Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Deb Katz, the executive director of Citizens Awareness Network.
In his op-ed piece of May 6, Guy Page lays out all of the predictable arguments in support of nuclear power; it’s clean, it’s safe and no one has ever died from nuclear power.
As the communications director for the Vermont Energy Partnership, of which Entergy is a member, he suffers from the same problem as Entergy; their messaging is out of sync with their reality.
Page makes the following claim, “Nuclear power is safe. Many Americans and Vermonters fear and distrust nuclear power. What do history and the present day teach us? In the 50-plus years of the U.S. nuclear power industry, no-one has ever died as a result of radiation.”
Page, his employer, Entergy, and the nuclear industry continue to make this claim even as we witness first hand as the catastrophe unfolds in Japan. This is now the third nuclear power catastrophe in three decades. As more and more nuclear power plants age is it out of the question to think that we can expect to have another nuclear meltdown somewhere on the planet within the next 10 years?
The claim that no one has ever died from radiation poisoning is beyond the pale. Supporters of nuclear power refuse to accept the known and verifiable fact that there is no safe level of radiation. They will only accept the sudden death of a coal mine collapse or a gas explosion as their benchmark. As most of us know, radiation does not kill its victim immediately. It takes time. People like Page shamelessly exploit this fact to make the wild claim that no one has ever died from radiation. Maybe the question should be revised. Has anyone suffered from exposure to radiation? Does an epidemic of childhood thyroid cancer in Russia count or the children born with “Chernobyl heart” or the kids who spend their summers in Ireland because they suffer from “Chernobyl aids”? Can we count the statistically significant number of children born with Down syndrome in Germany the year after the accident? This is the unacknowledged cost of nuclear power.
He goes on to chastise the Fukushima plants for having “unreinforced reactors with poor backup systems.” It leads one to wonder whether he has any idea of what is happening at the Vermont Yankee plant, the virtues of which he attempts to extol at every opportunity.
For instance, is he aware that the Fukushima Mark I plants were built to be stronger than the Vermont Yankee plant? Is he aware that the Vermont Yankee plant has twice as much spent fuel in an unprotected pool as all four of the Fukushima plants combined, making it one of the most vulnerable plants in the country?
He claims that the spent fuel problem can easily be resolved by simply digging a hole in the ground and burying it — out of sight, out of mind. Or we can use the new word, “recycle” (as opposed to reprocessing, which doesn’t market as well) the waste like the French do. Page seems to think that this is the panacea. Others disagree.
“But reprocessing does not get rid of the radioactivity,” said Dr. Makhijani. “Rather it creates more pollution. Moreover the separated plutonium is a proliferation problem and a very costly, uneconomical fuel.”
He states that renewables are too costly but conveniently sidesteps the exorbitant costs of decommissioning and the long-term storage of nuclear waste. He also fails to mention that without huge, ongoing government subsidies, socialism, if you will, the nuclear industry could not survive. The true, actual cost of nuclear power is much closer to 30 cents versus the 4.9 cents he claims Entergy is offering. He also fails to mention the fine print: Entergy offered 4.9 cents for only 10 megawatts of power for one year; after which they’d go to market prices.
Of this entire column there appears to be only one sentence that holds up: “Many Americans and Vermonters fear and distrust nuclear power.”
This is true, and it is for good reason that they feel this way. We all have seen what happens when this technology goes bad. The radiation being released today in Japan will render tens of thousands of acres of good land useless for generations. Over time those exposed will develop cancer. Young mothers of today and tomorrow may very well give birth to mutated children due to exposure to radiation.
What’s important to remember is that Entergy and the nuclear industry are driven by only one thing — money. It’s not about doing the right thing by the environment or society. People fear and distrust this industry, because they know in their hearts that it’s wrong. It’s wrong to dump legacy costs on our grandchildren. It’s wrong to have a technology that when (not if) it fails the results are catastrophic for generations. They distrust the industry, because they know that when the time comes to clean up the mess, those responsible will have taken the money and run.
The only people who don’t see this are those who are paid not to.
