After Fukushima, New Fears in U.S

Japan’s catastrophe has raised new safety concerns about the proposed AP1000 nuclear reactor.

By JOHN RAYMOND

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Japan's eastern coast. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

'The [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] is a leaky vessel for hope,' said Lou Zeller of Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League.

The catastrophe in Japan caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11—one of the worst nuclear disasters since the advent of commercial nuclear power—has drawn attention to the David-and-Goliath struggle underway to stop federal regulators from approving a new untested nuclear reactor that critics say has clear safety design flaws. The reactor, known as the AP1000 and designed by Westinghouse-Toshiba, is proposed for 14 sites across the southeastern United States.

The full core meltdowns at three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have raised new safety concerns about the AP1000 reactor. The AP1000 Oversight Group, a coalition of environmental watchdog groups in the Southeast, filed a new legal challenge on June 16 with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to declare the commission’s current AP1000 review “null and void.”

The groups say the proposed design submitted for public comment does not resolve known safety design issues, does not apply lessons already learned from Fukushima, and further, that the NRC’s review process did not give the public—including outside nuclear engineers—the time needed to review and comment on the design. The public comment period, which began in late February and ended in May, was cut off after 75 days despite thousands of requests to extend it.

“The NRC’s main goal is to bulldoze this license through no matter the pending safety questions,” says Tom Clements, southeastern nuclear campaign coordinator with Friends of the Earth. He and others charge that the NRC, under industry pressure, is fast-tracking the review process to certify the reactor this year and will put off consideration of design changes needed as a result of Fukushima until a later date, after reactor construction may already be underway at some sites.

“There are profound economic and safety issues that remain. Technical experts inside and outside of the NRC have confirmed them, and there is great pressure to cover over them and move ahead,” says Jim Warren, executive director of the North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network (NC WARN) based in Durham, N.C.

Friends of the Earth, NC WARN and the AP1000 Oversight Group have submitted technical studies and expert reports with implications for the design of the AP1000 that relate to its containment structure, the strength of the shield building, emergency cooling systems and the high-density spent fuel pools proposed in Westinghouse’s design.

“[It] is imperative that the NRC re-evaluate the new AP1000 design in light of its potential for containment failure,” says Arnie Gundersen, a former senior nuclear industry official and chief engineer of Fairewinds Associates, Inc., an independent research firm. He first brought attention to the AP1000’s flawed containment design in a report commissioned by the AP1000 Oversight Group and submitted to the NRC in April 2010. The report linked the potential for containment failure in the AP1000 to its “chimney effect” design that would release radiation into the environment following a nuclear accident.

Westinghouse disputes the entire report. Company spokesman Vaughn Gilbert told the industry journal Nuclear Engineering International, “We are certainly never surprised when an antinuclear group with an antinuclear agenda puts forth antinuclear comments.”

But Gundersen is not alone in raising safety warnings. Inside the NRC, Dr. John Ma, the lead staff engineer who analyzed the AP1000 shield building, filed a formal dissent in November against approving the design, warning that a natural disaster “would shatter the [building’s] wall as it does a glass cup.” Despite requests to release Ma’s full report, the NRC has only made a heavily redacted version available. Friends of the Earth recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the uncensored report.

“The NRC is a leaky vessel for hope,” said Lou Zeller of Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, which is fighting plans to build two AP1000 power plants outside Augusta, Ga. “It will require action on the part of residents, activists, elected officials and others to prevent an aggressive company with powerful political support from riding roughshod over safety issues,” he said.

The Nuclear Power Play – Part 3: What's the Solution?

Special Series: The Nuclear Power Play – Part 3: What's the Solution?

Published Saturday, May 21, 2011 2:30 am

by John Rehill

Special Series: The Nuclear Power Play – Part 3: What's the Solution?

John O’Leary, a deputy secretary of the US department of Energy, testified before the House panel in 1977 that “A solar power breakthrough will solve the energy crises once and for all... a viable plan to use the inexhaustible solar power source is reachable within 5 years.”

