Bruce Molholt writes: Today, nuclear power is being heavily touted as an answer to global warming, not only by the nuclear industry but by some political candidates, most notably John McCain, who advocates building 100 nuclear plants in the U.S., 45 in the next 22 years.
It’s been nearly 30 years since the accident at Three Mile Island, just south of Harrisburg, which essentially killed nuclear power development in the U.S. No new plants have been planned or built in the U.S. since the March 1979 accident.
Although the accident was less severe than the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, an estimated 95 percent of the reactor core melted and containment was breached within an inch of the infamous “China syndrome.” This catastrophe occurs when molten uranium fuel and a myriad of radioactive byproducts leak into groundwater and release highly radioactive steam into the air for hundreds of miles around, depending on wind speed and direction.
It’s true that, unlike coal or natural-gas fired plants, nuclear reactors don’t emit carbon dioxide — a major contributor to global warming. But nuclear power is still hardly “clean.” There has been a dismal failure of the industry and government to solve the dirtiest aspect of nuclear power — the production of 30 tons of highly radioactive wastes per year for each reactor.
Over the years, the U.S. has tried to deal with highly toxic radioactive wastes in spent fuel in several different ways: Spent fuel reprocessing, long-term disposal of spent fuel at Yucca Mountain, Nev., and long-term storage of spent fuel on-site.
Each method has proven untenable and portends potential widescale health hazards even with the present U.S. total of 104 nuclear plants, let alone Sen. McCain’s proposal to essentially double that number.
We tried spent fuel reprocessing at West Valley, N.Y., south of Buffalo, in 1966-72. During that six years, the plant reprocessed only a year’s worth of spent nuclear fuel from 21 reactors.
It is now permanently closed due to poor performance, environmental contamination and exposure of workers to dangerously high levels of radiation. The environmental cleanup tab alone has reached $5 billion. (08/04/08)
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