President Obama -- who ran on a platform of "change" and "transparency" -- is feeling the pressure as he wavers on fixing health care, winning the war in Afghanistan and saving the American economy. As a result, his approval ratings continue to fall and many of his supporters have voter's remorse.
Obama continues to give the Republicans numerous opportunities to divide America.
But there is one issue that both sides must support: nuclear energy.
And today, President Obama announced federal loan guarantees for building two new nuclear power reactors to be built by Southern Company in County, Georgia.
A revised nuclear power agenda in the United States will re-establish our position as the greatest country in the world.
Fear not, Americans. Contrary to what some politicians (on both sides) want you to believe, nuclear power is not dangerous. Nuclear power is not our enemy. Now is the time for the politicians stop instilling fear into our minds and to allow real science and engineering prove that nuclear energy is our greatest ally.
Cost and Efficiency
Currently, there are 102 nuclear power plants operating in the United States and they provide us with just 20% of our electricity. Nuclear energy is cheap, effective and safe. Nuclear energy does not produce carbon. The other alternatives? Well, we have coal which is harmful to the environment and the plants are ancient. We also have wind and solar energy options but neither provides for the baseload, nor is either reliable. At the coldest and warmest times, when we need most electricity, wind power is 7% -- that means that 7 days out of 100 you can expect for there to be electricity.)
Medicine
Every American has lost a loved one to cancer. Chemotherapy and radiation rarely cure; instead, such "therapies" kill healthy cells and cancerous cells at the same time. Americans deserve a cure for cancer and other deadly diseases. Nuclear medicine and medical isotopes provide that cure.
In Obama's January 28 "State of the Union" address, he said, "We need to encourage American innovation. Last year, we made the largest investment in basic research funding in history, an investment -- an investment that could lead to the world's cheapest solar cells or treatment that kills cancer cells but leaves healthy ones untouched."
Obama was not talking about advancements in chemotherapy. He was talking about medical isotopes. Medical isotopes are becoming more and more scarce and the isotopes Americans rely on are not even produced at home. For example, Chaulk River in Canada is responsible for producing 40,000 procedures a day for diagnosis. We need more medical isotopes. We need to save more lives. (Citizens for Medical Isotopes provides you with proof that medical isotopes cure disease.)
Safety
Nuclear plants in America have caused no civilian deaths; instead, nuclear power is the safest industrial endeavor ever and it accounts for all of its waste through proper waste management.
Do not be fooled by the Three Mile Island leak in 1979. The media hype caused Pennsylvania's population to completely freak out and flee the area in fear of extreme exposure to nuclear, so President Carter visited the site several days later to prove that the area was safe. In fact, the President's Commission's report concluded:
The collective dose resulting from the radioactivity released to the population living within a 50-mile radius of the plant was approximately 2,000 person rems. The estimated annual collective dose to this population from natural background radiation is about 240,000 person-rems...The radiation doses received by the general population as a result of exposure to the radioactivity released during the accident were so small that there will be no detectable additional cases cancer, developmental abnormalities or genetic ill-health as a consequence of the accident at TMI.
Yes, nuclear energy produces waste. But, rest assured, the "waste" is not entirely harmful. According to William Tucker of the Wall Street Journal,
Ninety-five percent of a spent fuel rod is plain old U-238, the nonfissionable variety that exists in granite tabletops, stone buildings and the coal burned in coal plants to generate electricity. Uranium-238 is 1% of the earth's crust. It could be put right back in the ground where it came from.
Furthermore, the "waste" issue must be taken off of the political chopping block. How to deal with the waste is an issue for science and engineering; it is not for Senator Harry Reid to decide just because Yucca Mountain is located in Nevada!
The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 requires -- requires -- our government to recycle its used resources. Nuclear energy fuel must be recycled. Period.
Now Is The Time
"To create more of these clean-energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives, and that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country," said Obama.
Obama is in a position to save jobs, save lives, save America and save his job. Obama can achieve all of these goals with nuclear energy. Enough of the bipartisanship. Time for change. Time for real nuclear energy.
Follow Tamara N. Holder on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tamaraholder
However, I caution that Uranium Based Nuclear Power is not the "best" option.
Thorium Based Nuclear Power IS!!!
Thorium has a lot of things going for it, not the least of which is that it makes the Regulators happy in many ways. This could change the CBO estimates right from the begining.
It also CANNOT be used to make Nuclear Weapons Material. I wonder why we have not done this before now? (Yeah right! I know why we have not!)
Just Google "thorium" and prepare for a shocker, folks! We are *not* enlightened enough, methinks!!!
;'{P~~~
In fact, Thorium CAN be used to make nuclear weapons. Thorium-232 absorbs a neutron to produce Uranium-233. Uranium-233 is a fissile material and can be used to make a nuclear weapon.
