A Letter to Senator Kerry, by Mary Lampert
To the Honorable Senator Kerry:
We are dismayed at your stance on the climate bill. Mr. Wasserman's letter below expresses our concerns very well. In addition our own thoughts regarding why nuclear power is not the answer to our future energy needs can be summarized in a few words it is too expensive, dangerous and dirty.
Let me explain.
Economics: Time Magazine, December 31, 2008 reported that new plants would be "spectacularly expensive." Florida Power & Light (FPL) filed a cost estimate for a large plant off the Keys that came to $12 billion to $18 billion. Progress Energy announced a $17 billion plan for a similar Florida plant, tripling its estimate in just a year. Do the math and it becomes obvious that we cannot afford to build enough reactors to make a dent in our electricity needs. Also, who would pay? Ratepayers would take the main hit, making your electric bills too high; but taxpayers could be on the hook too for billions in loan guarantees, tax breaks, insurance benefits and direct subsidies--not to mention the problem of storing radioactive waste, if Congress can ever figure out where to put it. Sticker shock also has unnerved Wall Street, banks, bond-rating agencies, and investors such as Warren Buffett who scrapped plans for an Idaho nuclear plant.
Efficiency and renewable are more economical than building new nuclear plants, according to a report published this summer by Dr. Mark Cooper, a senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School. He concluded that, "The likely cost of electricity for a new generation of nuclear reactors would be 12 to 20 cents per kilowatt hour, considerably more expensive than the average cost of increased use of energy efficiency and renewable energies at 6 cents per kilowatt hour."
Risky: Terrorists, aging parts and human error. The consequences of an accident make the risk unacceptable. For example, federal studies estimate that a core melt at Pilgrim would result in 3,000 peak early fatalities (within 20 miles) and 30,000 peak early injuries (within 65 miles) in the first year. A spent fuel accident would be many times worse. The Massachusetts Attorney General's Office expert testimony May 2006 estimated the costs and latent cancers following releases of just one isotope, Cesium-137, from Pilgrim's spent fuel pool to be 105-488 Billion dollars and 8,000-24,000 cancers; if the water in the spent fuel pool dropped just to the height of the stored assemblies as a result of human/mechanical error or acts of malice. Think about it, who really worries about a terrorist attacking a windmill; and what other type of electric generation require a mandatory evacuation plan?
Dirty: Every nuclear reactor produces 30 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste per year hazardous for thousands of years with no forwarding address. Even if Yucca Mountain is ever licensed, it will take decades to transfer current waste there; and, with re-licensing old plants and building more, Yucca will reach capacity in 2036 - leaving 44,000 tons stored at reactor sites. Plymouth, and other sites, will remain dangerous and ever-growing radioactive dumps - risking leaks and providing terrorists with lethal targets.
Reprocessing isn't the answer, either. It only makes the problem worse, even though it is promoted as "recycling." The "recycling" portion generally applies to just that one percent of spent fuel that consists of plutonium isotopes. Reprocessing overall increases the volume of radioactive waste greatly when all waste streams are taken into account and does not eliminate the need for a deep geologic repository.
Pollutes: Nuclear reactors release radioactivity to the air and water as part of their normal day-to-day operations; and studies show that low, constant levels of radiation exposure cause cancer and genetic mutations. The National Academy of Sciences recently reported that any exposure to radioactivity carries a health risk. For example, the footprints of radiation-linked disease can be seen in communities surrounding Pilgrim - elevated rates of leukemia, multiple myeloma and thyroid cancers.
In closing, with the loss to our nation and state of Senator Ted Kennedy, we deserve better from Massachusetts. We hope that you will rethink your position so that again Massachusetts can provide leadership in which we can take pride.
Thank-you for your consideration, I am sincerely,
Mary Lampert, Director Pilgrim Watch
148 Washington Street -Duxbury MA (781-934-0389)
Attachment
Harvey Wasserman
Is the Climate Bill Being Fossil/Nuked?
