nonukesnow

08/21/08
10:00AM -     12:00PM

Discuss events that occurred at Oconee Nuclear Station during the Unit 1 end of cycle 24 refueling outage.

Teleconference access available by calling contact below

NRC Region II Office
Suite 24T20
61 Forsyth Street, S.W.
Atlanta GA
Steven Rose
404-562-4609

08/21/08
1:00PM - 3:30PM

Discuss Levy County Units 1 and 2, COL application, environmental report, site characteristics, and request for limited work authorization

 

NRC One White Flint North
Commissioners' Hearing Room
11555 Rockville Pike
Rockville MD
Brian Anderson
301-415-996

09/03/08
9:30AM  

Initial prehearing conference, Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC, Combined License Application for William States Lee III Nuclear Station, Units 1 and 2

Cherokee County Courthouse
125 E. Floyd Baker Boulevard
Gaffney SC
Trish Harich
301-415-7399

and ravage the planet at the same time.  juicy profits all around!

ever wonder why steel and paper mills and power generating stations and factories of all sorts are located in poor neighborhoods - or countries?  

that's because the price of land is low and there's virtually no resistance or regulations by local governments or the residents.  for a few menial, low paying jobs, neighborhoods and towns and states and countries will throw open their arms to attract dirty industry.  heck, they'll even give up land and tax revenue to help these industrial giants move in.

ever wonder why there's no steel and paper mills and power generating plants and factories of any sort located in wealthy neighborhoods?

because the price of the land is too high and why is that?

because there's no steel and paper mills and power generating plants and factories of any sort located in wealthy neighborhoods.  wow, there's a connection!

my buddies and i just defeated the construction of a coal-fired electrical generating plant in a nearby county where the largest existing employer is a cellulose processing plant.  the local government was so hot to get the plant built in their neck of the woods for the 70 or so support and custodial jobs that they let one of the utility partners rewrite the county land use plan concerning water pollution impact. seems the utility couldn’t promise they wouldn't pollute the 1/2 mile flood plain adjacent to the main river -m the plant's water source, but they were pretty sure they could keep the waste to within 250 feet of the riverbanks. Yup, the power company got their lawyers to change the rules to help themselves and the county commissioners all beamed. guess none of them live in the flood plain.

anyway, we defeated the coal plant – seems it was just too dirty – and so there's still plenty of pines and palmettos undamaged by roads and chainsaws and the like. for now.

in a week or so, another utility - the nuclear crowd - will hold a meeting in a rural coastal county that has seen it's fishing and shellfish income dry up from over development to tell these poor folks how two new nuclear reactors will save them and turn their county into a thriving community.  they'll probably forget that folks with money won't want to move into a county with a nuclear power plant for the reason stated above.  they may actually lie to them about the benefits of putting in 1400 acres or so of asphalt, steel and concrete. and railroad lines. and transmission wires and rights of way and all that stuff.

and the folks will listen because they’re poor.

 they think their lives will be improved living in the shadow of one of the most complicated, expensive and deadly ways to boil water to make steam to turn electrical-generating turbines yet devised by the most wantonly destructive species on Earth!

and that's what industry wants them ...and you to think. 

i once heard the progress was defined as growth.  i also recall that unrestrained growth is what makes the cancer cell so deadly. another connection? possibly.

so a few of us tree-hugging radicals will truck down to this county and go to the hearing. they – industry and poor townsfolk will not be glad to see us.

we’ll be the ones outside with the homemade signs saying 'no new nukes' and nuclear power is not the answer' and then we'll attend the meeting and sit up front and talk our allotted 3 minutes to try to convince these people that there’s enough solar, wind and tidal nearby that if their chamber of commerce would get off its butt and seek better industry then they'd have better industry.  and that they nuclear industry folks are giving them benefits, they’re taking them. And that is they care about the future, their kids future, any future(!) they’ll resist this spreading cancer of lies and planetary rape for quarterly profit growth.

and, if we're lucky some of them will listen.

If you paid any attention at all to the tobacco industry’s pr campaign in the last half of the last century you may have noticed that they really didn’t need to convince anyone that smoking causes cancer or heart disease.  All they needed to do was place doubt in the mind of the consumer and they were in!  If you doubt that something is true you won’t get up off the sofa and do anything about it.  Sit back. Relax. Light up! We’re Big brother and we’re here to make your life better ...through chemistry if need be!

Well that was a while back and eventually the science could no longer be suppressed by the industry and their DC lackeys and now we pretty much see a relationship between cancer, cardiovascular diseases.  And smoking ...except for those willing to bet they’ll beat the odds and become someone’s grandparent who smoked 3 packs a day and lived to be 92, we’ve pretty much heard enough to be convinced.

It’s the same story with a lot of other things.  Is the planet really warming and isn’t warmth good thing really? Aren’t those Jews just a little different from us good Germans? Hmmmm. Atoms for peace? Too cheap to meter?  Aren’t  those good things too?

