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Showing posts with label General Electric. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General Electric. Show all posts
06 April 2011
U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant
By JAMES GLANZ and WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: April 5, 2011
United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis inJapan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Reuters
Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station are dealing with new challenges.Multimedia
Related
Company Says Radioactive Water Leak at Japan Plant Is Plugged (April 6, 2011)
Crisis Saddles Village With Unwanted Notoriety (April 6, 2011)
Radiation Errors Erode Confidence in Power Company(April 6, 2011)
Readers' Comments
Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semimolten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores.In recent days, workers have grappled with several side effects of the emergency measures taken to keep nuclear fuel at the plant from overheating, including leaks of radioactive water at the site and radiation burns to workers who step into the water. The assessment, as well as interviews with officials familiar with it, points to a new panoply of complex challenges that water creates for the safety of workers and the recovery and long-term stability of the reactors.While the assessment does not speculate on the likelihood of new explosions or damage from an aftershock, either could lead to a breach of the containment structures in one or more of the crippled reactors, the last barriers that prevent a much more serious release of radiation from the nuclear core. If the fuel continues to heat and melt because of ineffective cooling, some nuclear experts say, that could also leave a radioactive mass that could stay molten for an extended period.The document, which was obtained by The New York Times, provides a more detailed technical assessment than Japanese officials have provided of the conundrum facing the Japanese as they struggle to prevent more fuel from melting at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. But it appears to rely largely on data shared with American experts by the Japanese.Among other problems, the document raises new questions about whether pouring water on nuclear fuel in the absence of functioning cooling systems can be sustained indefinitely. Experts have said the Japanese need to continue to keep the fuel cool for many months until the plant can be stabilized, but there is growing awareness that the risks of pumping water on the fuel present a whole new category of challenges that the nuclear industry is only beginning to comprehend.The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown “up to one mile from the units,” and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be “bulldozed over,” presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed.David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who worked on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan and now directs the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the welter of problems revealed in the document at three separate reactors made a successful outcome even more uncertain.“I thought they were, not out of the woods, but at least at the edge of the woods,” said Mr. Lochbaum, who was not involved in preparing the document. “This paints a very different picture, and suggests that things are a lot worse. They could still have more damage in a big way if some of these things don’t work out for them.”The steps recommended by the nuclear commission include injecting nitrogen, an inert gas, into the containment structures in an attempt to purge them of hydrogen and oxygen, which could combine to produce explosions. The document also recommends that engineers continue adding boron to cooling water to help prevent the cores from restarting the nuclear reaction, a process known as criticality.Even so, the engineers who prepared the document do not believe that a resumption of criticality is an immediate likelihood, Neil Wilmshurst, vice president of the nuclear sector at the Electric Power Research Institute, said when contacted about the document. “I have seen no data to suggest that there is criticality ongoing,” said Mr. Wilmshurst, who was involved in the assessment.The document was prepared for the commission’s Reactor Safety Team, which is assisting the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the plant. It says it is based on the “most recent available data” from numerous Japanese and American organizations, including the electric power company, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, the United States Department of Energy, General Electric and the Electric Power Research Institute, an independent, nonprofit group.The document contains detailed assessments of each of the plant’s six reactors along with recommendations for action. Nuclear experts familiar with the assessment said that it was regularly updated but that over all, the March 26 version closely reflected current thinking.The assessment provides graphic new detail on the conditions of the damaged cores in reactors 1, 2 and 3. Because slumping fuel and salt from seawater that had been used as a coolant is probably blocking circulation pathways, the water flow in No. 1 “is severely restricted and likely blocked.” Inside the core itself, “there is likely no water level,” the assessment says, adding that as a result, “it is difficult to determine how much cooling is getting to the fuel.” Similar problems exist in No. 2 and No. 3, although the blockage is probably less severe, the assessment says.Some of the salt may have been washed away in the past week with