Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Nuclear Energy

  • Learning from History? After Sendai

    Richard FalkAfter atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki there was in the West, especially the United States, a short triumphal moment, crediting American science and military prowess with bringing victory over Japan and the avoidance of what was anticipated at the time to be a long and bloody conquest of the Japanese homeland. This official narrative of the devastating attacks on these Japanese cities has been contested by numerous reputable historians who argued that Japan had conveyed its readiness to surrender well before the bombs had been dropped, that the U.S. Government needed to launch the attacks to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that it had this super-weapon at its disposal, and that the attacks would help establish American supremacy in the Pacific without any need to share power with Moscow. But whatever historical interpretation is believed, the horror and indecency of the attacks is beyond controversy.  This use of atomic bombs against defenseless densely populated cities remains the greatest single act of state terror in human history, and had it been committed by the losers in World War II surely the perpetrators would have been held criminally accountable and the weaponry forever prohibited. But history gives the winners in big wars considerable latitude to shape the future according to their own wishes, sometimes for the better, often for the worse.


    Not only were these two cities of little military significance devastated beyond recognition, but additionally, inhabitants in a wide surrounding area were exposed to lethal doses of radioactivity causing for decades death, disease, acute anxiety, and birth defects. Beyond this, it was clear that such a technology would change the face of war and power, and would either be eliminated from the planet or others than the United States would insist on possession of the weaponry, and in fact, the five permanent member of the UN Security Council became the first five states to develop and possess nuclear weapons, and in later years, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea have developed nuclear warheads of their own. As well, the technology was constantly improved at great cost, allowing long-distance delivery of nuclear warheads by guided missiles and payloads hundreds times greater than those primitive bombs used against Japan.


    After Hiroshima and Nagasaki there were widespread expressions of concern about the future issued by political leaders and an array of moral authority figures.  Statesmen in the West talked about the necessity of nuclear disarmament as the only alternative to a future war that would destroy industrial civilization. Scientists and others in society spoke in apocalyptic terms about the future. It was a mood of ‘utopia or else,’ a sense that unless a new form of governance emerged rapidly there would be no way to avoid a catastrophic future for the human species and for the earth itself.


    But what happened? The bellicose realists prevailed, warning of the distrust of ‘the other,’ insisting that it would be ‘better to be dead than red,’ and that, as in the past, only a balance of power could prevent war and catastrophe. The new balance of the nuclear age was called ‘deterrence,’ and it evolved into a dangerous semi-cooperative security posture known as ‘mutual assured destruction,’ or more sanely described by its acronym, MAD.  The main form of learning that took place after the disasters of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to normalize the weaponry, banish the memories, and hope for the best. The same realists, perhaps most prominently, John Mearsheimer, even go so far as to celebrate nuclear weaponry as ‘keepers of the peace,’ for them the best explanation for why the Soviet Union-United States rivalry did not result in World War III.  Such nuclear complacency was again in evidence when in the 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a refusal to propose at that time the elimination of nuclear weaponry, and there were reliable reports that the U.S. Government actually used its diplomatic leverage to discourage any Russian disarmament initiatives that might expose the embarrassing extent of this post-deterrence, post-Cold War American attachment to nuclearism. This attachment has persisted, is bipartisan in character, is shared with the leadership and citizenry of the other nuclear weapons states to varying degrees, and is joined to an anti-proliferation regime that hypocritically treats most states (Israel was a notable exception) that aspire to have nuclear weapons of their own as criminal outlaws subject to military intervention.


    Here is the lesson that applies to present: the shock of the atomic attacks wears off, is superseded by a restoration of normalcy, which means creating the conditions for repetition at greater magnitudes of death and destruction. Such a pattern is accentuated, as here, if the subject-matter of disaster is clouded by the politics of the day that obscured the gross immorality and criminality of the acts, that ignored the fact that there are governmental forces associated with the military establishment that seek maximal hard power, and that these professional militarists are reinforced by paid cadres of scientists, defense intellectuals, and bureaucrats who build careers around the weaponry, and that this structure is reinforced in various ways by private sector profit-making opportunities. These conditions apply across the board to the business of arms sales.


    And then we must take account of the incredible ‘Faustian Bargain’ sold to the non-nuclear world: give up a nuclear weapons option and in exchange get an unlimited ‘pass’ to the ‘benefits’ of nuclear energy, and besides, the nuclear weapons states, winking to one another when negotiating the notorious Nonproliferation Treaty (1963) promised in good faith to pursue nuclear disarmament, and indeed general and complete disarmament. Of course, the bad half of the bargain has been fulfilled, even in the face of the dire experiences of Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986), while the good half of the bargain (getting rid of the weaponry) never gave rise to even halfhearted proposals and negotiations (and instead the world settled irresponsibly for managerial fixes from time to time, known as ‘arms control’ measures that were designed to stabilize the nuclear rivalry of the U.S. and Soviet Union (now Russia). Such a contention is confirmed by the presidential commitment to devote an additional $80 billion for the development of nuclear weapons before the Senate could be persuaded to ratify the New START Treaty in late 2010, the latest arms control ruse that was falsely promoted as a step toward disarmament and denuclearization. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with arms control, it may reduce risks and costs, but it is not disarmament, and should not presented as if it is.


    It is with this background in mind that the unfolding Japanese mega-tragedy must be understood and its effects on future policy discussed in a preliminary manner. This extraordinary disaster originated in a natural event beyond human reckoning and control. An earthquake of unimaginable fury, measuring an unprecedented 9.0 on the Richter Scale, unleashing a deadly tsunami that reached a height of 30 feet, and swept inland in the Sendai area of northern Japan to an incredible distance up to 6 kilometers. It is still too early to count the dead, the injured, the property damage, and the overall human costs, but we know enough by now to realize that the impact is colossal, that this is a terrible happening that will be permanently seared into the collective imagination of humanity, perhaps the more so, because it is the most visually recorded epic occurrence in all of history, with real time video recordings of its catastrophic  ‘moments of truth.’


    But this natural disaster that has been responsible for massive human suffering has been compounded by its nuclear and societal dimensions, the full measure of which remains uncertain at this point, although generating a deepening foreboding that is perhaps magnified by calming reassurances by the corporate managers of nuclear power in Japan  who have past blemishes on their safety record, as well as by political leaders, including the Naoto Kan who understandably wants to avoid causing the Japanese public to shift from its current posture of traumatized witnessing to one of outright panic. There is also a lack of credibility based, especially, on a long record of false reassurances and cover ups by the Japanese nuclear industry, hiding and minimizing the effects of a 2007 earthquake in Japan, and actually lying about the extent of damage to a reactor at that time and on other occasions. What we need to understand is that the vulnerabilities of modern industrial society accentuate vulnerabilities that arise from extreme events in nature, as well as from the determined efforts of industrial lobbyists to cut corners at public expense. There is no doubt that the huge earthquake/tsunami constellation of forces was responsible for great damage and societal distress, but its overall impact has been geometrically increased by this buying into the Faustian Bargain of nuclear energy, whose risks, if objectively assessed, were widely known for many years. These risks were accentuated in this instance by situating this reactor complex in an earthquake zone and near to the ocean, tempting known natural forces to inflict an unmanageable blow to human wellbeing. It is the greedy profit-seekers, who minimize these risks, whether in the Gulf of Mexico or Fukushima or on Wall Street, and then scurry madly even in the midst of disaster to shift responsibilities to the victims that make me tremble as I contemplate the human future. These predatory forces are made more formidable because they have cajoled most politicians into complicity and have many corporatized allies in the media that overwhelm the publics of the world with steady doses of misinformation delivered as if the search for truth was their only motivation.


    The awesome reality of current nuclear dangers in Japan are far stronger than these words of reassurance that claim the risks to health are minimal because the radioactivity are being contained to avoid dangerous levels of contamination. A more trustworthy measure of the perceived rising dangers can be gathered from the continual official expansions of the evacuation zone around the six Fukushima Daiichi reactors from 3 km to 10 km, and more recently to 18 km, coupled with the instructions to everyone caught in the region to stay indoors indefinitely, with windows and doors sealed. We can hope and pray that the four explosions that have so far taken place in the Fukushima Daiichi complex of reactors will not lead to further explosions and a full meltdown in one or more of the reactors. Even without a meltdown the near certain venting of highly toxic radioactive steam to prevent unmanageable pressure from building up due to the boiling water in the reactor cores and spent fuel rods is likely to spread risks and bad effects.  It is a policy dilemma that has assumed the form of a living nightmare: either allow the heat to rise and confront the high probability of reactor meltdowns or vent the steam and subject large numbers of persons in the vicinity and beyond to radioactivity, especially should the wind shift southwards carrying the steam toward Tokyo or westward toward northern Japan or Korea.  In reactors 1, 2, and 3 are at risk of meltdowns, while with the shutdown reactors 4,5, and 6 pose the threat of fire releasing radioactive steam from the spent fuel rods.