October 15, 2009
Is the Climate Bill morphing into an excuse to promote fossil fuels and new nuclear power plants?
Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) recent promotion of a pro-nuke/pro-drilling/pro-coal agenda in the name of Climate Protection has been highlighted in a New York Times op ed co-authored with Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC). The piece brands nuke power "our single largest contributor of emissions-free power." It advocates abolishing "cumbersome regulations" so utilities can "secure financing for more plants." And it wants "serious investment" to "find solutions to our nuclear waste problem."
The Senate Bill as now drafted also includes a "Clean Energy Development Administration" that could deliver virtually unlimited federal cash to build new reactors and fund other mega-polluters.
Also on the table are vastly expanded permits for off-shore drilling. And Kerry/Graham have talked of making the US "the Saudi Arabia of clean coal" while bringing "new financial incentives for companies that develop carbon capture and sequestration technology."
If you think pushing nukes, oil wells and coal mines to "prevent global warming" is counter-intuitive, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
The give-aways are allegedly meant to attract GOP votes. The joint Kerry/Graham op ed is being billed as a "game changer."
But even with provisions pushing a hundred new reactors in the US alone, some GOP stalwarts hint they would NEVER vote for a bill that includes cap-and-trade clauses. So is the GOP set to play the same game with Climate legislation as it has with health care: prolong negotiations, gut the substance of reform, demand---and GET---untold corporate give-aways, and then oppose the bill anyway?
What thin green substance survives could be limited to a few showpiece handouts for renewables and efficiency, with cap-and-trade as the centerpiece. But many environmentalists argue that cap-and-trade could create yet another costly bureaucracy with little real impact on the climate crisis.
To get real about solving this crisis, Congress should demand---and fund---a definitive national transition to energy efficiency and modernized mass transit. We still waste half the energy we consume. There's no source of usable juice cheaper and quicker to install than increased efficiency.
Taxes on carbon and other forms of "ancillary" pollution would help if they assess radioactive emissions (from coal as well as nukes), destruction of our oceans,lakes and rivers, removal of mountain tops, creation of nuclear waste, and so on. Merely axing the subsidies to King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas) and rendering a level playing field for true green energy sources to fairly compete with the old fossil/nukes would take us a long way up the road to Solartopia. A feed-in tariff that rewards renewables for the pollution they avoid would also help.
Without all that, the Climate Bill's outright negatives could be huge. Atomic reactors can do little or nothing to bring down carbon emissions. Projected construction costs for new nukes have jumped from $2 billion to $13 billion and counting. Body-blows to the all-but-dead Yucca Mountain nuke waste dump have left the industry, after 50 years, with nothing tangible to do with some 50,000 tons of spent lethal radioactive fuel rods. And after a half-century, the industry cannot command private construction financing or private liability insurance to cover a catastrophic melt-down or terror attack. Even if reactors could help with greenhouse gas emissions, it would take a trillion dollars or more to make a noticeable dent, and a decade or more for such reactors to begin to come on line.
But the reactor lifeline does not flow through licensing or waste. Because it has failed as a commercial technology, the industry must have massive infusions of cash and loan guarantees. The Climate Bill's real damage will be measured by the size and scope of reactor subsidies, if any.
Kerry's willingness to entertain "clean coal" and new offshore oil drilling as "solutions" for climate chaos staggers the imagination. It seems to signal that King CONG still owns Washington, and that any meaningful Congressional push for green power will demand serious re-direction from the grassroots.
DC insiders generally doubt that any Climate Bill can pass this year. Afghanistan and health care still dominate the national agenda.
But Democrats are desperate for SOMETHING to show at December's Copenhagen Climate Conference. The question is: how much will they give fossil/nuke Republicans to get a bill---ANY bill---with the world "Climate" attached?
The anti-nuclear movement has three times defeated proposed $50 billion loan guarantees for new nuclear plants. The environmental community still understands that solving the climate crisis requires the ultimate phase-out of fossil fuels. "A carbon-free, nuclear-free energy future is within the Senate's reach."