Unfortunately, the case for nuclear as a green technology is not so simple—the technology faces a spate of environmental and economic challenges, while its track record as a bridge fuel shows it may be more rivalrous than concomitant with renewables. In fact, it may be the nuclear industry that needs the Green New Deal, not the other way around.
For as long as it’s existed, nuclear has been an aspirational technology as much as an extant one
the magical thinking of the nuclear industry has taken different forms. Over decades, breeder reactors, salt reactors, large-scale fusion have all been the nuclear future just over the horizon. “The industry that people talk about is a theoretical industry,” says Jaczko. “The actual industry is not that.”
So the enthusiasm for the public investment of the Green New Deal is primarily a tactical one, with the promise of a massive outlay of public funds enticing an industry in need of a lifeline.
The Tantalizing Nuclear Mirage, Many see nuclear power as a necessary part of any carbon-neutral mix. The reality isn’t so simple. The American Prospect, BY ALEXANDER SAMMON DECEMBER 5, 2019
It took seven months on the campaign trail for Cory Booker to emerge as the Democratic Party’s foremost champion of nuclear power. In September, after he unveiled a signature climate plan replete with “$20 billion dedicated to research, development and demonstration of next-generation advanced nuclear energy,” he embraced the technology with unprecedented ardor. “I didn’t come to the United States Senate as a big nuclear guy,” Booker toldGrist in an interview. “But when I started looking at the urgency of climate change … nuclear has to be a part of the blend.”
To hear Booker tell it, his evolution on the subject was the product of scientific rigor and anti-ideological clarity on decarbonization. He related this narrative during a media blitz, comparing anti-nuclear Democrats to Republican climate deniers over their rejection of an incontrovertible science, while pledging to usher in a nuclear future that no right-minded person could deny. “Where the science is going, to me, at first sounded like science fiction … new nuclear actually portends of exciting things where you have no risk of the kinds of meltdowns we’re seeing,” he proclaimed at CNN’s climate town hall.
Grandiosity aside, Booker isn’t alone in his nuclear embrace. He’s part of an unlikely pro-nuclear political alliance, an emergent accord that spans the centrist think tank Third Way, Andrew Yang, Jay Inslee, environmental activists, and progressive commentators alike. “The left should stop worrying and learn to love existing nuclear power plants,” wroteNew York’s Eric Levitz in a subsequent send-up of Bernie Sanders’s and Elizabeth Warren’s twin commitments to phase out the technology.
In a world where the rapid deployment of zero-carbon energy production is urgent, nuclear power, the argument goes, represents the only proven bet.
……..With 11 years, per the U.N.’s 2018 IPCC report, to overhaul our energy system, to be serious about decarbonization is to find a place at the table for nuclear.
It’s an alluring idea. Already, this logic has been embraced in states like Ohio and Booker’s New Jersey, which have been allocating green tax subsidies to nuclear projects. And while it’s largely played out in the background, the question of what to do about nuclear has vexed Green New Dealers since the rollout of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s framework in February. While plane travel and hamburgers raised hackles in the press, one of the first clauses to be deleted from the initial proposal pledged to phase out the technology altogether.
So does the Green New Deal need nuclear to achieve its lofty goals? Does zero-carbon energy infrastructure necessitate a nuclear buildout, or at least an embrace of already-existing nuclear as a bridge fuel, as countries like Sweden have done? Unfortunately, the case for nuclear as a green technology is not so simple—the technology faces a spate of environmental and economic challenges, while its track record as a bridge fuel shows it may be more rivalrous than concomitant with renewables. In fact, it may be the nuclear industry that needs the Green New Deal, not the other way around.
DESPITE THE NEWFOUND exigency of overhauling the country’s energy mix, this is not the first time America’s energy system has arrived at a crossroads in the last ten years, nor is it the first time nuclear has been trotted out as its last, best hope. In the late aughts, with oil prices soaring and production stagnant, policymakers made a commitment to expanding American nuclear generation. An era of so-called “nuclear renaissance” began, with four next-generation reactors commissioned at two plants, one in Georgia and the other in South Carolina.
Now, over a decade later, that project managed to bankrupt its construction company, Westinghouse, nearly taking down the entire Toshiba conglomerate, Westinghouse’s parent company, with it. The two reactors in South Carolina were abandoned, while the Southern Nuclear and Georgia Power utility companies assumed control of the remaining two reactors in Georgia, the Vogtle 3 and 4. But even a cash infusion from Georgia ratepayers, who began subsidizing the completion of the project in 2011, was not enough to keep the project close to its budget or timeline. Initially expected to come online in 2016-2017, the Vogtle plant has run some $14 billion over budget. Its completion dates have been deferred to 2021-2022. There’s currently no other active nuclear development in the United States.
That timeline should be particularly alarming for nuclear enthusiasts………
WHEN DID NUCLEAR get this environmental rebrand? Until very recently, the industry hadn’t led with its environmental chops. In fact, for years, nuclear buddied up with the coal industry, courting the Trump administration for subsidies, while the Nuclear Energy Institute supported the Department of Energy’s failed coal and nuclear bailout, and lauded Ohio’s controversial coal and nuclear subsidy package earlier this year.
