risks associated with nuclear energy.

February 5, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized