By Judy Einach
Buffalo, NY – 441 commercial nuclear reactors operate worldwide. Energy analysts project that within 100 years 6000 reactors may be in operation.
To mitigate damage from climate change, we have a only decade to change the way we use and produce power. Nuclear plants take almost 10 years to build. The industry says new plants take less time, but experience shows that constructing nuclear plants includes cost overruns, delays, and corruption.
Nuclear reactors need a steady supply of fresh, cool water. Existing plants have had to curtail production in summer because water temperatures have risen and cannot cool reactors. The problem is expected to worsen as temperatures continue to rise.
The industry argues that nuclear power does not emit carbon dioxide. Nuclear fission produces heat that boils water, making steam to turn generators that produce electricity. This is a very expensive and dangerous way to boil water, and only part of the fuel cycle.
Regarding the entire fuel cycle, nuclear power is anything but green. Mining, milling and enriching uranium, creating fuel pellets and rods, building nuclear power plants, and constructing facilities to store nuclear wastes consume massive amounts of power from coal or oil.
Estimates are there is only enough uranium to supply 2500 reactors for 8 years. Government supports the development of new technologies to reprocess some nuclear wastes for reuse in reactors. These are expensive, untested technologies, and not likely to create an unlimited supply of energy-grade uranium.
As the world's supply of high grade uranium is used up, the industry will rely on lesser grades. Much more fossil fuel is required to extract and refine lesser grades insuring fossil fuel inputs exceed energy output.
The problem of nuclear wastes has never been solved. From mining uranium through multiple other nuclear processes, lethal wastes contaminate the environment. Mine tailings, releases of radioactive water into waterways, and nuclear storage sites compromise the environment so badly that we are trying to figure out how to mark contaminated sites so our descendents will understand, many thousands of years from now, they must stay away.
Western New Yorkers ought to be especially aware of the problem of nuclear wastes. We live with cancer and other diseases linked to exposure at rates above the national average. Manhattan Project legacy wastes are landfilled from the Town of Tonawanda to Lake Ontario. Radioactive isotopes traceable to the West Valley Demonstration Project were found in the Niagara River and Lake Ontario by Canadian researchers. The West Valley nuclear site contains the most complex mix of nuclear and hazardous wastes in the nation, a cocktail exponentially more dangerous than nuclear or hazardous wastes alone. One terrible breach at this site and Erie and Niagara Counties could become uninhabitable in one day's time.
Nuclear power will not make us energy-independent. Nuclear enslaves and threatens. We monitor and maintain nuclear facilities with such vigilance that we cannot turn our backs for fear of an accident. Nuclear power and weapons proliferation are inseparable. Government says it is working on ways to prevent weapons proliferation, but nuclear weapons are highly prized and we have done a poor job of securing the materials to produce them, let alone creating conditions that would cause nations not to wish to use them.
Nuclear is a big industry with powerful allies engaged in a propaganda campaign to convince us nuclear is safe and green. It is neither.
Listener-Commentator Judy Einach is director of the Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes.
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