For as long as it’s existed, nuclear has been an aspirational technology as much as an extant one. Since Eisenhower first announced nuclear energy generation as a civilian project in 1953, its promises of worldwide abundance have far outpaced its production. Twenty years later, in 1973, Richard Nixon pledged to have 1,000 nuclear plants online by 1980, a goal that never approached realization. Since then, the magical thinking of the nuclear industry has taken different forms. Over decades, breeder reactors, salt reactors, large-scale fusion have all been the nuclear future just over the horizon. “The industry that people talk about is a theoretical industry,” says Jaczko. “The actual industry is not that.” Since the development of nuclear weapons, the non-military nuclear energy program has always been a PR charge as much as it was a serious proposal. “Historians have determined that the rollout of civilian nuclear power in the 1960s had as much to do with Cold War PR as the need for electricity,” says Brown.
Nuclear’s pivot to unlikely environmental champion and running mate of the Green New Deal is far from a happy accident. It’s a deliberate posture, informed as much by shrewd marketing as Booker’s data-driven rationale. With the rapid development of solar and wind, nuclear is now far more expensive to produce in terms of dollars per kilowatt hour. With the rapid growth of renewables, nuclear now finds itself on the wrong side of free-market forces, in dire need of public subsidy to stay afloat.
So the enthusiasm for the public investment of the Green New Deal is primarily a tactical one, with the promise of a massive outlay of public funds enticing an industry in need of a lifeline. “Of course the nuclear industry is trying new alliances; they are desperate.” says Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity. Cutting them in would be an unforced error for GND legislation—the money that would be spent making nuclear viable, shielding it from an array of climate disasters, and figuring out what to do with its waste would be much better spent figuring out battery storage or something else to stitch in the gaps in renewable generation.
Looking closer at Booker’s proposal, it’s not clear even he believes the sales pitch he’s making. Despite his lofty pronouncements, the climate plan, which sums to $3 trillion, allocates just two-thirds of 1 percent to nuclear development. The $20 billion is barely enough to cover the cost overruns of the two reactors at Georgia’s Vogtle plant. The notion that such a paltry sum would finally put the industry over the top after decades of malaise, indeed, sounds like science fiction. https://prospect.org/greennewdeal/the-tantalizing-nuclear-mirage/
Support candidates in 2020 who will work for nuclear disarmament, https://www.thetimesnews.com/opinion/20191202/letter-support-candidates-in-2020-who-will-work-for-nuclear-disarmament?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitterAnne CassebaumIt was good to hear Mikhail Gorbachev given some air time to speak of the unspoken. Current tension and permanent war, he warned, make the danger of nuclear weapons “colossal.”Nuclear weapons rarely make the news; recent worry about ours in Turkey was fleeting, so the danger is pushed back in many Americans’ consciousness. The result: Pentagon spending balloons, and the Trump administration carries forward President Obama’s plan to modernize our nuclear forces.
Modernization may sound good and even inevitable; it is neither. In fact, it will set off a new arms race of smaller nuclear weapons that are, imagine, “more usable.” And smaller means reduced to Hiroshima and Nagasaki-sized bombs that killed more than 200,000 people.
The price tag for this 30-year modernization is $1.2 trillion and rising. The beneficiaries will be weapons producers, such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, for whom the Pentagon budget acts as an ATM, as one researcher quipped.
We could be pursuing disarmament treaties and diplomacy. Money siphoned for endless oil wars and weapons buildup could instead create jobs in green energy and deal with climate change, which, like radioactivity, respects no borders.
Any nuclear exchange would be a climate crisis of its own. As Gorbachev put it, ” … nuclear weapons should be destroyed. This is to save ourselves and our planet.”
The 2020 elections offer a time to consider candidates who see a new arms race as insanity, not security.
Deval Patrick: the latest presidential candidate to be uninformed on nuclear weapons, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By John Krzyzaniak, November 20, 2019 Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, became the latest latecomer to the 2020 presidential campaign when he entered the fray last week. At the time of this writing, he does not have very many clear policy positions, or even a campaign website. But anyone running for president—even someone who’s still on the honeymoon period of his announcement—should expect to be asked tough policy questions, especially on important issues like nuclear weapons. Was Patrick prepared? Well, not really……….
Overall, Patrick is woefully uninformed about what is a hugely important—dare I say existential—issue. But he’s not alone: A whole slew of 2020 candidates have either pleaded ignorance on certain nuclear policies or given answers that were borderline incomprehensible. In 2016 things were hardly different. In a debate with Hillary Clinton, then-candidate Donald Trump made two contradictory statements on this issue in almost the same breath, saying both that he would “certainly not do a first strike” and that he “can’t take anything off the table.”
The next Democratic presidential debate is on Wednesday evening. If we’ve learned anything from the debates, it’s that disproportionate attention to one or two issues, such as healthcare or immigration, has driven candidates to put serious thought into their own stance on those issues. If the moderators can carve out 10 minutes for a question or three on America’s nuclear weapons policies, it would mark a welcome change. https://thebulletin.org/2019/11/deval-patrick-the-latest-presidential-candidate-to-be-uninformed-on-nuclear-weapons/
“I’m disappointed to learn Holtec will be exempt from important emergency preparation and planning safeguards as it decommissions the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station,” said Senator Warren. “The Southeastern Massachusetts community has rightly continued to raise important questions about the plant’s decommissioning and they deserve answers, not more strong-arming.”
In October 2018, Senator Warren raised concerns about safety and lack of public input during Pilgrim’s shutdown last year and raised similar concerns regarding communications with local residents in her statement. In August 2019, she called for community concerns to be addressed before Pilgrim was allowed to change hands from Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. to Holtec.
