Energy Bill Bankrupts Our Future

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http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16226

 

Energy Bill Bankrupts Our FutureCharles Sheehan-Miles, AlterNet

June 23, 2003

 

In what may be the worst piece of legislation the Senate has passed in decades

(and they've had some whoppers), the Senate voted last week for a huge corporate

boondoggle that will not only help bankrupt our country, but will guarantee

long-term environmental damage, a rise in cancer rates and thousands of years of

monitoring of toxic and radioactive waste. They did this without a single public

hearing, without a debate, and without much of a conscience.

 

The energy bill is a major attack on our country and our world's future. First,

it authorizes the spending of taxpayer dollars to help build six or more new

nuclear reactors -- reactors that the utilities couldn't afford to build on

their own. The utilities and proponents of nuclear power would have us believe

that per megawatt, nuclear power is both the cheapest and the cleanest form of

energy available.

 

In fact, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the last five

commercial reactors cost 11 times as much to build per kilowatt as natural gas

plants. Furthermore, they aren't at all responsible for the cost of long-term

storage of the nuclear waste they create -- waste that will have to be stored,

monitored and maintained for the next 100,000 years.

 

Mind-boggling, considering that all of recorded human history is only a fraction

of that time. Imagine your reaction if your annual tax bill carried a surcharge

to maintain toxic waste left behind by Ptolemy II and Nebuchadnezzar.

 

Worse, the bill indefinitely extends the Price-Anderson Act, passing on the

liability for accidents at nuclear plants to the very people who will suffer the

consequences -- you and me. George Woodwell, one of the preeminent scientists in

America today, recently pointed out that if it weren't for Price-Anderson, there

wouldn't be a single commercial nuclear reactor in the U.S., because they

couldn't afford the insurance. As it stands, reactor operators are required to

carry $200 million of liability coverage per reactor; damages beyond that amount

are passed on to the taxpayer.

 

Ironically, in a 1992 study by Sandia National Labs, commissioned in the wake of

the Three Mile Island near-meltdown, the cost of damage from a single nuclear

accident is estimated to range as high as $560 billion in current articles. Who

pays? We do.

 

But that's not all. Behind curtain number three is a pilot pebble bed nuclear

reactor. The utilities call pebble bed reactors " inherently safe, " because if

they loose their coolant, they don't melt down. In fact, say the utilities, they

are so safe that the engineers don't believe they need containment structures.

Of course, if the graphite coatings on the " pebbles " are exposed to, say,

oxygen, they'll catch on fire, which is precisely what caused most of the

radiation exposure from Chernobyl. But don't worry, say the utilities -- it's

" inherently safe. " If so, why do taxpayers need to substantially bear the burden

of liability in case of accidents?

 

Let's not forget that if the 9/11 hijackers had taken a detour and crashed into

the Indian Point cooling pool (they flew right over it), they would likely have

killed 100,000 people instead of 3,000 if the wind was blowing in the right

direction.

 

Outraged yet? Keep reading. The bill, which must seem like a godsend to the

utilities, authorizes the pilot construction of a nuclear plant to produce

hydrogen for fuel cells. Forget that we can produce hydrogen with wind power at

almost no cost; instead, the Bush Administration has in store a plan to build

hundreds of nuclear plants to produce hydrogen. We'll have clean power for our

cars, at the price of hundreds of millions of tons of nuclear waste spread all

over the country. How helpful is that? In fact, this plan is simply a backdoor

to build more nuclear plants while they posture at being environmentally

friendly.

 

This isn't just about us. It's about our children, and their children, going

forward to all future generations. For some perspective, Julius Caesar was

assassinated by disgruntled senators a mere 2,000 years ago. By law, we have to

maintain and protect the waste produced by these plants for fifty times that.

The entire sweep of human history pales in comparison to the time this stuff

will be around, leaking into the environment, causing cancer and birth defects

and possibly extinction. It won't reach its peak radioactivity for another

100,000 years.

 

I hope those campaign contributions from the energy companies make the Senators

who voted for this bill feel better, because countless future generations will

be cursing them, giving this Senate its own brand of immortality. It's not a

legacy I'd want to live with.

 

Charles Sheehan-Miles is executive director of the Nuclear Policy Research

Institute and the author of " Prayer at Rumayla: A Novel of the Gulf War. "

 

 

 

© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

 

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