Opinion | Nuclear Power Still Doesn’t Make Much Sense - The New York Times

The case for next-gen nuclear is getting harder to make as the price of solar, wind, and batteries plummets. In this well-reasoned op-ed by @fmanjoo, @mzjacobson describes this as an "opportunity cost" we cannot afford in the face of a climate crisis. https://t.co/QoHbp2nHa9

— Jay Turner (@_jay_turner) September 16, 2022

Opinion | Nuclear Power Still Doesn’t Make Much Sense - The New York Times

The Insanity of Expanding Nuclear Energy - Emagazine.com

Former nuclear regulatory top dogs from the United States, France, Germany and Great Britain issued a joint statement in January strenuously opposing any expansion of nuclear power as a strategy to combat climate change. Why? There is not a single good reason to build new nuclear plants. Here are ten solid reasons not to…

The Insanity of Expanding Nuclear Energy - Emagazine.com

NIRS Statement in Response to the Inflation Reduction Act: Climate Compromises and Sacrifices Are Not Justifiable

  On Friday, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) passed the House and is headed to President Biden’s desk to be signed into law. This bill could have been our best – and maybe our only – chance to make real progress on fighting climate change and creating a just environmental and economic future. It should've been a major success for climate policy. 

It is a deep disappointment that the IRA is not truly a climate bill and is certain to harm the very communities that most need action on climate. With the IRA, our elected leaders have chosen to side with dirty energy industries, their financiers and investors, corporate media, and political opportunists to prop up the dirty energy status quo with hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies, financing, and devil’s bargains. 

NIRS joins the many frontline and BIPOC-led organizations that have pointed out they cannot support the bill. The compromise between climate action and climate destruction in the IRA is not one we can accept. NIRS urges Congress and the White House to go back and develop a policy that truly addresses climate change and environmental injustice – including restoration and repair of the harms caused by fossil fuels and nuclear energy. 

We refuse to accept that frontline communities must be sacrificed yet again for nuclear, fossil, and other dirty energy interests. We stand in solidarity with the frontline communities and we will not stop fighting for a just, equitable, and sustainable future. 

Read our full statement on the IRA here.

ACT NOW: Tell the House to Oppose the Nuclear Bailout and Save the Climate!

ACT NOW: Tell the House to Oppose the Nuclear Bailout and Save the Climate!

BIG NEWS: West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin reached a deal with Congressional Democrats on a sweeping climate and energy package that supposedly would address the climate crisis, now called the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). The Senate passed the bill on Sunday, August 7, and the House of Representatives plans to vote on it this Friday, August 12. 

This bill could have been our best – and maybe our only – chance to make real progress on fighting climate change and creating the just environmental and economic future the Biden administration promised voters. It should've been a major success for climate policy, thanks to tireless activists who worked to hold Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer accountable to get Sen. Manchin to the table on climate.

But, among the desperately needed good progressive measures in the IRA are bad policies and hundreds of billions of dollars in poison pills – handouts to fossil fuels, false climate solutions, and Big Nuclear. These provisions would profit dirty and polluting energy industries that are causing climate and ecological crises at the expense of taxpayers, environmental justice, and TRUE investment in the 100% renewable, just, and sustainable energy future we deserve. 

Frankly, the harm they would cause can’t be justified, and may actually block renewable energy and other real climate solutions in the bill.

Of the $369 billion dollars, up to $72 billion is slated for subsidies to aging nuclear reactors — a wasteful expenditure that will not create a single new job, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by any amount, nor make any progress towards climate action. The measure is nothing more than a corrupt bailout scam by the nuclear industry and their cronies in Congress. There is also: 

    $250 billion in taxpayer-guaranteed loans to prop up old nuclear and fossil fuel power plants 

    $40 billion in taxpayer loans that could go to building new reactors and fossil fuel power plants

    $700 million to promote domestic uranium mining and enrichment

We cannot settle for the inadequate, unjust, and wasteful policies in the Inflation Reduction Act. We cannot settle for a bill that backs false climate solutions and sacrifices frontline communities. We MUST demand better from Congress: a strong national policy for climate, the economy, and for environmental justice. The time to act is now. Demand that Congress and the Biden administration eliminate the massive subsidies to nuclear power and other dirty energy. 

