(This is a guest post by Alice Shabecoff, co-author with her husband Philip, of Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children.)
President Obama, in his State of the Union speech, called for a push to build new nuclear power plants to help serve our country’s energy needs. This is a truly unwise strategy. We’d go from the frying pan into the fire.
At the very time of the President’s speech, a group of Vermonters were out in the snow and freezing cold, calling for the state’s sole nuclear plant, the Vermont Yankee, to shut down. Their protest was ignited by revelations of rising levels of the radioactive element called tritium leaking from the plant into nearby water sources.
One of our closest friends, unfailingly honorable and intensely smart, is a nuclear engineer. He says that nuclear power can be safe if the right safeguards are put in place.
Let’s say that might be so.
But what makes anyone imagine that the right safeguards could actually be developed and then maintained, day in and day out, for decades, if not eons.
Think of the duplicity and greed of our nation’s bankers and brokers and the connivance of federal ‘regulators’ that ended in our current economic disaster. Recall the failures of our auto industry. Remember Enron, its lying top managers and the lying auditors who were supposed to be its safeguards. Why would the nuclear power industry do any different, any better? Why would the corporations and executives managing nuclear be any wiser, less greedy, more farsighted?
In fact their track record is abysmal, all the more so when you realize it’s not only money but lives that could be destroyed.
Sarah Sauer at age seven fell ill with a brain tumor. The Sauers lived close to two nuclear power plants in Grundy County, Illinois, that had leaked millions of gallons of water containing tritium into the surrounding environment. Some of it seeped into water supplies used by local residents, including the Sauers, for drinking, bathing and cooking. Exelon, the owner of the plant and our nation’s largest supplier of nuclear energy, hadn’t informed the community of the leak. When the Sauers brought Sarah home from the hospital, her mother, Cindy, learned about an out-of-court settlement between Exelon and the Illinois attorney general of charges relating to violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act dating back to 1990. Sarah’s father, a physician with degrees in engineering, set about collecting data, did the calculated and found that brain cancers increased 30% and leukemias increased 31% within a 15-mile radius of the two reactors. The Sauers have moved far away from Exelon’s plants.
A National Academy of Sciences report in 1990 stated that there are no safe thresholds for exposure to radiation.
Exelon’s plant in Braceville, IL, has leaked the same radioactive material into that community at least three times. One week after the 40-year-old Oyster Creek (NJ) reactor license was extended another 20 years, plant workers discovered tritium-contaminated water in its buried pipes. At Indian Point (NY), also owned by Entergy, it was the same story; its radiated water seeps underground into the Hudson River. Investigating these leaks, New York Rep. Edward Markey discovered that there are miles and miles of buried pipes at every nuclear power facility that have never been inspected for leaks.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not require nuclear plant operators to do groundwater testing at their nuclear plants. It's a voluntary initiative. In fact, leaks of tritium into bodies of water and into the air around nuclear plants are commonplace nationwide. Nor has anyone found a solution for where or how to store nuclear waste.
President Obama proposes a $54 billion subsidy for the nuclear power industry. After fifty years in operation, why does that industry need taxpayer subsidies? Why has the private capital market refused to extend loans to nuclear power plants without federal loan guarantees, and even lowered the ratings of loans that have been made? If nuclear power were a viable business, wouldn’t it be able to stand on its own by now?
It was only last year that Vermont’s nuclear power plant operator, Entergy, gave sworn testimony to the state utility regulators and the Legislature stating there were no buried pipes. Now, when the radioactive leaks surfaced, the company launched an investigation to find the source of the radioactivity. The probable source: buried pipes that the company had sworn didn't exist. Vermont’s governor now says that recent events have “raised dark clouds of doubt” about the reactor’s safety and management.
Though our nation is seeking an alternative to polluting energy sources such as oil, why chose high-cost, high risk nuclear?
How to find out more:
Nuclear Information and Resource Service: nirsnet@nirs.org
Institute for Energy & Environmental Research: IEER.org; read their report, False Promises; for their analysis of the Sauers’ exposure and radiated water in general, see www.ieer.org/comments/tritium060320.html
Union of Concerned Scientists: www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/
Riverkeeper: www.riverkeeper.org
LIFE'S’ DELICATE BALANCE - KNOWN CAUSES AND PREVENTION OF BREAST CANCER, by Janette D. Sherman.
image: By Toby Talbot, AP
7 comments:
The world will not deal successfully with the real threat of global warming as long as people absorb misinformation from totally irresponsible political groups whose sole purpose is to lie about nuclear energy.
For real information on this important subject, please read Power to Save the World by Gwyneth Cravens.
Hello Red Craig,
FYI: This blog is not a "irresponsible political group whose sole purpose is to lie about nuclear energy." It is blog run by a parent, for parents. This post was by an author and guest blogger. The book you cite sounds like an informative read, but has also been judged as a one sided view of the positives of nuclear energy.
And one question: would you want to have your children drink from a well where there are underground tritium leaks? Ones that the company lied about ever being there?
Katy, thanks for taking the trouble to comment.