    We know that throughout Asia alone some 3,000 new reactors are either being built or have been planned and approved. We know that nuclear power has been touted in the last several years as a major source of energy to deal with future energy requirements, a way of overcoming the challenge of ‘peak oil’ and of combating global warming by some decrease in carbon emissions. We know that the nuclear industry will contend that it knows how to build safe reactors in the future that will withstand even such ‘impossible’ events that have wrought such havoc in the Sendai region of Japan, while at the same time lobbying for insurance schemes to avoid such risks. Some critics of nuclear energy facilities in Japan and elsewhere had warned that these Fukushima reactors sme built more than 40 years ago had become accident-prone and should no longer have been kept operational. And we know that governments will be under great pressure to renew the Faustian Bargain despite what should have been clear from the moment the bombs fell in 1945: This technology is far too unforgiving and lethal to be managed safely over time by human institutions, even if they were operated responsibly, which they are not. It is folly to persist, but it is foolhardy to expect the elites of the world to change course, despite this dramatic delivery of vivid reminders of human fallibility and culpability. We cannot hope to control the savageries of nature, although even these are being intensified by our refusal to take responsible steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but we can, if the will existed, learn to live within prudent limits even if this comes to mean a less materially abundant and an altered life style. The failure to take seriously the precautionary principle as a guide to social planning is a gathering dark cloud menacing all of our futures.


    Let us fervently hope that this Sendai disaster will not take further turns for the worse, but that the warnings already embedded in such happenings, will awaken enough people to the dangers on this path of hyper-modernity so that a politics of limits can arise to challenge the prevailing politics of limitless growth. Such a challenge must include the repudiation of a neoliberal worldview, insisting without compromise on an economics based on needs and people rather than on profit margins and capital efficiency. Advocacy of such a course is admittedly a long shot, but so is the deadly utopian realism of staying on the nuclear course, whether it be with weapons or reactors. This is what Sendai should teach all of us!  But will it?

  • Nuke Accident Would Dwarf Oil Spill

    This article was originally published on the Huffington Post.

    Bob Herbert’s July 19 New York Times column rightly states that the harm from a meltdown at a nuclear power plant “would make the Deepwater Horizon disaster look like a walk in the park.” Herbert also warns that systems needed to prevent a meltdown are not well developed. “Right now, we’re not ready,” he says.

    The damage from the April oil well rupture which spewed into the Gulf of Mexico is still being calculated. It killed 11 workers and thousands of aquatic creatures. Recovery workers have become ill attempting to cap the damaged well. The ecosystem of a large body of water and coastline has been damaged. The economic losses are staggering.

    But the Deepwater disaster still can’t hold a candle to a nuclear accident.

    Understanding why a meltdown would be so devastating is possible only after recognizing that nuclear reactors produce the same radioactive chemicals in atomic bomb explosions. Splitting uranium atoms produces a cocktail of 100-plus chemicals that are radioactive waste products, including Cesium-137, Iodine-131, and Strontium-90.

    If water cooling a reactor’s core or waste pools was removed, from mechanical failure or act of sabotage, huge amounts of toxic gases and particles would be released and breathed by humans. Many thousands would be stricken immediately with radiation poisoning, and subsequently with cancer. Infants and children would suffer most.

    From 1945 to 1963, atom bombs were tested in the atmosphere in remote areas of the south Pacific and Nevada. But still, the fallout drifted long distances and contaminated the diet of all Americans. In 1999, the National Institute of Medicine concluded that up to 212,000 Americans developed thyroid cancer from the Nevada tests.

    But reactors are not in remote locations. Most are near highly populated areas. One example is Indian Point, which is just 23 miles from the New York City border. The plant has three reactors; one has shut down, but the other two have been operating since the mid-1970s. Its aging parts are corroding, and several “near miss” meltdown situations have occurred in the past decade, according to a 2006 Greenpeace report.

    If Indian Point experienced a meltdown, and an evacuation was attempted, New York area traffic would be far worse than its usual crawl. Radioactivity, carried by winds, would reach 21 million people living within 50 miles of the plant. Even among those evacuated, many would not be able to return to their homes, since their environment would remain contaminated.

    Indian Point may be the worst case scenario for a meltdown, as New York is the most populated city in the U.S. But nuclear plants are situated on the outskirts of virtually every major metropolitan area in the nation.

    Bob Herbert’s warning that systems to prevent meltdowns at nuclear plants are insufficient was also a conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. One of the hijacked planes headed for Manhattan flew directly over Indian Point. Had the plane crashed into Indian Point’s core or waste pools, the consequences would have been far worse than the loss of nearly 3,000 lives at the World Trade Center.

    Safety systems exist at nuclear plants, but anything less than 100 percent effectiveness is dangerous. One flaw came to light in 2002 at the Davis Besse plant near Toledo Ohio. Boric acid had eaten through nearly all of an 8-inch a steel beam in the plant’s ceiling, reducing it to less than half an inch at its thinnest part. Disturbingly, the problem was discovered accidentally, not from any routine safety procedure.

    The meltdown scenario is disturbing, but there is more to the nuclear threat. Most radioactive waste is stored, but some is routinely or accidentally released into air and water from all 104 U.S. nuclear reactors. These enter our bodies through breathing, and also the food chain.

    No government program has ever measured how much radioactivity from reactors enters our bodies, as officials call these amounts “negligible.” But a landmark study, whose results have been published in five leading medical journals, has provided evidence to the contrary. Levels of Strontium-90 in nearly 5,000 baby teeth are 30 to 50% greater in children living closest to nuclear plants, and are rising over time. In the 1950s and 1960s, Strontium-90 was often cited as one of the most toxic chemicals in bomb fallout.

    Tooth study results raise the question of whether reactor emissions have raised cancer rates near nuclear plants. Again, government officials dismiss this possibility. But near nuclear plants in New York and New Jersey, increases in Sr-90 in teeth were matched by similar increases in local childhood cancer rates a few years later.

    Children suffer the greatest damage from radiation exposure, but adults are not exempt. Thyroid cancer is one of the most radiation-sensitive cancers, because radioactive iodine in bomb fallout and reactor emissions seek out the thyroid gland and destroy its cells. A 2009 scientific article reported the highest U.S. thyroid cancer rate in a small 90-mile radius. This encompassed eastern Pennsylvania, central New Jersey, and southern New York, where 16 reactors are located.

    Other scientific reports have documented evidence that nuclear plant shut downs are followed immediately by dramatic reductions in local infant deaths and child cancers. This is similar to what happened nationally following the 1963 ban on above-ground atomic tests.

    Proposals to build new reactors to replace carbon-producing coal plants are accompanied by claims that nuclear power is “clean.” This could not be further from the truth. We should never forget that nuclear reactors are essentially controlled atom bombs.

    As lessons of the Deepwater fiasco are learned, we must understand the hard truth that certain energy sources pose very high risks to our security and health. We must do all we can to prevent another massive oil spill, or a nuclear meltdown. But we should go further, by developing energy sources that are safe. Solar panels need no security precautions. Wind mills don’t cause environmental catastrophes. We must be proactive and safe.

  • US Energy Policy Creating a New Generation of Dr. Strangeloves

    This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.

    President Eisenhower is well-remembered for warning the public in his final address to the nation to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence . . . by the military-industrial complex.” But it is little known that Eisenhower, in that same speech further cautioned that “we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

    In May, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steve Chu announced that 42 university-led nuclear research and development projects would receive $38 million through the Department of Energy’s “Nuclear Energy University Program” designed to help advance nuclear education and develop the next generations of nuclear technologies. “We are taking action to restart the nuclear industry as part of a broad approach to cut carbon pollution and create new clean energy jobs,” said Secretary Chu. “These projects will help us develop the nuclear technologies of the future and move our domestic nuclear industry forward.”

    At a time when the United States should be creating a new Manhattan Project for safe, clean, green energy from the sun, wind, and tides, the Obama administration is trying to recreate the old Manhattan project, training our best and brightest to continue to wreak havoc on the planet with nuclear know-how. Instead of letting the old nuclear complex rust in peace, the government is proactively taking the initiative to create a whole new generation of Dr. Strangeloves, enticing young people to study these dark arts by putting up millions of precious dollars for nuclear programs and scholarships.

    What a disappointment that Dr. Chu, a Nobel laureate scientist, appointed by Obama for “change we can believe in”, represents the old paradigm of top-down, hierarchical, secret nuclear science. It’s just so 20th century! Chu has apparently ignored the myriad studies that show that dollar-for-dollar, nuclear power is one of the most expensive ways to meet energy needs, when lifecycle costs are compared to solar, wind, geothermal, appropriate hydropower and biomass, as well as efficiency measures. This is also true for reducing carbon emissions, as expensive nuclear power would actually exacerbate catastrophic climate change since less carbon emission is prevented per dollar spent on costly nuclear technology compared to applying those funds to clean energy sources and efficiency.

