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<font size=4>How the “Peaceful Atom” Became a Serial Killer</b> <br>
Nuclear Power Loses its Alibi</b> <br><br>
</font><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175371/tomgram:_chip_ward,_the_nuclear_myth_melts_down/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175371/tomgram%3A_chip_ward%2C_the_nuclear_myth_melts_down/<br>
</a>By <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/chipward">Chip
Ward</a><br><br>
When nuclear reactors blow, the first thing that melts down is the
truth. Just as in the Chernobyl catastrophe almost 25 years ago
when Soviet authorities denied the extent of radiation and downplayed the
dire situation that was spiraling out of control, Japanese authorities
spent the first week of the Fukushima crisis issuing conflicting and
confusing reports. We were told that radiation levels were up, then
down, then up, but nobody aside from those Japanese bureaucrats could
verify the levels and few trusted their accuracy. The situation is
under control, they told us, but workers are being evacuated. There
is no danger of contamination, but stay inside and seal your
doors.<br><br>
<a name="more"></a>The First Atomic Snow Job <br><br>
</b>The bureaucratization of horror into bland and reassuring
pronouncements was to be expected, especially from an industry where
misinformation is the rule. Although you might suppose that the
nuclear industry’s outstanding characteristic would be its expertise,
since it’s loaded with junior Einsteins who grasp the math and physics
required to master the most awesomely sophisticated technology humans
have ever created, think again. Based on the record, it’s most
outstanding characteristic is a fundamental dishonesty. I learned
that the hard way as a grassroots activist organizing opposition to a
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174946/chip_ward_uranium_frenzy_in_the_west">
scheme</a> hatched by a consortium of nuclear utilities to park thousands
of tons of highly radioactive fuel rods, like the ones now burning at
Fukushima, in my Utah backyard. <br><br>
Here’s what I took away from that experience: the nuclear industry is a
snake-oil culture of habitual misrepresentation, pervasive wishful
thinking, deep denial, and occasional outright deception. For more
than 50 years, it has habitually lied about risks and costs while
covering up every violation and failure it could. Whether or not
its proponents and spokespeople are dishonest or merely deluded can be
debated, but the outcome -- dangerous misinformation and the meltdown of
honest civic discourse -- remains the same, as we once again see at
Fukushima.<br><br>
Established at the dawn of the nuclear age, the pattern of dissemblance
had become a well-worn rut long before the Japanese reactors spun out of
control. In the early 1950s, the disciples of nuclear power, or the
“peaceful atom” as it was then called, insisted that nuclear power would
soon become so cheap and efficient that it would be offered to consumers
for free. Visionaries that they were, they suggested that cities
would be constructed with building materials impregnated with uranium so
that snow removal would be unnecessary. Atomic bombs, they urged,
should be used to carve out new coastal harbors for ships. In low
doses, they swore, radiation was actually beneficial to one’s
health.<br><br>
Such notions and outright fantasies, as well as propaganda for a new
industry and a new way of war -- even if laughable today -- had tragic
results back then. Thousands of American GIs, for instance, were
<a href="http://www.naav.com/">marched into ground zero</a> just after
above-ground nuclear tests had been set off to observe their responses to
what military planners assumed would be the atomic battlefield of the
future. Ignorance, it turns out, is not bliss, and thousands of
those soldiers later became ill. Many died young.<br><br>
Unwary civilians who
<a href="http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/utah_today/nucleartestingandthedownwinders.html">
lived downwind</a> of America’s western testing grounds were also exposed
to nuclear fallout and they, too, suffered horribly from a variety of
cancers and other illnesses. Uranium miners
<a href="http://www.hcn.org/issues/329/16520">exposed to radiation</a> in
the tunnels where they wrestled from the earth the raw materials for the
nuclear age also became ill and died too soon, as did workers processing
that uranium into weapons and fuel. Many of those miners were poor
Navajos from my backyard in Utah where a new uranium boom, part of the
so-called nuclear renaissance, was -- before Fukushima -- set to take
shape.<br><br>
How Unlikely Risks Become Inevitable<br><br>
</b>In the future, today’s low-risk claims from industry advocates will
undoubtedly seem as tragically naïve as yesterday’s false claims.
Yes, the likelihood that any specific nuclear power plant reactor will
melt down may be slim indeed -- which hardly means inconceivable -- but
to act as though nuclear risks are limited to the operation of power
plants is misleading in the extreme.
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel">“Spent
fuel”</a> from reactors (the kind burning in Japan as I write) is
produced as a plant operates, and that fuel remains super hot and
dangerous for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. As we are
learning to our sorrow at the Fukushima complex, such used fuel is hardly
“spent.” In fact, it can be even
<a href="http://www.infowars.com/fuel-rod-fire-at-fukushima-reactor-would-be-like-chernobyl-on-steroids/">
more radioactive</a> and dangerous than reactor cores.<br><br>
Spent fuel continues to pile up in a nuclear waste stream that will have
to be closely managed and monitored for eons, so long that those
designing nuclear-waste repositories struggle with the problem of signage
that might be intelligible in a future so distant today’s languages may
not be understood. You might think that a danger virulent enough to
outlast human languages would be a danger to avoid, but the hubris of the
nuclear establishment is equal to its willingness to deceive.<br><br>
A natural disaster, accident, or terrorist attack that might be
statistically unlikely in any year or decade becomes ever more likely at
the half-century, century, or half-millennium mark. Given enough
time, in fact, the unlikely becomes almost inevitable. Even if you
and I are not the victims of some future apocalyptic disturbance of that
lethal residue, to consign our children, grandchildren, or
great-grandchildren to such peril is plainly and profoundly immoral.
<br><br>
Nuclear proponents have long wanted to limit the discussion of risk to
plant operation alone, not to the storage of dangerous wastes, and they
remain eager to ignore altogether the risks inherent in transporting
nuclear waste (often called
<a href="http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/hlwtransport/mobilechernobyl.htm">
“mobile Chernobyl”</a> by nuclear critics). Moving those spent fuel
rods to future repositories represents a rarely acknowledged category of
potential catastrophe. Just imagine a trainload of hot nuclear
waste derailing catastrophically along a major urban corridor with the
ensuing evacuations of nearby inhabitants. It means, in essence, that one
of those Fukushima “pools” of out-of-control waste could “go nuclear”
anywhere in our landscape.<br><br>
Risk is about more than likelihood; it’s also about impact. If I
tell you that your chances of being bitten by a mosquito as you cross my
yard are one in a hundred, you’ll think of that risk differently than if
I give you the same odds on a deadly pit viper. As events unfold in
Japan, it’s ever clearer that we’re talking pit viper, not
mosquito. You wouldn’t know it though if you were to debate nuclear
industry representatives, who consistently downplay both odds and impact,
and dismiss those who claim otherwise as hysterical doomsayers.
Fukushima will assumedly make their task somewhat more
difficult.<br><br>
Hidden Costs and Wasted Subsidies<br><br>
</b>The true costs of nuclear power are another subject carefully fudged
and obscured by nuclear power advocates. From its inception in
federally funded labs, nuclear power has been highly subsidized. A
recent
<a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-power-subsidies-report.html">
report</a> by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that “more than 30
subsidies have supported every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle from
uranium mining to long-term waste storage. Added together, these
subsidies have often exceeded the average market price for the power
produced.” When it comes to producing electricity, these subsidies
are so extensive, the report concludes, that “in some cases it would have
cost taxpayers less to simply buy the kilowatts on the open market and
give them away.” <br><br>
If the nuclear club in Congress, led by Senate Republican leader Mitch
McConnell, gets its way, billions more in subsidies will be forthcoming,
including massive federal loan guarantees to build the next generation of
nuclear plants. These are particularly important to the industry,
since bankers won’t otherwise touch projects that are notorious for
mammoth cost overruns, lengthy delays, and abrupt cancellations.<br><br>
The Obama administration has already proposed
<a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0204/Obama-s-nuclear-power-policy-a-study-in-contradictions">
an additional $36 billion</a> in such guarantees to underwrite new plant
construction. That includes $4 billion for the construction of two
new nuclear reactors on the Gulf Coast that are to be
<a href="http://www.gregpalast.com/no-bs-info-on-japan-nuclearobama-invites-tokyo-electric-to-build-us-nukes-with-taxpayer-funds/">
operated</a> in partnership with Tokyo Electric Power Company -- that’s
right, the very outfit that runs the Fukushima complex. Yet when I
debate nuclear advocates, they always claim that, in cost terms, nuclear
power outcompetes alternative sources of energy like wind and
solar.<br><br>
That government gravy train doesn’t just stop at new power plants
either. The feds have long assumed the epic costs of waste
management and storage. If another multi-billion dollar project
like the now-abandoned Yucca Mountain
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174946/chip_ward_uranium_frenzy_in_the_west">
repository</a> in Nevada is built, it will be with dollars from taxpayers
and captive ratepayers (the free market be damned). Industry
spokesmen insist that subsidizing such projects will be well worth it,
since they will create thousands of new jobs. Unfortunately for
them, a definitive 2009
<a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/03/green_jobs.html">
University of Massachusetts study</a> that analyzed various
infrastructure investments including wind, solar, and retrofitting
buildings to conserve energy placed nuclear dead last in job
creation.<br><br>
Finally, the recently renewed
<a href="http://climateprogress.org/2008/08/07/how-much-of-a-subsidy-is-the-price-anderson-nuclear-industry-indemnity-act/">
Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act</a> limits the liability
of nuclear utilities should a catastrophe like the one in Japan happen
here in the United States. The costs of recovery from the Fukushima
catastrophe will be astronomical. In the U.S., nuclear utilities
would be off the hook for any of those costs and you, the citizen, would
foot the bill. Despite their assurances that nothing can go wrong
here, nuclear industry officials have made sure that in their business
risk and reward are carefully separated. It’s a scenario we should
all know well: private corporations take away profits when things go
well, and taxpayers assume responsibility when shit happens.<br><br>
Finally, nuclear power boosters like to proclaim themselves “green” and
to claim that their industry is the ideal antidote to global warming
since it produces no greenhouse gas emissions. In doing so, they
hide the
<a href="http://healutah.org/what/energypolicy/nuclearpower/chipward">
real environmental footprint</a> of nuclear energy.<br><br>
It’s quite true that no carbon dioxide comes out of power-plant
smokestacks. However, maintaining any future infrastructure to
handle the industry’s toxic waste is guaranteed to produce lots of carbon
dioxide. So does mining uranium and processing it into fuel rods,
building massive reactors from concrete and steel, and then behemoth
repositories capable of holding waste for 1,000 years. Radiation
from the Fukushima meltdown is now
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/asia/20japan.html">
entering</a> the Japanese
<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/21/us-japan-quake-idUSTRE72A0SS20110321">
food chain</a>. How green is that?<br><br>
The Watchdogs Play Dead<br><br>
</b>Over the course of nuclear power’s history, there have been scores of
mishaps, accidents, violations, and problems that, chances are, you’ve
never heard about. Beyond the unavoidable bad PR over the partial
meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986,
and now the Japanese catastrophe, the industry has an excellent record --
of covering up its failures.<br><br>
The co-dependent relationship between the nuclear corporations and the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the federal agency charged with
licensing and monitoring them, resembles the cozy relationship between
the Securities Exchange Commission and Wall Street before the global
economic meltdown of 2008. The NRC relies heavily on the industry’s
own reports since only a small fraction of its activities can be
inspected yearly. <br><br>
A report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, “The NRC and Nuclear Power
Plant
<a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_risk/safety/nrc-and-nuclear-power-2010.html">
Safety</a> in 2010,” which highlights the NRC’s haphazard record of
inspection and enforcement, makes clear just why the honor system that
assumes utilities will honestly report problems has never worked.
It describes 14 recent serious “near miss” violations that initially went
unreported. At the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, only 38 miles
north of the New York metropolitan area, for instance, NRC inspectors
ignored a leaking water containment system for 15 years.<br><br>
After a leaking roof forced the shutdown of two reactors at the Calvert
Cliffs nuclear facility in Maryland, plant managers admitted that it had
been leaking for eight years. When Honeywell hired temporary workers to
replace striking union members at its uranium refinery in Illinois, they
were slipped the correct answers to a test required for those allowed to
work at nuclear plants, because otherwise they had neither the knowledge
nor experience to pass.<br><br>
The regulation of Japan’s nuclear industry mirrors the American
model. Japan’s
<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-18/japan-disaster-caps-decades-of-faked-reports-accidents.html">
legacy</a> of regulatory scandals, falsified safety records,
underestimated risks, and cover-ups includes an incident in 1999 when
workers mixed uranium in open buckets and exposed hundreds of coworkers
to radiation. Two later died. Other scandals involved hiding
cracks in steam pipes from regulators in 1989, lying about a fire and
explosion at a plant near Tokyo in 1997, and covering up damage to a
plant from an earthquake in 2007.<br><br>
In the wake of the Fukushima catastrophe, we will no doubt discover how
there, too, so-called watchdogs
<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8384059/Japan-earthquake-Japan-warned-over-nuclear-plants-WikiLeaks-cables-show.html">
rolled over</a> and played dead. In recent years, in fact, the
Fukushima complex had
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704433904576212980463881792.html">
the highest accident rate</a> of any of the big Japanese nuclear
plants. We’ve already learned that an engineer who helped design
and supervise the construction of the steel pressure vessel that holds
the melting fuel rods in Reactor No. 4 warned that it was damaged during
production. He had himself initially orchestrated a cover-up of
this fact, but revealed it a decade later -- only to be ignored.
During the complex’s construction by General Electric some 35 years ago,
Dale Bridenbaugh, a GE employee,
<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/fukushima-mark-nuclear-reactor-design-caused-ge-scientist/story?id=13141287">
resigned</a> after becoming convinced that the reactors being built were
seriously flawed. He, too, was ignored. The Vermont Yankee
reactor in Vermont and 23 others around the U.S.
<a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2059453,00.html?xid=rss-fullnation-yahoo">
replicate that design</a>. <br><br>
Stay tuned, since more examples of reckless management will surely come
to light...<br><br>
Risk Is Not a Math Problem<br><br>
</b>That culture of secrecy is a logical fit for an industry that is
authoritarian by nature. Unlike solar or wind power, nuclear power
requires massive investments of capital, highly specialized expertise,
robust security, and centralized control. Any local citizen facing
the impact of a uranium mine, a power plant, or a proposed waste
depository will attest that the owners, operators, and regulators of the
industry are remote, unresponsive, and inaccessible. They misinform
because they have the power to get away with it. The absence of
meaningful checks and balances enables them.<br><br>
Risk, antinuclear advocates quickly learn, is not simply some complicated
math problem to be resolved by experts. Risk is, above all, a
question of who is put at risk for whose benefit, of how the rewards,
costs, and liabilities of an activity are distributed and whether that
distribution is fair. Those are political questions that citizens
directly affected should be answering for themselves. When it comes
to nuclear power, that doesn’t happen because the industry is
undemocratic to its core. Corporate officers treat downwind
stakeholders with the same contempt they reserve for honest accountings
of the industry’s costs and dangers.<br><br>
It may be difficult for the average citizen to unpack the technicalities
of nuclear power, or understand the complex physics and engineering
involved in splitting atoms to make steam to produce electricity.
But most of us are good at detecting bullshit. We know when
something like the nuclear industry doesn’t pass the smell test.<br><br>
There is a growing realization that our carbon-based energy system is
warming and endangering this planet, but replacing coal and oil with
nuclear power is like trading heroin for crack -- different addictions,
but no less unhealthy or risky. The “nuclear renaissance,” like the
“peaceful atom” before it, is the energy equivalent of a three-card monte
game, involving the same capitalist crooks who gave us oil spills, bank
bailouts, and so many of the other rip-offs and scams that have plagued
our lives in this new century. <br><br>
They are serial killers. Stop them before they kill again.
Credibility counts and you don’t need a PhD or a Geiger counter to detect
it.<br><br>
Chip Ward was a founder of HEAL Utah, a grassroots group that has led the
opposition to the disposal of nuclear waste in Utah and the construction
of a new reactor next to Green River. A
<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175301/chip_ward_a_west_raised_by_wolves">
TomDispatch regular</a>, he is the author of
</i>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1859843212/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20">
Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West</a> and
</i>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1559639776/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20">
Hope’s Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land</a>. To
listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Ward
discusses the endless legacy of nuclear power, click
<a href="http://tomdispatch.blogspot.com/2011/03/fed-up-and-atom.html">
here</a>, or download it to your iPod
<a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=j0SS4Al/iVI&subid=&offerid=146261.1&type=10&tmpid=5573&RD_PARM1=http%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Ftomcast-from-tomdispatch-com%2Fid357095817">
here.</a><br><br>
</i>Copyright 2011 Chip Ward<br><br>
<br><br>
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