Speak up today! Tell Your Representatives: Don’t Waste our Climate Future on False Solutions

Nuclear Power Is Not Carbon-Free ECU 662 Michel Lee - YouTube

Nuclear Power Is Not Carbon-Free ECU 662 Michel Lee - YouTube:

Enviro Close-Up #662 -- Nuclear Power Is Not Carbon-Free Michel Lee, an attorney and senior analyst for Promoting Health and Sustainable Energy (PHASE), shatters the current pitch of the nuclear industry that nuclear power is carbon-free. “It’s flat-out false,” says Lee. The nuclear fuel cycle—which includes mining, milling and enrichment of uranium—is carbon intensive, she notes. And nuclear plants emit Carbon-14, a radioactive form of carbon with a half-life of 5,700 years. Nuclear power “is an extremely ineffective way to deal with climate change,” says Lee. She says media accepting it as carbon-free and an answer to climate change are doing “reporting of press releases.” Further, she tells of how the nuclear industry “would shrivel up and die without subsidies” from government.” She speaks of environmental justice and how nuclear power “has left an astonishingly horrific legacy on uranium-mining communities, in the United States mostly Native American communities,” and minority communities are being “targeted” for nuclear waste. She states: “Nuclear is particularly poorly suited to democracy.”

More Nuclear Energy Is Not The Solution To Our Climate Crisis

Faced with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report, some environmental leaders are all too ready to toss a lifeline to aging, uneconomic nuclear power plants. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), long venerated as America’s most rigorous nuclear watchdog group, joined this chorus in early November.

The UCS report, “The Nuclear Dilemma,” proposes that we single out “safe” but financially ailing nuclear plants and subsidize their operations, so that they might remain open — thus avoiding additional carbon emissions from coal or natural gas plants that might replace them. America gets about 20 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, but only 17 of the 99 reactors that generate this power are unprofitable, according to UCS. Those reactors account for just 3 percent of overall U.S. power generation, though UCS says the share of unprofitable nuclear plants could grow in future years if the price of natural gas drops or the costs of maintaining older nuclear facilities rise.

What do we gain by breathing some extra life into these plants? Proponents say “zero-carbon emissions.” That’s if we choose to ignore the emissions associated with mining and processing uranium, building nuclear power stations, managing nuclear waste, and — on those rare but horrific occasions — dealing with the consequences of a major nuclear disaster.

Bailing out old, financially shaky nuclear plants is a short-sighted response to a huge challenge that requires much bigger, much more transformative thinking. Instead, we ought to invest big in our leading zero-carbon alternatives — solar and wind — which offer far cheaper electricity and, unlike nuclear, have life-cycle costs that have steadily dropped over the past several years…

more: More Nuclear Energy Is Not The Solution To Our Climate Crisis

NIRS Publishes White Paper on Reactor Shutdowns and Phaseout Plans | NIRS

NIRS published a white paper on strategies states can use to manage shutdowns of nuclear reactors responsibly and cost-effectively. Nuclear Reactor Closures: Practical, Cost-Effective Solutions for Communities and the Climate, takes lessons learned from reactor closures and state subsidy programs. It proposes proactive, cost-effective ways for states to plan for shutdowns, while protecting workers and local communities through economic transition and accelerating renewable energy growth and greenhouse gas reductions.

NIRS Publishes White Paper on Reactor Shutdowns and Phaseout Plans | NIRS

nirs.org

Should We Subsidize Nuclear Power to Fight Climate Change? - Scientific American Blog Network

That’s what some are advocating, but the arguments in favor of doing so are flawed

Last month, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) put out a reportentitled The Nuclear Power Dilemma: Declining Profits, Plant Closures, and the Threat of Rising Carbon Emissions that calls for offering subsidies to unprofitable nuclear power plants. Not surprisingly, it has been widely welcomed by nuclear advocates, who interpret the report as essentially saying “yes to nuclear power” in order to reduce carbon emissions.

But that interpretation misses the many important but less prominent insights in the UCS report… read more

Conclusion: "All these factors undermine the report’s central assumption that nuclear plants will be replaced by fossil fueled plants. To be fair, the UCS report does call for periodically assessing whether continued support is necessary and cost effective. But such support might already not be cost effective. All told, the economic basis for subsidies is uncertain at best; more likely, it is flawed. Either way, it may be best to get onward with the transition from fossil fuels and nuclear power to renewables."