the switch from seawater to fresh water cooling, nuclear experts said.A rise in the water level of the containment structures has often been depicted as a possible way to immerse and cool the fuel. The assessment, however, warns that “when flooding containment, consider the implications of water weight on seismic capability of containment.”Experts in nuclear plant design say that this warning refers to the enormous stress put on the containment structures by the rising water. The more water in the structures, the more easily a large aftershock could rupture one of them.Margaret Harding, a former reactor designer for General Electric, warned of aftershocks and said, “If I were in the Japanese’s shoes, I’d be very reluctant to have tons and tons of water sitting in a containment whose structural integrity hasn’t been checked since the earthquake.”The N.R.C. document also expressed concern about the potential for a “hazardous atmosphere” in the concrete-and-steel containment structures because of the release of hydrogen and oxygen from the seawater in a highly radioactive environment.Hydrogen explosions in the first few days of the disaster heavily damaged several reactor buildings and in one case may have damaged a containment structure. That hydrogen was produced by a mechanism involving the metal cladding of the nuclear fuel. The document urged that Japanese operators restore the ability to purge the structures of these gases and fill them with stable nitrogen gas, a capability lost after the quake and tsunami.Nuclear experts say that radiation from the core of a reactor can split water molecules in two, releasing hydrogen. Mr. Wilmshurst said that since the March 26 document, engineers had calculated that the amount of hydrogen produced would be small. But Jay A. LaVerne, a physicist at Notre Dame, said that at least near the fuel rods, some hydrogen would in fact be produced, and could react with oxygen. “If so,” Mr. LaVerne said in an interview, “you have an explosive mixture being formed near the fuel rods.”Nuclear engineers have warned in recent days that the pools outside the containment buildings that hold spent fuel rods could pose an even greater danger than the melted reactor cores. The pools, which sit atop the reactor buildings and are meant to keep spent fuel submerged in water, have lost their cooling systems.The N.R.C. report suggests that the fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor suffered a hydrogen explosion early in the Japanese crisis and could have shed much radioactive material into the environment, what it calls “a major source term release.”Experts worry about the fuel pools because explosions have torn away their roofs and exposed their radioactive contents. By contrast, reactors have strong containment vessels that stand a better chance of bottling up radiation from a meltdown of the fuel in the reactor core.“Even the best juggler in the world can get too many balls up in the air,” Mr. Lochbaum said of the multiplicity of problems at the plant. “They’ve got a lot of nasty things to negotiate in the future, and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse.”
United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis inJapan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Reuters
Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station are dealing with new challenges.
Multimedia
Related
Company Says Radioactive Water Leak at Japan Plant Is Plugged (April 6, 2011)
Crisis Saddles Village With Unwanted Notoriety (April 6, 2011)
Radiation Errors Erode Confidence in Power Company(April 6, 2011)
Readers' Comments
Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semimolten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores.
In recent days, workers have grappled with several side effects of the emergency measures taken to keep nuclear fuel at the plant from overheating, including leaks of radioactive water at the site and radiation burns to workers who step into the water. The assessment, as well as interviews with officials familiar with it, points to a new panoply of complex challenges that water creates for the safety of workers and the recovery and long-term stability of the reactors.
While the assessment does not speculate on the likelihood of new explosions or damage from an aftershock, either could lead to a breach of the containment structures in one or more of the crippled reactors, the last barriers that prevent a much more serious release of radiation from the nuclear core. If the fuel continues to heat and melt because of ineffective cooling, some nuclear experts say, that could also leave a radioactive mass that could stay molten for an extended period.
The document, which was obtained by The New York Times, provides a more detailed technical assessment than Japanese officials have provided of the conundrum facing the Japanese as they struggle to prevent more fuel from melting at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. But it appears to rely largely on data shared with American experts by the Japanese.
Among other problems, the document raises new questions about whether pouring water on nuclear fuel in the absence of functioning cooling systems can be sustained indefinitely. Experts have said the Japanese need to continue to keep the fuel cool for many months until the plant can be stabilized, but there is growing awareness that the risks of pumping water on the fuel present a whole new category of challenges that the nuclear industry is only beginning to comprehend.
The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown “up to one mile from the units,” and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be “bulldozed over,” presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed.
