Media Mayhem: Nuking climate change

Comment: This blog agrees with the following groups: Clean Water Action, Environmental Working Group, Greenpeace, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club, NO TO NUKE POWER, YES TO TRUE GREEN POWER! The following groups are traitors and need to be tar and feather with nuke waste: The Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists! NO TO THE SO CALL CLIMATE CHANGE, NEW NAME "NUKE CLIMATE CHANGE PAID FOR BY AMERICAN TAXPAYERS!"

When people like John Kerry back nuclear subsidies, green activists find themselves in a difficult position.

By Ken EdelsteinMon, Oct 19 2009 at 6:32 AM EST

Nuclear power once was the greenie’s ultimate litmus test.

Pro-nuke? You must have been an industry toady willing to relegate future generations to radioactive Armageddon. Anti-nuke? You must have righteously understood that the only future to sense in our world would be one graced with windmills, solar panels, peace, love and flowers.

If environmentalism were a religion, the nuclear industry was its devil

How much less politically radioactive nuclear power has become was underscored Oct. 11 in a Sunday New York Times op-ed co-written by Sen. John Kerry. As Massachusetts’ lieutenant governor and then as senator.

The NYT op-ed generated buzz because Kerry wrote it with a Republican colleague, Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. It signaled that some Republicans actually might support a climate bill this year if it contained significant compromises, and that Democrats might agree to such compromises to get the bill passed.

A lot of those compromises have to do with nukes. In the article, Kerry and Graham argue that nuclear power must be part of the mix in addressing climate change. Not only that, they say, nukes deserve special favors. “While we invest in renewable energy sources like wind and solar,” they write:
In many ways, Kerry’s support for nuclear subsidies demonstrates just how desperately he and others view the prospect of climate change. It’s not that nuclear plants have become any safer. There are still myriad questions surrounding them: Where will we dispose of the waste? How can we find enough water to cool them? What about the terrorist threat? What about the prospect of nuclear proliferation? And how can we justify subsidizing loan guarantees and insurance backups for a wealthy industry surrounded by so many questions?

But as the nuclear industry’s twin bête noires -- the Chernobyl disaster and the Three Mile Island accident -- fade from memory, the threat of climate change looms larger and scarier. Nuclear power, its advocates note, pumps virtually no greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

The whole new reality creates quite a predicament for environmentalists. Yes, politics does make strange bedfellows, but usually they don’t require Geiger counters. The nuclear industry’s lead trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), owns an appropriate reputation for greenwashing PR on the order of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy.

In the typical doublespeak fashion of moneyed Washington special interests, NEI has crafted slick marketing campaigns to appropriate the phrase “clean energy.” It backs an industry front group called the “Clean and Safe Energy Coalition” and a speakers’ bureau called Clean Energy America. With the start of this year’s National Hockey League season, NEI struck a sponsorship deal with the Washington Capitals; there’s nothing like rink-side signs that say “Clean Air Energy” to get your message across to members of Congress who happen to be hockey fans.

Most environmental organizations still argue against the increased subsidies needed to kick-start nuclear power plants. Among the foes are Clean Water Action, Environmental Working Group, Greenpeace, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club. They note that steering resources into safer, renewable energy -- such as wind, solar and conservation -- seems to bode better for both the environment and for the economy.

The anti-nuclear movement still has strong pop-cultural pull among environmentalists. Last week, NukeFree.org -- a group backed by Jackson Brown, Bonnie Raitt and other celebrities -- organized a “National Call In Day” to pressure Congress not to include nuclear subsidies in climate legislation.

Other environmental groups shouldn’t be described exactly as pro-nuke, but they are keeping their options open. The Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists -- all highly respected organizations with a strong bent toward research and policies -- have said they’re at least willing to consider nuclear energy as part of broader legislation.

The thing is that the Senate climate change bill introduced last month by Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer already contains quite a few gifts for the nuclear industry, including job training, regulatory reform, subsidies and $18.5 billion in loan guarantees. That’s more generous than the House-approved Waxman-Markey bill. (For more on this, visit MNN’s politics channel.)

So the compromises create yet another predicament for environmentalists. If the climate legislation ends up so much more generous to the nuclear energy than it is to emerging renewable industries -- such as wind, solar and conservation -- some will have to consider whether to withdraw their support, and to rely on the Environmental Protection Agency to push for regulation.

Either that, or strike their deal with the devil.

Journalist Ken Edelstein writes the Media Mayhem column for the Mother Nature Network. From various coffee shops in Atlanta, he publishes an environmental news site at MyGreenATL.com.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/energy/stories/media-mayhem-nuking-climate-change#comment-8497

The medical and economic costs of nuclear power

October 15, 2009
by Dr Helen Caldicott

Jennifer Nordstrom, co-ordinator of the Carbon-Free Nuclear-Free project has noted “Telling states to build new nuclear plants to combat global warming is like telling a patient to smoke to lose weight.”

A recent study sponsored by the German government (the KiKK study - Kaatsch P, Spix C, Schultze-Rath R, et al. Leukemia in young children living in the vicinity of German nuclear power plants. Int J Cancer. 2008; 1220:721-726,) examined children who lived near 16 of the country’s commercial nuclear power plants.

The results revealed a strongly increased risk of all childhood cancers, particularly leukaemia, the closer the proximity of the children’s residence to the reactor. In particular, the study found that children less than the age five years, living within a 5km radius of the power plant exhaust stacks were more than twice as likely to develop leukaemia compared with those children residing more that 5km away. The KiKK team studied other carcinogenic factors which may be responsible for the cancer clusters but none were found.

Another large study (Baker PJ, Hoel DG. Meta-analysis of standardized incidence and mortality rates of childhood leukemia in proximity to nuclear facilities. Eur J Cancer Care. 2007:16:355-363) - a meta-analysis of the incidence and mortality rates of childhood leukaemia in children living near 138 nuclear facilities in Britain, Canada, Spain, Germany, the US and Japan also demonstrated a statistically significant rate of leukaemia in children less than nine years of age.

A further large review (Laurier D, Jacob S, Bernier MO, et al. Epidemiological studies of leukemia in children and young adults around nuclear facilities: A critical review. Rad Prot Dosim. 2008; 132:182- 190) of children and young adults living near 198 nuclear sites in 10 countries was found to be compatible with the study described above.

It is important to note that the sensitivity to the damaging effects of radiation in early embryonic and fetal life is much higher than in adults, and young children are also particularly vulnerable.

The radioactive elements “routinely” emitted from nuclear power plant stacks into the air can be inhaled, or ingested when they concentrate in the food chain - in vegetables and fruit, -and then further concentrated in various internal organs in humans.

Similarly, the millions of gallons of cooling water flushed daily from a nuclear reactor into the always adjoining water source (lake, river or sea) contaminate it with radioactive materials which bio-concentrate hundreds of times in the aquatic food chain.

Unfortunately, radioactive elements are invisible to the human senses - taste, smell, and sight. Also unfortunately, the incubation time for radiation-induced cancer is five to 60 years, a long, silent latent period. No cancer ever denotes its specific cause.

Among these biologically active elements that are routinely released from nuclear power plants are tritium which lasts for more than 100 years (there is no limit to the amount of tritium that escapes); xenon, krypton. and argon which decay to cesium and strontium; carbon 14 which remains radioactive for thousands of years; cesium 137 - radioactive for hundreds of years; and iodine 129, which has a half life of 15.7 million years.

Tritium combines directly in the DNA molecule of the gene and can induce fetal deformities and various cancers in both animals and humans; cesium causes muscle sarcomas and brain cancers; and strontium - a calcium analogue - migrates to bone where it can induce bone cancer or leukaemia. Finally radioactive iodine causes thyroid cancer.

This situation is made worse by the fact that we are all - including populations living within the vicinity of nuclear reactors - routinely exposed to carcinogenic chemicals in our daily lives, many of which enhance the carcinogenic effects of radioactivity. There are now 80,000 chemicals in common use.

Turning from the human health costs to the monetary, another relevant study related to the nuclear power debate examined the economic feasibility of a “nuclear renaissance” at this time. The World Nuclear Industry Status Report published in August 2009 states that the nuclear industry continues to face steadily increasing construction costs and future cost estimates. The AREVA French-designed reactor project in Olkiluoto Finland is three years behind schedule and 55 per cent over budget (US$7 billion).

The average age of operating reactors globally is 25 years, while the average age of 123 reactors already closed is 22 years only. In addition to the 52 reactors currently under construction, another 43 reactors would have to be planned, built and started by 2015 - one every six weeks, and another 192 units over the following 10 years - one every 19 days - in order to maintain the same number that are operating today.

None of the new countries wanting nuclear power have the appropriate nuclear regulations, independent regulators, the domestic maintenance capacity and the skilled workforce to run a nuclear reactor.

Furthermore some of these countries either have a government hostile to the concept of nuclear power (Norway, Malaysia, Thailand), hostile public opinion (Italy and Turkey), major economic problems (Poland), earthquake or volcanic risks (Indonesia) or some have an absolute lack of all necessary infrastructure (Venezuela).

And there is one other major bottleneck for new reactors - only one corporation in the world, Japan Steel Works, can manufacture large steel forgings for many reactor pressure vessels.

These problems, together with the global financial crisis mean that the prospects of funding for the nuclear industry - most of which is government sourced - looks grim. .

US, efforts to forge the nuclear industry renaissance has been thwarted in eight states from Kentucky to Minnesota to Hawaii, Illinois, West Virginia, California, Missouri and Wisconsin.

When the Yucca Mountain repository for high level waste was vetoed by President Obama, Dave Kraft, Director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service in Chicago said “Authorising construction of nuclear reactors without first constructing a radioactive waste disposal is like authorising the construction of a new Sears tower without the bathrooms. Neither makes sense; both threaten public health and safety.”

How does this state of affairs relate to Australia? Well, as we know Australia sits on 40 per cent of the world’s high grade uranium; the ALP, in its wisdom, has determined that there should be no restrictions on uranium mining proceeding throughout the country.

There are more than 60 potential uranium mines in Western Australia alone.
In the light of these two studies it is difficult to understand how Kevin Rudd and the Labor Government can have no moral scruples about our uranium exports.

Dr Helen Caldicott, has devoted the last 38 years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction. She is also the Founding President of the Physicians for Social Responsibility which, with other national groups won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. She is President of people for a Nuclear Free Australia and a member of the Spanish Scientific Committee advising the Spanish Prime Minister.

Helen Caldicott is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Helen Caldicott

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15673

Even Rabbit Droppings Count in Nuclear Cleanup

October 15, 2009
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — Anything that hops, burrows, buzzes, crawls or grazes near a nuclear weapons plant may be capable of setting off a Geiger counter. And at the Hanford nuclear reservation, one of the dirtiest of them all, its droppings alone might be enough to trigger alarms.
A government contractor at Hanford, in south-central Washington State, just spent a week mapping radioactive rabbit feces with detectors mounted on a helicopter flying 50 feet over the desert scrub. An onboard computer used GPS technology to record each location so workers could return later to scoop up the droppings for disposal as low-level radioactive waste.

The Hanford site, overseen by the federal Department of Energy, produced roughly two-thirds of the plutonium used in the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, beginning in World War II and ending in the 1980s. Today it is the focus of the nation’s largest environmental cleanup, an effort that has cost tens of billions of dollars and is expected to continue for decades.

The area had, however, been used by rabbits that had also burrowed into other areas that were contaminated. Many of the contaminants were in the form of salts, which attract wildlife. The rabbits carried strontium and cesium, which emit gamma rays, back out of the area in their digestive tracts.

The flights were far less expensive than other strategies, said Dee Millikin, a spokeswoman for the contractor, a subsidiary of the engineering and environmental consulting company CH2M Hill.

Walking through the area with radiation detectors would have taken eight months longer and cost $1 million, she said.

The flights were first reported by The Tri-City Herald newspaper of Kennewick, Wash.

The rabbits themselves are not a target of the operation: the area from which they picked up the contamination was paved over years ago, so the source was sealed off, Ms. Millikin said.

Rabbits were not the only biological vectors contaminated by the nuclear residue. Mice and badgers also picked it up, she said, and coyotes feed on the contaminated smaller animals. “It’s basically a circle-of-life situation,” she said, adding that researchers have also found traces of radioactive materials in fish of the adjacent Columbia River.

Yet roaming rabbits appear to account for the overwhelming bulk of the radioactive excrement located in the flights, Ms. Millikin said.

Technicians have monitored rodents and waterfowl at Hanford for radiation since 1947, and have identified about 5,400 incidents of “biological intrusion.” It is not only animals; tumbleweeds have roots deep enough to pull up radioactive material and then carry it as they blow away, said John Price, who monitors conditions at Hanford for the Washington State Department of Ecology.

Marylia Kelley, the executive director of a California group called Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, said the rabbit cleanup was “kind of funny, in a sick way.”

Hanford is not the only reactor site that has prompted concern about contamination spreading to animals, Ms. Kelley said. .

At that site, she said, contamination has been somewhat harder to track because it is mostly plutonium, whose main emission is alpha particles that travel only a few inches in air, unlike the gamma rays from cesium and strontium at Hanford.

Radiation is also a concern at the Savannah River nuclear site in South Carolina, where neighbors can enter a lottery every year to be allowed to hunt deer.

“If they find something that was above the limit, they take out that part of the carcass and allow the guy to go on his merry way with the rest of it,” said Robert Alvarez, an environmental expert and former Energy Department official.

In the 1980s, researchers found turtles contaminated with radioactive materials on a hog farm near the Savannah River plant.

As the federal government pursues cleanups at various nuclear sites, experts have deliberately contaminated a species to further their efforts: honeybees.
Workers position a hive at a suspect area and wait to see what the bees come back with. Researchers can measure the radioactive content of the bees’ honey or wax, but “the recommended sample is the bee itself,” the agency said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/science/earth/15rabbit.html?_r=1&sq=nucle&scp=2&pagewanted=print

NATIONAL DON'T NUKE THE CLIMATE CALL-IN DAY--THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15

Subject: Tomorrow is Nat'l Call-In Day--Keep the Senate's phones ringing
Nuclear Information and Resource Service

NATIONAL DON'T NUKE THE CLIMATE CALL-IN DAY--THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15


PICK UP THE PHONE! KEEP THOSE SENATE PHONES RINGING!


AND KEEP THOSE E-MAILS/FAXES COMING TOO!


TALKING POINTS BELOW

October 14, 2009

Dear Friends,

Tomorrow is the National Don't Nuke the Climate Call-In Day!
Please call both of your Senators offices and tell them to keep nuclear power out of the Senate climate bill. Recent events, like the John Kerry/Lindsay Graham op-ed in Sunday's New York Times calling for more nuclear power in the bill, add to the urgency of this call-in day.

Help keep the Senate's phones ringing all day long!
Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121.

And keep your letters and faxes to your Senators coming, and keep forwarding the action url to all of your lists: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5502/t/5846/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=2137

Post it on your Facebook pages, Tweet it, spread the word every way possible.

More than 4,000 letters already have been sent to the Senate this week--but we'll need more than that to beat the nuclear lobbyists.

And with 16,000+ people on this e-mail list, that means a lot of you haven't yet taken action, and haven't yet helped reach the millions more people across this country who also want to keep nuclear out of the climate bill.

So take action today. E-mail and/or fax your Senators here. Then spread the word to every list you have, everyone you can think of.

And take action tomorrow. Call both your Senators offices at

202-224-3121.