Elizabeth Warren Wants A Nuclear No First Use Policy, But It Won’t Be Easy to Implement, Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama tried—but failed—to incorporate NFU into their Nuclear Posture Reviews. If Warren wants an NFU, she should look to these Democratic presidents’ pasts to learn how to make her lofty goal achievable. National Interest
by Lauren Sukin, 25 Oct 19, While President Donald Trump boasts about the “tippy top” shape of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has a much more reasonable plan for American nuclear weapons, outlined in her co-sponsored fourteen-word bill that aims to radically alter the conditions under which the United States can use nuclear weapons. The bill (S. 272/H.R. 921) reads simply: “It is the policy of the United States to not use nuclear weapons first.” The idea—called No First Use (NFU)—has been around since the Cold War, but it has never officially been U.S. policy………..
Lessons for the Next President
If the next president wants to implement NFU, what should they do differently? First, an improved NPR process would involve hands-on, consistent leadership from civilian executives. Second, the next president will need to bridge differences of opinion between traditionalists and those who are more reform-minded. That means choosing civilian leaders of the NPR effort who have and commit to building a good rapport with the military establishment and military leaders who are receptive to new ideas while using their expertise to ensure that any adopted policies are beneficial, clear, and implementable.
Lessons for the Next President
If the next president wants to implement NFU, what should they do differently? First, an improved NPR process would involve hands-on, consistent leadership from civilian executives. Second, the next president will need to bridge differences of opinion between traditionalists and those who are more reform-minded. That means choosing civilian leaders of the NPR effort who have and commit to building a good rapport with the military establishment and military leaders who are receptive to new ideas while using their expertise to ensure that any adopted policies are beneficial, clear, and implementable. Lauren Sukin is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/elizabeth-warren-wants-nuclear-no-first-use-policy-it-wont-be-easy-implement-90716
A recent Zogby Analytics poll found that more than 80% of Ohio residents believe it is critical that the candidates state their positions on this issue.
They are right to want to hear the candidates’ views. Ohioans understand that the risk of nuclear war remains one of the greatest threats to civilization, and security experts warn that the potential for a nuclear war is greater than it has been in decades.
The good news is that the next president could make America safer by changing U.S. nuclear policy.
Under current policies, the United States could start a nuclear war by mistake. How? Let me explain the chain of events.
The Pentagon keeps its 400 land-based missiles on hair-trigger alert so they can be launched quickly upon warning of a Russian missile attack before they could be destroyed by incoming Russian missiles. If the military received such a warning, the president would have less than 10 minutes to decide whether to launch U.S. missiles. But that warning is generated by computers based on radar and satellite data, all of which are fallible. Indeed, there have been false alarms over the years due to a range of technical and human errors. This tight time span in which to make a decision increases the risk of starting a nuclear war based on a false warning. U.S. missiles cannot be recalled or destroyed in flight, even if the Pentagon belatedly realized that the warning had been false.
Keeping missiles on hair-trigger alert is not only dangerous, it is also unnecessary. Most U.S. nuclear weapons are hidden at sea on submarines where they are safe from attack, so the United States can wait to see if a nuclear attack is actually happening before it retaliates. Debate moderators should ask the candidates if they would remove U.S. missiles from hair-trigger alert and eliminate the possibility of starting a nuclear war by mistake.
The next president also could reduce the chance that the United States would deliberately start a nuclear war. Current policy permits the United States to use nuclear weapons first in a non-nuclear conflict with Russia, China or North Korea — all of which are nuclear-armed. Doing so would almost certainly provoke a devastating nuclear response against the United States.
Moderators should tackle that topic as well. They should ask the candidates whether, if elected, they would clearly state that the only purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack and establish a policy that the United States will never use nuclear weapons first. Such a policy also would make America safer by making it less likely that our adversaries would attack us with nuclear weapons first out of fear that a U.S. nuclear strike was imminent.
The Zogby survey polled Ohioans about this “first use” issue, too. When asked if there were any acceptable circumstances for the United States to use nuclear weapons first, nearly two-thirds said no.
Finally, the United States has long relied on verifiable international agreements to constrain its adversaries’ nuclear forces. Today the United States and Russia still possess 92% of all nuclear weapons, yet the United States recently pulled out of a longstanding nuclear arms treaty with Russia and has threatened to walk away from the landmark treaty that limits long-range nuclear weapons. Debate moderators should ask the candidates if they are committed to maintaining such agreements, how they would reinvigorate U.S.-Russian negotiations and how they would address North Korea and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Voters want to know, but they will only if debate moderators ask the right questions. The presidential candidates must clarify what they would do, if elected, to reduce the nuclear threat and guarantee national — and international — security.
David Wright, co-director and senior scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, grew up in Lima and attended Miami University and Ohio State University.
Harvey Wassermann, 21 Sept 19,Senator Cory Booker has become a Pro-Nuke Holocaust Denier and must not be president or vice.
As desperate mostly-young millions march worldwide for the survival of our Earth, Booker embraces explosive atomic 500-F climate killing machines that are roasting Her.
Any of our 96 badly run, rarely inspected US nukes could explode into a nuclear holocaust at any time.
In Booker’s New Jersey, three dying public-subsidized nukes spew heat, radiation and carbon. Their safety is “guaranteed” by Trump’s fake Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They’re dangerously decrepit, but what’s he done to to guarantee their safety? (Hint: they can’t get private insurance).
Now he’s Trump-style slandering the global grassroots safe energy movement for demanding nuke accountability.
