From a Guest-Blogger: Concerned about Nuclear Energy? We Have Work To Do
A piece written by the president of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service:
Dear Friends,
Yesterday, President Obama released his Fiscal Year 2012 budget and I’m afraid the overriding message is: we’ve got to get to work!
Even while slashing funds for heating assistance for the poor and cleaning up the Great Lakes, the President’s budget–like last year–proposes to triple the loan “guarantee” program for new nuclear reactor construction. That would mean another $36 Billion in loan “guarantees” for nuclear utilities to buy reactors from wealthy foreign companies like Areva and Toshiba, while the poor shiver through the winter.
In the fiscal fantasy world of the federal budget, it’s important to note that, in budget terms, $36 Billion in loan “guarantees” shows up as only $360 million in actual spending. But $360 million is still a big chunk of change, and would buy an awful lot of heat for an awful lot of people.
And in the real world, those “guarantees” are actually taxpayer loans. The money leaves the federal treasury and only comes back if the project succeeds. During the first go-round of nuclear construction, fewer than half of the reactors proposed were actually ever built and generated income–and that’s when the utilities had to pay for reactors without government help. There is no reason to believe things will work out any better for the industry this time around–especially if we taxpayers are liable for the bill.
Not only does the Administration want to increase nuclear construction loans, it also is proposing some $500 million over five years to develop new “small modular reactors.” But really, when we’re cutting funding to clean the Great Lakes, why should we be adding funding for new polluting power plants? And if these reactors are economically viable (hint: they’re not), why shouldn’t the companies involved develop them with their own money?
Of course, the Republicans–especially their Tea party wing–want to cut even more from the federal budget than President Obama. But will they be willing to stand up to the nuclear industry and cut this proposal?
President Obama made the same proposal to triple the nuclear loan program last year. And he didn’t get a single dime. Your actions combined with the dedicated work of the small group of people working on this issue in Washington to stop the increases completely.
Now we’ve got to do it again. Write your Congressmembers here and tell them no money for nuclear loans, no money for new reactors–small, large, or in-between! We can’t afford them and we don’t want them. When we all raise our voices, we are extremely loud. And we need each of you to raise your voice now.
We will keep you informed about the progress of these proposals in the weeks and months to come.
Finally, if you haven’t yet signed the petition to the Prime Minister of Japan to stop their government’s funding of proposed new reactors in Texas, please do so now here. Organizations can sign on by sending their info to us at nirsnet@nirs.org.
Thanks for all you do,
Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
Instead of decrying nuclear power, we should be pushing for the best available nuclear technology which, unfortunately, we are not using. Check these out:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1727914/will-green-nukes-save-the-world
http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2011/02/lftr-in-social-media-and-in-media.html
http://www.nucleargreen.org/Nuclear%20Green/Home.html
Hmmm.. Cool, no nuclear! Let’s just burn more coal!
Hey, let’s tell the Congress and the President we can’t afford more spending to heat and power the nation to increase production.
What’s that ? Those pesky Japanese want to help out with a loan to get Texas working again, NO WAY!! We’ll just burn more oil!
Tea party? I’ve already just read the Mad Hatters views!
I received the following email from Nokoli McCraken. This is an interesting tactic by the anti-nuclear movement. But not new, In the mid ’60’s and early ’70’s a program of mail out’s of almost identical emotive letters were posted around the world, Ostensibly from private individuals, they really originated from a Soviet funded, ‘peace’ movement long since disappeared along with the paymaster.
Interesting to see this type pf propaganda tactic revived.
Email:[quote]I am not sure who you are, as I have not been in touch with your organization before. I seem to get
that you think nukes are preferable to burning more coal. Have you worked in the nuclear energy
business? I have. My father worked at both of the Nevada Test sites. The main and Tonopah sites.
I was irradiated as a child, and today, suffer a chronic illness. I grew up and married a man who
served in the nuclear submarine Navy. I thank God both of our children were conceived while he was
in diesel-electric boats. But, after 14 years, the Polaris program put too much pressure on our family
life, and our marriage did not survive. He remarried a few years later, and had a son with his new
wife. That child developed leukemia at age 3, and after a horrible battle, died at the age of 13. Our
family was decimated -since my kids just considered their half and step siblings as ‘brothers and sisters.’
My former husband and I have kept our relationship amiable, first for the sake of our kids, later, just
because being amiable worked out so well, why be mean?
AND, I myself worked, mostly in aerospace, but twice in my 34-year career as a technical illustrator,
graphic artist, drafter in both electronics and NUCLEAR POWER stations. Trust me. You do NOT want
more nuclear power plants, badly built, badly run, and you have no clue how often we came close
to a core meltdown. Or how careless our government has been with nuclear waste. Or how much has
been spent already on Superfund sites, trying finally to clean it up. And at Hanford WA, and other places
around the US, how far they are from even distantly predicting when that mess can be cleaned up.
