22 years ago today, a deadly cloud rose up from the heart of the Ukraine from Unit 4 at the Chernobyl reactor site. For the next few hundred generations, life on our planet will be affected by this man made radioacxtive fallout which was much worse than the fallout from Nagasaki or Hiroshima.
Conservative estimates of oc this disater's cost are in the $500 billion range. Down wind of the plant, there are still regions to dangerous to live in and the ultimate death toll from cancer and birth-defects is impossible to estimate.
If another Chernobyl type of disaster hit today, you are already slated to pay for it.
We are experiencing a "Reactor Renaissance" and it is being sold to you with lies and public liability.
There are 104 Reactors in the United States and many on line to be built and not one of them has or can get insurance from private sources.
For the last 50 years, since 1957, your tax dollars have protected reactor owners with the Price-Anderson Act.
Look at your homeowners policy for it's specific exclusions against liability for nuclear reactor-related radiation. If there was a Chernobyl type accident in the United States, like Three Mile Island almost became, it would bankrupt the government and you.
The real place our future energy investments should be made is in the renewable technologies. Wind, solar, hydro....there are new breakthroughs and discoveries weekly, but if they are not promoted and they are suppressed, the progress is slow and will never happen. These are the solutions to Global warming.
Every dollar invested in increased energy efficiency saves seven times the energy a dollar invested in nuclear can produce.
Now nuke pushers want to load the Lieberman-Warner “Global Warming” Bill with still more taxpayer subsidies.
But from the start of the fuel cycle to plant decommissioning and waste management, reactor technology is a serious greenhouse gas emitter. The final “bootprint” is unclear because there’s no actual solution to the waste problem, and no firm price for final reactor decommissioning.
A French “new generation” project in Finland is already two years and $2 billion over budget. French nukes are gargantuan tax pits, Europe’s most notorious radioactive polluter, and an ecological and public health nightmare.
In Florida, ratepayers may be gouged for up to $24 billion for two new reactors that would destroy the Everglades, and still more billions for two more north of Tampa. The utilities involved don’t know what kind of reactors they want to build, can’t guarantee when they would come on line, or what they’ll ultimately cost.
All that money should be going to renewables,but renewables don't return the immediate investment and generate the construction revenue that the heavily subsidized Nuclear Industry does. The Gulf Emirates are now putting their oil billions into renewable energy research. They will be at the forefront of this new industry as we are still fighting for the last drops of Iraqi oil.
22 years after the biggest nuclear disaster on our planet and we are still playing with the dragon.
4 comments:
There is a nuclear cycle that I would support. The thorium cycle accelerator driven system, or energy amplifier as invisioned by Carlos Rubbia. It is impossible for this type of reactor to run away and meltdown. There are minimal waste, in fact the accelerator driven system is being designed as a way to burn off nuclear waste.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_amplifier
Pebble bed reactors show promise too.
BTW MD, Detroit Edison has plans in action right now for a unit 3 at Fermi. Surveying began last year for exactly where onsite the number III unit will be built.
Thanks for both of your comments about new technology reactor designs.
I read the thorium cycle article in wikipedia and though it seems to be a safer alternative, there is a lot of development to be done and problems to be worked out before it can be real. It still creates radioactive waste.
The pebble bed reactors seem to be still in development and there are safety and technical problems. There was an accident in Germany a few years ago which led them to abandon reasearch into the concept.
Sepp, you wrote that Detroit Edison was planning one. It makes me think of when I was 12 and my school took a field trip to the new Enrico Fermi Plant at Luna Pier. We saw the film with Reddy Kilowat and our friend the Atom....that was only a few weeks before the sherrif of Monroe county got the phone call from the plant and was asked how fast he could evacuate the city of Monroe.
The first Fermi plant was new technology, A liquid sodium cooled reactor which was designed as it was built....the engineers solved the problems on the spot as they discovered them. One of the solutions was a "flutter valve" in the sodium system, which broke and was the cause of the near meltdown disaster. The valve was not in the original plans and when they tried to do an autopsy of the accident, they saw what they thought was a beer can tab...it took two years before the engineer who designed the "flutter valve" realized whatt had happened..
You know of course that the plutonium contaminated sodium is too dangerous to move and is still being stored out at Luna Pier.
Not to mention the corrosion problems at Davis Besse due to neglegence, of which the consumer is going to take it up the pooper for with rate increases to pay for their fuckup... Thank you! may I have another PUCO!?
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