Weighing Risks and Costs of Nuclear Power

If you are one of the millions of Americans living in Range of America’s most dangerous nuclear reactor, the odds that you will suffer physical harm from radiation exposure are greater that the odds of a regular player winning a $100 lottery ticket.  Sooner or later, it will happen.  For the residents of New York City, those odds stink.  Despite the claims from the industry, that has a long track record of sabotaging safety in favor of profit, and the equally fraudulent claims of Republicans and some Democrats, that nuclear power is safe, we need to take closer look.  Here we have an excellent editorial from Bob Herbert, an analysis of our country’s nuclear plants, and a video presentation from Bob Hayes.

No one thought the Interstate 35W bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis would collapse. No one thought the Gulf of Mexico would be fouled to the horrible extent that it was by the BP oil spill. The awful convergence of disasters in Japan — a 9.0 earthquake followed by a tsunami and a devastating nuclear power emergency — seemed almost unimaginable.

Worst-case scenarios unfold more frequently than we’d like to believe, which leads to two major questions regarding nuclear power that Americans have an obligation to answer.

First, can a disaster comparable to the one in Japan happen here? The answer, of course, is yes — whether caused by an earthquake or some other event or series of events. Nature is unpredictable and human beings are fallible. It could happen.

So the second question is whether it makes sense to follow through on plans to increase our reliance on nuclear power, thus heightening the risk of a terrible problem occurring here in the United States. Is that a risk worth taking?

Concern over global warming has increased the appeal of nuclear power, which does not produce the high levels of greenhouse gases that come from fossil fuels. But there has been a persistent tendency to ignore the toughest questions posed by nuclear power: What should be done with the waste? What are the consequences of a catastrophic accident in a populated area? How safe are the plants, really? Why would taxpayers have to shoulder so much of the financial risk of expanding the nation’s nuclear power capacity, an effort that would be wildly expensive?

A big part of the problem at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power station are the highly radioactive spent fuel rods kept in storage pools at the plant. What to do, ultimately, with such dangerous waste material is the nuclear power question without an answer. Nuclear advocates and public officials don’t talk about it much. Denial is the default position when it comes to nuclear waste.

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said again this week that the 40-year-old Indian Point nuclear power plant in Westchester County, 35 miles north of New York City, should be closed. Try to imagine the difficulty, in the event of an emergency, of evacuating such an area with its millions of residents. “This plant in this proximity to New York City was never a good risk,” said the governor.

There are, blessedly, very few catastrophic accidents at nuclear power plants. And there have not been many deaths associated with them. The rarity of such accidents provides a comfort zone. We can look at the low probabilities and declare, “It can’t happen here.”

But what if it did happen here? What would the consequences be? If Indian Point blew, how wide an area and how many people would be affected, and what would the cleanup costs be? Rigorously answering such questions is the only way to determine whether the potential risk to life and property is worthwhile.

The 104 commercial nuclear plants in the U.S. are getting old, and many have had serious problems over the years. There have been dozens of instances since 1979, the year of the Three Mile Island accident, in which nuclear reactors have had to be shut down for more than a year for safety reasons.

Building new plants, which the Obama administration favors, can be breathtakingly expensive and requires government loan guarantees. Banks are not lining up to lend money on their own for construction of the newest generation of Indian Points.

In addition to the inherent risks with regard to safety and security, the nuclear industry has long been notorious for sky-high contastruction costs, feverish cost-overruns and projects that eventually are abandoned. The Union of Concerned Scientists, in a 2009 analysis of the costs associated with nuclear plant construction, said that once a plant came online it usually led to significant rate increases for customers:

“Ratepayers bore well over $200 billion (in today’s dollars) in cost overruns for completed nuclear plants. In the 1990s, legislators and regulators also allowed utilities to recover most ‘stranded costs’ — the difference between utilities’ remaining investments in nuclear plants and the market value of those plants — as states issued billions of dollars in bonds backed by ratepayer charges to pay for utilities’ above-market investments.”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

To Cuomo’s credit, he advocated shutting down Indian Point long before Japan’s tragedy put the issue on the front burner.  The biggest proof of the non-viability of nuclear risk-benefit is the response of the second most self-interested group of Americans (behind Congress).  The Banksters won’t touch nuclear power, unless the taxpayers guarantee their profit.  It it were economically feasible, they would be pigs at the trough.

But more important than cost is safety, so let’s look at safety analysis:

As the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant grows daily, the safety of domestic nuclear reactors is under serious scrutiny. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Gregory Jaczko reassured Congress earlier this week that American nuclear reactors can survive major natural disasters, but some critics argue that U.S. reactors may be even more vulnerable than the ones in Japan. Nuclear reactors are engineered to withstand certain levels of disaster, based on projections beyond what the area has experienced. But should an unprecedented disaster take place, as with Japan, it’s impossible to definitively establish whether the operating reactors in the U.S. would remain safe.