Should We Subsidize Nuclear Power to Fight Climate Change? - Scientific American Blog Network

NUCLEAR POWER AND CLIMATE ACTION

When nuclear power started to develop into an ever more important source of electric energy during the second half of the twentieth century, there grew widespread optimism regarding the potential of this seemingly unlimited, clean and, in the long run, economic resource. The unresolved problem of how to dispose of nuclear waste—which degrades very slowly, with a half-life of up to 15.7 million years—existed from the beginning but was widely ignored. Instead, much hope was placed in finding a solution to this problem—a solution that, up to this date, still does not exist.

Those who were skeptical of nuclear power were proven right by the accidents of Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and Fukushima in 2011. The latter two incidents in particular encouraged demands for a nuclear power phase-out and led to the establishment of phase-out plans in several countries, including Germany. When the urgency of climate change, along with the necessity of rapid decarbonization, became more evident, many scientists and activists alike pleaded for the use of nuclear power as a transitional technology. They argued that the use of nuclear power could help to avoid shortages in energy supplies caused by the relative unreliability of renewables like wind and solar energy.

In this important new study, Tim Judson, Executive Director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) and renowned nuclear power expert, does away with persistent myths about the importance of nuclear power. Starting not from an abstract position but by considering real-world events, the author demonstrates the very concrete challenges that the production of nuclear power poses for the environment as well as for our economy.

In addition to the long-lasting environmental impacts of nuclear power production, Judson pays attention to how it affects communities—and in particular poor communities of color—through the mining and processing of uranium as well as the disposal of nuclear waste. While mainly focusing on the production and use of nuclear power in the US, as well as possible phase-out scenarios, this study can easily be applied to other contexts around the world. Informed by global trends in climate change, this study is of utmost urgency in showing us a path toward a nuclear-free, sustainable future.

Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office introduces this study as an opportunity to carefully investigate the possible potential as well as the dangers of nuclear power, and the question of its suitability as a transitional technology.

FULL REPORT (English/PDF)

NUCLEAR POWER AND CLIMATE ACTION | ROSA LUXEMBURG STIFTUNG NYC

Annual dose of empirical data shows nuclear power in continued decline – Report tracks global success of renewable energy | Beyond Nuclear International

Annual dose of empirical data shows nuclear power in continued decline

By Linda Pentz Gunter

When arguing the case for or against nuclear energy, you can go with the masters of spin and omission or you can go with the empirical data. We prefer the latter. And for that, there is the welcome annual edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report.

After that, the job becomes easy. There IS no case for nuclear power. It’s fundamentally over. Yet governments — mainly those of nuclear weapons states — cling on to it even as their fingers are loosened one at a time from the ledge. They refuse to fall. Why?

These questions are largely answered in the 2018 edition of the WNISR which rolled out in London, UK on September 4, and is available for download — in full or as an executive summary — from the WNISR website… … …

more: Report tracks global success of renewable energy | Beyond Nuclear International

Radioactivity harms us and no dose is “safe” | Beyond Nuclear International

A “small” dose can do immense damage; our new handbook explains how and why

All nuclear power plants routinely release radioactive gases and water contaminated with radioactive isotopes. When a nuclear plant has a serious accident — as occurred at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima — orders of magnitude more radioactivity is released into the environment.

Uranium mining also releases harmful radioactive isotopes and leaves behind radioactive waste. The 1979 uranium tailings pond spill at Church Rock, NM — 90 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste and 1,100 tons of solid mill waste — was the largest accidental release of radioactive waste in US history and permanently contaminated the Puerco River.

Radioactive releases occur all along the uranium fuel chain, beginning with uranium mining and culminating in radioactive waste “management.”

All of these releases — whether large or small (because there is no “safe” dose) — impact human health with varying degrees of severity. And yet most of the time, these impacts are poorly understood, hushed up, or even dismissed. When discoveries are made — such as increased rates of leukemia in populations living near nuclear power or reprocessing plants — there is an immediate effort by industry, often supported by governments, to undermine, challenge or negate such findings.