    Further, countless studies, including recent reports from three communities in Germany with nuclear reactors, indicate that there are higher incidences of cancer, leukemia and birth defects in communities with toxic nuclear power plants that pollute the air, water, and soil in the course of routine operations. And a recent report from the New York Academy of Sciences, by distinguished Russian scientists, finds that deaths from the disastrous accident at Chernobyl now number over 900,000. Dr. Chu, a nuclear physicist, is well aware that the radioactive byproducts of nuclear power will remain toxic for 250,000 years and that there is no known solution to safely store this lethal brew for the eons it will threaten human health and the environment.

    Americans should oppose any further funding for this failed, dangerous technology as well as the inordinate subsidies presently planned for the nuclear industry. It’s time to invest in a clean energy future that will create millions of jobs and enable the US to earn an honest dollar by developing desirable new technology to offer to the world. Instead we will be providing a growing number of countries the wherewithal and technical know-how with which to make a nuclear bomb, while subjecting their communities to the consequences of toxic radiation.

  • British Petroleum, Imagination and Nuclear Catastrophe

    Vaya aquí para la versión española.

    Before the catastrophic British Petroleum oil gush in the Gulf of Mexico, there were environmentalists who warned that offshore drilling was fraught with risk – risk of exactly the type of environmental damage that is occurring.  They were mocked by people who chanted slogans such as “Drill, baby, drill.”  Now it is clear that the “Drill, baby, drill” crowd was foolish and greedy.  The economic wellbeing of people in and around the Gulf coast has been badly damaged and, for some, destroyed altogether.  Aquatic and estuary life, in the Gulf and beyond, has fallen victim to an environmental disaster that was foreseeable with a modicum of vision and imagination.

    Albert Einstein reached the conclusion that “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” He said that “knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”  Let us try applying our imaginations to nuclear weapons and nuclear war.  Here are some scenarios:

    Scenario 1: Al Qaeda does what most commentators believed to be impossible.  They obtain nuclear materials for several nuclear weapons and hire scientists to construct crude nuclear weapons.  These weapons are detonated in London, New York and Paris within hours of each other.  Millions would lie dead and injured.  Around the world stock markets would freefall.  Before the terrorist nuclear attacks, the people who warned against such a possibility were mocked.

    Scenario 2: Nuclear deterrence fails dramatically, and India and Pakistan engage in a nuclear war over Kashmir.  The hundred or so nuclear warheads that detonate on Indian and Pakistani cities leave millions dead and lower global temperatures so as to significantly shrink the size of agricultural areas in which food can be grown.  Crop failures leave hundreds of millions more people to starve to death.  Before the war, the people who warned against such a possibility were mocked.  

    Scenario 3: A nuclear war begins with an accidental launch of a nuclear-armed missile by Russia, followed by a retaliatory strike by the US, which brings further retaliation from Russia, leading to still more from the US.  Before the accidental launch, few people believed that such a cataclysmic accident and its retaliatory follow up were possible.  In its aftermath, the scenario seems far too feasible.  People now realize that the failsafe devices to prevent accidental launches could fail, but those who foresaw this danger and warned about it earlier were mocked.

    Scenario 4: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il launches a nuclear attack that destroys US military bases on the Japanese island of Okinawa.  He threatens to destroy the Japanese city of Kyoto and Seoul, South Korea unless he receives the development assistance he says was promised to him by the United States.  Those who argued throughout the Nuclear Age that continued possession of nuclear weapons by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council would result in nuclear proliferation and the weapons falling into the hands of irrational leaders were mocked.  

    There are many scenarios possible for the onset of nuclear war and there remain many justifications for nuclear weapons.  Leaders of nuclear weapon states argue that these weapons are only for nuclear deterrence, that is, to prevent war by threatening nuclear retaliation.  They don’t foresee the potential failure of nuclear deterrence, even though they recognize the cataclysmic consequences of failure.  They believe that nuclear weapons bolster a country’s prestige and give it greater power in the international system.  They proudly display their nuclear weapons and test their missile delivery systems.  Those who argue that nuclear deterrence could fail catastrophically are mocked.

    Political and military leaders have failed to honor the proposition that in every complex system in which humans are involved, system failure is a possibility.  They have dismissed the idea of system failure leading to nuclear annihilation.  Scientists spoke out about this shortsightedness, but they were mocked.  Former high-level policymakers spoke out about the dangers, and they, too, were mocked.  Even some former military leaders spoke out against the dangers of reliance on nuclear weapons, and they were mocked.  The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who witnessed the horrors of the atomic bombs firsthand, have told their stories in an attempt to awaken people to the danger of nuclear weapons, but their voices are soft and few people in high places have listened to them.  

    Civil society organizations from throughout the world have called out for a commitment to an urgent plan for the elimination of nuclear weapons, and they also have been mocked.  But, like the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they continue to speak out because it is the right thing to do.  Nuclear weapons can end life on Earth as we know it.  They can destroy civilization.  In a major nuclear war, they could bring the human species and most complex forms of life to extinction.  Even in a smaller nuclear war or accident, they could destroy cities and countries.  

    As the oil from the British Petroleum failure in the Gulf of Mexico continues to destroy the ocean and surrounding environment, it is perhaps too late to ask ourselves whether offshore drilling is worth the risk.  Clearly it is not.  It is still not too late, however, to raise the question of whether continued reliance on nuclear weapons is worth the risk to humanity and to future generations.  

  • Apocalypse in the Gulf Now (Oil) & Next (Nukes)

    As BP’s ghastly gusher assaults the Gulf of Mexico and so much more, a tornado has forced shut the Fermi2 atomic reactor at the site of a 1966 melt-down that nearly irradiated the entire Great Lakes region.

    If the White House has a reliable plan for deploying and funding a credible response to a disaster at a reactor that’s superior to the one we’ve seen at the Deepwater Horizon, we’d sure like to see it.

    Meanwhile it wants us to fund two more reactors on the Gulf and another one 40 miles from Washington DC. And that’s just for starters.

    The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has warned that at least one new design proposed for federal funding cannot withstand tornadoes, earthquakes or hurricanes.

    But the administration has slipped $9 billion for nuclear loan guarantees into an emergency military funding bill, in addition to the $8.33 it’s already approved for two new nukes in Georgia.

    Unless we do something about it, the House Appropriations Committee may begin the process next week.

    Like Deepwater Horizon and Fermi, these new nukes could ignite disasters beyond our technological control—and our worst nightmares.

    Like BP, their builders would enjoy financial liability limits dwarfed by damage they could do.

    Two of the new reactors are proposed for South Texas, where two others have already been leaking radiation into the Gulf. Ironically, oil pouring into the Gulf could make the waters unusable for cooling existing and future nukes and coal burners.

    Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently admitted to Rachel Maddow he has no firm plans for the radioactive wastes created by the proposed new reactors, or by the 104 currently licensed.

    That would include Vermont Yankee, where strontium, cesium, tritium and more are leaking into the Connecticut River. VY’s rotted underground pipes may have leaking counterparts at every other US reactor.

    After 50 years, this industry can’t get private financing, can’t get private liability insurance and has no solution for its wastes.

    The Gulf gusher bears the simple lesson that technologies that require liability limits will rapidly exceed them, and must not be deployed.

    No US nuclear utility has sufficient capital resources to cover the damages from a reactor disaster, which is one reason taxpayers are targeted as the ultimate underwriters.

    On May 27, the House Appropriations Committee was scheduled to vote on new nuke loan guarantees, which had been attached to an emergency military spending bill. Amidst a flood of grassroots opposition, the vote was postponed.

    But it could return as early as June 15. We can and must stop these new guarantees, which would feed the gusher of nuke power hand-outs being dumped into new climate/energy legislation.

    By all accounts, despite the horrors of the Gulf, the administration still wants legislation that will expand deepwater drilling and atomic technologies that are simply beyond our control…but that fund apparently unstoppable dividends for corporations like BP.

    It’s our vital responsibility to transform this crisis into a definitive shift to a totally green-powered earth, based solely on renewables and efficiency. We have a full array of Solartopian technologies that are proven, profitable, insurable and manageable. They are the core of our necessary transition to a prosperous, sustainable future.

    As our planet dies around us, truly green climate/energy legislation must come…NOW! The next key vote may come when the Appropriations Committee reconvenes.

    Make your voice is heard. It’s all we have. 

  • The Consequences of Chernobyl

    This article was originally published on Counter Punch

    Monday is the 24th anniversary of the
    Chernobyl nuclear plant accident. It comes as the nuclear industry and
    pro-nuclear government officials in the U.S. and other nations try to
    “revive” nuclear power. It also follows the just-released publication of
    a book, the most comprehensive study ever made, on the impacts of the
    Chernobyl disaster.

