Thinking
twice about nuclear power.
Nothing
has really changed. Decades ago,
the nuclear industry boasted that
nuclear
power does not release greenhouse gases.
The opposite was true then and
the
opposite is true now.
Enormous
amounts of coal were burned in the preparation of nuclear fuel.
They
still burn lots of coal for that purpose.
More fossil fuel will be consumed
to
deal with nuclear wastes, a problem which has not been solved responsibly.
Even if the nuclear fuel cycle did not consume fossil fuel, which it does, the amount
of green house gases from power plants is tiny compared to what comes from
automotive
vehicles and from heating. Nukes
are no solution to global warming.
The nuclear industry has been the biggest enemy of alternative energy sources.
Their lobbying starved these better sources of funds to rake in their own multi-billion dollar subsidies.
This made their prophecies of renewable energy inadequacy a self fulfilling prophecy.
If alternatives had received the moral equivalent of nuclear boondoggles and
fossil
fuel tax breaks we would have had a cleaner renewable energy economy long ago.
The nuclear industry lied under oath about how much energy we actually get from uranium.
Their claims of net energy yield violate the second law of thermodynamics.
Their specifications for the transportation of nuclear wastes violate the law of conservation
of
energy. Rigged tests were used to
convince the unwary that unsafe
methods
are perfectly O.K.
They lied about the casualties caused by nuclear accidents. Thousands of victims of the
Three
Mile Island accident were denied their day in court in a corrupt miscarriage
of justice.
They lied about the effect of the Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union.
More than 2 million people in the Ukraine have been treated for radiation illness.
Only 20 per cent of the children in Belraus are healthy. Ukrainian officials
believe
that 7 million people throughout the former Soviet Union have suffered.
A single accident can cause a trillion dollar disaster. The industry will be excused.
The Price Anderson Act abolishes everyone’s property rights to protect the property
rights of nuclear utilities. No other energy source requires a Price Anderson Act.
Bush
insists on renewing this Act.
Bush has deregulated the transportation of low level but highly toxic nuclear wastes.
He
is pushing to put these poisons
in ordinary garbage dumps.
Now, the Bush Administration wants to pay half the cost of new nuclear plant designs
which are arguably less safe than the unsafe ones we already have.
They feature a design that can produce the kind of carbon fire that Chernobyl did.
They
want to eliminate
protective
enclosures to save costs.
Congress is about to ram through what that king of no-bid contracts
Cheney
decided, in his secret energy
meetings.
The fraud and deceit of Enron is amateurish, compared to business
as
usual in the nuclear
establishment.
A
lot of smart people have been taken in by nuclear disinformation.
We need a responsible and intelligent energy policy, not like what is
being rushed through right now based on massive disinformation.
Think
twice about the nuclear option…you bet!
Sidney
J. Goodman, P.E, M.S.M.E.
(201)
327-5158
author
of “Asleep at the Geiger Counter” published by Blue Dolphin, Inc.