Nuke reactors spew gargantuan quantities of waste heat and deadly radiation. That includes Carbon 14, a global warming agent.
Carbon-emitting reactor fuel production demands carbon-emitting mining, milling, transport and enrichment. So does fuel to run pools for spent rods that will explode if not forever cooled (see WIPP, New Mexico).
40 years ago this month 90,000 eco-fans heard the Musicians United for Safe Energy Concerts over 5 nights in Madison Square Garden. Some 200,000 rocked our rally at Battery Park City.
Three Mile Island had earlier poured radiation into central Pennsylvania. TMI’s owner denied the melt-down, the emissions, the health impacts.
But after the concerts I visited local farms, met the families, consulted their doctors.…and veterinarians… The feds had long since predicted a reactor accident could wipe out an area the size of Pennsylvania and kill thousands.
At kitchen tables I heard awful tales of death and disease, of stillborn infants, dying children, Down’s Syndrome, dead animals and orchards. I held a dog born with no eyes, saw a cat that couldn’t stand, horses that couldn’t breed, a pile of dead wild birds. The Baltimore News-American confirmed the stories, as did Dell/Delta’s Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation (now free on line), and others.
In 1996, in Kiev and Russia, I heard far more/worse stories from Chernobyl survivors. I will not return to Japan, where I’d joined giant marches demanding Fukushima not be built on seismic faults washed by tsunamis.
Over nearly a half-century of activism I’ve never met a No Nuker who denies climate change. Saving our eco-balance remains everywhere a major motivation to shut all nuke reactors before the next one blows up.
But now the come-lately genius Corey Booker tells us we’re all Climate Deniers.
He might’ve joined the debate with dignity and respect. But since any of the three falling-down Trump-run nukes in his own state (where I have children and grandchldren) could at any time render the entire east coast a radioactive ruin, filled with human agony and ecological horror, let’s just call him what he is: a Holocaust Denier.
Harvey Wasserman coined the phrase “Solartopia” and helped with “No Nukes.” His The People’s Spiral of US History will soon be at www.solartopia.org. He hosts California Solartopia at KPFK-FM in Los Angeles and Green Power & Wellness at www.prn.fm.
Huffington Post, 20 Sep 19 “…….The remark ― one of the most pointed critiques of the anti-nuclear position in the Democratic primary so far ― grazes a particularly sensitive nerve in the climate policy debate.The United States hasn’t licensed a new reactor in a quarter century. Yet nuclear power is deeply unpopular. In 2016, Gallup found a majority of Americans opposed nuclear energy for the first time since the pollster began surveying the question in 1994. If the 2011 meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, stoked fear in a generation too young to recall 1979’s Three Mile Island accident, HBO’s new hit miniseries “Chernobyl” exposed viewers to the horrors of radioactive contamination. ……
In a presidential election, Nevada, where voters who cast ballots in a decisive early primary staunchly oppose storing nuclear waste in the desert, raises the stakes. ……..
Now consider the climate platforms top Democratic presidential candidates proposed…. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pledged to start “weaning ourselves off nuclear energy” with the goal of shutting down existing plants by 2035.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took an even firmer stance against nuclear power. He led the charge to shut down the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station, which closed in late 2014, and proposed a bill last year to start decommissioning plants across the country. …….
a heating planet raises some of nuclear power’s biggest risks. Nuclear reactors require 720 gallons of cooling water per megawatt-hour of electricity they produce ― a concern as water resources grow scarcer on a hotter planet, as HuffPost previously reported. The threat of violence increases in a heated world with depleted resources and unprecedented numbers of refugees, raising concerns of nuclear sabotage in terrorist attacks or war.
“From transportation, to storage, to waste that remains lethal for more than 100,000 years, nuclear plants pose numerous threats to our families and our communities,” said John Coequyt, the Sierra Club’s global climate policy director. “Meanwhile, clean energy from solar and wind is outcompeting dirty fuels and only getting cheaper, while new nuclear plants are outrageously expensive, over budget by billions, and economically failing.”
Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko warned that even mini-reactors will mean more accidents.
“Every day almost you see a new story, talking about how we’re not going to solve the problem of climate change without nuclear reactors,” Jaczko told WBUR this week. “And when I see those things I scratch my head and wonder if they’re talking about the same industry I’ve been familiar with, because I don’t see how nuclear power plants are going to solve that problem.”
Building new plants will be costly, and it’s not clear such an investment is a better deal than renewables that continue to grow cheaper. And Democratic presidential candidates, despite stark differences on new nuclear plants, are less clear on more pressing, wonky questions, said Jesse Jenkins, an energy systems engineer and professor at Princeton University. Those likely include whether candidates support state or federal subsidies to keep financially distressed nuclear plants open, or if they’d extend licenses up to 60 years on stations deemed safe. ….. https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/cory-booker-nuclear_n_5d8299bae4b0957256b0ad04
Warren Unveils “Most Sweeping Set of Anti-Corruption Reforms Since Watergate”, TruthOut Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams September 17, 2019 Democratic presidential primary candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday unveiled a wide-ranging plan to combat corruption in U.S. politics with “big, structural change to fundamentally transform our government.”
The End Washington Corruption plan builds on legislation that the Massachusetts Democrat introduced last August, months before she announced her presidential campaign. Warren released the plan ahead of her Monday night speech in New York City, near the site of the tragic 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
“Today, I’m announcing a comprehensive set of far-reaching and aggressive proposals to root out corruption in Washington,” Warren wrote on Medium Monday. “It’s the most sweeping set of anti-corruption reforms since Watergate. The goal of these measures is straightforward: to take power away from the wealthy and the well-connected in Washington and put it back where it belongs — in the hands of the people.”