My comment was intended to challenge the author's information sources, not the author. I don't doubt she has the world's best interests at heart. The political groups where she got the information do not.
I think your question is rhetorical, but I'll answer it anyway. The tritium was not found in drinking-water wells, but in monitoring wells dug precisely for the purpose of detecting such leaks. The tritium being released will not find its way into aquifers.
The question of what to do about the leaks is being investigated. The leaks do not pose a threat to anyone, and the NRC is required by law to make sure that corrective action is taken to ensure they won't in the future.
The difference between nuclear and coal is that nuclear plants have these sorts of safety features. Coal plants don't have them, and the plants have clear and undeniable health effects on the areas around them.
Cravens's book is decidedly one-sided. She was strongly anti-nuke and took part in some anti-nuclear protests. Then she had a chance to study the subject directly instead of taking information from political groups. She learned that everything she had been told was either false or at least distorted.
The air pollution from fossil fuels is a genuine threat to people's health, especially for infants. Thousands of Americans die every month from it. In contrast, no American has ever been harmed by a nuclear power plant. I know that's an unbelievable statement, but it's what the record shows.
You never would have guessed the truth if you rely on political groups. That's why I'm asking you to find better information sources.
Thank you for this opportunity to answer your question.
Red
"But what makes anyone imagine that the right safeguards could actually be developed and then maintained, day in and day out, for decades, if not eons."
There are 439 nuclear plants around the world and they don't all have problems. This particular plant was old (built in 1972) outdated and producing more power than it was designed to. It should have been shut down a long time ago and replaced with a newer, more efficient plant. I'd be willing to bet that safety wise we've come a long way since 1972.
Thanks for your comments!
I must admit I need to learn lots more about nuclear power. But I do know a good bit about ecology, and how water travels through soil and into aquifers-- so I don't trust or agree that the tritium will not/ or has not posed a threat to human health through introduction into our waterways (in this case the Connecticut River). Thinking that leaks or pollutants released in one area of a watershed will not reach the areas around it where people live is a bit short sited. And the troubling thing about the claim of nuclear plants not harming anyone-- well, cancer is a tricky thing, with multiple causes, and that is why one could skew the data in that direction to make such a claim. I, for one, need to do more reading and research about nuclear power, but I am not interested in generating more waste that we don't know what to do with, and trusting massive corporations with our health. That hasn't gone so well in the past and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Anyway, this is a great dialogue and I appreciate your thoughts.
Katy, I appreciate your willingness to approach this with an open mind.
The report I read on the leaks said the ground water is moving toward the Connecticut river, which is normal for ground alongside rivers. Understand, we're not talking about major water flows and so when the tritium-contaminated water mixes with river water the concentration would be so low as to be undetectable. Compared with the natural radioactivity in the water, of all the pollutants in the river the tritium is the last one we should be concerned over.
I guess if the choice were between nuclear energy and a completely natural environment, most people would choose natural. But that isn't the choice we get. Even the intermittent, unpredictable energy sources the greenpeacers are promoting affect the environment: pollution, land disturbance, toxic waste, greenhouse gases. In reality, people won't accept part-time energy sources, so the choice is between coal and some mix of nuclear and renewable. Coal plants release many times more radioactivity than nuclear plants do because the coal contains radon and radioactive minerals, some of which escape the particle-collection systems.
We do, in fact, know what to do with spent fuel, which you call waste. We've had the technology for recycling it for more than 60 years. And the money for recycling is already saved in a fund to which the utilities contribute. The residual waste left over from recycling is amenable to a number of solutions, all of them depending on technology which is well developed and awaiting implementation. My preferred solution is to bombard the waste with neutrons in special reactors: not only is the waste transmuted into different elements but the process yields energy--a win-win proposition. Some people advocate dropping it into tectonic subduction zones; the residual wastes lose their radioactivity in a few centuries and won't pop up somewhere else to cause harm. I'm OK with that, too.
You might be wondering why the spent fuel isn't being treated, since the technology and the funding are both available. Actually, you already know the answer. The political groups that complain the wastes aren't being treated also lobby against treating it. That's how democracy works and I'm OK with it. But as citizens we have to keep complaints like this in perspective.
I'm sympathetic to your last point. After eight years of watching the federal government abdicate its responsibilities for protecting the environment it's reasonable and appropriate to be cautious and circumspect. But that's a problem we have to deal with anyway. Nuclear energy is only one of a large number of environmental concerns that have to be watched and, in comparison to the others, it is one of the least threatening.
You can see the problem in the subject we're dealing with here. The air and the water are being polluted with toxic chemicals nature has never had to deal with, the soil and the oceans are being poisoned by heavy metals, and the climate is being changed. But a small leakage of tritium that could never cause harm is promoted to headline status, with individuals acting as though it's the worst possible threat to the environment and it proves the world has to give up the only full-time energy source that can effectively reduce CO2 emissions.
Such a concern should never be ignored, but it has to be considered in context. That's why you and I are having this dialog.
Thanks very much.
Red
I totally agree with you. We should always be aware of our health and make sure we avoid theses factors to maintain our good lifestyle.
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