Undeniable truths about dirty, dangerous nuclear power: "If the costs of just one major disaster were embedded in the price of electricity, the industry would not be even close to economically viable; only massive taxpayer subsidies keep nuclear power alive. The costs of sustaining nuclear power are too great for society to bear; so why is it still with us? Beyond the obvious, such as effective lobbying, nuclear plants are still online today because society is extraordinarily weak in its ability to assess and manage risks that have a low probability of happening (or that may occur in the distant future), but have catastrophic impact when they do... Operators of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was severely damaged the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, initially received a $12.8 billion bailout from the government to help contain the disaster. Japan announced this week an additional $500 million to further stabilize the continuing contamination. We are witnessing acts of desperation: building a "frozen wall" underground to prevent a flood of groundwater from contacting the contaminated buildings. This has never been tried on such a vast scale or for the decades needed here... None of these infrastructure problems cover the tremendous human and economic costs of forced evacuations of more than 160,000 people; the equivalent of a small city evacuated, never to be occupied again, with land permanently lost to high levels of radiation. Imagine abandoning forever Madison, WI, or Akron, OH, because of radiation contamination. Then too are the exorbitant costs of remediation where that is even possible, and long-term health costs of radioactive releases to the air. Experts estimate that the total cost of the accident will be nearly $300 billion." huffingtonpost/jeff-schweitzer/nuclear-energy-survives-o_b_3882434.html
Posted on: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 01:39:09 +0000
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