GOP Goes off the Deep End, Proposes 100 New Nuclear Reactors in the U.S.

By Harvey Wasserman, AlterNet. Posted June 17, 2009.

As the prospective price of new reactors continues to soar, and as the first "new generation" construction projects sink in French and Finnish soil, Republicans are introducing a bill to Congress demanding 100 new nuclear reactors in the U.S. within 20 years. It explicitly welcomes "alternatives" such as oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and "clean coal." Although it endorses some renewables, such as solar and wind power, it calls for no cap on carbon emissions.

According to the New York Times, this is the defining GOP alternative to a Democratic energy plan headed for a House vote later this month.

But niggling questions like who will pay for these reactors, who will insure them, where will the fuel come from, where will waste go and who will protect them from terrorists are not on the agenda. Given recent certain-to-prove-optimistic estimates of approximately $10 billion per reactor, the plan envisions a trillion-plus-dollar commitment to a newly nuke-centered nation.

With this proposed legislation, the GOP makes atomic energy the centerpiece of its strategy to deal with climate change.

Nuclear power requires energy-intensive activities such as uranium mining, milling, fuel enrichment, plus other carbon expenditures for plant construction, waste management and more.

Reactors also convert buried uranium ore into huge quantities of heat, much of which becomes hot water and steam emitted into the environment. Reactors in France and elsewhere have been forced to shut because adjacent rivers have been taken to 90 degrees Fahrenheit by hot water dumped from reactor cooling systems.

None of this troubled GOP hearings this week on the future of atomic energy. There were no answers to how new reactors would be insured. Since 1957, the federal treasury has been the underwriter of last resort for potential reactor disasters. Renewed in the 2005 Bush energy plan, the commitment applies to all new reactors.

So reactors licensed to operate through 2057 -- as would be virtually certain under the GOP plan -- would extend to a full century the atomic industry's inability to cover its own risks. Neither the Obama administration nor the GOP has presented detailed plans for dealing with such disasters, or explained how they would be paid for.

Despite the GOP's endless focus on the 9/11 terrorist attacks, no significant structural upgrades have been made to protect the currently licensed 104 U.S. reactors from an air attack. The new reactors will be required to demonstrate an ability to resist a jet crash, but testing that requirement remains an open issue.

The ability to fuel this new fleet of reactors remains questionable. Reprocessing used fuel into reusable mixed oxide rods has proved dirty, expensive and dangerous.

The initial experience with building new reactors runs parallel. As reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, French-financed construction projects at Flamanville, France, and at Okiluoto in Finland have soared hugely over budget and behind schedule.

Much of the economically catastrophic experience endured by utilities and rate payers in building the first generation of reactors in the 1960s to the 1990s appears to be recurring, with even bigger deficits. The French government's front group, Areva, which is building the new plants, has sunk into serious financial and political chaos, with potentially devastating implications for this much-touted "new generation" technology.

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