Mosey on over to the Union of Concerned Scientists website, people, instead of being spoon-fed this political propaganda.
Never forget, there is science and the politics of science. This article is the politics of science. To be specfic: Obama supports, is promoting, and wants taxpayers to bail out Dirty Energy. Period.
Obama's so-called energy plan for climate change is a debacle of huge proportions. Wake up and smell the topped-off mountain air, folks.
One of their latest attempts to discredit nuclear power has been to try to declare that only nuclear power plants require millions of gallons of water for the steam cycle.
That flies in the face of reality and the laws of thermodynamics. Every large industrial plant, including their favorite baseload plant, natural gas used in a combined cycle to generate steam, requires millions of gallons of water. Why is UCS adamantly against the two nuclear plants in California that use millions of gallons of water but conveniently forget to mention the other 17 electricity generating plants using natural gas and coal that require millions of gallons of water as well?
So trying to say UCS is apolitical just because they have the word "scientist" in their group name is vastly oversimplifying the mission of UCS. UCS has been and always will an anti-nuclear group, which means they have just as much a political agenda of eliminating nuclear power as does Greenpeace. Which in my book puts them in the back pocket of the natural gas industry.
You believe the nuclear scientists who are opposed to nuclear power shouldn't be listened to, or their research included in the debate because...???
Oh right. Because it might make someone oppose Obama's "nuclear renaissance".
And we should just listen to some PR flack Chicago lawyer instead of the nuclear scientists who are opposed to nuclear power because...???
Oh right. Because you are PRO NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE.
Right. Keep all the conflicting data, studies, research out of the hands of the public AT ALL COSTS!
And as to your claim that UCS is "to declare that only nuclear power plants require millions of gallons of water for the steam cycle"...
and you, Mr. Nuclear Scientist, are???
Oh right. A jerk posting anonymously to see yourself in print on a political blog. That makes you much more expert than the scientists who have been studying this for decades.
Excuse me, I'll bow out and leave you "experts" to flog anyone who disagrees with you and Bailout Obama.
Yes, I voted for Obama. I consider myself a social liberal. I also have Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Nuclear Engineering with emphasis on thermonuclear fusion, fission power systems, thermal-hydraulics, neutron transport, and artificial intelligence. I am soon to have a Ph.D in Nuclear Engineering with emphasis on counterproliferation, nuclear forensics, and combating WMD.
I am in no way biased as I do not work in the nuclear power industry, nor will I ever work in the nuclear power industry. I will refer to willr's comment regarding the UCS.
You are a creepy sort, a politico-blog bottomfeeder, trying to score points in the basement with your Repub buddies.
Go jump in a reactor cooling tower.
So the President is right to push through the gridlock and do whats right whether its popular or not.
This is a matter of science and engineering, and it's crazy that we're letting politics creep into every facet of our society.
Politicians and ideologues should not be the ones shaping public opinion on science and technology. Our scientists and engineers have spent their entire lives studying these things, so excuse us "ignorant" peons for trusting Nobel Prize winners assessment of the evidence over the opining of bloggers depending on wikipedia as the basis for their opinion.
Good job Dr. Chu, and kudoes to the President for following the advice of experts rather than misguided political ideologues.
Uranium that's still in the ground is now mostly found on indigenous lands across different countries, and leaching uranium from the soil can produce large amounts of environmental contamination. There's also the issue that Navajos (who at one time had a total of 42 uranium mines in operation on what land is left to them) or other indigenous peoples can be paid a fraction of a wage of industry workers.
There's also the issue of storage. There's the one in Andrews County, upstream of Austin along the Colorado River whose storage pit is 14 feet above the Oglalla Aquifer got approved by the state. There's Yucca Mountain whose geology and proneness to floods in the region all but guarantee that humans will some day be exposed to the waste.
This list can go on, but the point is that there are strong arguments against nuclear power that this author chooses to ignore.
As for the race thing, communities of color are definitely dumping grounds for many industries, but radioactive waste from nuclear facilities is not being dumped in those communities. The waste is usually stored on site, and certain reactor designs are capable of "recycling" this waste, which most engineers and scientists suspect will be the eventual course of action.
Either way these are issues for scientists and engineers to solve and the public should be wary of the siccing politicians on technological issues. Look what politicians have done with health care and the economy. Do we really want them working their magic on technical problems like waste management?
And it has killed a lot of miners, continues to contaminate the air & water.
But apparently you didn't get the memo on what exactly it is those fabulously hungry nuke plants like to eat. Uranium and water.
Waste is only being TEMPORARILY stored on site at nuclear power plants, to get around the need to put the spent fuel somewhere logical where it won't poison everyone it is near thru groundwater and air contamination & leakage. Which is a ticking time bomb.