Once PRO nuclear, I am now unalterably opposed to any new plants. Two of the plants, built by the
employer who told me that they were running ‘flawlessly’ – have been leaking tritium into ground and
drinking water for decades! No plant has ever been built on time, or on budget. Right now, there are
two plants, built by Areva, the French company which has built bad plants all over the US, one in the
UK, and the other in Finland. Both are years overdue, and billions of Eurodollars over budget.
Now, these people want to build 104 of the damn things, and Uncle Sucker is supposed to pay for it?
You want a perfect, terrorist’s wet dream of a dirty bomb? Not an airliner, but a pissed-off Piper
Cub into any of the dry cask storage plants, and there’s your dirty bomb, and God help anyone
living downwind from it!
Do your research. It’s all out there, to be found on the Internet. Or let me send you my article, and
those of NIRSNET and Ace Hoffman, both people and groups who do know the dangers,and are fighting
them. Finally, I had my life and career destroyed by a terrible, chronic illness. I was DELIBERATELY
irradiated as a child. I lived in Tonopah NV during the years of the above-ground nuclear testing. AND
a program was started then, to give children from poor families ‘free’ medical treatment. I had a terrible
deep chest flu that woudn’t go away. Our town doctor promised my father ‘free’ medical treatment
if they could use their gee-whiz, new atomic-powered medical treatments. I was 11 years old. I was
laid on a gurney, wearing only panties, and they placed a gadget which looked like a fat, curved
drafting lamp, over my chest. The bulbs looked like fluorescent bulbs, except they were a pale purple
color, and gave off an odd buzzing noise. The treatment didn’t do jack for my terrible flu — but I got
one hell of a ‘free’ sunburn all over my chest. And that widget was pressed against me, from my
throat to just above my navel. I have suffered from hypothyroidism, all my life, from about then to
the present. I have other medical conditions, many of them. And I endured 5 years of skepticism
from the medical community, and almost lost the love and respect of my adult children. Until, one by
one, they too were stricken. So please don’t try to tell me, or any member of THIS family, about how
‘safe’ nuclear anything is!
Oh, yeah. I wanted to give my former husband pictures of all the submarines he served in. I found them.
All of them, having been in service about 20 years, have already been broken up for scrap. I went ‘Hmm, what did they do with the reactors?” I found out. They are parked, in neat, military rows, with no encasement, in the open air, at the Hanford site! Want to go fishing up there?[/quote]
Interesting tactic, rather old fashioned approach, very disingenuous.Even the ‘each sentence a paragraph’ is a copy of the old Getsetner machine style.
Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice….
Rec’d reply email, (coy about posting)..A curious blend of insult and propaganda. Note the amended style.
Email:[quote]I was born in Trona CA, to parents who were also loyal Americans. My father was gone for five years during WW II, he was a Seabee, and you mention an Island in the South Pacific where a battle occurrred, and he was probably on it! My mother worked for all of the war years as a driver for Railway Express.
And, you illiterate dufus, 1. MY name is Nikoli, pronounced Nikol–ee, not Nikol-eye! OR NO-KO-LI.
I am a woman, or did you miss the part where I said I grew up and MARRIED a Navy submariner? I wrote my own stuff, it is not any form of propaganda, it is actual experience from my own life. I gave birth to two other loyal Americans, both of whom grew up drug free, and who served; my son in destroyers, my daughter as an Army MP in Germany. For over 20 years, I carried my country’s security clearances, and never broke faith with it.
This is no ‘tactic.’ This is writing from people honestly concerned about the dangers posed by nuclear reactors, whichhave not born out their earlier promise, and which have poisoned many thousand acres of land. I first started towrite against nuclear power when I returned to Nevada for retirement. Yucca Mountain is not safe, underneath the land there, are both an earthquake fault and a huge water table. Or, do you live near where a new nuclearplant is to be built? Watch while it takes years over schedule and billions over budget to build. And watch your electricrates climb when they become too costly to run.
Best wishes,
Nikoli A. McCracken[/quote]
This is the ‘concerned mom/citizen mail-out approach. The wise expert approach is another. Secret revelations and tragic stories follow, but all in the same stylised personal format.
Ok, let’s face it, 60 years of anti-nuclear horror stories have become deeply entrenched in the Psyche of most people. The threat of nuclear war and Chernobyl have created a popular hysteria against one of the potentially safest and most reliable sources of relatively clean energy available.
Nuclear technology has advanced over the last 60 years,and while no energy industry is free from drawbacks, the new nuclear technology is worth considering without this sort of ill-informed hysterical propaganda.
46% of the planets energy is sourced from coal-fired power stations. This figure is on the increase with the rapid expansion of the PRC and India as major industrial economies.
We no longer have the luxury of ignoring viable alternatives. Adding up the balance sheet of VIABLE alternatives, nuclear becomes a very attractive option.