    Chernobyl:
    Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment
    has just been published by the New York Academy of Sciences. It is
    authored by three noted scientists: Russian biologist Dr. Alexey
    Yablokov, former environmental advisor to the Russian president; Dr.
    Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist in Belarus; and Dr.Vassili
    Nesterenko, a physicist and at the time of the accident director of the
    Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of
    Belarus. Its editor is Dr. Janette Sherman, a physician and toxicologist
    long-involved in studying the health impacts of radioactivity.

    The book is solidly based—on health data,
    radiological surveys and scientific reports—some 5,000 in all.

    It concludes that based on records now available,
    some 985,000 people died of cancer caused by the Chernobyl accident.
    That’s between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004.

    More deaths, it projects, will follow.

    The book explodes the claim of the International
    Atomic Energy Agency—still on its website – that the expected death toll
    from the Chernobyl accident will be 4,000. The IAEA, the new book
    shows, is under-estimating, to the extreme, the casualties of Chernobyl.

    Comments Alice Slater, representative in New York
    of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: “The tragic news uncovered by the
    comprehensive new research that almost one million people died in the
    toxic aftermath of Chernobyl should be a wake-up call to people all over
    the world to petition their governments to put a halt to the current
    industry-driven ‘nuclear renaissance.’ Aided by a corrupt IAEA, the
    world has been subjected to a massive cover-up and deception about the
    true damages caused by Chernobyl.”

    Further worsening the situation, she said, has been
    “the collusive agreement between the IAEA and the World Health
    Organization in which the WHO is precluded from publishing any research
    on radiation effects without consultation with the IAEA.” WHO, the
    public health arm of the UN, has supported the IAEA’s claim that 4,000
    will die as a result of the accident.

    “How fortunate,” said Ms. Slater, “that independent
    scientists have now revealed the horrific costs of the Chernobyl
    accident.”

    The book also scores the position of the IAEA, set
    up through the UN in 1957 “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of
    atomic energy,” and its 1959 agreement with WHO.  There is a “need to
    change,” it says, the IAEA-WHO pact. It has muzzled the WHO, providing
    for the “hiding” from the “public of any information…unwanted” by the
    nuclear industry.

    “An important lesson from the Chernobyl experience
    is that experts and organizations tied to the nuclear industry have
    dismissed and ignored the consequences of the catastrophe,” it states.

    The book details the spread of radioactive poisons
    following the explosion of Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant on
    April 26, 1986. These major releases only ended when the fire at the
    reactor was brought under control in mid-May. Emitted were “hundreds of
    millions of curies, a quantity hundreds of times larger than the fallout
    from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” The most
    extensive fall-out occurred in regions closest to the plant—in the
    Ukraine (the reactor was 60 miles from Kiev in Ukraine), Belarus and
    Russia.

    However, there was fallout all over the world as
    the winds kept changing direction “so the radioactive emissions…covered
    an enormous territory.”

    The radioactive poisons sent billowing from the
    plant into the air included Cesium-137, Plutonium, Iodine-131 and
    Strontium-90.

    There is a breakdown by country, highlighted by
    maps, of where the radionuclides fell out.  Beyond Ukraine, Belarus and
    Russia, the countries included Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany,
    Greece, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The radiological
    measurements show that some 10% of Chernobyl poisons “fell on Asia…Huge
    areas” of eastern Turkey and central China “were highly contaminated,”
    reports the book. Northwestern Japan was impacted, too.

    Northern Africa was hit with “more than 5% of all
    Chernobyl releases.” The finding of  Cesium-137 and both Plutonium-239
    and Plutonium-240 “in accumulated Nile River sediment is evidence of
    significant Chernobyl contamination,” it says. “Areas of North America
    were contaminated from the first, most powerful explosion, which lifted a
    cloud of radionuclides to a height of more than 10 km. Some 1% of all
    Chernobyl nuclides,” says the book, “fell on North America.”

    The consequences on public health are extensively
    analyzed. Medical records involving children—the young, their cells more
    rapidly multiplying, are especially affected by radioactivity—are
    considered. Before the accident, more than 80% of the children in the
    territories of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia extensively contaminated by
    Chernobyl “were healthy,” the book reports, based on health data.  But
    “today fewer than 20% are well.”

    There is an examination of genetic impacts with
    records reflecting an increase in “chromosomal aberrations” wherever
    there was fallout. This will continue through the “children of
    irradiated parents for as many as seven generations.” So “the genetic
    consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe will impact hundreds of
    millions of people.”

    As to fatal cancer, the list of countries and
    consequences begins with Belarus. “For the period 1900-2000 cancer
    mortality in Belarus increased 40%,” it states, again based on medical
    data and illuminated by tables in the book. “The increase was a maximum
    in the most highly contaminated Gomel Province and lower in the less
    contaminated Brest and Mogilev provinces.” They include childhood
    cancers, thyroid cancer, leukemia and other cancers.

    Considering health data of people in all nations
    impacted by the fallout, the “overall [cancer] mortality for the period
    from April 1986 to the end of 2004 from the Chernobyl catastrophe was
    estimated as 985,000 additional deaths.”

    Further, “the concentrations” of some of the
    poisons, because they have radioactive half-lives ranging from 20,000 to
    200,000 years, “will remain practically the same virtually forever.”

    The book also examines the impact on plants and
    animals. ”Immediately after the catastrophe, the frequency of plant
    mutations in the contaminated territories increased sharply.”

    There are photographs of some of these plant
    mutations. “Chernobyl irradiation has caused many structural anomalies
    and tumorlike changes in many plant species and has led to genetic
    disorders, sometimes continuing for many years,” it says. “Twenty-three
    years after the catastrophe it is still too early to know if the whole
    spectrum of plant radiogenic changes has been discerned. We are far from
    knowing all of the consequences for flora resulting from the
    catastrophe.”

    As to animals, the book notes “serious increases in
    morbidity and mortality that bear striking resemblance to changes in
    the public health of humans—increasing tumor rates, immunodeficiencies,
    decreasing life expectancy…”

    In one study it is found that “survival rates of
    barn swallows in the most contaminated sites near the Chernobyl nuclear
    power plant are close to zero. In areas of moderate contamination,
    annual survival is less than 25%.” Research is cited into ghastly
    abnormalities in barn swallows that do hatch: “two heads, two tails.”

    “In 1986,” the book states, “the level of
    irradiation in plants and animals in Western Europe, North America, the
    Arctic, and eastern Asia were sometimes hundreds and even thousands of
    times above acceptable norms.”

    In its final chapter, the book declares that the
    explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear plant “was the worst technogenic
    accident in history.” And it examines “obstacles” to the reporting of
    the true consequences of Chernobyl with a special focus on
    “organizations associated with the nuclear industry” that “protect the
    industry first—not the public.” Here, the IAEA and WHO are charged.

    The book ends by quoting U.S. President John F.
    Kennedy’s call in 1963 for an end of atmospheric testing of nuclear
    weapons.“The Chernobyl catastrophe,” it declares, “demonstrates that the
    nuclear industry’s willingness to risk the health of humanity and our
    environment with nuclear power plants will result, not only
    theoretically, but practically, in the same level of hazard as nuclear
    weapons.”

    Dr. Sherman, speaking of the IAEA’s and WHO’s
    dealing with the impacts of Chernobyl, commented: “It’s like Dracula
    guarding the blood bank.” The 1959 agreement under which WHO “is not to
    be independent of the IAEA” but must clear any information it obtains on
    issues involving radioactivity with the IAEA has put “the two in bed
    together.”

    Of her reflections on 14 months editing the book,
    she said: “Every single system that was studied—whether human or wolves
    or livestock or fish or trees or mushrooms or bacteria—all were changed,
    some of them irreversibly. The scope of the damage is stunning.”

    In his foreword, Dr. Dimitro Grodzinsky, chairman
    of the Ukranian National Commission on Radiation Protection, writes
    about how “apologists of nuclear power” sought to hide the real impacts
    of the Chernobyl disaster from the time when the accident occurred. The
    book “provides the largest and most complete collection of data
    concerning the negative consequences of Chernobyl on the health of
    people and the environment…The main conclusion of the book is that it
    is impossible and wrong ‘to forget Chernobyl.’”

    In the record of Big Lies, the claim of the
    IAEA-WHO that “only” 4,000 people will die as a result of the Chernobyl
    catastrophe is among the biggest.

    The Chernobyl accident is, as the new book
    documents, an ongoing global catastrophe.

    And it is a clear call for no new nuclear power
    plants to be built and for the closing of the dangerous atomic machines
    now running—and a switch to safe energy technologies, now available, led
    by solar and wind energy, that will not leave nearly a million people
    dead from one disaster.

  • What Obama Did and Did Not Say

    President Obama’s first speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday was all about the economy. Even when he was talking about education, national security or energy, he was talking about the economy.

    There were two things that really struck me in his speech: one thing that he said, and one thing that he didn’t say.

    The president recognizes that we need to slash the bloated Pentagon budget, though whether he’ll adopt Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA) plan to cut the Pentagon budget by 25% or more is unlikely. But, on Tuesday, Obama said, “We’ll…reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use.”

    This statement was sufficiently vague to keep all but the most rabid militarists from immediately criticizing his position. I think that some proof of what exactly Obama was referring to came today in the draft 2010 Department of Energy budget: ZERO dollars for new nuclear weapons (currently called the Reliable Replacement Warhead program).

    The other thing that really struck me in his speech was the very noticeable omission of nuclear power as a critical part of our energy future. Solar? Check. Wind? Check. Efficiency? Check. “Clean” coal? Um…check. Nuclear power? No thanks.

    Let’s ignore for a moment that “clean coal” is about as asinine as calling nuclear power “clean, safe and reliable.” Barack Obama comes from the state of Illinois, the state with the most nuclear power plants and arguably the strongest base of the nuclear power lobby. Obama accepted campaign money from nuclear power pushers. He campaigned on an energy platform that included nuclear power as part of the energy mix.

    What has he discovered in his first 40 days in office? Hopefully all of the following:

    • There is still no “permanent” solution to the nuclear waste problem, and there is no solution in sight;
    • The nuclear power industry cannot survive without massive government subsidies;
    • New nuclear power plants take so many years to approve and construct that they cannot help us to meet our immediate carbon reduction requirements;
    • Once you take into account the lifecycle carbon footprint of nuclear power (uranium mining, construction, operation, waste storage, decommissioning), it doesn’t look so carbon-free;
    • Investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency are more economically sensible and will eliminate CO2 emissions more effectively.

    With continued public pressure, it is possible for the evil twins of the 20th century, nuclear power and nuclear weapons, to be eliminated for good.

    This article was published on the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s blog Waging Peace Today

    Rick Wayman is Director of Programs at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

  • The Great Turning: Germany Takes the Lead for a Transformation of the Energy Paradigm

    Joanna Macy, eco-philosopher, scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. is a respected and revered voice in movements for peace and justice. She’s led numerous workshops on the nuclear dilemma, developing and promoting the Guardian Project, to brainstorm and imagine what kind of markers we will need to lay down to warn our world of the toxic lethality of plutonium, hundreds of thousands of years after we’re all gone. Macy has written that “future generations will look back on these closing years of the twentieth century and call it the time of the Great Turning. It is the epochal shift from an industrial growth society, dependent on accelerating consumption of resources, to a life-sustaining society”. Good news has come from Germany, heralding that perhaps, as we enter this new millennium, we have indeed begun the Great Turning, and not a moment to soon, ready to make the shift into a new paradigm of sustainability.
    The German government announced that 60 governments met in Berlin in mid-April to plan for a launch of an International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) this September which would empower developing countries with the ability to access the free and abundant energy of the sun, wind, marine, and geothermal sources; would train, educate, and disseminate information about implementing sustainable energy programs; organize and enable the transfer of science and know-how of renewable energy technologies; and generally be responsible for helping the world make the critical transition to a sustainable energy future. Since IRENE is the Greek word for peace, this new initiative is especially well named because we’ll never have peace with nuclear power plants metastasizing around the planet, and with old, 20th century hierarchical attempts to control and dominate the fuel cycle in yet another discriminatory regime of “haves” and “have nots”, with preemptive wars threatened against those countries which “the powers that be” don’t trust to have “peaceful” nuclear technology.
    Two other harbingers of the Great Turning, were announcements by the government of Ireland and the province of British Columbia of bans on uranium mining on their territories. Ireland’s Natural Resources Minister Eamon Ryan said, “The most likely end use of any uranium extracted in Ireland would be for nuclear electricity generation. It would be hypocritical to permit the extraction of uranium for use in nuclear reactors in other countries, while the nuclear generation of electricity is not allowed in Ireland.” More than 500 people demonstrated in sparsely settled British Columbia, to protest the opening of a uranium mine and the Minister for State Mining, Kevin Kruger, announced, “There will never be a uranium mine in B.C.” Three years ago, the Navajo tribe in Arizona banned uranium mining on their land because of the catastrophic radiation poisoning members of their tribe have suffered from the piles of mining wastes that accumulated over the years, contaminating their soil, water, and air.

    It’s noteworthy that the Berlin meeting happened quietly, with very little notice or NGO participation. It seemed like the governments were forming their own power block to make an end run around the polluting energy corporations, in the nuclear, fossil and biofuels industries, mega-transnational corporations which are touting their sickening wares to the world, corrupting our democratic processes with huge campaign gifts and sucking up government subsidies and tax breaks to the tune of $250 billion per year for their poisonous energy corporations, even burning food for fuel as more than 25 countries contend with food riots caused by scarcity, while the wealthiest of us put food in our fuel tanks at the expense of 2 billion people living in poverty. Help make the Great Turning real! Find out if your government was one of the 60 who met so quietly in Berlin this April. Make sure they’re on board to support IRENA, see http://www.irena.org/index.htm , to help humanity make the Great Turning to a more peaceful and sustainable 21st century.

    Alice Slater is the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s New York City representative.

  • The International Renewable Energy Agency

    Speech delivered at the Conference for the Establishment of IRENA in Berlin on April 10, 2008

    Thank you, Hermann, for your kind words. As many of you will know, Hermann Scheer has been the driving force behind the creation of IRENA. Please join me in recognising that without his vision and unwavering commitment to the establishment of IRENA, we would not be here today.

    I should like to say how honoured and delighted I am to be delivering this speech. Many of you will have heard about the recent chaos at Heathrow Airport in London. But this conference was so important that I braved the potential horrors of Terminal 5 to be here today. To my great surprise, everything went smoothly, so I take that as a good omen for the success of this conference.

    The threat of global climate disaster Today we stand at a crossroads in history. Most climate scientists have sounded urgent alarms, warning us about the imminent threat of climate change, and the impending tipping point. David Wasdell, Director of the Meridian programme, in a book he co-authored called Planet Earth, We Have A Problem, describes the tipping point like this:

    “If we go beyond the point where human intervention can no longer stabilise the system, then we precipitate unstoppable runaway climate change. That will set in motion a major extinction event comparable to the five other extinction crises that the earth has previously experienced.”

    As climate change kicks in, the tropical and subtropical countries of Africa, South Asia and Latin America will heat up more and more, with temperatures becoming increasingly intolerable. Droughts will affect large parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Melting glaciers will flood river valleys and then, when they have disappeared, unprecedented droughts will occur. Poor, low-lying countries such as Bangladesh will find it much harder to cope with sea level rise than Holland or Florida.

    If current trends are allowed to continue, hundreds of millions of people in the poorer countries will lose their homes, as well as the land on which they grow their crops. And then there is the threat of diseases: By the end of the century 182 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone could die of diseases directly attributable to climate change, according to Christian Aid.

    Given the scale of this impending disaster, we have no choice but to embark upon a global renewable energy revolution, by replacing our carbon-driven economy with a renewable energy economy. The challenge we are facing now is how to switch to a more secure, lower-carbon energy system that does not undermine economic and social development, and addresses the threats of climate change and global inequality.

    Climate change is no longer just an environmental issue: it touches every part of our lives: peace, security, human rights, poverty, hunger, health, mass migration and economics. IRENA is a necessary condition for preventing climate disaster and ensuring global energy security and stability.

    I will be frank with you. Before now, I was sceptical whether the international community had the resolve to do what is necessary to prevent global climate disaster. However, the establishment of IRENA is more than the establishment of just another agency. In addition to its visionary goals, it will benefit from Hermann Scheer’s thirty years of expertise and dedication to the creation of this organisation.

    There have been indications that various governments have taken notice of the threat posed by climate change: the World Summit for Sustainable Development in 2002, the International Renewable Energy Conference in Bonn in 2004, and the Beijing International Renewable Energy Conference in 2005 are three examples. By taking the initiative in hosting this conference, the German government have proposed concrete steps where previously there was mostly talk. I hope you will join me in applauding their courage and foresight.

    Milton Friedman said, “In a crisis, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That… is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”

    Never before has humanity been so overwhelmed by such massive and urgent concerns. We are experiencing explosive population growth: the world’s population is forecast to reach 9.2 billion by 2050. Since 1992, there has been a 50% rise in world energy consumption. Another 50% rise is expected in the next fifteen years. We now know that if we remain locked into an inefficient, polluting, fossil-fuel based global economy, we will exhaust the Earth’s natural resources and we will accelerate climate change.

    So we have reached both an environmental and an economic tipping point. Which direction we choose to take will decide the fate of our planet. What is certain is that we must bring about fundamental change in our energy systems, with a renewed focus on energy security and lower, if not zero, carbon emissions.

    But we should be wary of using phrases like “the carbon-free economy”. So far, this expression has been used in relation to two technologies that fail to provide acceptable solutions to the energy crisis. The first is “carbon capture and storage”, or CCS technology. Not only is this technology still speculative, though it is projected for 2020, it is already clear that insufficient space exists to capture all the CO2 released. We can also say that implementing CCS will be much more expensive than providing energy from renewable sources.

    The second technology is nuclear power. The nuclear industry has attempted to “green-wash” itself by trumpeting its carbon neutrality, yet the deployment of nuclear power comes with tremendous – and, to my mind, unacceptable – risks, including large-scale nuclear accidents, the problem of waste, uranium storage, nuclear proliferation in general, and last but not least the high water consumption of nuclear power plants. As some of you may know, France was forced to shut down some of its nuclear reactors a few years ago, thanks to a shortage in cooling water. As we continue to experience worldwide water shortages, and as we look to a future in which these shortages are set to worsen, this is a significant risk factor in relying on nuclear power.

    Nuclear power is not a panacea to cure us of our energy worries. Quite apart from the safety concerns it poses, the substantial costs involved and the irresponsibility of burdening future generations with the problems of waste management, it is estimated that our usable uranium reserves will run out within five decades – and that is only if no new power plants are built. Attempts to “stretch” current reserves with various technologies carry incalculable cost. Similarly, proposals that have been made to extend the life of the fossil fuel energy system not only risk the ecosphere but also represent a mammoth financial burden to future generations.

    Renewable energies, on the other hand, avoid many of these problems, and even create a plethora of opportunities – economic, environmental and social. Renewable solutions are affordable, available and a moral imperative. With the benefits to poorer countries of decentralized, indigenous energy sources, and the affordability of implementation that has been demonstrated by the latest research, we will be working toward solving the two great threats to our continued survival: environmental degradation and global inequality. Renewable energies provide a realistic solution to both. And, as the example of Germany shows, the employment benefits are staggering: Germany has created some 250,000 new jobs by its accelerated introduction of renewable energy in less than ten years.

    The advantages of renewable energy

    Traditional sources of energy, which account for 60% of the current commercial energy supply,are becoming scarce. But renewable energy provides sustainable, safe, affordable power that does not run out and does not pose a risk to ourselves or to the environment. For these reasons, the creation of IRENA is necessary and urgent.

    The arguments that renewable energy does not provide sufficient or affordable alternatives to traditional energy sources have been exposed as flawed and false. Furthermore, the cost of finite conventional energies will continue to rise as the sources dry up. But, as we will all have read in Herman Scheer’s books, The Solar Economy and The Solar Manifesto, renewable energy costs will generally go down, as they consist almost exclusively of technology costs. Mass production and technological innovation will bring dramatic decreases in cost. So we should not see the promotion of renewables as a burden: we should see it as a unique economic opportunity – one that will reward those who get on board early. IRENA will be instrumental in encouraging research and development to facilitate its affordability and implementation, and for this reason, the creation of IRENA is necessary and urgent.

    As we have heard today, countries in the Global South enjoy little or no energy security. But a renewable energy revolution will have crucial economic and social benefits for the poorest countries in the world. Home-grown renewable sources provide developing countries with the means by which to insulate themselves against rising energy prices elsewhere in the world. And with a decentralised renewable network there would be no need for expensive grid solutions.

    In promoting these decentralised energy systems, we will be helping to prevent political and military conflicts sparked by scarcity of resources. We will be giving the developing world true and lasting energy security. For this reason, the creation of IRENA is necessary and urgent.

    Renewable energy stimulates economic growth and local job creation. In 2007, more than $100bn was invested worldwide in renewable energy technology. By 2006, 2.4 million jobs were created. Since renewable energy installations are less complex to operate than conventional facilities, plants can be managed by local workforces as part of a decentralised system.

    Only renewable energy offers the possibility of true energy efficiency. Whilst in the global supply chains of conventional energies, from mines and wells to customers, there are large energy losses, the short supply chains that are possible in the renewable model will lead to a drastic reduction in wastage. To make short energy chains feasible will require investment in research and development of storage technologies, and this is an area in which IRENA will be of vital importance. So for this reason, too, the creation of IRENA is necessary and urgent.

    In addition to reducing the burden on the Earth’s natural resources, renewable energies reduce pollution, because renewables mostly result in only very small greenhouse gas emissions.

    So whilst conventional fossil and atomic energies continue to endanger the health of the planet, risk sparking conflict over declining resources, and require high water consumption and ever-increasing costs, renewable energy sources do not bring with them these negative effects. The representative from Senegal today spoke of “ridding ourselves of the tyranny of oil”.

    Renewables are the only solution to the three key global energy challenges: energy security, cost efficiency and environmental protection. The task now is to create policies that make investment in renewable energies an attractive proposition at national and international levels. For this, the creation of IRENA, as you may have guessed by now, is necessary and urgent.

    Moving forward with renewable energy

    Notwithstanding all these advantages, there is still unjustifiable political prejudice against renewable energy. While conventional energies enjoy political privilege, including large amounts of public money for research and development, military protection of the supply chain and $300billion in global annual subsidies, renewable energies are discriminated against. Though intergovernmental institutions exist to promote atomic energy – for example the IAEA and EURATOM – not one exists for the promotion of renewables. Renewables need an institutional base at international level to provide a reference point – an intergovernmental agency to advise governments in drawing up policies and strategies – to address the current imbalance between traditional and renewable sources.

    To date, the International Energy Agency, the IEA, despite its significant expertise, is seen by the developing countries as a “club for the rich”, and their influence and activity is limited to the OECD countries. The IEA only recently showed interest in renewable energy sources. Other existing networks have no mandate to advise governments on the accelerated introduction of renewable energy.

    It is not as if this is a sudden or unexpected crisis. We have known the limitations and damaging consequences of conventional energies for over thirty years. As Hermann Scheer puts it, the result so far has been “talking globally, postponing nationally”, with the effect that the introduction of renewable energies has not been nearly fast enough. Despite clear indications that renewable energy was the inevitable way forward, we have not met the challenges set at Rio in 1992.

    Paying lip service to renewable energy is no longer sufficient. We now require concrete action. The delays in investment and adoption of renewable energies have been environmentally and economically inexcusable. We have the tools to expose the fossil fuel industry’s claims that renewables are expensive and inadequate as false. Promoting renewables must now become a global and universal priority, and IRENA is a necessary condition for that goal. If we intend to embark on the renewable energy revolution, we cannot do it without IRENA.

    IRENA will work toward improved regulatory frameworks for renewable energy through enhanced policy advice, improvements in the transfer of renewable energy technology; progress on skills and know-how for renewable energy; it will be able to offer a scientifically sound information basis through applied policy research; and better financing of renewable energy.

    Germany has shown great leadership and vision in spearheading the renewable energy revolution. We must grasp firmly the hand that is being offered to us and embark upon this revolution to prevent global climate disaster. I thank the German government for this opportunity, and Hermann Scheer for his outstanding work. Also on behalf of the World Future Council, of which I am the Chair, I urge each of you support the establishment of IRENA as heralding a new world order, in which we can look forward to safe, affordable, secure and stable energy sources for all.

    I was delighted today to see the discussions quickly focus on substantive and practical issues. It seems as though many countries are keen to begin working.

    I would like to finish by quoting Dr. Scheer:

    To be able to discuss energy as a separate matter is an intellectual illusion. The CO2 emissions are not the only problem of fossil energy. The radioactive contamination is not the only problem of atomic power. Many other dangers are caused by using atomic and fossil energies: From the polluted cities to the erosion of rural areas; from water pollution to desertification; from mass migration to overcrowded settlements and the declining security of individuals and states. Because the present energy system lies at the root of these problems, renewables are the solution to these problems. That means: Nothing is macro-economically better and cheaper than the total substitution of conventional energies by renewables. We need a hard-line strategy for soft energies.

    Hermann’s words show that this is the over-riding moral imperative of the century: the time has come for decision-makers in politics and economics to embrace this opportunity.

    There is no time for further excuses, postponement, or procrastination. This is a time for courage and leadership, and for positive and immediate action.

    We have an obligation to future generations upon which we must not renege. For their sake, I urge you to take full advantage of the current political momentum and give your full support to the creation of IRENA.

    Bianca Jagger is Chair of the World Future Council (www.worldfuturecouncil.org).

  • Money is the Real Green Power: The Hoax of Eco-Friendly Nuclear Energy

    Originally appeared in Extra!

    Nuclear advocates in government and the nuclear industry are engaged in a massive, heavily financed drive to revive atomic power in the United States-with most of the mainstream media either not questioning or actually assisting in the promotion.

    “With a very few notable exceptions, such as the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. media have turned the same sort of blind, uncritical eye on the nuclear industry’s claims that led an earlier generation of Americans to believe atomic energy would be too cheap to meter,”comments Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. “The nuclear industry’s public relations effort has improved over the past 50 years, while the natural skepticism of reporters toward corporate claims seems to have disappeared.”

    The New York Times continues to be, as it was a half-century ago when nuclear technology was first advanced, a media leader in pushing the technology, which collapsed in the U.S. with the 1979 Three Mile Island and 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant accidents. The Times has showered readers with a variety of pieces advocating a nuclear revival, all marbled with omissions and untruths. A lead editorial headlined “The Greening of Nuclear Power” (5/13/06) opened:

    Not so many years ago, nuclear energy was a hobgoblin to environmentalists, who feared the potential for catastrophic accidents and long-term radiation contamination. . . . But this is a new era, dominated by fears of tight energy supplies and global warming. Suddenly nuclear power is looking better.

    Nukes add to greenhouse

    Parroting a central atomic industry theme these days, the Times editors declared, “Nuclear energy can replace fossil-fuel power plants for generating electricity, reducing the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute heavily to global warming.” As a TV commercial frequently aired by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the nuclear industry trade group, states: “Nuclear power plants don’t emit greenhouses gases, so they protect our environment.”

    What is left unmentioned by the NEI, the Times and other mainstream media making this claim is that the overall “nuclear cycle”-which includes uranium mining and milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication and disposal of radioactive waste-has significant greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

    As Michel Lee, chair of the Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy, wrote in an (unpublished) letter to the Times, the

    dirty secret is that nuclear power makes a substantial contribution to global warming. Nuclear power is actually a chain of highly energy-intensive industrial processes. These include uranium mining, conversion, enrichment and fabrication of nuclear fuel; construction and deconstruction of the massive nuclear facility structures; and the disposition of high-level nuclear waste.

    She included information on “independent studies that document in detail the extent to which the entire nuclear cycle generates greenhouse emissions.”

    Separately, Lee wrote to a Times journalist stating that the “fiction” that nuclear power does not contribute to global warming “has been a prime feature of the nuclear industry’s and Bush administration’s PR campaign” that “unfortunately . . . has been swallowed by a number of New York Times reporters, op-ed columnists and editors.”

    Greens for hire

    In “The Greening of Nuclear Power,” the Times, like other mainstream media touting a nuclear restart, also spoke of environmentalists changing their stance on nuclear power. “Two new leaders” have emerged “to encourage the building of new nuclear reactors,” according to the editorial. They happen to be Christine Todd Whitman, George W. Bush’s first Environmental Protection Agency administrator, and Patrick Moore, “a co-founder of Greenpeace.” The Times heralded this as “the latest sign that nuclear power is getting a more welcome reception from some environmentalists.”

    However, “both Whitman and Moore . . . are being paid to do so by the Nuclear Energy Institute,” noted the Center for Media and Democracy’s Diane Farsetta (PRWatch.org, 3/14/07). In her piece “Moore Spin: Or, How Reporters Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Front Groups,” Farsetta also reported:

    A Nexis news database search on March 1, 2007 identified 302 news items about nuclear power that cite Moore since April 2006. Only 37 of those pieces-12 percent of the total-mention his financial relationship with NEI.

    Whitman and Moore were hired as part of NEI’s “Clean and Safe Energy Coalition” in 2006, which is “fully funded” by the institute, Farsetta noted. As for Moore and Greenpeace, his “association . . . ended in 1986,” and he “has now spent more time working as a PR consultant to the logging, mining, biotech, nuclear and other industries . . . than he did as an environmental activist.”

    According to Harvey Wasserman, senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and co-author of Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience With Atomic Radiation (Brattleboro Reformer, 2/24/07), “Moore sailed on the first Greenpeace campaign, but he did not actually found the organization.” Wasserman went on to cite an actual founder of the organization, Bob Hunter, describing Moore as “the Judas of the ecology movement.”

    Scarce high-grade fuel

    Insisting that “there is good reason to give nuclear power a fresh look,” “The Greening of Nuclear Power” further claimed, “It can diversify our sources of energy with a fuel-uranium-that is both abundant and inexpensive.”

    This, too, was bogus. The uranium from which fuel used in nuclear power plants is made-so-called “high-grade” ore containing substantial amounts of fissionable uranium-235-is, in fact, not “abundant.” As Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation told BBC News (11/29/05), another “dirty little secret” of nuclear power is that “startlingly, there’s only a few decades left of the proven high-grade uranium ore it needs for fuel.” This has been the projection for years.

    Indeed, this limit on “high-grade” uranium ore is why the industry projects that, in the long-term, nuclear power will need to be based on breeder reactors running on manmade plutonium. But use of plutonium-fueled reactors has been stymied because they can explode like atomic bombs-they contain tons of plutonium fuel, while the first bomb using plutonium, dropped on Nagasaki, contained 15 pounds. Because it takes only a few pounds of plutonium to make an atomic bomb, they also constitute an enormous proliferation risk.

    Blaming Jane Fonda

    “The Jane Fonda Effect” (9/16/07), a Times Magazine column by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, blamed nuclear power’s stall on the 1979 film The China Syndrome, starring Jane Fonda, which opened days before the Three Mile Island partial meltdown. “Stoked by The China Syndrome,” it caused “widespread panic,” wrote Dubner and Levitt, even though, they maintained, the accident did not “produce any deaths, injuries or significant damage.”

    In fact, the utility that owned Three Mile Island has for years been quietly paying people whose family members died, contracted cancer or were otherwise impacted by the accident. While settlements range up to $1 million, the utility company continues to insist this does not acknowledge fault. The toll of Three Mile Island is chronicled in my television documentary Three Mile Island Revisited (EnviroVideo, 1993) and Wasserman’s book Killing Our Own (which includes a devastating chapter, “People Died at Three Mile Island”), among other works.

    But Dubner and Levitt continue undeterred, declaring, “The big news is that nuclear power may be making a comeback in the United States.” They acknowledge the Chernobyl accident, stating that it “killed at least a few dozen people directly.” They admit that it “exposed millions more to radiation,” but keep silent about the consequences of this in terms of illness and death. This atomic version of Holocaust denial flies in the face of voluminous research on the disaster that puts the number of dead in the hundreds of thousands.

    “At least 500,000 people-perhaps more-have already died out of the 2 million people who were officially classed as victims of Chernobyl in Ukraine,” said Nikolai Omelyanets, deputy head of the National Commission for Radiation Protection in Ukraine (Guardian, 3/25/06). Dr. Alexey Yablokov, president of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, calculates a death toll of 300,000. In the book Chernobyl: 20 Years On, which he co-edited, Yablokov writes, “In 20 years it has become clear that not tens, hundreds of thousands, but millions of people in the Northern Hemisphere have suffered and will suffer from the Chernobyl catastrophe.”

    The New York Times Magazine also published “Atomic Balm?” (7/16/06), by Jon Gertner; the subhead read, “For the first time in decades, increasing the role of nuclear power in the United States may be starting to make political, environmental and even economic sense.” Gertner used the term nuclear “renaissance,” and again forwarded the claim that “the supply [of uranium] is abundant.”

    Gertner told of how the “lifespan” for nuclear plants was set at 40 years because this was considered “how long a large nuclear plant could safely operate.” This has “proved a conservative estimate,” he states-without providing a factual basis. So the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been “granting 20-year extensions” to the 103 U.S. nuclear plants so they “can run for a total of 60 years.” (Consider the safety and reliability of 60-year-old cars speeding down highways.)

    “Even with such licensing renewals, though, it’s doubtful the current fleet of plants will run for, say, 80 years,” he continued, and “that means the industry, in a way, is in a race against time.” It needs to build new plants because the “absence” of nuclear power “would probably pose tremendous challenges for the United States.”

    The New York Times also allows its nuclear advocacy to slip into its news stories. In an article (11/27/07) about the French nuclear power company Areva signing a deal with a Chinese atomic corporation, Times reporter John Tagliabue wrote of Areva chief executive Anne Lauvergeon’s “long path from dirty hands to clean energy.” The “dirty hands” referred to a youthful interest in archaeology; that nuclear power is “clean energy” appears to require no explanation.

    Another story, datelined Fort Collins, Colorado (11/19/07), reported on two energy projects proposed for what the paper calls “a deeply green city.” Describing the plans as “exposing the hard place that communities like this across the country are likely to confront,” Times reporter Kirk Johnson wrote:

    Both projects would do exactly what the city proclaims it wants, helping to produce zero-carbon energy. But one involves crowd-pleasing, feel-good solar power, and the other is a uranium mine, which has a base of support here about as big as a pinkie. Environmentalism and local politics have collided with a broader ethical and moral debate about the good of the planet, and whether some places could or should be called upon to sacrifice for their high-minded goals.

    Other revivalists

    Other media promoting a nuclear revival-their words prominently featured on NEI’s website-include USA Today (3/5/06): “The facts are straightforward: Nuclear power . . . creates virtually none of the pollution that causes climate change and delivers electricity cheaper than other forms of generation do.” And the Augusta Chronicle (8/21/06): “Nuclear power-for decades perceived as an environmental scourge-is emerging as the cleanest and most cost-efficient source of energy available, a fact conceded even by environmentalists.” And Investor’s Business Daily (12/1/06): “We can worry about imaginary threats of nuclear energy or the real dangers of fossil fuel pollution.”

    Glenn Beck of CNN Headline News also joined the chorus of support (5/2/07): “Look, America should embrace nuclear power, even if it’s [just] to get off the foreign oil bandwagon.” This is also common nuclear disinformation, that nuclear power is needed to displace foreign oil. The only energy produced by nuclear power is electricity-and only 3 percent of electricity in the U.S. is generated with oil.

    There are a few exceptions in the mainstream media, notably the other Times, the Los Angeles Times. “The dream that nuclear power would turn atomic fission into a force for good rather than destruction unraveled with the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979 and the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986,” the paper stated (7/23/07) in an editorial headlined: “No to Nukes: It’s Tempting to Turn to Nuclear Plants to Combat Climate Change, but Alternatives Are Safer and Cheaper.” Those who claim nuclear power “must be part of any solution” to global warming or climate change “make a weak case,” said the L.A. Times, citing

    the enormous cost of building nuclear plants, the reluctance of investors to fund them, community opposition and an endless controversy over what to do with the waste. . . . What’s more, there are cleaner, cheaper, faster alternatives that come with none of the risks.

    Staggering numbers

    As to the risks, the mainstream media’s handling-or non-handling-of the U.S. government’s most comprehensive study on the consequences of a nuclear plant accident is instructive. Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences 2 (known as CRAC-2) was done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the 1980s. Bill Smirnow, an anti-nuclear activist, has tried for years to interest media in reporting on it-sending out information about it continually.

    The study estimates the impacts from a meltdown at each nuclear plant in the U.S. in categories of “peak early fatalities,” “peak early injuries,” “peak cancer deaths” and “costs [in] billions.” (”Peak” refers to the highest calculated value-not a “worst case scenario,” as worse assumptions could have been chosen.) For the Indian Point 3 plant north of New York City, for example, the projection is that a meltdown would cause 50,000 “peak early fatalities,” 141,000 “peak early injuries,” 13,000 “peak cancer deaths,” and $314 billion in property damage-and that’s based on the dollar’s value in 1980, so the cost today would be nearly $1 trillion. For the Salem 2 nuclear plant in New Jersey, the study projects 100,000 “peak early fatalities,” 70,000 “peak early injuries,” 40,000 “peak cancer deaths,” and $155 billion in property damage. The study provides similarly staggering numbers across the country.

    “I’ve sent the CRAC-2 material out for years to media and have never heard a thing,” Smirnow told Extra!:

    Not anyone in the media ever even asked me a question. There’s no excuse for this media inattention to such an important subject, and it shows how they’re falling flat on their faces in not performing their purported mission of educating and informing the public. Whatever their reason or reasons for not informing their readers and listeners, the effect is one of helping the nuclear power industry and hurting the public. If the public was informed, this new big pro-nuke push would never happen.

    Also in the way of sins of omission is the media silence on “routine emissions”-the amount of radioactivity the U.S. government allows to be routinely released by nuclear plants. “It doesn’t take an accident for a nuclear power plant to release radioactivity into our air, water and soil,” says Kay Drey of Beyond Nuclear at the Nuclear Policy Research Institute. “All it takes is the plant’s everyday routine operation, and federal regulations permit these radioactive releases. Rarely, if ever, is this reported by media.” The radioactive substances regularly emitted include tritium, krypton and xenon. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sets a “permissible” level for these “routine emissions,” but, as Drey states, “permissible does not mean safe.”

    Hidden subsidies

    Another lonely voice amid the media nuclear cheerleaders is the Las Vegas Sun, which recently has been especially outraged by $50 billion in loan guarantees for the nuclear industry to build new nuclear plants included in the 2007 Energy Bill. The Sun demanded (8/1/07): “Pull the Plug Already.”

    In reporting on the economics of nuclear power, mainstream media virtually never mention the many government subsidies for it, while continuing to claim that it’s “cost-effective” (Augusta Chronicle, 8/21/06). One such giveaway is the Price-Anderson Act, which shields the nuclear industry from liability for catastrophic accidents. Price-Anderson, supposed to be temporary when first enacted in 1957, has been extended repeatedly and now limits liability in the event of an accident to $10 billion, despite CRAC-2’s projections of consequences far worse than that.

    Writing on CommonDreams.org (9/11/07), Ralph Nader explored the economic issue. “Taxpayers alert!” he declared:

    The atomic power corporations are beating on the doors in Washington to make you guarantee their financing for more giant nuclear plants. They are pouring money and applying political muscle to Congress for up to $50 billion in loan guarantees to persuade an uninterested Wall Street that Uncle Sam will pay for any defaults on industry construction loans. . . . The atomic power industry does not give up. Not as long as Uncle Sam can be dragooned to be its subsidizing, immunizing partner. Ever since the first of 100 plants opened in 1957, corporate socialism has fed this insatiable atomic goliath with many types of subsidies.

    Ignored alternatives

    Yet another claim by mainstream media in pushing for a nuclear revival is the “success” of the French nuclear program. 60 Minutes (4/8/07) did it in a segment called “Vive Les Nukes.” (See FAIR Action Alert, 4/18/07.) Correspondent Steve Kroft started with the nuclear-power-doesn’t-contribute-to-global-warming myth:

    With power demands rising and concerns over global warming increasing, what the world needs now is an efficient means of producing carbon-free energy. And one of the few available options is nuclear, a technology whose time seemed to come and go, and may now be coming again. . . . With zero greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. government, public utilities and even some environmental groups are taking a second look at nuclear power, and one of the first places they’re looking to is France, where it’s been a resounding success.

    Though she was totally ignored, Linda Gunter of Beyond Nuclear told 60 Minutes of radioactive contamination in the marine life off Normandy where the French reprocessing center sits, leukemia clusters in people living along that coast, and massive demonstrations in French cities earlier in the year protesting construction of new nuclear power plants.

    The Union of Concerned Scientists was upset by 60 Minutes’ downplaying of alternative energy technologies such as wind and solar. UCS’s Alden Meyer wrote to 60 Minutes:

    In fact, wind power could supply more energy to the U.S. grid than nuclear does today, and when combined with a mix of energy efficiency and other renewable energy sources, could provide a continuous energy supply that would help us make dramatic reductions in global warming.

    Dismissal of renewable energy forms is another major facet of mainstream media’s drive for a nuclear power revival. As the St. Petersburg Times put it (12/08/06), “While renewable sources of energy such as solar power are still in the developmental stage, nuclear is the new green.” Renewables Are Ready was the title of a 1999 book written by two UCS staffers. Today, they are more than ready. “Wind is the cheapest form of new generation now being built,” wrote Greenpeace advisor Wasserman (Free Press, 4/10/07). He pointed to an “array of wind, solar, bio-fuels, geothermal, ocean thermal and increased conservation and efficiency.”

    Wasserman has also written about another element ignored by most mainstream media (Free Press, 7/9/07): “The switch to renewables defunds global terrorism. Atomic reactors are pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction. Shutting them down ends the fear of apocalyptic disaster by both terror and error.” He stressed, again, that safe, clean energy is here and “we could replace everything with available technology that could easily supply all our needs while allowing a sustainable planet to survive and thrive.”

    The one green thing

    What are the causes of the media nuclear dysfunction? The obvious problem is media ownership. General Electric, for one, is both a leading nuclear plant manufacturer and a media mogul, owning NBC and other outlets. (For years, CBS was owned by Westinghouse; Westinghouse and GE are the Coke and Pepsi of nuclear power.) There have been board and financial interlocks between the media and nuclear industries. There is the long-held pro-nuclear faith at media such as the New York Times. (See sidebar.)

    There is also the giant public relations operation-both corporate, led by the NEI, and government, involving the Department of Energy and its national nuclear laboratories. “You have the NEI and the nuclear industry propagandizing on nuclear power, and journalists taking down what the industry is saying and not looking at the veracity of their claims,” Greenpeace USA nuclear policy analyst Jim Riccio told Extra!.

    And then there’s lots of money. FAIR recently exposed (Action Alert, 8/22/07) how National Public Radio, which broadcasts many pro-nuclear pieces, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from “nuclear operator Sempra Energy” and Constellation Energy, “which belongs to Nustart Energy, a 10-company consortium pushing for new nuclear power plant construction.”

    The only thing green about nuclear power is the nuclear establishment’s dollars.

    Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York College at Old Westbury. Books he has written about nuclear technology include Cover Up: What You ARE NOT Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power. He has hosted many television programs on nuclear technology on EnviroVideo.com.