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Nuclear Power: What Are You Going to Do about It?
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| Because there is no safe dose of radiation, and because we have no specific knowledge about how routinely released radionuclides migrate through the biosphere, there is no factual basis to the claim that nuclear power is safe. |
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by George Crocker
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First the good news: we are not likely to see new commercial nuclear power reactors in this country anytime soon. They are simply too expensive. A power company in Florida recently announced that the new reactors it is considering would cost about $17 billion for 2,000 megawatts. A Texas utility recently reported that two new 700 megawatt reactors would cost $8 billion. This range, from about $5.7 million to $8.5 million per installed megawatt, means that virtually any other option for providing electric utility services is cheaper. For comparison, new wind turbines now cost about $2,000 per installed megawatt.
Without even considering significant carbon contributions at several links in the nuclear chain, and ignoring a lead time in excess of 10 years for new reactors, cost alone precludes any meaningful role for nuclear power as a solution to global climate change. Until nuclear power advocates figure out how to warp and pervert energy markets even more than they already are (which is considerable, and they might), these costs, upwards of $5,700 per installed kilowatt, make new reactors impossible to justify.
The bad news is that existing reactors around the country, including Monticello and Prairie Island here in Minnesota, are being re-licensed for 20-year operating life extensions. Worse, potentially, even as reactor parts age and deteriorate, reactors are being modified to run hotter and at higher pressures so that a few additional megawatts of power can be squeezed out of them. In addition, nuclear waste storage issues remain unresolved. The costs and consequences of a multitude of problems foisted on society by nuclear profiteering therefore continue to escalate. One of these problems is an ever-increasing threat of catastrophic radiation contamination due to accident or attack. Another more insidious problem has to do with adverse public health impacts caused by routine radiation releases. The question is, what are we going to do about it?
The answer, probably, is nothing.
Then, if catastrophe does strike, the survivors will wring their hands and wonder how it could possibly have happened. If it doesn’t, survivors will continue burying their loved ones prematurely due to unexplained cancers. And we will all continue paying much more for this electricity that kills our own than we would be paying if utility regulators weren’t, as a practical matter, colluding with nuclear profiteers. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are things we can do about it. To keep it simple, we will focus on just one single course of action that could make all the difference: monitoring routine radiation releases from nuclear power plants.
Of course, radiation monitors already surround the nation’s commercial reactors, and every year each reactor routinely releases many tens, hundreds, thousands, or even millions of curies of radiation into the air and/or the water. These routine radiation releases are reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the data, confusing though it is, is available to the public. The problem is that while the nuclear industry brags about the fact that not a single radionuclide has ever been detected off-site, the National Academy of Sciences now conclusively reports that there is no safe dose of radiation (see the BEIR VII Report, June 30, 2005). Every single exposure to every single radionuclide increases the opportunity for cancers, mutations, and other diseases including Down syndrome.
In other words, monitoring around nuclear reactors is sufficient to tell us where the radioactive waste that is routinely released into our environment isn’t, but we really don’t care where it isn’t, because it’s not there. We need to know where it is. We need to know where the radiation goes after it is released, and where concentration zones are located, because people live in those concentration zones. Unfortunately, the monitoring is not sophisticated enough to tell us where the radiation goes after it is released, and how it migrates, year after year, through the biosphere.
Because there is no safe dose of radiation, and because we have no specific knowledge about how routinely released radionuclides migrate through the biosphere, there is no factual basis to the claim that nuclear power is safe. Quite the contrary. Considering that collectively, commercial US nuclear reactors routinely release many thousands of curies of radioactive waste into our environment every year, and that much of this radiation has a half-life of many years, the only rational conclusion is that routine radioactive waste releases from commercial reactors are responsible for the premature deaths of thousands of Americans on an annual basis.
For example, in 1974, Monticello reported to the NRC that it routinely released more than one million curies of radiation, including tritium, into the air. The half-life of tritium is over 12 years. This means that this year, in 2008, about 10 percent of the tritium radiation released in 1974 is still circulating through the biosphere, some portion of it passing into and out of our bodies, and then into and out of another’s body, and another’s, and another’s, elevating opportunities for cancers all along the way. And nobody has any idea of where any of it has been, or is now, or will be tomorrow.
The North American Water Office, with support from the Prairie Island Indian Community, took a good first step toward adequate radiation monitoring in Minnesota last year, during the 2007 legislative session. With excellent leadership from Representative Karen Clark, the Minnesota House passed a bill that would require the Minnesota Department of Health to monitor routine radiation releases at commercial nuclear reactors in Minnesota with enough precision to define the radiation plume after the radionuclides are released into the biosphere. Unfortunately, this legislation died during the Conference Committee in 2007 because the Minnesota Senate failed to include it in the final bill. And, during the 2008 Minnesota legislative session, leadership in the Senate again failed to take up this legislation.
Adequate radiation monitoring is readily achievable. After all, when the former Russian spy was assassinated with polonium 210 a couple of years ago, minute amounts of radiation were tracked all across Europe. The North Korean nuclear program got busted because minute amounts of radiation were detected days later from thousands of miles away. The technology to precisely define the radiological environment created by commercial nuclear reactors is readily available and could quickly be deployed, at every reactor site in the country. But if we did that, we would identify locations where radiation levels are elevated. The people living in those locations would quickly learn about their potential for elevated radiation exposure, and therefore heightened risk of cancer. How long do you think the nuclear power industry would survive if such information were readily available?
If you think that it makes sense to require radiation monitoring that defines the radiological environment created by nuclear power plants, maybe the time for doing nothing is over. Maybe, with the support of WAMM and others who desire a safer, cleaner, more responsible energy future, we can pick it up where we left off in 2007, and pass into law the Radiation Monitoring Act of 2009.
George Crocker is Executive Director of the North American Water Office. Online: www.nawo.org. |
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© 2008 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete May 2008 Index - click here
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