Warren directly targeted President Donald Trump with her Medium post. “Make no mistake about it: The Trump administration is the most corrupt administration of our lifetimes,” she wrote, highlighting tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, Supreme Court justices “hand-picked by right-wing extremist groups,” and key cabinet and ambassador posts the president has filled with former lobbyists and major donors.
“But these problems did not start with Donald Trump. They are much bigger than him,” Warren noted, emphasizing the need for broad, transformative change. “My plan lays out nearly a hundred ways that we can change our government to fix this problem — from improving public integrity rules for federal officials in every branch of government to ending lobbying as we know it, fixing the criminal laws to hold corrupt politicians to account, and ensuring our federal agencies and courts are free from corrupting influences.”
The plan has six broad goals under which Warren organized her proposals. The first goal is restoring public integrity — which, she argued, requires “rooting out financial conflicts of interest in Washington.” To achieve this, Warren would:
End self-dealing in the White House by applying conflict of interest laws to the president and vice president;
Disclose tax returns of federal candidates and officeholders to the public automatically;
Force senior government officials to divest from privately-owned assets that could present conflicts of interest;
Completely ban the practice of government officials trading individual stocks while in office;
Shut down a raft of additional shady practices that provide opportunities for government officials to serve their own financial interests; and
Immediately end the possibility of trading on access to insider political information.
As part of Warren’s effort to address the public’s lack of confidence in federal officials and institutions, she wants to “close and padlock the revolving door between government and industry.” Her proposals to achieve this are:
Ban “golden parachutes” that provide corporate bonuses to executives for serving in the federal government;
Restrict the ability of lobbyists to enter government jobs;
Make it illegal for elected officials and top government appointees to become lobbyists — ever; and
Restrict the ability of companies to buy up former federal officials to rig the game for themselves.
The White House hopeful would also work to curb the influence of corporations and powerful special interests on the U.S. justice system. Specifically, Warren calls for strengthening ethics requirements for federal judges and ensuring that Supreme Court justices are held to the same standard as judges in lower courts. She would also mandate the public dissemination of all federal judges’ financial reports, recusal decisions, and speeches and “close the loophole that allows federal judges to escape investigations for misconduct by stepping down from their post.”………. https://truthout.org/articles/warren-unveils-most-sweeping-set-of-anti-corruption-reforms-since-watergate/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=cea503c8-3faa-4731-ad8b-b83e698521c9
Sen. Elizabeth Warren pledges not to invest in nuclear energy and focus on renewables instead, MassLive, By Douglas Hook | dhook@masslive.com, 8 Sept 19, Sen. Elizabeth Warren made clear in a Sept. 4 climate town hall meeting that if she is successful in taking office as president, she will not invest in nuclear energy.
The Democratic presidential hopeful pledged to not only prevent the building of new power plants, but also said she would phase out all nuclear power by 2035 and replace it with renewables. After 52 years of producing energy, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station closed its doors on May 31.
Warren was asked what her opinion on nuclear energy replacing fossil fuels are during the Climate Town Hall.
“[Nuclear energy] is not carbon based, but it has a lot of risks associated with it,” said Warren. “Particularly the risks associated with spent fuel rods.”
Elizabeth Warren Says ‘No’ to Nuclear Power: Campaign Update, Yahoo Finance, Ari Natter September 5, 2019 (Bloomberg)— Elizabeth Warren is vowing to wean the country off nuclear power if elected president, joining a number of candidates who say the risks outweigh the benefit of the carbon free electricity source.
“The problem is it’s got a lot of risks associated with it, particularly the risks associated with the spent fuel rods,” Warren said during a presidential forum on climate change hosted by CNN. “In my administration we are not going to build any new nuclear power plants.”
Warren’s remarks come as Democratic candidates split over their support for the power source, which has drawn opposition from progressives and some environmental groups who have qualms over nuclear waste storage and mining uranium for fuel. Other candidates who either want to phase out the use of the fuel or stop the construction of new plants include Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Buttigieg, and Julian Castro.
Joe Biden, the Democratic race’s front-runner, has called for funding new nuclear technologies.
Sanders says U.S. Shouldn’t Fund Coastal Rebuilds (10:14 p.m.)
Democrats split over nuclear energy amid climate fight, The Hill, BY MIRANDA GREEN – 09/04/19The use of nuclear power is splitting Democratic presidential candidates, with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and businessman Andrew Yang among those calling for new plants and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) arguing vehemently against any expansions.
Somewhere in the middle stand former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who oppose building new reactors but support maintaining those already in operation.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who is vying with Sanders for the progressive mantle in the nomination fight and has been in the top three in polls alongside Sanders and Biden, hasn’t spelled out her position. Neither has Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), one of the Democratic hopefuls who released their stand-alone climate plan in the final hours leading up the forum.
Nuclear power is one of the only environmental and energy issues that splits the Democratic candidates, who generally agree on the big-picture need to take action to address climate change and to strengthen regulations to protect the environment. But there is no clear consensus when it comes to the role of nuclear energy.
As candidates are looking to distinguish themselves in a crowded field, and with two climate forums this month, some environmentalists say candidates’ stances on nuclear power will be the most telling. That belief is especially true for climate activists who oppose nuclear altogether.