The fact remains, however, that both the immediate and long-term damage done to human health — which can last for generations — is the single, most compelling reason not to continue with the use of nuclear power and the extractive, polluting industries that must support it.

The Radiation and Harm to Human Health chapter of the Beyond Nuclear anti-nuclear handbook, is available now for download and printing as a standalone booklet. In it, we endeavor to both explain and synthesize the many ways that radioactivity released through the nuclear power sector damages human health, especially the most vulnerable members of our population — women, pregnancy, babies and young children…

more: Radioactivity harms us and no dose is “safe” | Beyond Nuclear International

NEW HANDBOOK: "The Case Against Nuclear Power: Radiation and Harm to Human Health" (PDF)

An A-Z against nuclear power | Beyond Nuclear International

The Overview section of our new Handbook provides simple explanations of the entire nuclear fuel chain

What is the difference between an open pit and an in-situ leach uranium mine? How does a nuclear power plant produce electricity? What happens to reactor fuel once it’s no longer usable? What is the difference between high-level and low-level radioactive waste and where is it stored? Why isn’t reprocessing really “recycling”?

We may know the answers to some or all of these questions. But can we deliver a succinct, clear, accessible answer to explain them to someone not already steeped in the issue?

As any activist engaged in anti-nuclear advocacy knows, nuclear power is a complex topic and describing each phase of the nuclear fuel chain can quickly bog us down in long, technical explanations. And once we go there, eyes glaze and we lose our audience.

Proponents of nuclear energy have taken full advantage of this, downplaying and minimizing the risks and using facile and superficially appealing sound bites, unsupported by facts, to convince people that nuclear power is benign and useful for climate change.

Facts are what we believe will change people’s minds. But the idea that bombarding someone with a deluge of irrefutable facts about the dangers of nuclear power will automatically win them to our cause has proven to be an illusion. It doesn’t necessarily work.

We do need facts, of course. And that is where our Handbook — The Case Against Nuclear Power: Facts and Arguments from A-Z — comes in. We must be able to accurately describe why nuclear power is dangerous, uneconomical and unjust. But we must do so in succinct, simple lay language. And then, once the basics are understood, we need to move people. And that is why the Beyond Nuclear International website came to be born, providing a natural home for the Handbook and expanding from facts to compelling narratives…

An A-Z against nuclear power | Beyond Nuclear International

Global Nuclear Power in 2017 : Bankruptcies, Shutdowns, Abandoned Constructions Show A Deepening Crisis | DiaNuke.org

The Year 2017 for Global Nuclear Power in a nutshell: 4 reactor startups (12 less than scheduled), 3 shutdowns, 4 construction starts, 2 abandoned constructions, bankruptcy of Westinghouse, bailout and breakup of AREVA, significant financial and economic pressure on nuclear operators. Five new reactors entered long-term outage, and 3 were restarted. Globally, 405 reactors operating (1 less than a year ago), 52 under construction (3 less).

read: Global Nuclear Power in 2017 : Bankruptcies, Shutdowns, Abandoned Constructions Show A Deepening Crisis | DiaNuke.org

Beyond Nuclear - Home - U.S. nuclear companies invited to help launch Saudi Arabia’s dangerous “Atomic Age”

Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih is extending invitations to the U.S. nuclear industry to launch the Gulf Region’s most ambitious nuclear power program.

The Saudi atomic energy plan is to build as many as 17 nuclear power plants by 2032.  The Saudi Arabia government has stated that its atomic power program will be “self-sufficient” in the production of nuclear fuel at 5% enriched uranium-235 and purely directed for civilian power development. The pronouncement comes as Saudi energy officials remain silent on their past refusal to not pursue high-grade uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing technologies as military weapons production facilities. In any case, the introduction of nuclear materials will significantly increase instability and tensions in the region.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry visited the Saudi Arabia capitol in Riyad for talks on the nuclear deal that would include negoitations with the bankrupt Westinghouse Electric Corporation to build two of the nuclear power projects despite the company financially abandoning its AP1000 construction projects for the two reactor units halted in South Carolina and two more units teetering on cancellation in Georgia.