David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who worked on the kinds of General Electric reactors used in Japan and now directs the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the welter of problems revealed in the document at three separate reactors made a successful outcome even more uncertain.
“I thought they were, not out of the woods, but at least at the edge of the woods,” said Mr. Lochbaum, who was not involved in preparing the document. “This paints a very different picture, and suggests that things are a lot worse. They could still have more damage in a big way if some of these things don’t work out for them.”
The steps recommended by the nuclear commission include injecting nitrogen, an inert gas, into the containment structures in an attempt to purge them of hydrogen and oxygen, which could combine to produce explosions. The document also recommends that engineers continue adding boron to cooling water to help prevent the cores from restarting the nuclear reaction, a process known as criticality.
Even so, the engineers who prepared the document do not believe that a resumption of criticality is an immediate likelihood, Neil Wilmshurst, vice president of the nuclear sector at the Electric Power Research Institute, said when contacted about the document. “I have seen no data to suggest that there is criticality ongoing,” said Mr. Wilmshurst, who was involved in the assessment.
The document was prepared for the commission’s Reactor Safety Team, which is assisting the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which owns the plant. It says it is based on the “most recent available data” from numerous Japanese and American organizations, including the electric power company, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, the United States Department of Energy, General Electric and the Electric Power Research Institute, an independent, nonprofit group.
The document contains detailed assessments of each of the plant’s six reactors along with recommendations for action. Nuclear experts familiar with the assessment said that it was regularly updated but that over all, the March 26 version closely reflected current thinking.
The assessment provides graphic new detail on the conditions of the damaged cores in reactors 1, 2 and 3. Because slumping fuel and salt from seawater that had been used as a coolant is probably blocking circulation pathways, the water flow in No. 1 “is severely restricted and likely blocked.” Inside the core itself, “there is likely no water level,” the assessment says, adding that as a result, “it is difficult to determine how much cooling is getting to the fuel.” Similar problems exist in No. 2 and No. 3, although the blockage is probably less severe, the assessment says.
Some of the salt may have been washed away in the past week with the switch from seawater to fresh water cooling, nuclear experts said.
A rise in the water level of the containment structures has often been depicted as a possible way to immerse and cool the fuel. The assessment, however, warns that “when flooding containment, consider the implications of water weight on seismic capability of containment.”
Experts in nuclear plant design say that this warning refers to the enormous stress put on the containment structures by the rising water. The more water in the structures, the more easily a large aftershock could rupture one of them.
Margaret Harding, a former reactor designer for General Electric, warned of aftershocks and said, “If I were in the Japanese’s shoes, I’d be very reluctant to have tons and tons of water sitting in a containment whose structural integrity hasn’t been checked since the earthquake.”
The N.R.C. document also expressed concern about the potential for a “hazardous atmosphere” in the concrete-and-steel containment structures because of the release of hydrogen and oxygen from the seawater in a highly radioactive environment.
Hydrogen explosions in the first few days of the disaster heavily damaged several reactor buildings and in one case may have damaged a containment structure. That hydrogen was produced by a mechanism involving the metal cladding of the nuclear fuel. The document urged that Japanese operators restore the ability to purge the structures of these gases and fill them with stable nitrogen gas, a capability lost after the quake and tsunami.
Nuclear experts say that radiation from the core of a reactor can split water molecules in two, releasing hydrogen. Mr. Wilmshurst said that since the March 26 document, engineers had calculated that the amount of hydrogen produced would be small. But Jay A. LaVerne, a physicist at Notre Dame, said that at least near the fuel rods, some hydrogen would in fact be produced, and could react with oxygen. “If so,” Mr. LaVerne said in an interview, “you have an explosive mixture being formed near the fuel rods.”
Nuclear engineers have warned in recent days that the pools outside the containment buildings that hold spent fuel rods could pose an even greater danger than the melted reactor cores. The pools, which sit atop the reactor buildings and are meant to keep spent fuel submerged in water, have lost their cooling systems.