According to Biff Bradley, the director of risk assessment for the Nuclear Energy Institute, it’s almost impossible to try to rank the absolute safety risk of a plant, due to the number of variables that would be involved in any sort of direct comparison. But given that some fundamental risks are obvious and plant safety records are public, relative risks can be measured. For instance, nearly half of the 104 nuclear reactors operating in the United States are close to major fault lines, including the Diablo Canyon and San Onofre plants located near California’s San Andreas Fault. The Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York is less than two miles from the Pampano fault line, and sits within 50 miles of more than 17 million people.

Based on the input of more than a half-dozen experts in nuclear energy, nuclear engineering and risk assessment, The Daily Beast ranked the country’s power plant sites based on three, equally weighted metrics: risk of natural disaster, safety performance assessments, and surrounding population. In other words, which nuclear power plants are located in the most dangerous physical locations, have the weakest relative operating conditions, and would affect the greatest number of people should an unforeseeable emergency occur? For the complete, detailed methodology, click here.

1. Indian Point

Location: Buchanan, NY (24 miles north of New York City)

Reactors: 2

Electrical Output (megawatts): Unit 2: 1020; Unit 3: 1025

Year Operating License Issued: Unit 2: 1973; Unit 3: 1975

Population within 50 Miles: 17,452,585

Relative Safety Rating: bottom third

Risk of Natural Disasters:

Likelihood of Earthquake (scale 0-6): 2

Expected Number of Hurricanes in Next Century: 20 – 40

Miles to Potentially Active Volcano: not a factor

Significant Tornadoes (1921-1995): 0 to 5

2. San Onofre

Location: San Clemente, CA (45 miles southeast of Long Beach, CA)

Reactors: 2

Electrical Output (megawatts): Unit 2: 1070; Unit 3: 1080

Year Operating License Issued: Unit 2: 1982; Unit 3: 1982

Population within 50 Miles: 9,468,825

Relative Safety Rating: middle third

Risk of Natural Disasters:

Likelihood of Earthquake (scale 0-6): 4

Expected Number of Hurricanes in Next Century: 0

Miles to Potentially Active Volcano: approx. 225 miles

Significant Tornadoes (1921-1995): 0 to 5

3. Limerick

Location: Limerick, PA (21 miles northwest of Philadelphia)

Reactors: 2

Electrical Output (megawatts): Unit 1: 1134; Unit 2: 1134

Year Operating License Issued: Unit 1: 1985; Unit 2: 1989

Population within 50 Miles: 7,923,148

Relative Safety Rating: bottom third

Risk of Natural Disasters:

Likelihood of Earthquake (scale 0-6): 2

Expected Number of Hurricanes in Next Century: 20 – 40

Miles to Potentially Active Volcano: not a factor

Significant Tornadoes (1921-1995): 5 to 10

4. Dresden

Location: Morris, IL (25 miles southwest of Joliet, IL)

Reactors: 2

Electrical Output (megawatts): Unit 2: 867; Unit 3: 867

Year Operating License Issued: Unit 2: 1991; Unit 3: 1971

Population within 50 Miles: 7,806,437

Relative Safety Rating: bottom third

Risk of Natural Disasters:

Likelihood of Earthquake (scale 0-6): 2

Expected Number of Hurricanes in Next Century: 0

Miles to Potentially Active Volcano: not a factor

Significant Tornadoes (1921-1995): 15 to 25

5. Diablo Canyon

Location: Avila Beach, CA (12 miles west-southwest of San Luis Obispo, CA)

Reactors: 2

Electrical Output (megawatts): Unit 1: 1151; Unit 2: 1149

Year Operating License Issued: Unit 1: 1984; Unit 2: 1985

Population within 50 Miles: 437,333

Relative Safety Rating: bottom third

Risk of Natural Disasters:

Likelihood of Earthquake (scale 0-6): 5

Expected Number of Hurricanes in Next Century: 0

Miles to Potentially Active Volcano: approx. 250 miles

Significant Tornadoes (1921-1995): 0 to 5

… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <The Daily Beast>

These are just five of the nuclear plants in the US.  For safety analysis of them all, click through to the original article.  From the five most dangerous alone 43,088,598 Americans are in danger of nuclear exposure.

Last night, Chris Hayes of The Nation discussed the safety of number five on our list, Diablo Canyon.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Did you notice the role Republican ideologue Justice Antonin “SS” Scalia played in determining that a location’s vulnerability to earthquakes need not be assessed or considered in siting a nuclear plant  there?!!?  What InsaniTEA!!

So, in conclusion, for greenhouse gasses, nuclear power passes.  For effective waste disposal, nuclear power fails.  For safety, nuclear power fails.  For cost effectiveness, nuclear power fails.  Nuclear power excels at only one thing: the transfer of wealth from poor and middle class taxpayers to greedy corporations.  No wonder virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are for it.