Saudia Arabia is similarly reaching out for nuclear power technology from Russia, South Korea, France and China.

more: Beyond Nuclear - Home - U.S. nuclear companies invited to help launch Saudi Arabia’s dangerous “Atomic Age”

#DontNuketheClimate #COP23 | Rally on 11.11, Bonn, Germany

The solutions to the climate crisis are clear: A rapid, just transition to a nuclear-free, carbon-free energy system. The only sure way to stop the global warming impacts of energy use is to transition as quickly as possible from antiquated energy models of the 20th Century and their polluting nuclear power and fossil fuel technologies … to the safe, clean, affordable and sustainable renewable, efficient, and smart technologies of the 21st Century.

The International Anti-Nuclear campaign "don't nuke the climate" – On 03.11.2017 October 03.11.2017, at a press conference in bonn, its agenda for the approaching Conference " Cop23".

Nuclear power in particular cannot solve the climate crisis. Indeed, its continued use exacerbates global warming by preventing the deployment of clean energy systems.

Among a myriad of other problems, nuclear power is:

Rooted in human rights violations and environmental racism: First Nations, people of color and low-income communities are targeted for uranium mining and radioactive waste. Radiation harms women and girls at twice the rate as their male counterparts. And radioactive pollution indiscriminately harms future generations, poisoning the environment for hundreds to thousands of years.

Too Dirty: Nuclear reactors and the nuclear fuel chain produce vast amounts of lethal radioactive waste, which grow whenever nuclear power is used. The nuclear fuel chain is responsible for far more carbon emissions than renewable energy generation and improved energy efficiency. All reactors routinely emit radiation and radioactive waste. Scientific bodies agree have confirmed that there is no “safe” level of radiation exposure.

Too Dangerous: Continued use of nuclear power will inevitably lead to more Fukushimas, Church Rocks, and Chernobyls. The technology and materials needed to generate nuclear energy can be diverted to nuclear weapons programs.
Too Expensive: Nuclear power is the costliest means possible of reducing carbon and methane emissions; its use crowds out investment in clean energy sources.

Too Slow: Use of nuclear power to reduce fossil fuel emissions would require an unprecedented nuclear construction program, beyond the capability of the world’s manufacturers within an acceptable time frame.

Clean energy, including solar, wind, geothermal, energy efficiency, distributed generation, electricity storage and other advanced technologies can meet the world’s energy needs without carbon and methane emissions, radioactive waste, and other pollutants.

FUNDRAISER

dont-nuke-the-climate-2017.causevox.com

PETITION 

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Don't nuke the climate
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• original post  on Facebook with images and a share button: facebook.com/robert.cherwink/posts/10209890984610620

on facebook: Robert Cherwink - #nonukes :: #DontNuketheClimate #COP23 | Rally...

Please Join Us in Supporting the Don't Nuke the Climate Campaign! | NIRS | COP23 ::: #DontNukeTheClimate

NIRS is a founding member of the Don't Nuke the Climate coalition -- a global campaign to stop nuclear power and promote urgent, ambitious action on climate change. We are based in the US and serves the grassroots anti-nuclear and sustainable energy movements. 

It is more important than ever for the voices of people from the US and North America are heard at the COP23 global climate conference next month in Germany. President Trump opposes climate action and is working to undermine the Paris Agreement. His administration is strongly promoting nuclear power and fossil fuels -- most dramatically with moves to create a $100+ billion bailout for nuclear and coal power plants! 

This is a bad example for the rest of the world, and we must make sure that other countries know Americans oppose nuclear power and want a nuclear-free, carbon-free world.

Nuclear power is not a solution to climate change - it is too dirty, too dangerous, too expensive, and too slow to solve the climate crisis -- and it has a long track record of violating basic human rights. From mining uranium to making nuclear waste, to disasters like Fukushima and Chornobyl, it poisons the environment and endangers our health and security. Climate action funds must focus on sustainable, 100% renewable energy solutions -- and not false, dirty energy sources like nuclear, dirty biomass, and large-scale hydro power.

The Don't Nuke the Climate! campaign is a grassroots international campaign to bring that message to the COP23 global climate conference at Bonn, Germany in November 2017.  

We have to stop nuclear power from raiding climate action funds to build nuclear reactors, mine uranium, and make radioactive waste.