“Given that we don’t have a way to deal with the waste from our existing nuclear reactors, let alone any additional ones, that’s a cause for concern,” said Mitch Jones, climate and energy program director at Food and Water Action.
“If you’re trying to extend the life of existing nuclear power, then you do not have the most environmentally friendly approach to the problem.”……..
the industry is struggling financially. So far this year, two reactors are expected to be retired despite various government subsidies helping the industry. Only one new nuclear power plant has come online since 2010.
The energy source also has a tainted past, rife with references to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. And nuclear waste remains an issue to this day.
Attacks on the Sanders’ climate plan appear to have less to do with the ongoing viability of nuclear power as a legitimate climate solution and more to do with an ongoing effort to convince the public to subsidize another unsuccessful sector of the energy industry.
Bernie Sanders’ Plan to Phase out Nuclear Power Draws Attacks — Here’s Why They’re Wrong https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/08/30/bernie-sanders-climate-plan-nuclear-phase-out-attacks, By Justin Mikulka • Friday, August 30, 2019 Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has released an ambitious climate proposal, one which champions of the status quo were quick to criticize. One line of attack, coming from many different sources, focuses on Sanders’ plan to phase out nuclear power, but the arguments, and who is behind them, deserve a closer look.Sanders’ proposal refers to nuclear power as one of several “false solutions” to the climate crisis:
“To get to our goal of 100 percent sustainable energy, we will not rely on any false solutions like nuclear, geoengineering, carbon capture and sequestration, or trash incinerators.”
The Washington Post editorial board quickly blasted Sanders’ plan to eliminate nuclear power: “Mr. Sanders also promises to make his plan unnecessarily expensive by ruling out a long-established source of carbon-free electricity: nuclear power.”
The New York Times quoted Joshua Freed, vice president for clean energy at Third Way, a think tank that describes itself as promoting “modern center-left ideas.”
“The Sanders plan appears to be big, but it’s not serious,” Freed said. “We need to have every option on the table.” Freed’s biography on the Third Way website makes clear that “advanced nuclear” is a top priority for the organization.
In an op-ed at Forbes attacking Sanders’ plan, Ellen R. Wald, an energy historian and senior fellow at The Atlantic Council, went so far as to say that the outcome of the plan would be that “we would live in darkness” and “many of us would starve.”
Former Top Regulator Says ‘Nuclear is Dying’
However, if you ask a former top nuclear regulator about the future of nuclear power, the prospects are much dimmer. Gregory Jaczko was the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2009 to 2012 and is the author of the book Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator. In an op-ed for the Washington Post in May, Jaczko asserted that “[n]uclear is dying” and argued that nuclear power is not a solution to the climate crisis.
He spells out multiple reasons not to pursue nuclear power, with the obvious safety risks topping his concerns. And rightly so. Jaczko served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
In addition to nuclear’s well-publicized safety risks, Jaczko also highlighted a less well-known one. He said that the nuclear industry wields such influence over regulatory agencies — something he saw firsthand — that safety is being sacrificed for profit.
Another downside is that building nuclear power plants is an incredibly expensive undertaking. Recent attempts to revive nuclear energy in the U.S. have been financial disasters, with $9 billion spent on one failed project in South Carolina alone.
Jaczko cites the low cost and low risk of renewables as another factor that makes nuclear obsolete. “I’ve now made alternative energy development my new career, leaving nuclear power behind. The current and potential costs — in lives and dollars — are just too high,” wrote Jaczko, who has founded the company Wind Future LLC.
Last year, William Von Hoene, senior vice president at Exelon, which operates nuclear plants, predicted that there would be no new nuclear power plants built in America for the same reason. “They are too expensive to construct, relative to the world in which we now live,” said Hoene.
Bailing Out Another Failing Industry
Like the coal industry, the U.S.nuclear industry has been on the decline, but in this case, the drop is primarily due to aging nuclear plants closing and not being replaced. Still, this trend doesn’t mean U.S. taxpayers won’t pay the price as both industries continue to lobby hard for bailouts.
n Ohio, nuclear industry lobbyists recently secured a $1.1 billion bailout of two economically failing nuclear power plants (and struggling coal plants) while incentives for renewables were cut. Not all Ohio citizens were happy with this handout, and one group is currently collecting signatures to put the bailout before voters in a referendum next year.
“I don’t see nuclear as a solution to climate change,” Jaczko told The Intercept. “It’s too expensive, and would take too long if it could even be deployed. There are cheaper, better alternatives. And even better alternatives that are getting cheaper, faster.”
The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report in May urging the use of more nuclear power but also admitted that this move would require the government picking up the tab. As Oilprice.com reported at the time, the “IEA pleaded with governments to rescue the industry” while admitting that without government intervention the prospect of new nuclear power projects in the U.S. and Europe was “inconceivable.”
Industry Not Giving Up
As evidenced by the nuclear bailouts, there is still money to be made in the utility business, and while the chances of building new nuclear power plants in the U.S. are remote, the industry is pushing back hard against Bernie Sanders’ plan.
Nuclear industry executives are perhaps inspired by the executives of failed coal, oil, and gas firms who get rich while bankrupting their companies.
Industry-backed think tanks and academic groups echo their funders’ talking points and continue to champion nuclear power as a climate solution.
And this think tank isn’t alone. According to the right-leaning Washington Examiner, Dr. Noah Kaufman, a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), also disagreed with Sanders’ approach to nuclear power.
“I see ruling out any valuable low-carbon technologies and policies as fighting the [climate] battle with one arm tied behind our backs,” said Kaufman.