“The economics of nuclear power are bad and getting worst” says energy consultant Charles Komanoff. “In my judgment, no utility executive with an accurate perception of the cost of nuclear power and a sincere desire to minimize cost would propose ordering a new nuclear plant.” Atomic Industrial Form Committee on fuel cycle policy (1977)

The volumes of studies comparing the future of solar and other renewable energies are clearly favorable when considering investment, jobs, pollution and safety. But they have been losing their rightful place to the deep pockets of Big-Oil and the atomic based sciences hatched from the “Manhattan Project.”

Affiliated corporations to that project, have been forever rewarded with funding, paraded with Two of of these corpoclout, and embarrassed with open doors. rations are General Electric and Westinghouse – both of whom stand as the leaders in building today’s nuclear global power industry. The subsidies they and oil have received amount to over a trillion dollars over the past five decades.

When Ronald Reagan took down the solar panels from the White House, it was more than symbolic. Behind that action came billions of dollars in “oil subsidies.” Nonrenewable sources of energy would be the “fuel de jour” and individuals would not find freedom from them. Many renewable projects involving wind and solar bio-fuels were emerging through the 70s, displaying great promise, but none would find refuge from big oil nor real assistance from the government.

Melvin Calvin was one such casualty of that era. In 1961, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on “photosynthesis,” while being recognized as an authority in theoretical organic chemistry, as well as being awarded the “Priestly Medal”. 

The “Calvin Cycle” was named after his method of developing the path of carbon in Photosynthesis. This was the birth of understanding “solar energy.” In 1974, Calvin began working on a project that could have brought more of an impact to the security of this country than did the atomic bomb itself, as his focus turned to global warming and the greenhouse effect. 

Calvin had worked on the Manhattan Project and was aware of the direction the trillion dollar Pentagon budget was taking us. Years before, he had traced carbon dioxide’s relationship with sunlight to carbohydrate in plants. He then understood every enzymatic requirement needed to convert carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons.

By 1978, on his ranch in California, he had successfully produced oil from a plant. “Euphorbia lathyris,”  a relative of the poinsettia. It’s grown in a hot and dry atmosphere and produces a latex milk that consists of hydrogen and water. This mixture is processed to exclude oxygen atoms, thus producing hydrocarbons-oil – 12 percent of the plant to be exact and at $20 a barrel. Now oil is almost $120 per barrel. 

Calvin felt cloning and genetic engineering would highly improve the yield and bring the cost down. One of the advantages of fuel derived from Euphoriba is that it does not add to the carbon dioxide blanket eating the ozone. But this did not fit what modeled the “Business Roundtable’s” lock on “fossil fuels”. 

Thus, this Quantum leap in energy resourcefulness and environmental preservation died a quiet and ominous death. The last time I talked to Mr. Calvin, it was 1992, to let him know that I'd included his studies in a piece I wrote for “Creative Loafing,” that I had gathered in an interview with him a year before. He was only coming into his lab half a day a week and soon to retire. 

Calvin told me that he did have misgivings about his years of work being swept under the carpet. How many more like him were, and are still, being dismissed. Imagine California to Texas cooling the desert with green bio-fuel. Euphorbia can still be grown, but we can’t get back the precious kids, who have been sent off to fight over Middle East oil, not to mention the trillions of dollars spent protecting the profits of the oil companies, or the untold damage done to the environment.

In such, President Obama may have completely missed his chance to really be a visonary leader. Right after the BP incident, the President could have partnered with some businesses, commandeered some of those abandoned warehouses along the gulf coast and setup assembly lines building solar collectors, windmills and reversible meters. 

President Obama might have suggested that the most powerful and significant change we can make would be our choices. To be aware of low hydro-carbon products, support them and innovative pioneers like Calvin. To reduce our waste and vote with our feet to tell corporate America how we need to reduce our dependency on fossil and nuclear fuels. That this would progressively usher alternative energy sources into our future.

Making choices has a domino effect. Smart buying reduces trash - reducing trash pic-ups - reducing over burden landfills, which reduces the amount of carbon consuming topography we lose creating them and fossil fuels burnt transporting their fill. To buy smart is like eating smart, it saves you money at the doctor, so when curtailing waste, we and the planet become the benefactors of these practices.

Surely, building more NP plants will not change our habits, nor move us away from this throw-away society they represent. They are the epitome of "trash left behind" with no responsibility to the future. We can, however, insist manufacturers produce products durable, recyclable and biodegradable goods, with little to no fossil fuel. These habits can turn us to a better future in less time than we could bring the first new NP plant online, if we started breaking ground today.

Such broad scale policies would have put tens of thousands of people to work and started a trend that could have reduced dependency on oil – perhaps our greatest threat to national security. President Obama could have put thousands of people to work planting Euphoriba across the Southwest, reducing our dependency even more and helping to heal the woes from CO2. 

All of these industries would employ many, many times the amount of labor then do NP plants. In fact, after an NP plant is built it only requires 100 to 150 people to run it unless a disaster hits. There are not many catastrophes involved in solar and no mining and poisoning waters either, with little chance of a $300 billion cleanups needed to boot. 

Plus, the $36 billion in the pipe for NP as loans, will all be repaid by those who consume the electricity (you and me) and added will be a fountain of profits for the corporations facilitating that process. The longer that takes, the longer those profits flow. It really just becomes a “phantom tax” that redistributes taxpayer wealth to already wealthy, publicly-subsidized corporations. Nuclear Power is by far the most costly and victimizing direction to go down the road to our future. If one wanted to believed it offered a future at all. 

Yes, if President Obama really wanted "clean energy that would strengthen our security, protect our planet and create endless new jobs," he wouldn’t be kissing the rings of those who have taken all of that from us. He'd be standing up to give the American people something more deserving of our nation's role in humanity and we would be taking the lead in guiding the world toward a sustainable future for generations to come.

McGuinty faces major challenges: Star editorial

The Ontario Legislature resumes sitting today after a three-month recess. In the coming days, its order paper will be filled with earnest legislation like amendments to the Mining Act (to give First Nations more of a say in prospecting and mining on their traditional lands), a measure to limit toxic emissions by industries, and a ban on the use of hand-held cellphones by motorists.

There will also be an economic statement, likely in November, with some short-term fixes for the ailing provincial economy.

And in the daily question period in the Legislature, Premier Dalton McGuinty's government will come under attack for not doing enough to address the economic slump.

But McGuinty should be able to withstand the barrage, given the weakened state of the opposition, with one lame-duck leader (the NDP's Howard Hampton, who is stepping down next year) and the other on probation (the PC's John Tory, who was given a tepid endorsement by his party earlier this year).

Behind the scenes, however, McGuinty will be wrestling with two enormous decisions that will shape the province's future.

The first is whether to keep the budget balanced or to let it slide into deficit if, as expected, the current economic slump continues and significantly erodes the provincial revenue base.

The second is what kind of reactor to choose to replace the aging nuclear power plants at Pickering and Darlington.

On the deficit, even bank economists have said that, given the circumstances, it ought to be under consideration. But so far McGuinty has stuck doggedly to the goal of a balanced budget.

"Obviously if we anticipate that our revenues are going to slow down, as I've said many times in the past, we're going to have to do in government what families do at home," said McGuinty last week. "You've got to make some adjustments and you've got to make sure you're focusing on your priorities."

Thus, with one eye on the fiscal storm clouds, McGuinty has sought to dampen expectations of government assistance. He told municipalities last month not to expect instant relief from the downloading of provincial services onto their plates. And last week he suggested the timetable for his promise to reduce poverty will have to be stretched out.

So no new spending initiatives. But even existing spending – on schools, hospitals, roads, transit, courts, jails and so on – will come under pressure if the recession deepens and the treasury is further squeezed. It remains to be seen whether McGuinty's commitment to a balanced budget is sustainable in that circumstance.

As for the decision on a new nuclear reactor, in hot competition for the multi-billion-dollar contract are: Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL), the homegrown company whose design is now in place in the province's power plants; French-owned Areva; and U.S.-based Westinghouse.

The McGuinty government would like to give the nod to AECL, which is owned by the federal government. But Ontario wants Ottawa to back up any sale with guarantees to cover cost overruns. So far, those guarantees have not been forthcoming, as Stephen Harper's government has wrestled with its own decision whether to keep AECL or sell it.

Both these decisions are due to be made next spring (the deficit in the annual provincial budget, the reactor likely in a separate announcement). The behind-the-scenes struggles that precede the decisions will be more ferocious – and hugely more significant – than the daily battles on the floor of the Legislature between the government and the opposition parties.

Comments

Major Challenge is getting rid of McGuinty

At what point will Ontarions ever get choices for good government? The current system is only about getting votes and not doing anything that benefits us. Mr. McGuinty was a reckless promiser in opposition and his party had even tried to get rid of him. He has been elected by playing the game (twice now) with no real strategic plan. You got wonder at a guy who now wants to use a web based petition when many such as tax payers association, support for parents of autistic children and even the small business association have used similar tactics with him with absolutely zero positive results. Can you say PR?

Posted by Ignorance is Bliss

don't bite the hand...

McGuinty never thought about how he's going to pay for all his massive increases in civil servants and their salaries. A strong public sector always requires a strong private sector. Someone has to pay the bills.

Posted by scamper

Grow up and govern

Have you received your property assessment yet? Lets see some real leadership and halt this annual insanity courtesy of MPAC. Mr. McGuinty road the coattails of fear in the '07 election on the religious schooling issue. It was a non starter. Mr. Tory could have OVERNIGHT turned this entire platform 180 degrees by promising a total revamp of this insane, bully pulpit tax grab. He didn't. Where were the NDP and Howard Hampton? If they raised this issue , they allowed it to be muted. The middle class is being fleeced and all the while wooed with empty promises in this campaign. WAKE UP

Posted by Steve Canyon

Really?

Sure, lets bring more competition to the provision of hydro power. Remember when Mr. Eaves let the rates for electricity float after full deregulation, and everyone hand to pay market price? The government had to step in again to prevent the public outcry from becoming riots in the streets. If we are already so incensed by the collusion of the oil conglomerates, how will it be when the electricity generators and distributors do the same thing? But by all means, Mr. Jones, lets have more competition.

Posted by sobersecondthought

Econimic denials and foolishness

McGullible was too busy boasting of irrelevant issues like banning smoking and pitbulls - the real easy stuff - how proactive. Mr Flaherty urged McG to start cutting taxes across the board, including the health tax. Instead, McG sulked and felt he was victimised - now, Ontario is in a recession and all he can do is give the doctors a big raise and shuffle the cabinet - liberals are all alike - why face reality when you can blame your foolhardyness on someone else.

Posted by freebel

Cost Over Runs

Let's end the old boys club once and for all. Ontario is shy on competition: there's very very little in hydro and very very very very little in education. This results in complacency, lack of accountability, mediocrity, and inefficiency. As Bob Rae said, " We can do better" Ontario would thrive with an injection of competition into it's highly protected socialized public work force.

Posted by Templeton Jones


No Short Term Fixes

The crisis in manufacturing has been brewing for a long time. Expect to see many more small companies in Ontario close. In the globalized economy, consolidation is a critical trend. Mass is king. Our cpompanies are typically one tenth the size of American companies. Guess who closes first when the market contracts?

Posted by Herschell Hollywood

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.

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.

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!