Thanks for whatever support you can give!

#DontNukeTheClimate

>> Please Join Us in Supporting the Don't Nuke the Climate Campaign! | NIRS

#DONTNUKETHECLIMATE :: COP23 / Nov. 2017 / BONN (GERMANY)

Jasmine Bright photo

The solutions to the climate crisis are clear: A rapid, just transition to a nuclear-free, carbon-free energy system. The only sure way to stop the global warming impacts of energy use is to transition as quickly as possible from antiquated energy models of the 20th Century and their polluting nuclear power and fossil fuel technologies … to the safe, clean, affordable and sustainable renewable, efficient, and smart technologies of the 21st Century.

Nuclear power in particular cannot solve the climate crisis. Indeed, its continued use exacerbates global warming by preventing the deployment of clean energy systems.

Among a myriad of other problems, nuclear power is:

Rooted in human rights violations and environmental racism: First Nations, people of color and low-income communities are targeted for uranium mining and radioactive waste. Radiation harms women and girls at twice the rate as their male counterparts. And radioactive pollution indiscriminately harms future generations, poisoning the environment for hundreds to thousands of years.

Too Dirty: Nuclear reactors and the nuclear fuel chain produce vast amounts of lethal radioactive waste, which grow whenever nuclear power is used. The nuclear fuel chain is responsible for far more carbon emissions than renewable energy generation and improved energy efficiency. All reactors routinely emit radiation and radioactive waste. Scientific bodies agree have confirmed that there is no “safe” level of radiation exposure.

Too Dangerous: Continued use of nuclear power will inevitably lead to more Fukushimas, Church Rocks, and Chernobyls. The technology and materials needed to generate nuclear energy can be diverted to nuclear weapons programs.

Too Expensive: Nuclear power is the costliest means possible of reducing carbon and methane emissions; its use crowds out investment in clean energy sources.

Too Slow: Use of nuclear power to reduce fossil fuel emissions would require an unprecedented nuclear construction program, beyond the capability of the world’s manufacturers within an acceptable time frame.

Clean energy, including solar, wind, geothermal, energy efficiency, distributed generation, electricity storage and other advanced technologies can meet the world’s energy needs without carbon and methane emissions, radioactive waste, and other pollutants.

Sign our petition

COP23 / Nov. 2017 / BONN (GERMANY)

Please Join Us in Supporting the Don't Nuke the Climate Campaign! | Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Beware nuclear industry’s fake news on being emissions free | Letters | Environment | The Guardian

David Blackburn says we need decentralised energy sources; David Lowry on nuclear not being zero-carbon technology; plus letters from David Hayes and Fred Starr

…Your incisive editorial makes many strong points, not least highlighting the exigencies of potential security compromises and terrorism vulnerabilities of the planned new nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point. But there is a fatal flaw in the argument you set out. The editorial asserts: “Nuclear power has a trump card: it is a zero-carbon technology which delivers a continuous, uninterrupted supply.”

This is demonstrably untrue. On the latter point, you only have to consult the published operating record of reactors to see this is an unsustainable claim. All reactors have lengthy planned outages (shutdowns) for operational reasons; some have significant unplanned outages due to operational failures; and in the extreme case of post-accident safety prudence, such as in Japan, their 54 reactors were all closed for years after the 2011 Fukushima disaster – and became hugely expensive “stranded assets.”

On alleged zero-carbon status of nuclear plants, you repeat a similarly erroneous assertion made in your editorial of 1 October 2005 (Pre-empting debate), where you wrote: “The big advantage of nuclear generation is that it does not produce environmentally degrading emissions in the way that fossil fuel generation does.”