If the "on site storage" fix hadn't been invented, we wouldn't even be getting 1% of our energy from nukes, because they would have had to shut down because they couldn't be refueled.
Like I said, scientific ignorance here is off the charts.
Learn how nukes work, people, before you embarrass yourself in public like this.
Anyone who thinks nuclear power is "safe", "cheap" and "efficient" is still living in 1959.
So, what's your excuse for this pathetic and bizarre piece?
And why isn't it on Fox News or Free Republic, where it clearly belongs?
Cheap: "A 2008 study concluded that if carbon capture and storage was required then nuclear power would be the cheapest source of electricity". Moreover, "solar energy is subsidized to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind $23.37 and 'clean coal' $29.81. By contrast, normal coal receives 44 cents, natural gas a mere quarter, hydroelectric about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59."
Efficient: Almost all power plants (gas, coal, nuclear) use the steam cycle so efficiency is around 33%. Solar is between 8% and 30% efficiency with 30% being NASA-costly - however you have to keep in mind that the sun doesn't always shine, so this number is assuming perfect conditions, sunny, etc (this is where capacity factor comes in). FYI, the capacity factor for most nuclear plants is well above 90%, for wind and solar it is around 20%.
Nuclear isn't safe: If an accident in any other kind of energy plant occurs---as horrible as it might be---it would kill dozens or maybe hundreds. A nuclear accident could kill millions and make the land around it for miles, uninhabitable for centuries.
Nuclear isn't cheap: The "2008 study" you cite is industry-funded and set up for propaganda purposes. Every objective study, over decades, demonstrates that nuclear is far and away the most expensive form of energy generation. And if solar, wind, biomass, and many more alternative technologies were funded with even 10% of what taxpayers have coughed up for nuclear over the years, it would create an energy and jobs boom that would bury nuclear completely. (Which is one reason why the people in power won't do it. They're too indebted to the nuclear giants.)
Nuclear isn't efficient: It's just the opposite. All nuclear energy does is boil water. That's it. Only an industry shill, or someone truly ignorant, would argue that nuclear fission is the most efficient way to make water boil.
Nuclear energy costs more than any other form of energy, is very inefficient, creates lethal waste that last for centuries, and in an accident could literally take out several states.
Now, tell us again why we taxpayers should be subsidizing this madness?
I am also a former Engineer Officer of a US nuclear powered submarine who has lived with a nuclear power plant within 200 feet for months at a time. It is safe technology that is clean enough to run inside a sealed submarine full of people that is based on a fuel that is so concentrated that a mass roughly equal to the body weight of a linebacker can provide enough energy to power that submarine for 15 years using 1950's vintage technology. (My boat was commissioned in 1962. Today's subs will operate for 33 years without new fuel.)
Liberal thinkers are not supposed to be closed minded and they are certainly not supposed to oppose technology developments that can replace coal, oil and natural gas in many applications today with potential for many other developments in the future. Last time I checked, it was the other side who worked off of talking points.
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/24549/page1
Coal power plants actually produce more radioactive waste than nuclear power plants. Of course this radioactive material is mixed in with much other toxic materials from coal ash such as mercury. Coal power plants also put at least 100 times more radiation into the general environment than nuclear power plants do.
And genius, you might be shocked to learn all radioactive waste ain't recyclable or reusable.
As to the claim "coal power plants actually produce more radioactive waste than nuclear power plants", please see my remarks on the shocking scientific ignorance exhibited here.
YOU are one of the ignorant to whom I am referring.
The total campaign contributions from sources that can be linked to nuclear energy were quite tiny compared to those received from competitive energy sources like wind, solar, oil, coal and gas and also far smaller than those received from lawyers, big pharma, individuals, doctors, hospitals, defense contractors and other industries whose business is affected by government decisions.
Many of the "special" interests who contributed to President Obama's campaign are not happy with his decision to enable the development of nuclear energy - it will diminish demand for rail transportation, pipeline construction, drilling services, coal, oil, gas, wind turbines, and solar systems. It might also diminish the demand for chemotherapy, hospital beds, and oncologists.
It is a courageous example of doing what is right, not what is popular or pleasing to the people donated money hoping for favors. It is, however, a decision that will benefit those small individual donors who believe that "we can" solve any remaining issues associated with technology with amazing potential for good.
Mmmmmhmmmm.
Kinda like ya can't prove radiation causes cancers a year or two after the nuke explodes or meltsdown, only backwards.
Love the pretzel logic exhibited here, to justify Obama being "right" about nuclear power, rather than admitting he is shoving a dangerous and costly technology down our throats to further his personal political agenda.
Group hug.