However, CGEP itself is known for supporting climate-killing policies, such as its successful effort to help lift the crude oil export ban. Additionally, last year CGEP hired former Trump energy advisor and fossil fuel defender George “David” Banks as an expert on “international climate policy.”
Attacks on the Sanders’ climate plan appear to have less to do with the ongoing viability of nuclear power as a legitimate climate solution and more to do with an ongoing effort to convince the public to subsidize another unsuccessful sector of the energy industry.
The Green New Deal, The climate crisis is not only the single greatest challenge facing our country; it is also our single greatest opportunity to build a more just and equitable future, but we must act immediately. Bernie Fraser, Climate change is a global emergency. The Amazon rainforest is burning, Greenland’s ice shelf is melting, and the Arctic is on fire. People across the country and the world are already experiencing the deadly consequences of our climate crisis, as extreme weather events like heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods, and hurricanes upend entire communities, ecosystems, economies, and ways of life, as well as endanger millions of lives. Communities of color, working class people, and the global poor have borne and will bear this burden disproportionately.
The scientific community is telling us in no uncertain terms that we have less than 11 years left to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy, if we are going to leave this planet healthy and habitable for ourselves, our children, grandchildren, and future generations. As rising temperatures and extreme weather create health emergencies, drive land loss and displacement, destroy jobs, and threaten livelihoods, we must guarantee health care, housing, and a good-paying job to every American, especially to those who have been historically excluded from economic prosperity.
As President, Bernie Sanders Will Avert Climate Catastrophe and Create 20 Million Jobs
As president, Bernie Sanders will launch the decade of the Green New Deal, a ten-year, nationwide mobilization centered around justice and equity during which climate change will be factored into virtually every area of policy, from immigration to trade to foreign policy and beyond. This plan outlines some of the most significant goals we have set and steps we will take during this mobilization, including:
Reaching 100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization by 2050 at latest – consistent with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change goals – by expanding the existing federal Power Marketing Administrations to build new solar, wind, and geothermal energy sources.
Ending unemployment by creating 20 million jobs needed to solve the climate crisis. ……..
Declaring climate change a national emergency. We must take action to ensure a habitable planet for ourselves, for our children, and for our grandchildren. We will do whatever it takes to defeat the threat of climate change……..
Phase out the use of non-sustainablesources. This plan will stop the building of new nuclear power plants and find a real solution to our existing nuclear waste problem. It will also enact a moratorium on nuclear power plant license renewals in the United States to protect surrounding communities. We know that the toxic waste byproducts of nuclear plants are not worth the risks of the technology’s benefit, especially in light of lessons learned from the Fukushima meltdown and the Chernobyl disaster. To get to our goal of 100 percent sustainable energy, we will not rely on any false solutions like nuclear, geoengineering, carbon capture and sequestration, or trash incinerators.
Climate change isn’t our only existential threat, https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/06/opinions/nuclear-war-climate-change-2020-opinion-helfand/index.html, By Ira Helfand, July 6, 2019 (CNN)America confronts a long list of critical problems and they all require urgent attention. But among them, two issues stand out: catastrophic climate change and nuclear war are unique in the threat they pose to the very survival of human civilization. The enormity and imminence of these twin existential threats cannot be overstated and how to confront them must be the central issue of any presidential campaign.
Climate change and the danger of nuclear war are closely related. As climate change progresses over the coming decades, large areas of the planet will be unable to support their human population. As a result, there will likely be forced migrations on a scale unknown in human history, and an enormously increased risk of conflict, including nuclear conflict. Nuclear war, should it come, would cause further catastrophic climate disruption and widespread global famine.
Fortunately, there is a much greater focus on climate change in this election cycle than in 2016 when it received scant attention in the campaign despite the enormous differences in the policies espoused by the major candidates. This time around, the growing demand for action, especially by young people, and the daily reminders of the escalating damage to the planet, are forcing this issue to the fore where it rightly belongs.
Progressives in Congress have put forward a comprehensive plan to deal with this crisis in the form of the Green New Deal, and there is the real possibility that a post-Trump administration will embrace this plan or some variant on it. Unfortunately, there is much less attention at this point in the campaign to the growing danger of nuclear war. That must change.
Former Secretary of Defense William Perry has said that the danger of nuclear war is greater than it was during the Cold War, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set its iconic Doomsday Clock to 2 minutes to midnight, the closest it has been to a nuclear apocalypse since 1953, after the US tested the hydrogen bomb. Relations between the US and Russia are the worst they have been in three decades and the current tension is replete with nuclear saber-rattling from both sides. War between the nuclear superpowers is an ever-present threat.
Furthermore, research done over the last 15 years has shown that even a very “limited” nuclear war, involving less than 0.5% of the world’s nuclear weapons, would be enough to cause catastrophic global climate disruption and a worldwide famine, putting up to 2 billion people at risk. Such a war would not necessarily involve the great powers. A war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan could easily produce this level of global climate disruption.
Even if none of the nine nuclear-armed states makes a deliberate decision to launch nuclear weapons, the possibility of an accidental war remains. There have been at least six episodes during the nuclear weapons era when either Moscow or Washington began the process of launching its nuclear weapons in the mistaken belief that it was already under attack. As Robert McNamara, President Kennedy’s defense secretary, famously stated, “We lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war.” As long as they continue to maintain nuclear arsenals, the security “policy” of the nuclear-armed states is essentially a hope for continued good luck.