And here’s  the nuclear folks taking their cue.  Create doubt about the dangers …sort of like terrorists attacking the US any day now.   Three Mile Island was a pretty good exercise, wasn’t it.  And Chernobyl?  Isn’t that like in the former Soviet Union and didn’t it disappear of the American radar as well?

Doubts.

Mix in a few half-truths and hidden costs – monetary and otherwise – and you’ve got yourself one sweet campaign to redirect shareholder value away from the oil industry that even they know is tanking to the nuclear renaissance. (I had a comment on another post that there isn’t really a renaissance since they’ve been building nuke plants merrily along in Europe for years. Guess my pal hasn’t taken a look at new proposals  and orders and noticed the increase. Even in Europe.)

Half-truths like there is no CO2 associated with nuclear power.  Notice I said associated?  Externalities?  Aren’t those like the refrigerator you put out on the street when it isn’t useful anymore?  Or the homeless?  Don’t externalities not exist because you can’t see them right in front of your face?

Of course there’s CO2 associated with nuclear power unless you mean random atom splitting that has nothing to do with uranium or reactors or waste or security or transportation or diesel fuel or, golly, making the biggest most deadly and expensive known to humans to boil water to make the lights come on.

Hidden costs? Can you spell s-u-b-s-i-d-y? Let’s see; if my government collect taxes from me and gives it to the nuclear industry and then they use some of it to make the electricity I pay for… wait a minute, that’s my money both times!  And if they provide the investment that the private investors are afraid to and then charge me instead of paying a return on my investment, aren’t I getting screwed?  And if there’s a major “incident” at one of these nuclear plants and it costs $600 billion or something and the government says they’ll use the tax money they collected from me to pay 98% of that is that really insurance.  Seems like I have to pay for the nuclear industry’s insurance along with my own.  And then they charge me for the electricity still?

Yikes. I’m beginning to doubt that nuclear energy is a cost-effective way to get the lights to come on after all.

Doubt.  It’s a wonderful thing in the right hands.

After decades being a technology cast by the wayside, the nuclear industry is attempting global renaissance based primarily on the lie that nuclear energy is a way to meet increasing electrical demand while not producing any greenhouse gas emissions. Voila! The Vegas strip grows and glows and we don't have to concern ourselves about that pesky global warming/climate change/Manhattan under water thing anymore! While I can (and will another time) go on at length about whether or not the status quo of our over-consumptive species can be sustained, I would rather address the big CO2 lie at the moment. The lie, by the way, plays very well with those who find it comforting and less mentally painful to believe there is a single-savior, single-bullet; single-simple-easy anything answer to the climate change we are accelerating by burning fossil fuels. First, the concession. Splitting the atom - aside form being the most complicated and expensive way ever devised to heat water to make steam to make electricity - does not produce greenhouse gasses (This is always the part that gets quoted in the mainstream press...the only part.) Unlike burning fossil fuels - oil, coal, and natural gas - there is no production of CO2, the most popular and widely recognized greenhouse gas, and, therefore, no contribution to global warming and climate change. But that's only the atom splitting part. What about everything else that goes into boiling water via the 'peaceful atom' idea? But what about the fuel source? Uranium. Does digging the stuff out of the ground contribute to greenhouse gas emissions? Well beyond the image of a human being exhaling as he or she digs in the Earth, yes. That's because there are no humane beings but rather all the gigantic yellow diesel-burning machines that mine uranium and transport it from the mine to the next phase. All that black diesel smoke? Straight into the atmosphere. ...and it takes tons and tons and tons of ore to make the little pellets (another carbon-producing manufacturing process) that fuel and refuel nuclear reactors. Raw uranium? Can't be used to make electricity. No. It needs milling and refining and converting and pelletizing before it can be packed away in the fuel rods and immersed at the reactor core. Each of these steps has its own carbon expenditure that the industry fails to include in its lies about carbon-free energy. The chemicals used to convert the uranium into uranium hexafluoride had to be manufactured in a chemical plant somewhere and transported to the nuclear fuel processing plant. Does the chemical plant use electricity? Does the semi truck that transports it burn gas or diesel? Is this carbon free? Starting to see beyond the lies? Reactor construction? Tons of concrete and steel and road building and railroad landings and site preparation and lots of CO2 in each step. On-site plant maintenance facilities? Off-site suppliers? Carbon dioxide? You bet. Handling, transporting, storing and securing waste for thousands of years also adds to the CO2 tally. And decommissioning and dismantling a nuclear power plant at the end of its lifespan? We don't know because we've never bone that here but its a sure bet that you can't tear down an insanely radioactive building with a wrecking ball and acetylene torch the way you can a coal plant or, gee, a worn-out wind turbine. Point is, don't believe the hype that the nuclear industry is spewing and relying upon as one of its main selling points to making a comeback. Remember that the last order for a plant in this country was in the 70s for good reason. We stopped this once and can again if you can take the truth to the public. It's expensive. It's deadly. It's unreliable. And it does produce and incredible amount of greenhouse gases that are accelerating global warming and the related dangers of a changing climate. Atoms for Peace? Too cheap to meter? Too much to be believeable ...or believed!