The N.R.C. report suggests that the fuel pool of the No. 4 reactor suffered a hydrogen explosion early in the Japanese crisis and could have shed much radioactive material into the environment, what it calls “a major source term release.”
Experts worry about the fuel pools because explosions have torn away their roofs and exposed their radioactive contents. By contrast, reactors have strong containment vessels that stand a better chance of bottling up radiation from a meltdown of the fuel in the reactor core.
“Even the best juggler in the world can get too many balls up in the air,” Mr. Lochbaum said of the multiplicity of problems at the plant. “They’ve got a lot of nasty things to negotiate in the future, and one missed step could make the situation much, much worse.”
19 December 2007
Nuke industry is on the Verge of Getting $25 billion Handout
http://www.alternet.org/stories/70924/
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted December 18, 2007.
Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!. Posted December 18, 2007.
Congress is about to dump billions on an industry that has been unprofitable for 50 years.
The House is set to vote on Tuesday on the $500 billion 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill. Unveiled on Sunday, the measure covers budgets for all cabinet departments except the Pentagon. It's expected to pass both houses of Congress this week.
Hidden in the bill is a major energy package that would boost government financing for the nuclear industry. It would provide loan guarantees of up to $25 billion for new nuclear reactors. A massive grassroots campaign forced these taxpayer-financed loans out of the national energy bill earlier this month, but last week Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico slipped them back into the budget vote.
Harvey Wasserman has been at the forefront of raising awareness about the dangers of nuclear power. He helped found the grassroots anti-nuke movement in the early 1970s, advises the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. He's senior editor of the Ohio-based freepress.org and editor of nukefree.org. Harvey Wasserman has also co-authored two books on the 2004 election. They are How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election and Is Rigging 2008 and What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election.
Amy Goodman: Welcome to Democracy Now! ... Talk about this energy bill.
Harvey Wasserman: Well, we beat Pete Domenici. With Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Keb' Mo', Ben Harper, we put out a music video on nukefree.org. We raised 120,000 signatures and presented them to Congress in October. And Domenici was forced to pull these nuke loan guarantees out of the energy bill, but then slipped them back into the appropriations bill.
And the nuclear power industry is a fifty-year proven failure, and they can't get independent financing to build their own new reactors, which they want to do now. And so, they've gone to the government. This is one issue where we're in agreement with Forbes magazine and the Cato Institute, which is backing the opposition to these loan guarantees, because if nuclear power, after fifty years of huge government subsidies, can't make it in the marketplace, why should the taxpayers fund another $25 billion worth of reactor construction?
We're on the brink of a tremendous energy revolution in solar, wind, tidal, geothermal. You know, we're looking almost at a solartopia of a renewable-based economy, which will be much more controllable at the grassroots, much more democratically oriented. And that's why the nuclear power industry is desperately holding on here.
Goodman:So who are its backers, aside from Pete Domenici?
Wasserman: Well, we have Westinghouse, General Electric -- the usual suspects -- Ariva, a large French company, all wanting to go into the -- to revive the so-called nuclear renaissance. You know, we've been trying for fifty years to drive the stake through the heart of an industry that doesn't seem to have one.
And there's absolutely no demand for new nuclear plants. There's no reason to build them. They don't work. Even with optimum conditions of licensing and so on, they couldn't get a reactor online for another ten years. They've been saying the nuclear power plants are a solution to the global warming problem; we know they make global warming worse. You know, it's a total scam. And they are continuing to take of taxpayer money, public money, to build reactors where we don't need that kind of financing for wind, for solar, for tidal, geothermal, the other forms of green energy, which can be community-controlled.
And so, these subsidies, these loan guarantees in the appropriations bill, we are asking people, through the nukefree.org website, to call Congress, call the congressional leadership, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi -- David Obey is very key as the congressional chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Mitch McConnell on the Republican side -- and tell them: get these loan guarantees out of the appropriations bill.
Goodman:So talk about how it worked over this last month -- went in, went out, went in.
Wasserman: Yes. Well, under tremendous pressure with the signatures that we brought in from nukefree.org to the Congress -- we had Ed Markey, John Hall, Shelly Berkeley at our press conference, support from John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, other key green energy backers -- Domenici was forced to pull these subsidies out of the energy bill. It was a very big victory for us.
Actually, there were much worse subsidies. There was a loan guarantee for the DOE that was essentially without any congressional appropriations oversight. Now we've got it down to a one-year $25 billion -- down to a one-year $25 billion subsidy. Even that's too much, way too much.
The nuclear power industry is a terror target just waiting to be hit. We don't need these reactors. They're devastatingly dangerous to the environment. They're destructive of public health. It was shown forty years ago that regular so-called normal emissions from nuclear plants kill thousands of Americans every year. This was by head of the Atomic Energy Commission's own medical research division. So, you know, this is something that is being prolonged at the expense of the public health and the public treasury.
The appropriations, as you say, they were pulled out of the energy bill due to public pressure, but Pete Domenici is the senator for nuclear power, and he's very clever at congressional manipulation.
Goodman:Why is he so wed to nuclear power?
Wasserman: He's the guy -- he's been their point guy for decades. You know, he is the senator from New Mexico, and he's been the man that the nuclear power industry has gone to to further their interests in Congress.
Goodman:And he'll be leaving next [inaudible] in 2009.
Wasserman: He will be leaving, not soon enough, as far as we're concerned, but he's been forcing these appropriations in -- you know, he tried the farm bill. Now, we beat him on the energy bill. He tried to put them in the farm bill. Then he tried to slip them into the global warming bill, and then Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, pulled them out. We've gotten good support from Senator Pelosi -- Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi, but we need more from Congressman Obey and from the Republican side. You know, these Republicans, who are supposedly conservatives, shouldn't be for subsidizing industries like the nuclear power industry. It's an obsolete proven failure.
Goodman:What if the nuclear industry doesn't get these loan guarantees?
Wasserman: It's a very big deal. They can't build new nuclear plants. No -- Wall Street will not finance new nuclear construction. We are actually in solidarity with the financial community here. Nobody wants to back nuclear power plants. They are a failure. They cannot compete now with wind energy or with solar or tidal or the other green forms of energy, even of flat-out marketplace. And so, if they don't get these loan guarantees, they're not going to be building new nuclear plants, and we will be going to wind and solar and to a solartopian, you know, energy version -- vision. So we really -- this is a very big deal to stop these appropriations. And, you know, like I say, we're actually in conjunction with the old-time right wing here who actually believes in a free market.
Goodman:You talk about King CONG madness.
Wasserman: That's right.
Goodman:That's coal, oil, nukes and gas.
Wasserman: Coal, oil, nukes and gas.
Goodman:The International Climate Change Summit in Bali ended with no new plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Wasserman: Astonishing. It's astonishing. Here, they give the Nobel Prize to Al Gore for warning us all about global warming. You know, I'm waiting for Al Gore to get arrested at the Indian Point Nuclear Plant. That's when he'll really deserve the Nobel Prize. You know, but the power of the coal, oil, nukes and gas conglomerates -- King CONG, as we call them -- is astonishing. To have the whole world focused on global warming and then come to this conference and not be able to get even a simple agreement is astounding. And it's really a terrifying testimony to the power of these corporations.
Goodman:Well, Al Gore went there and said, I name "the elephant in the room": the United States.
Wasserman: Yes. And, you know, it's a disgrace. It's an embarrassment to the world that the United States would stand -- here we're standing on the brink of a technological revolution that would really parallel the information revolution of the '90s. You know, we had the spread of the internet, the boom in computerization that really brought us prosperity. We could have a repeat of that, if we got away from nuclear power, coal, oil, nukes and gas and went into green power. But, you know, the Bush administration won't let it happen.
Goodman:How would green power look? I mean, you have the oil companies fighting hard against alternative energy, but at the same time -- I mean, like BP calling themselves "Beyond Petroleum" -- at the same time, seeing the writing on the wall, trying to get right in there. Now, there is a way to do this in a centralized way, isn't there? And isn't that what they're trying to get in on?
Wasserman: Yeah. They want to centralize and keep control of their energy supplies, of our energy supplies. And nuclear power is the ultimate way to do that, and then coal, oil and gas let them keep control over it, where the model we're working on --
Goodman:But even alternative.
Wasserman: Yeah.
Goodman:Even wind and solar.
Wasserman: They're not -- but I think they've realized they can't do it. Solar and wind cannot be centralized the way nukes, coal and oil can, because they are, of essence, decentralized technologies, and they can be community-owned. We're working in Minnesota and other states on a model of community-owned wind power, which we now have $100 million worth of community-owned wind in Minnesota.
Goodman:Doing what?
Wasserman: Doing -- generating cheap electricity, owned by the farmers on whose land it is and by the communities that get the electricity. This is the moment of terror for the coal, oil, nukes and gas industries, because they can't control this energy. And if we get -- that's why we need to stop these appropriations, because if they can't get the loans to build nuclear plants, all the money is going to go where it belongs, which is to green power. You know, with the information revolution, we didn't have an institutional barrier. With the renewable energy industry and with, you know, getting to solartopia, we do have the institutional barriers of the coal, oil, nukes and gas industry, and the nuke industry is really the vanguard, because it's the ultimate centralized --
Goodman:And you have some environmentalists who are pushing nukes. They are saying it's cleaner.
Wasserman: Very, very few. You know, it's been a miniscule -- you look at all the money the industry have, they have only been able to pick up a few marginal players. We had a press conference in D.C., and all the major environmental groups were right there: Sierra, League of Conservation Voters, Greenpeace. You know, they're with us. No major environmental group has gone to the dark side for nuclear power.
Goodman:Where does Bush stand?
Wasserman: You know, in a very deep radioactive hole, where -- exactly where you'd expect. They're pushing, you know, this industry. Actually, Dick Cheney has very serious interests in pushing nuclear power. And, you know, he's been right behind the scenes with Domenici there.
Goodman:What are his interests?
Wasserman: His interests are very corporate, and he wants controls. You know, the nuclear power -- as long as they're putting money into nuclear power, we're not going to get away from coal, oil and nukes and gas. Nuclear power is really the cutting edge for the fossil fuel industry. And if the nuclear barrier breaks, all the money -- all the new money is going to go to renewables. And so, they are terrified -- the coal, oil, nuke and gas industries -- of renewables. And so, nuclear power is really their finger in the dam, because once everything breaks, it's all going to go to renewables, and we'll have a transformed world.
The House is set to vote on Tuesday on the $500 billion 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill. Unveiled on Sunday, the measure covers budgets for all cabinet departments except the Pentagon. It's expected to pass both houses of Congress this week.
Hidden in the bill is a major energy package that would boost government financing for the nuclear industry. It would provide loan guarantees of up to $25 billion for new nuclear reactors. A massive grassroots campaign forced these taxpayer-financed loans out of the national energy bill earlier this month, but last week Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico slipped them back into the budget vote.
Harvey Wasserman has been at the forefront of raising awareness about the dangers of nuclear power. He helped found the grassroots anti-nuke movement in the early 1970s, advises the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. He's senior editor of the Ohio-based freepress.org and editor of nukefree.org. Harvey Wasserman has also co-authored two books on the 2004 election. They are How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election and Is Rigging 2008 and What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election.
Amy Goodman: Welcome to Democracy Now! ... Talk about this energy bill.
Harvey Wasserman: Well, we beat Pete Domenici. With Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Keb' Mo', Ben Harper, we put out a music video on nukefree.org. We raised 120,000 signatures and presented them to Congress in October. And Domenici was forced to pull these nuke loan guarantees out of the energy bill, but then slipped them back into the appropriations bill.
And the nuclear power industry is a fifty-year proven failure, and they can't get independent financing to build their own new reactors, which they want to do now. And so, they've gone to the government. This is one issue where we're in agreement with Forbes magazine and the Cato Institute, which is backing the opposition to these loan guarantees, because if nuclear power, after fifty years of huge government subsidies, can't make it in the marketplace, why should the taxpayers fund another $25 billion worth of reactor construction?
We're on the brink of a tremendous energy revolution in solar, wind, tidal, geothermal. You know, we're looking almost at a solartopia of a renewable-based economy, which will be much more controllable at the grassroots, much more democratically oriented. And that's why the nuclear power industry is desperately holding on here.
Goodman:So who are its backers, aside from Pete Domenici?
Wasserman: Well, we have Westinghouse, General Electric -- the usual suspects -- Ariva, a large French company, all wanting to go into the -- to revive the so-called nuclear renaissance. You know, we've been trying for fifty years to drive the stake through the heart of an industry that doesn't seem to have one.
And there's absolutely no demand for new nuclear plants. There's no reason to build them. They don't work. Even with optimum conditions of licensing and so on, they couldn't get a reactor online for another ten years. They've been saying the nuclear power plants are a solution to the global warming problem; we know they make global warming worse. You know, it's a total scam. And they are continuing to take of taxpayer money, public money, to build reactors where we don't need that kind of financing for wind, for solar, for tidal, geothermal, the other forms of green energy, which can be community-controlled.
And so, these subsidies, these loan guarantees in the appropriations bill, we are asking people, through the nukefree.org website, to call Congress, call the congressional leadership, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi -- David Obey is very key as the congressional chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Mitch McConnell on the Republican side -- and tell them: get these loan guarantees out of the appropriations bill.
Goodman:So talk about how it worked over this last month -- went in, went out, went in.
Wasserman: Yes. Well, under tremendous pressure with the signatures that we brought in from nukefree.org to the Congress -- we had Ed Markey, John Hall, Shelly Berkeley at our press conference, support from John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, other key green energy backers -- Domenici was forced to pull these subsidies out of the energy bill. It was a very big victory for us.
Actually, there were much worse subsidies. There was a loan guarantee for the DOE that was essentially without any congressional appropriations oversight. Now we've got it down to a one-year $25 billion -- down to a one-year $25 billion subsidy. Even that's too much, way too much.
The nuclear power industry is a terror target just waiting to be hit. We don't need these reactors. They're devastatingly dangerous to the environment. They're destructive of public health. It was shown forty years ago that regular so-called normal emissions from nuclear plants kill thousands of Americans every year. This was by head of the Atomic Energy Commission's own medical research division. So, you know, this is something that is being prolonged at the expense of the public health and the public treasury.
The appropriations, as you say, they were pulled out of the energy bill due to public pressure, but Pete Domenici is the senator for nuclear power, and he's very clever at congressional manipulation.
Goodman:Why is he so wed to nuclear power?
Wasserman: He's the guy -- he's been their point guy for decades. You know, he is the senator from New Mexico, and he's been the man that the nuclear power industry has gone to to further their interests in Congress.
Goodman:And he'll be leaving next [inaudible] in 2009.
Wasserman: He will be leaving, not soon enough, as far as we're concerned, but he's been forcing these appropriations in -- you know, he tried the farm bill. Now, we beat him on the energy bill. He tried to put them in the farm bill. Then he tried to slip them into the global warming bill, and then Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, pulled them out. We've gotten good support from Senator Pelosi -- Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi, but we need more from Congressman Obey and from the Republican side. You know, these Republicans, who are supposedly conservatives, shouldn't be for subsidizing industries like the nuclear power industry. It's an obsolete proven failure.
Goodman:What if the nuclear industry doesn't get these loan guarantees?
Wasserman: It's a very big deal. They can't build new nuclear plants. No -- Wall Street will not finance new nuclear construction. We are actually in solidarity with the financial community here. Nobody wants to back nuclear power plants. They are a failure. They cannot compete now with wind energy or with solar or tidal or the other green forms of energy, even of flat-out marketplace. And so, if they don't get these loan guarantees, they're not going to be building new nuclear plants, and we will be going to wind and solar and to a solartopian, you know, energy version -- vision. So we really -- this is a very big deal to stop these appropriations. And, you know, like I say, we're actually in conjunction with the old-time right wing here who actually believes in a free market.
Goodman:You talk about King CONG madness.
Wasserman: That's right.
Goodman:That's coal, oil, nukes and gas.
Wasserman: Coal, oil, nukes and gas.
Goodman:The International Climate Change Summit in Bali ended with no new plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Wasserman: Astonishing. It's astonishing. Here, they give the Nobel Prize to Al Gore for warning us all about global warming. You know, I'm waiting for Al Gore to get arrested at the Indian Point Nuclear Plant. That's when he'll really deserve the Nobel Prize. You know, but the power of the coal, oil, nukes and gas conglomerates -- King CONG, as we call them -- is astonishing. To have the whole world focused on global warming and then come to this conference and not be able to get even a simple agreement is astounding. And it's really a terrifying testimony to the power of these corporations.
Goodman:Well, Al Gore went there and said, I name "the elephant in the room": the United States.
Wasserman: Yes. And, you know, it's a disgrace. It's an embarrassment to the world that the United States would stand -- here we're standing on the brink of a technological revolution that would really parallel the information revolution of the '90s. You know, we had the spread of the internet, the boom in computerization that really brought us prosperity. We could have a repeat of that, if we got away from nuclear power, coal, oil, nukes and gas and went into green power. But, you know, the Bush administration won't let it happen.
Goodman:How would green power look? I mean, you have the oil companies fighting hard against alternative energy, but at the same time -- I mean, like BP calling themselves "Beyond Petroleum" -- at the same time, seeing the writing on the wall, trying to get right in there. Now, there is a way to do this in a centralized way, isn't there? And isn't that what they're trying to get in on?
Wasserman: Yeah. They want to centralize and keep control of their energy supplies, of our energy supplies. And nuclear power is the ultimate way to do that, and then coal, oil and gas let them keep control over it, where the model we're working on --
Goodman:But even alternative.
Wasserman: Yeah.
Goodman:Even wind and solar.
Wasserman: They're not -- but I think they've realized they can't do it. Solar and wind cannot be centralized the way nukes, coal and oil can, because they are, of essence, decentralized technologies, and they can be community-owned. We're working in Minnesota and other states on a model of community-owned wind power, which we now have $100 million worth of community-owned wind in Minnesota.
Goodman:Doing what?
Wasserman: Doing -- generating cheap electricity, owned by the farmers on whose land it is and by the communities that get the electricity. This is the moment of terror for the coal, oil, nukes and gas industries, because they can't control this energy. And if we get -- that's why we need to stop these appropriations, because if they can't get the loans to build nuclear plants, all the money is going to go where it belongs, which is to green power. You know, with the information revolution, we didn't have an institutional barrier. With the renewable energy industry and with, you know, getting to solartopia, we do have the institutional barriers of the coal, oil, nukes and gas industry, and the nuke industry is really the vanguard, because it's the ultimate centralized --
Goodman:And you have some environmentalists who are pushing nukes. They are saying it's cleaner.
Wasserman: Very, very few. You know, it's been a miniscule -- you look at all the money the industry have, they have only been able to pick up a few marginal players. We had a press conference in D.C., and all the major environmental groups were right there: Sierra, League of Conservation Voters, Greenpeace. You know, they're with us. No major environmental group has gone to the dark side for nuclear power.
Goodman:Where does Bush stand?
Wasserman: You know, in a very deep radioactive hole, where -- exactly where you'd expect. They're pushing, you know, this industry. Actually, Dick Cheney has very serious interests in pushing nuclear power. And, you know, he's been right behind the scenes with Domenici there.
Goodman:What are his interests?
Wasserman: His interests are very corporate, and he wants controls. You know, the nuclear power -- as long as they're putting money into nuclear power, we're not going to get away from coal, oil and nukes and gas. Nuclear power is really the cutting edge for the fossil fuel industry. And if the nuclear barrier breaks, all the money -- all the new money is going to go to renewables. And so, they are terrified -- the coal, oil, nuke and gas industries -- of renewables. And so, nuclear power is really their finger in the dam, because once everything breaks, it's all going to go to renewables, and we'll have a transformed world.
Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!
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