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Can We Dig It? Should We Dig It?

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 In the United States today, over 161 million people already reside within 75 miles of "temporarily stored" nuclear waste. Sleep well tonight.

Then there's the whole Yucca Mountain business -- which is in reality little more than an government/industry head-fake of mountainous proportions. If Yucca never stores and ounce of nuclear waste, it's already served its purpose. As long as government and the nuclear industry could claim that "someday" all that radioactive waste will be buried deep in that Nevada mountain, the longer they could avoid providing any real solution. Anyone out there who really believes all the nation's hot nuclear waste will someday be trucked across America to Nevada and tucked away deep in Yucca Mt. has fallen for the most expensive impractical joke in US history.

So, before we let you guys start building a whole new generation of nuclear facilities around the country, we need to see your plans for dealing FIRST with all the existing waste and then your plans for all the waste your new plants will spin off over their projected lifetimes.

Do you have such plans?

Yes / No / Don't Ask-Don't Tell


One more thing on cleaning up after one's self. What's your plan for safely decommissioning aging nuclear reactors? And who do you intend to stick with those bills? Will the cost of such clean ups be factored into the cost of the energy nuclear those new plants produce?

I only ask because I keep reading stories like this one:

Oakridge to Take Billions and 15 Years to Clean
"(Knoxville 6/2/2008) Building it only took 18 months, but now officials say it could take around 15 years to clean up and tear down the uranium enrichment factory in Oak Ridge. ... The Knoxville area facility was built six decades ago during the cold war's race for the first atomic bomb...Officials are working to get rid of the site, but an official with the Department of Energy says structural issues and contamination have delayed the project .. The government has spent about $1.6 billion on it at this point. So far, about half of the more than 500 buildings on the site have been removed or cleaned. (Full)

And that's just one nuclear facility. It can take longer and cost almost as much to decommission one of these nuclear plants and clean up the area as it did to build it begin with. If the industry gets what it's own companies say they want over the next 25-years they will be adding another 1300 nuclear plants to the existing list of aging plants. No, I'm not kidding.
 
".. the Bush administration's proposed energy policy unveiled on May 17...recommends the construction of more than 1,300 new power plants and a national nuclear waste repository, licensing new nuclear reactors and speeding the re-licensing of existing nuclear plants...Currently, 103 nuclear reactors operate in 31 states, Jacob said. Nuclear energy accounts for 20 percent of all U.S. electricity generation and more than 40 percent of power generation in 10 states. (Full Story)

It was only recently that we learned that the cost of gasoline had been held artificially low by refusing to recognize and account for the invisible impacts burning oil has had on society, national defense and the environment. They were still there, we just chose to ignore them. But they were not about to ignore us, and now they've injected themselves into the equation. We are just now experiencing the real price of gas, and we hate it. Too bad we didn't learn to hate it a long time ago.

Neither Big Oil or Big Coal can hold a candle to nuclear for hidden costs. What's the nuclear industry going to do about those hidden expenses? Ignore them -- as you do now? Or are you ready to agree that the costs of decommissioning and clean up are a significant part of the cost of every kilowatt produced by nuclear power plants, and therefore must be included in the cost of construction, operation and the price of nuclear fuel itself?

Yes / No / Don't Ask-Don't Tell


Finally, about your claims that new nuclear plant designs are much safer than the old ones. First, duh! We saw what could happen with those old designs, so you damn well better have safer designs or we could just end this conversation right here.

Leaving the other safety issues of storage and clean up aside for moment, let's concentrate on the operations your nuclear plants.  How do we know they're safer? (After all, you assured us Three Mile Island was safe, and it wasn't. That left us with some nagging "trust issues.")

If an oil refinery blows up it might kill a few refinery workers and stink up the neighborhood for a day or two. But if one of your nuclear plants goes up -- or melts down -- it could kill thousands immediately and tens of thousands over time.

So, being able to confirm your safety claims is more than just a casual curiosity. And your word is not going to cut it this time. This time we need more -- a lot more. We need to see your engineering designs and have them evaluated by independent engineers, nuclear scientists and medical professionals. We need to see your  blueprints, your operational manuals, your security systems, your emergency response and evacuation plans and the resources you and plant operators will commit -- under law and under contract -- to those various tasks.

Do you have such plans, and will you submit them for independent evaluation?

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Stephen Pizzo has been published everywhere from The New York Times to Mother Jones magazine. His book, Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, was nominated for a Pulitzer.

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