The last time the world was this close to nuclear annihilation, in the 1980s, the need to prevent nuclear war was front and center in the nation’s political discourse. A vast popular movement formed that demanded and won a freeze in the nuclear arms race.
The danger today demands a similar response, and this time the effort must focus on the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.
A campaign to focus national attention on this issue has begun to take shape around the Back from the Brink platform, a Green New Deal for the nuclear threat. Supported by more than 200 professional associations, faith communities, peace and environmental groups, it has been endorsed unanimously by the US Conference of Mayors, and by the municipalities of Baltimore, Los Angeles and DC, as well as being approved overwhelmingly by the California and Oregon legislatures and the New Jersey General Assembly.
In 2017, 122 nations voted to establish the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The US boycotted those negotiations and has not yet signed the treaty. The Back from the Brink campaign calls on the United States to embrace the treaty and lead an international effort to prevent nuclear war. It specifically urges the US to enter now into negotiations with the other nuclear-armed states for a verifiable, enforceable, timebound plan to eliminate their nuclear arsenals as the only way to guarantee that they are never used. We cannot know for sure that we will be able to eliminate nuclear weapons; we do know what is likely to happen if we don’t.
The United States cannot afford to elect a good president in 2020. It must elect a great president, and at this moment in time, greatness means the ability to deal successfully with the danger posed by climate change and nuclear weapons.
This paper attempts to refute the myth of “clean nuclear energy”, and discusses the unethical impact on the environment of the overall process of the nuclear energy electricity production industry, from mining to decommissioning, through the problematic framework of “health risk analysis”, “economical feasibility” and “sustainability”. It also focuses on the economic and safety fragility of developing countries in the South to deal with big loans or a possible catastrophe, not to mention managing nuclear waste for a very long period of time.
Finally, the paper diverges all the inductions of the different criteria discussed towards inferring a global categorically imperative ethical perception based on a biocentric stance that takes United Nations recommendations into consideration, such as the “Precautionary Principle”, the declarations on Human Rights and the rights of future generations to a healthy and sustainable environment, in order to settle down to an “ecosophical” conclusion.
1- Introduction: The “clean nuclear energy” myth!
Nuclear energy is still one of the options used today across the world, thought to be a clean source of energy that produces neither CO2 nor other Ozone related pollutants into the atmosphere. However, it is now been verified that the complete fuel cycle of nuclear energy production is generous in producing GHG as well as CFCs; from mining and milling to fuel enrichment, constructing and operating the nuclear facility, transportation of nuclear fuel, safety and security measures, reprocessing and recycling the depleted nuclear fuel, manufacturing by-products, encasing and burying the nuclear waste and eventually decommissioning the nuclear facility and its surrounding environment, including the contaminated soil(1).
Concerned communities in Japan who are removing contaminated soil and conducting clean up operations are using independent researchers because they have lost faith in their government: “The roots of mistrust came out after authorities issued radiation readings that often turned out to be incorrect”(2). This comes as a proof that governments don’t consider life cycle assessment mechanisms in calculating accurate GHG emissions, insurance, cost of KWh of electricity produced or genome radioactive infuriation. Most of the research is government sponsored or controlled by nuclear commissions, thus falling in “conflict of interest” controversy.
The nuclear fuel cycle is a generous CO2 emitter that can exceed 288 grams of CO2 e/KWh, or (66)g as a mean value, even when existing studies fail to consider emissions of co-products (3) which cause global warming too. Research on light water nuclear reactors showed CO2 emission up to 220 g/KWh (4), yet this value is expected to rise as uranium ore grade worldwide is deteriorating by time. The USA ore grade average, for example, dropped from 0.28% U3O8 to 0.07 – 0.11% (1100 ppm) in 40 years (5). The complete life cycle assessment mechanism considered to calculate CO2 equivalent (CO2 e/KWh) in the previous analysis can raise this value significantly!
A comparative study on GHG emissions of thin-film photovoltaic electricity generation yielded a range of carbon foot print of 14-26 g/KWh under 2400 KWh per square meter per year, through a performance of 80%, for a life time of 30 years(6). A median value of carbon foot print for wind power was calculated to be 11 g/KWh(7), compared to the 66 g for nuclear without considering co-products emissions, uranium ore grade deterioration …etc.
The nuclear fuel cycle also produces chemical compounds that can harm the Ozone layer due to the generous emissions of CFCs during uranium enrichment. CFC 114 produced is an Ozone layer depletory, where as 93% of the CFC 114 released in the USA is from uranium enrichment (8).
Further more, the enrichment of uranium is a highly polluting industry during which U238 (Depleted Uranium) is produced; a heavy metal, 1.7 times heavier than lead, used in encasing ammunition among other things. It burns upon impact and 80% of its weight disintegrates into aerosol powder (half – radioactive life 4.5 billion years, the same as the Earth’s age) (9).
Regardless of these justified arguments, some might still argue that nuclear energy emits far less CO2 than some fossil fuels, particularly coal. However, we would like to counter-argue that claim on the basis that nuclear energy production is unethical on the bases of a set of criteria:
Health risk analysis, economic feasibility, sustainability, security and liability, which will be discussed in this paper. Additional arguments would be based on the “Precautionary Principle”, United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and the right of future generations in a healthy, safe and sustainable environment.
For those who might still believe that moral responsibility and ethical stances don’t change the world just have to wait and see how an ethics committee decision shaped the future of nuclear Germany!…………”