You printed my response to this assertion (There is nothing green about Blair’s nuclear dream, 20 October 2005) in which I set out the various ways the carbon footprint of nuclear power is substantial, if the whole “cradle-to-grave” nuclear fuel chain (uranium mining, milling, enrichment, fuel production, in-reactor fuel irradiation, storage and final long-term management) is properly calculated. I pointed out that the nuclear industry’s proponents, such as those gathered at last week’s World Nuclear Association jamboree in London, are fond of spreading fake news such as describing nuclear energy as “non-carbon emitting”. It is about time this dangerous falsehood was confined to the dustbin of history…

read: Beware nuclear industry’s fake news on being emissions free | Letters | Environment | The Guardian

New U.S. reactor construction collapses because it's “prohibitively expensive”: the fight for justice continues | Beyond Nuclear

South Carolina electric utilities have scrapped finishing construction for two half-built Westinghouse reactors admitting that nuclear power is “prohibitively expensive.” The abandonment of the V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3 in Jenkinsville, SC comes with an estimated $11 billion in sunk costs and still projected six years from completion. The cancellation adds to the growing number of tombstones for once championed “milestones” in an atomic power revival. The inability to control the “cost-of-completion” and “time-to-completion” is the fundamental economic failure behind this recent collapse of the nuclear industry. In fact, these same reasons were featured in a 1985 Forbes magazine cover story “Nuclear Follies” describing the development of commercial atomic power as “the largest managerial disaster in U.S. business history where only the blind and the biased can say the money was well spent.”

There is not one nuclear power project in the United States that has ever been built on budget and on time, only more or less grossly out of proportion. The country is littered with the abandoned hulks of the 20^th Century’s "nuclear error” including Seabrook Unit 2 in New Hampshire, Shoreham in New York, Midland in Michigan, the “Whoops” reactors in Washington, Bellefonte in Alabama, Marble Hill in Indiana and Zimmer in Ohio. These sites stand as monuments to nearly 100 more cancelled construction projects.   

The recent collapse of V.C. Summer 2 &3 now weighs heavier on the only remaining new reactor construction in the U.S. at Vogtle units 3 and 4 in Waynesboro, Georgia. With the bankruptcy of Westinghouse Electric and still mounting financial trouble for its Japan-based parent company Toshiba, Southern Company and Georgia Power were handed the dubious oversight and management of construction by the U.S. Department of Energy for the two Westinghouse reactors still being built there. The fate of the Vogtle boondoogle is still uncertain even with Toshiba giving $3.7 billion to Southern Company to contractually cut loose of the project and spread the cost out over more owners. Just how much and how long it will take to complete the untested design remain inescapable questions.  Southern Company's new projected cost-of-completion for Vogtle has balloned to $25 billion.  Southern is under pressure to tell the Georgia Public Service Commission by end of 2017 whether it plans to go forward with completion of the Vogtle expansion.  The decision could come as early as the end of August 2017.

The repeated and predictable economic failure of atomic power sends an ever direr warning of the shear folly in wasting billions more dollars and decades longer only to predictably fall short in the challenge to abate climate change. Again, nuclear power is exposed as an unreliable partner in any “energy mix” with renewable power from the wind and sun, energy efficiency and conservation. Nuclear power, new and old, only serves to divert and deplete necessary resources and squander the precious little time that remains.

The collapse of the nuclear industry further lay bare the economic and environmental justice struggles still ahead to hold corporations accountable to greed, fraud and desecration.

Accolades are much deserved to the environmental and consumer protection groups that have been involved from the beginning with the proposed Summer and Vogtle expansions. These same organizations are now demanding ratepayer restitution and protection from still more fleecing.

As Tom Clements, South Carolina’s advisor to Friends of the Earth (FoE) puts it, “The decision to abandon the V.C. Summer project is of monumental proportion and is a full admission that pursuit of the project was a fool’s mission right from the start.” According to Clements, the abandonment of construction now portends a fight for economic justice where, “Rather than applauding the decision this is a time for reflection and to prepare for formal proceedings before the PSC that will review how this debacle happened and how to refund ratepayers money due to a string of imprudent decisions.”

Sara Barczak with the Southern Alliance for Safe Energy (SACE) is wondering how much longer it will take Southern Company to pull the plug on Vogtle 3 and 4. Still she continues the call for “stopping the forced draining of customers’ wallets” there. Indeed, as Barazk observes for V.C. Summer, “A very costly door has closed on the so-called nuclear renaissance” and the awaited announced cancellation of Vogtle 3 and 4. 

Beyond Nuclear - Home - New U.S. reactor construction collapses because it's “prohibitively expensive”: the fight for justice continues

Global Nuclear Power Database | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Global Nuclear Power Database | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists