Second Thoughts on Nuclear Power

By Michael Mariotte
Cancer, toxic spills, and damage to ecosystems from mining might come with nuclear energy production.

What kinds of energy systems are we going to need? And what kinds are going to be sustainable? The answer to both questions is something other than nuclear energy. It poses too many dangers to humans and their environment. Here is a breakdown:

* Mining. The Navajo tribe in the U.S. Southwest sits on top of some of the most productive uranium mines in the world. But the tribe banned uranium mining permanently because it killed so many tribe members during the 1950s and 1960s.

Mining of any kind is inherently a dirty business. When you're mining something that's potentially radioactive, it's an extremely dirty business.

* Storing waste. It has been said that nuclear power could replace fossil fuels and thereby avert human-induced climate change. The truth is that, for nuclear power to play any meaningful role in reducing carbondioxide emissions and reversing climate change, it would take as many as 2,000 new reactors worldwide.

Where would we put the waste from all those sites? In a program where you're constantly building nuclear power plants, where you will have nuclear power from now on, you would need a new storage site every 25 years or so.

* Danger of leakage. Nuclear plants store their wastes in casks of concrete and steel. Eventually, the casks will decay and the waste will seep out. The only question is when. For years, the U.S. government has been developing facilities at Yucca Mountain in Nevada for storing waste permanently.

The Obama administration made it clear that waste storage at Yucca Mountain is going to end. The Energy Department was admitting that the mountain offered no protection: The casks offered 99.5% of the protection. If that's the case, you might as well put the waste on the White House lawn. [Editor's note: The U.S. Senate voted in July 2009 to shut down Yucca Mountain.]

* Monitoring waste. What kind of monitoring would the waste program have? Having teams of people watching it 24 hours a day is not what most people think of when they think of waste disposal.

* Cancer risk. In 1979, a reactor at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant suffered a near meltdown. According to researcher Stephen Wing, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, leukemia rates went up 300%-400% in the communities downwind from the plant, and lung cancer rates went up 600%-700%.

Every reactor releases radiation into the air and water. All radiation exposure carries some risk, and the more exposure, the greater the risk. It's hard to single out which cancers may have been caused by nuclear power plants, but studies done in many parts of the world suggest that there is some effect caused by routine operation of reactors. In Massachusetts in the 1970s, the Pilgrim reactor had a fuel problem and the state health department identified higher-than-normal radiation releases for a period, as well as some excess cancers that may have been caused by that. No one knows how many people have died from nuclear power. We do know that radiation is a carcinogen, however, and that there is no safe level.

Innovation Isn't Enough

Nuclear facilities use more sophisticated technology today to generate, store, and monitor nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. Granted, any technology improves over time. Cars are safer now than when they first came out due to innovations like seatbelts, air bags, and better brake systems. But people still manage to die on the highways.

Nuclear technology is no different. Of course, there have been improvements in computer controls and design, but the fundamental safety problems have not been fixed and cannot be fixed with the technology that we are using now. You can't make an inherently dangerous technology safe.

Are there alternative ways to get our energy that don't involve release of toxic materials? Twenty or thirty years ago, the renewables weren't ready. Today, however, they are. You don't need to release radiation or burn coal to get the power we need. We have a place to get it, and those places - solar, wind, and others - are becoming cost competitive.

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