The basic talking point is simple. If you only get 30 seconds with your Senators' offices, or an answering machine, just tell them: No nuclear power in the Senate climate bill, no more taxpayer dollars to support the failed nuclear industry.

But if you get a little more time, below are some talking points you may want to use. These also will be useful for drafting letters to the editor, op-eds, blog postings and the like--all of which will be very helpful as well. The more noise and publicity we can make, the better off we'll be.

Talking Points

*Nuclear power already receives a competitive advantage when a price is placed on carbon. If the nuclear industry cannot compete with such an advantage, that's its own problem, taxpayers should not be expected to provide more help to the industry.

*Projected costs for new reactors are stratospheric. In early 2006, the Nuclear Energy Institute predicted costs for the first few new reactors would run $2,000/kw, going down to $1,500/kw over time. Instead, recent estimates include Turkey Point (Florida) at $8,200/kw and Calvert Cliffs-3 (Maryland) and Bell Bend (Pennsylvania) at about $9,000/kw, or $13-15 billion. For example, see: http://www.bellbend.com/faqs.htm

*Cost overruns have been a constant with the nuclear industry. A 1986 Department of Energy study found the average cost overrun for the first 75 U.S. reactors was 207%. Reactors coming online after 1986 typically experienced even larger overruns. The only two reactors now under construction in the West-Areva reactors in Finland and France-are currently 75% and 20% over-budget, with years to go before construction completion.

*Electricity from new reactors, as expected with such enormous costs, would make the 1980s concept of "rate shock" seem quaint. An August 2009 report from the California Energy Commission, for example, predicts kilowatt/hour costs for nuclear electricity as high as 27-34 cents/kwh-nearly a tripling from today's prevailing rate of less than 12 cents/kwh. This report is available at: http://www.energy.ca.gov/2009publications/CEC-200-2009-017/CEC-200-2009-017-SD.PDF

*Nuclear power is not carbon-free. The nuclear fuel chain is responsible for fairly significant carbon emissions--at least three times those of wind power, for example. A recent study by Virginia Tech professor Benjamin Sovacool on this subject is available here: http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/sovacool_nuclear_ghg.pdf

*Nuclear reactors use enormous amounts of water, and water will become an increasingly precious resource in years to come, especially as we grapple with a warming climate. Allocating water to nuclear reactors now means less water for people and agriculture down the road. An August 2009 Virginia Tech study notes 36 states are projected to experience water shortages during the next decade. http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/water/sr46waterdependency.pdf

*Nuclear power is not even the only baseload alternative, as some in the industry claim. As cited in the August 6, 2009 Wall Street Journal for example, Spain is building large baseload solar thermal power plants for about $5,200/kw. While expensive, this is still $2,000/kw cheaper than the current low estimates for new reactor construction.

*Congress must not pre-judge the administration's re-evaluation of radioactive waste policy, which has not yet even begun. Specifically, no money should be spent on expensive, dangerous technologies like reprocessing, especially when the future direction of waste policy is unknown.

Tomorrow, NIRS staff will be going door-to-door in the Senate office buildings, delivering the thousands of postcards you sent to us (Thanks!) and the list of 629 U.S. organizations that have signed on to the simple statement on nuclear power and climate change. We hope to hear those phones ringing in every office we visit!

Thanks for all you do, but this week, let's all try to do just a little bit more....
Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
www.nirs.org
nirsnet@nirs.org

US Energy Secretary: To Push For More Nuclear Loan Guarantees

Comment: Everybody needs to make calls tomorrow against Nukes, see the above articles! No To Nuke Power! No To Chu!

Oct 14, 2009
By Ian Talley, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday he will push for billions of dollars in new loan guarantee authority to help rejuvenate a domestic industry and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Although companies have submitted 18 new nuclear power plant license applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy only has authority for $18.5 billion, enough for four to five plants.

"If you really want to restart the American nuclear energy industry in a serious way...we (need to) send signals to the industry that the U.S. is serious about investing in nuclear power plants," Chu said in an interview on the sidelines of a conference here.

Pressing for new nuclear power plants may help the administration win over the handful of Republican senators needed to help pass a landmark climate bill into law. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., for example, supports a cap on emissions in principle, but said government support for nuclear power is essential for him to consider backing a bill that would cut greenhouse gases.

Although it's nowhere near the 100 new nuclear power plants that the GOP has called for, Chu said "there's real interest out there (for) another four to five or more, we could easily do."

"It's part of how we're going to get to the carbon reductions we need in order to avoid the worst of climate change," Chu said.

The Energy Secretary said the loan guarantees would help revitalize a U.S.- based nuclear industry, given that most of the major companies that build reactors are now owned by international companies.

"It's also an American leadership issue," the Secretary said. "We were the pioneers in the nuclear industry...We are no longer the world leaders," he said.

Chu also said a new blue ribbon panel that will determine the nation's future nuclear waste energy policy would be appointed "soon." Although there were still "complications," he was pressing for the panel to convene as quickly as possible.

The delay in determining the waste issue after the administration decided to cancels plans for a central storage site in Nevada is one of many stumbling blocks that has dogged the industry.

-By Ian Talley, Dow Jones Newswires; (202) 862 9285; ian.talley@dowjones.com;

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=200909241923dowjonesdjonline000687&title=us-energy-s

Nuclear power: not clean, not cheap, not safe

Comment: Great Study, No to Nuke Power and No to Uranium Mining all over the World!

October 14, 2009

My students usually identify the seven fatal flaws in nuclear energy (''Nuclear power the way to cut emissions'', October 14) within 10 minutes of discussion:

1) the still unsolved problem of safely dealing with the radioactive waste;

2) the huge amounts of carbon released into the atmosphere during the mining, transport and processing of the ore;

3) the extraordinarily high costs of building the plants;

4) the massive amounts of water required for their operation;

5) hostile attack;

6) peak uranium and, finally, what all the advocates never mention,

7) the crippling costs of decommissioning the obsolete plants that will sit where they are until kingdom come.

Not clean. Not cheap. Not safe either for us or for countless generations to come.

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/letters/nuclear-power-not-clean-not-cheap-not-safe-20091014-gxc9.html

France dumps nuclear waste in Siberia, reports say

Comment: The Fairy Tale Nuke France is not so great are they, come on Virginia, kick them out of our state!

Nuclear 13.10.2009

Nuclear waste from France has been sent to Siberia for storage.

According to the French daily newspaper Liberation and Franco-German television broadcaster Arte, France's electricity company EDF has sent 108 tons of uranium to Siberia since the mid-1990s. .

EDF said it sends uranium left over from nuclear plant production in France to Russia to be treated so that it can be used again.

Ten to 20 percent of the uranium came back to France to be used in French power plants, an EDF spokeswoman said Monday. A company official denied that waste was left outdoors.

Liberation based its information on an eight-month investigation which was broadcast by Arte on Tuesday.

Legal loophole

The container was allegedly shipped by boat from Le Havre in northern France to the Siberian atom complex "Tomsk-7," located 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) away. This was only possible due to a legal loophole: In Russia, depleted uranium, recharged uranium and plutonium are not considered atomic waste but "radioactive material," according to the report by journalist Laure Noualhat.

Therefore, the shipment to Russia was not officially treated as an atomic waste transport overseas - that would have been forbidden by law.

France's ecology minister, Chantal Jouanno, has called for an investigation into the case.

Anti-nuclear power movement group "Sortir du Nucleaire" accused Jouanno of trying to win time by announcing an investigation. The group has demanded that the atomic waste be brought back from Russia.

France, like Germany, has not yet found a location to permanently store nuclear waste underground. French nuclear authorities are considering permanently storing the waste generated in the past three decades and the waste produced in the future near Bure in eastern France, 500 meters (1,640 feet) below ground.

sst/AFP/AP
Editor: Kate Bowen

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4786672,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf