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May 25, 2013
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 Obama’s Nuclear OptionPosted on Feb 16, 2010By Amy Goodman President Barack Obama is going nuclear. He announced the initial $8 billion in loan guarantees for construction of the first new nuclear power plants in the United States in close to three decades. Obama is making good on a campaign pledge, like his promises to escalate the war in Afghanistan and to unilaterally attack in Pakistan. And like his “Af-Pak” war strategy, Obama’s publicly financed resuscitation of the nuclear power industry in the U.S. is bound to fail, another taxpayer bailout waiting to happen. Opponents of the plan, which includes a tripling of existing nuclear plant construction-loan guarantees to $54.5 billion, span the ideological spectrum. On its most basic level, the economics of nuclear power generation simply doesn’t make sense. The cost to construct these behemoths is so huge, and the risks are so great, that no sensible investor, no banks, no hedge funds will invest in their construction. No one will loan a power company the money to build a power plant, and the power companies refuse to spend their own money. Obama himself professes a passion for the free market, telling Bloomberg BusinessWeek, “We are fierce advocates for a thriving, dynamic free market.” Well, the free market long ago abandoned nuclear power. The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation remarked, “Expansive loan guarantee programs ... are wrought with problems. At a minimum, they create taxpayer liabilities, give recipients preferential treatment, and distort capital markets.” Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a longtime critic of the nuclear power industry, told me, “If you buy more nuclear plants, you’re going to get about two to 10 times less climate solution per dollar, and you’ll get it about 20 to 40 times slower, than if you buy instead the cheaper, faster stuff that is walloping nuclear and coal and gas.” In his 2008 report “The Nuclear Illusion,” Lovins writes, “Nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options.” Advertisement The waste from nuclear power plants is not only an ecological nightmare, but also increases the threats of nuclear proliferation. Obama said in his recent State of the Union address, “We’re also confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people—the threat of nuclear weapons.” Despite this, plans that accompany what Obama has proposed, his “new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,” include increased commercial “nuclear fuel reprocessing,” which the Union of Concerned Scientists calls “dangerous, dirty and expensive,” and which it says would increase the global risks of both nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. Both Lovins and the Union of Concerned Scientists debunk the myth that nuclear energy is essential to combat global warming. Lovins writes, “Every dollar invested in nuclear expansion will worsen climate change by buying less solution per dollar.” Obama said that this first tranche of public funding, which will benefit the energy giant Southern Co., “will create thousands of construction jobs in the next few years, and some 800 permanent jobs.” Yet investment in solar, wind and cogeneration technologies could do the same thing, quickly creating industries here in the U.S. that are thriving in Europe. What’s more, the risks of failure of a windmill or a solar panel are minute when compared with nuclear power plant disasters like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. From economics, to the environment, to the prevention of nuclear threats, Obama’s nuclear loan guarantees fail on all counts. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column. Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller. © 2010 Amy Goodman Distributed by King Features Syndicate  TAGS:
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By ofersince72, April 13, 2010 at 4:17 am Link to this comment
That cover-up that you re-examined in 1981 led to
Report thisthe deaths of 50,000 US troops and a couple million
Vietnamese. It was also under the watch of a
Democrat President and Congress. Nothing has changed
much in forty five years has it sir, except for the
quality and access of journalism. Now as the empire
strikes its final blows in its quest for control of all
the world’s resources, you stand there with a closed
eye and a wink and a nod watching America crumple.
You too, Eugene Robinson, the Maddow show is an awful
easy gig isn’t it !!! Any idiot could comment on Glen
Beck.
By ofersince72, April 13, 2010 at 3:50 am Link to this comment
MR. Sheer, in 1981 when you reexamined the ship
logs of the USS Maddox, what did you find??
It would do the nation good if you would get back
to that type of investigative jounalism,
The matter?, have you become the protagonist of 1984?
Report thisBy Scooter, April 12, 2010 at 8:39 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Lovins writes, “Every dollar invested in nuclear expansion will worsen climate change by buying less solution per dollar.”
I’m curious, did Lovins or Goodman make the same argument when U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the U.S. would join others in securing a $100 billion annual fund by 2020 to help developing countries cope with climate change.
Wouldn’t those dollars as well be better spent trying to solve the problem?
Report thisBy liecatcher, February 26, 2010 at 12:22 am Link to this comment
When common sense prevails, the people win.
From DEMOCRACY NOW February 25, 2010
Vermont State Senate Votes to Close Nuclear Plant
“The Vermont Senate has voted to close the state’s
lone nuclear power plant. On Wednesday,
the state senators voted to shut the Vermont Yankee
plant when its license expires in 2012.
The thirty-eight-year-old plant is one of the oldest
in the country and has had a series of leaks.
The move marks the first time a state has moved to
shut down a reactor in over twenty years.
Opponents of the plant gathered at the state
legislature broke into cheers after the vote was
announced.
Vermont State Senate President Peter Shumlin said
the vote would have national implications.”
When the fascist oligarchs prevail , puppet Bush3
Report thisgives $BILLIONS to the nuclear industry &
we the people get screwed again.
By Captain Chris, February 24, 2010 at 2:55 pm Link to this comment
GRL,
Report thisAll it takes for a runaway is for the servos (I assume) to have a glitch, and not remove the rods from solution, and we have an instant runaway.
This possibility is avoided by having the fissionable material itself in a containment unit.
Chris K. MS, MET
By G.R.L. Cowan, February 23, 2010 at 11:45 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
“... except that existing reactors CAN run away; that is the cause of a meltdown. Chernobyl is a prime example”
Chernobyl was indeed a runaway. However, by 1955, the lessons of Chernobyl had been learned, everywhere outside the former Soviet Union. Google (“Reactor Safeguard Committee” teller void).
Nuclear waste contains fission fragments, and when a nuclear power establishment runs for many decades, it accumulates 0.00028 watts of gamma-ray and beta-ray power coming from these fragments for every thermal watt that is being produced in its reactors. Here’s a picture of one of containments for those fragments: http://whyfiles.org/275nukewaste/images/dry_cask_storage.jpg .
Strictly speaking that 0.00028 takes an infinite number of decades to build up, not just many. But after many, it gets close.
Now, to understand core melting, you must ask what fraction of the industry’s wattage is delayed, not ten years or more, but ten seconds or more? About seven percent. Although reactors cannot run away, that seven percent persists for a while, even after fission has stopped. After a day, IIRC ,it’s down to 1 percent, but in that day, a shut-down reactor that lacks adequate post-shutdown cooling can melt itself, if its fuel was solid to begin with.
That is why meltdowns are not evidence of an ability to run away, and TMI was nothing like Chernobyl. It was to Chernobyl as a lightning bug is to lightning.
“I respect Amy very much, in fact sent a donation last week- but she is plain wrong—“
and she was already wrong in 1955.
Report thisBy Captain Chris, February 23, 2010 at 11:21 am Link to this comment
G.R.L.-
I agree with almost all you said, except that existing reactors CAN run away; that is the cause of a meltdown. Chernobyl is a prime example. Sure we have redundant safeguards (Three mile Island is a perfect example.) But, so did Challenger…
Pebble nuclear waste is harmless because it is CONTAINED. It is used until spent to the point that radiation cannot escape the pebble. Unless mixed with fresh material, or crushed, it is innocuous.
And, ummm, my uncle retired from the Savannah River Plant- as Plant Engineer, and I did more than a little research at Case Western Reserve University in chemistry, nuclear physics, and automation. I am also an engineer…
My point is that this gen4 pebble reactors are NOT the same technology as fuel rod plants, and I want people to get that.
I respect Amy very much, in fact sent a donation last week- but she is plain wrong in the scary stuff she is talking about in this article. She is speaking of 40 year old technology as if that were what people are designing today.
Respectfully,
Report thisChris K. MS, MET
By G.R.L. Cowan, February 23, 2010 at 8:17 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Captain Chris, in regard to “It IS safe, cannot melt down, cannot run away, and the waste is absolutely harmless”, that’s all true except the part about the waste being absolutely harmless.
But existing reactors are also safe and unable to run away. They can melt down, and their waste is potentially harmful to the same degree as pebble-bed reactors’ waste, but like that waste has never actually harmed anyone.
It’s always better to do a whole lot of research, before putting one’s oar in, than a little.
Report thisBy Captain Chris, February 23, 2010 at 8:03 am Link to this comment
Look people,
Technology has changed in 40 years. There is a new sort of plant in experimental (yet working) stages. It is called generation 4 “pebble nuclear.” It IS safe, cannot melt down, cannot run away, and the waste is absolutely harmless. They are small enough to put one in a small town for its own use.
Basically, the fissile material is encased in small glass spheres. When it is hot enough to create a chain reaction when put in to proximity (ie: touching) other spheres, it creates heat. When the fuel is exhausted, it is harmless. You throw it into the dump.
Before you get all hot and bothered by these sort of things, I suggest you do some research.
“Pebble Nuclear”
Google it. The sky is not falling.
Report thiscc
By G.R.L. Cowan, February 22, 2010 at 2:05 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
That’s an exceptionally crude form of the proliferation lie. The truth is that no PWR, no BWR, and no CANDU reactor has ever produced a gram of the plutonium that is in today’s nuclear weapons.
An analogy that I like: if horse-borne or horse-drawn transport were heavily taxed (as fossil fuels are today), and guns were commonplace, and cars were being eagerly adopted, many government-supported persons would author treatises with titles like “Transport/Crime: Breaking the Thermodynamic Link”.
They would argue, truthfully, that any four-cylinder engine can, with sufficient time, skill, and effort, be converted into a four-barrel gun. The lie would be that the spread of cars therefore was a gun-proliferation threat.
Report thisBy LadyRoisin, February 22, 2010 at 1:04 pm Link to this comment
No way Nuclear Power - the French and Finnish have stopped building their latest Nuclear Power stations because they were already unsafe. The plan for Developed countries nuclear waste is to sell it to Developing countries - in this scheme it means the receiving countries will be left to look after the waste for 1 Million years. Nuclear Power (439 active stations globally) is kept alive for nuclear fuel for nuclear bombs - and we don’t need those anymore - who is gonna Nuke the planet (and themselves) first? With it’s trigger happy policy (US & UK) of I’ll shoot you first if I THINK you are going to fire at me - means the ‘first strike’ could be from those countries….
Report thisBy they, February 21, 2010 at 3:39 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The new reactors are designed to burn existing nuclear waste, obviating the need for Yucca mountain. Past methods of reclamation were designed to produce pure plutonium for weapons and thus were expensive and the resulting plutonium is a danger to us all. The new methods produce no weapons grade material. If you want to be shocked, take a close look at what comes out of a coal plant.
Report thisBy rollzone, February 20, 2010 at 11:03 am Link to this comment
hello again. the outstanding difference between American nuclear power and French nuclear power is safety. i would rather pay for safety. Oboymamma sees affirmative action necessary for his friend in Atlanta. as his time is ticking, into the journals of poster boy history; and if he does not affirmatively help now: it will be the last opportunity for a very long time. this is pork for a friend.
Report thisBy Richard_Ralph_Roehl, February 18, 2010 at 11:38 pm Link to this comment
Ooops! Can’t use the N word here!
Report thisBy Blackspeare, February 18, 2010 at 10:33 am Link to this comment
To JDmysticDJ et al…
You and your ilk are what we lovingly call Luddites——no progress at any cost. However, you’ll probably get your way because nuclear power plant construction is want is known as a contractor’s dream——with cost over-runs and change orders whatever the estimated cost is you can double it fersure! The USA should take a lesson from France where 85% of their energy is from nuclear power——how do they do it! The answer is quite simple——uniformity. All their nuclear power plants have the same basic design which right away is an economical advantage. And when they make an improvement in one all the rest follow. Of course in France the power industry is nationalized, which leads to economies from the getgo. In the USA you have a myriad of engineering firms and contractors vying for the contract to design and build and when the lawyers for each get through you get quite a bill.
Report thisBy Jean-David, February 18, 2010 at 7:03 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
There is no problem with storing the nuclear waste. Put it where the proponents of nuclear power are. Put it in the basement of the White House, the House, the Senate, and the Pentagon. If the stuff is not safe enough for those turkeys, it is not safe enough for anyone else.
Report thisBy Tourist, February 18, 2010 at 6:42 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
Oh my God, what is Obama doing? This technology has no future except a radioactive one for the next couple of thousands years. Barack, don’t give in to the energy lobby. These people don’t care about anyone’s health as long as the buck is rolling.
Report thisSo far there is not ONE safe place in the entire US where they can store the nuclear waste. The current depositaries for nuclear waste are a joke and a ticking time bomb.
The billions which are necessary to build those plants should be invested in renewable energy projects.
This time Obama is really a disappointment.
By David Bradish, February 18, 2010 at 4:46 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
JDmysticDJ,
If you look closely at the chart, the dark blue bars mean “current authority.” If you add the two dark bars that are stacked on top of each for efficiency and renewables, then you will find that they currently have $52.3B versus nuclear at $18.5B like I said. The light blue bars are the loan volumes proposed by Obama for the different technologies.
1703 and 1705 are the numbers of the recovery and stimulus acts that were passed last year that provided large amounts of loan volume to ee and re. Ms. Goodman in her article is mixing up credit subsidy costs and loan volume which are two different things.
Report thisBy JDmysticDJ, February 18, 2010 at 1:25 am Link to this comment
Blackspeare
I think that mating call is meant for you. You are obviously in love with nuclear power. Let me suggest that you wear a condom.
Before you get all lunatic fringie on us, maybe you should check out the effects of nuclear contamination on people who were actually exposed to nuclear radiation. They have stats and pictures too. It’s odd that something so clean, efficient, and quite safe could cause so much death, and such horrible mutations.
See Ya! Oh! incidentally, if you’re interested, I think I can get you a deal on some acreage in Chernobyl.
Report thisBy JDmysticDJ, February 17, 2010 at 11:21 pm Link to this comment
David Bradish
You say,
“Actually no. According to a slide used by Jonathan Silver, Executive Director of the Loan Guarantee Program Office, efficiency and renewables currently have $52.3B in loan guarantee volume versus nuclear’s $18.5B.”
Actually, it’s not “Actually no,” actually it’s, actually yes and no. According to the link you provided, 18.5B in loan guaranties will be for RENEWABLE SOURCES, while NUCLEAR will receive 54.5 in loan guaranties. THE NUMBERS ON YOUR LINK WERE JUST ABOUT EXACTLY REVERSED FROM THE NUMBERS PROVIDED BY YOUR LINK. The actual ratio, according to your link, is about 3 to 1, and the 10 to 1 ratio as reported in the article is, according to your link, incorrect. Apparently, if your link is correct, Amy and her staff failed to verify the numbers they got from their source. News about the loan guarantees is all over the web now, and other articles verify Amy’s other assertions. For example, the government will guarantee loans for a source of energy that:
Is nearly, infinitely poisonous – (I don’t like clichés, but the problem of plutonium waste is the “Elephant in the room” that apparently nobody knows how to deal with) - will increase climate problems, is such a financial risk “that no sensible investor, no banks, no hedge funds will invest in their construction.” (“No one will loan a power company the money to build a power plant, and the power companies refuse to spend their own money,”) Also there is the issue of commercial nuclear fuel processing, “…which the Union of Concerned Scientists calls “dangerous, dirty and expensive,” and which it says would increase the global risks of both nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.” And as I understand it, no insurance company will insure these facilities.
…and the government (We the people,) as it stands now, will provide, and be responsible for, 3 times as much in loan guarantees for this risky, dirty, and dangerous source of energy, than we will be for cleaner, safer, renewable forms of energy, which would/will be available sooner than the energy from the proposed nuclear plants.
Report thisBy rollzone, February 17, 2010 at 7:28 pm Link to this comment
hello. perhaps the more nuclear targets we build, they
Report thiswill come.
By Blackspeare, February 17, 2010 at 2:59 pm Link to this comment
Here comes the crazies! Nuclear power is like a mating call to the lunatic fringe. The answer is and always will be nuclear power——clean, efficient, and quite safe. As for the waste——just take it out to the Marianna Trench and toss it——nature will absorb it quite nicely. As a matter of fact I think it’s time to bring back radium watch dials——they were great if you haven’t seen one.
Report thisBy NYCartist, February 17, 2010 at 2:58 pm Link to this comment
Amy G.,
Report thisI’m sad this week re Dem.Now. You “get” nuclear power’s dangers. You “get” climate change dangers and have done marvelous work on it, but you fall for “mind-body” junk-not- science on the show this week…
?? Sanda
By G.Anderson, February 17, 2010 at 8:40 am Link to this comment
At this point, it’s becoming all too obvious what Barak Obama, president of the United States is all about.
He couldn’t keep up the charade forever, I suspect that as time goes on, he will drop all attempts to appear to be the president, but instead become an employee of those in charge.
It reminds me of the lyrics from one of my favorite albums, Animals by Pink Floyd:
Big man, pig man, ha ha charade you are.
Report thisYou well heeled big wheel, ha ha charade you are.
And when your hand is on your heart,
You’re nearly a good laugh,
Almost a joker,
With your head down in the pig bin,
Saying “Keep on digging.”
Pig stain on your fat chin.
What do you hope to find.
When you’re down in the pig mine.
You’re nearly a laugh,
You’re nearly a laugh
But you’re really a cry.
By David Bradish, February 17, 2010 at 7:40 am Link to this comment
Thus, just one-tenth the amount for nuclear is being dedicated to energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies.
Actually no. According to a slide used by Jonathan Silver, Executive Director of the Loan Guarantee Program Office, efficiency and renewables currently have $52.3B in loan guarantee volume versus nuclear’s $18.5B. Obama’s proposal to increase loan volume for nuclear, renewables and efficiency would make them about equal.
Report thisBy Mike789, February 17, 2010 at 7:05 am Link to this comment
Ellis…What are you thinking?
How long does it take to dismantle a car to retrieve the fuel?
Report thisBy pacrat, February 17, 2010 at 6:25 am Link to this comment
How can someone as bright as President Obama be so dumb? Or is he deliberately dumbing himself down to be more acceptable to the GOP - Grand Old Phoney party?
The man clearly knows little or nothing about the dangers of nuclear energy generation and waste. He must have been at Harvard during the Three Mile Island dissaster! Or worse - he doesn’t really care about endangering the lives of millions of his fellow Americans - many of whom voted for him!
Report thisBy JohannG, February 16, 2010 at 10:36 pm Link to this comment
Good analysis. Investment in Nuclear Power benefits the
Report thisfew that currently “own” our Government. It will not
benefit Amy Goodman or myself in any way. Thus on this
issue, like many others, President Obama has lost my
support.
By mistertwister, February 16, 2010 at 10:23 pm Link to this comment
Really Mr. Obama? Was not fighting for real Health Care change we can believe in? Afghanistan? Now nukes,—- even more change we can believe in?
If it is, I want my change back.
And oh, I almost forgot: Allowing the republicans to characterize not doing anything remotely progressive on these big tickets issues as “socialism.” Ah, what a laugh, those Republican jokesters!
By the way, Obama, good luck with the Iranians and with seeking worldwide nuclear non-proliferation. What are you going to tell them, “do as I say not as I do?”
Report thisBy G.R.L. Cowan, February 16, 2010 at 7:56 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
If the supposed diseconomy of nuclear power is such that “one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe”, the lifesaving it might do, if that unnecessary debate were to conclude in the affirmative, is obviously too expensive. We can’t afford to save those people.
If we save them, we don’t even know who they are! They’re people who *would have* been, for instance, blown up by gas explosion like the recent one in Connecticut, or poisoned by partially burned gas, aka carbon monoxide, or killed by a collapsing or burning wind turbine.
Report thisBy bozh, February 16, 2010 at 6:29 pm Link to this comment
Obviously, evocation of nuclear threat to US is part of US policy; thus, a prez is obliged to say that.
Evocation of nuclear threats to US is solidly connected with US declaration of its right for first strike as well.
Most amers may have not espied the connection of US first strike threat and US conjuring a nuclear atack against US.
But leading russians, chinese, koreans, venezuellans, vietnamese, et al are not known for being that much dumb not to see that the right to bear arms is an universal right.
I suggest that knowledgeable ‘aliens’ expect US to be the empire/nation which will start a second ltd nuclear war.
Especially, if US gets frustrated enough with pashtuns in afpak or anguished over protracted warfare to get pashtun ‘nobility’ onside.
And with warming possibly-probably rendering much of planet uninhabitable and the planet getting daily poorer, one cannot put anything past the new ‘nobility’.
Report thisIn conclusion, i aver that iran is morally and legally obligated to acquire wmd. tnx
By Ed Harges, February 16, 2010 at 5:18 pm Link to this comment
We’re nowhere near solving the problem of where to put nuclear waste, not to
Report thismention how to prevent catastrophic terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities. And
Obama wants to build a bunch more of these things? Goodman is right: this
completely crazy..
By ofersince72, February 16, 2010 at 4:56 pm Link to this comment
I believe that the Obama presidency makes a very
Report thisgood case that the military now has complete
control over our government. A banana republic