Then-Fox Business host Eric Bolling stated, “Here’s the problem. No one can get the permit to build the reactor. They have to jump through literally thousands of hoops.” [Fox Business, Follow The Money with Eric Bolling,
[KQED.org via Environmental Defense Fund, 7/25/13]
MYTH: Nuclear Power Is Prohibitively Dangerous
- Yahoo News ran an article titled “Fukushima fallout may be causing illness in American babies: Study” based on a study that had clear signs of data fixing from anti-nuclear authors that have distorted data in the past. [Yahoo News, 4/5/13] [Depleted Cranium, 4/10/13] [Scientific American, 6/21/11]
- The international version of the New York Times published an op-ed by anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott arguing that Chernobyl showed that we should stop nuclear power use, without noting any of the unique failures that led to that disaster. [The International Herald Tribune (now known as the International New York Times), 12/2/11]
- The Huffington Post suggested that you should “avoid bluefin tuna” as they are “Still Radioactive Years After Fukushima,” even though the levels of radiation were well below those that would threaten human health. [Huffington Post, 2/21/13] [Wood Holes Oceanographic Institution, 8/28/13]
- U-T San Diego published an op-ed claiming that each San Onfre reactor “produced enough weapons-usable plutonium annually to make 100 A-bombs,” without noting that the plutonium at San Onfre is not weapons-grade. [U-T San Diego, 6/19/13]
FACT: Fossil Fuels Behind Far More Deaths
IEA: Nuclear Is The Least Deadly Major Power Source. A 2002 review by the International Energy Agency (IEA) compared the fatalities per unit of power for major energy sources, examining their full life cycles from extraction to post-use including deaths from accidents. They found that nuclear resulted in the least number of deaths, and coal had the highest. The New Scientist created this chart of the results:
[New Scientist, 3/23/11]
NASA Scientists: By Replacing Fossil Fuels, Nuclear Power Has Prevented 1.8 Million Air Pollution-Related Deaths. Scientists from NASA studied the effects of using nuclear power in place of fossil-fuel energy sources over the past four decades. They found using nuclear power has prevented around 1.8 million air pollution-related deaths, in addition to reducing global carbon emissions by 64 gigatons, from 1971 to 2009. [Chemical & Engineering News, 4/8/13]
Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste. Scientific American reported that “the fly ash emitted by a power plant–a by-product from burning coal for electricity–carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.” However, the scientists emphasized that “health risks from radiation in coal by-products are low,” and that other consequences of coal pose greater health risks. As this chart shows, nuclear power is a miniscule part of most people’s exposure to radiation, far outweighed by natural sources:
[Scientific American, 12/13/07] [How It Works, 3/15/11]
Power Reactors Like That In Chernobyl Could Not Be Licensed In The U.S. PBS Frontline reprinted an excerpt from the 1993 book Nuclear Renewal by Richard Rhodes, explaining why a disaster like Chernobyl’s could not happen in the U.S.:
No commercial reactor in the United States is designed anything like the RBMK reactor. [Physicist Bernard] Cohen summarizes several of the differences:
1. A reactor which is unstable against a loss of water could not be licensed in the United States.
2. A reactor which is unstable against a temperature increase could not be licensed here.
3. A large power reactor without a containment [structure] could not be licensed here.
The absence of a containment structure is especially important. As Cohen point out about Chernobyl, “Post-accident analyses indicate that if there had been a U.S.-style containment, none of the radioactivity would have escaped, and there would have been no injuries or deaths.”
[...]
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl represent extreme instances of the problem that seems to trouble the American public more than any other about commercial nuclear power: its apparent danger. But risk is always relative. [Nuclear Renewal, 1993, via PBS Frontline]
It Is Physically Impossible For Nuclear Reactors To Become Nuclear Bombs. The expansion of nuclear power to countries that do not currently have a nuclear bomb worries some security experts as they could potentially enrich the uranium to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb. However, for a country such as the U.S., nuclear power poses no nuclear bomb threat because, as University of California, Berkeley physicist Richard Muller explained, it is impossible for a nuclear reactor to become a nuclear bomb:
For their fuel, reactors use primarily U-235, just as in a nuclear bomb. But the uranium is not enriched to bomb quality. Recall that natural uranium has only 0.7% U-235; the rest is U-238. For use in a bomb, the U-235 has to be enriched to about 80%. But for a nuclear reactor, it only has to be enriched to about 3%.
[...]
Can a reactor turn into an atomic bomb?
No. The real reason is that a reactor depends on slow neutrons. If the chain reaction begins to run away (because the number of absorbed neutrons in each generation becomes greater than 1) then the fuel heats up. Pretty soon it is hot enough to explode. This will happen as soon as the fuel is a few thousand degrees. That will blow up the reactor, but the energy released will be about the same that you would get from TNT. It’s an explosion, but it is a million times smaller than an nuclear bomb.
In the atomic bomb, they had to use fast neutrons (not moderated) in order to have the entire 80 generations over with before the bomb blew itself apart. After 80 generations, the temperature was many millions of degrees. The only reason is hasn’t yet blown apart is that there wasn’t enough time! With moderated neutrons, the chain reaction is much slower, since the neutrons are slower. [Physics for Future Presidents, 2001] [NPR, 10/14/13]
MYTH: Nuclear Power Is Harmless
- In a Fox News op-ed, Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights claimed the “one danger of running a nuclear plant is a large release of radiation,” which is “extremely unlikely.” [FoxNews.com, 7/23/11]
- Then-Fox Business host Eric Bolling said that “not a death” came from Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster while “dozens” have died from wind turbines. [Fox Business, Follow The Money with Eric Bolling, 3/11/11]
- The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed suggesting that “low radiation doses may immunize the body against cancer and birth defects by stimulating these repair mechanisms into greater responsiveness, just as vaccines stimulate the immune system.” However, the National Research Council states that the “weight of the evidence” does not support a positive impact from low doses of radiation. [Wall Street Journal, 3/6/12] [National Research Council, 2006]
FACT: Regulations Needed To Prevent Accidents, Attacks
Scientists: Fukushima Showed Need To Reevaluate Regulations On Nuclear Energy. Discussing Japan’s nuclear crisis in the New York Times’ Room for Debate blog, Frank N. von Hippel, a nuclear physicist and professor of public and international affairs at Princeton, wrote that the accident at Japan’s Fukushima reactor suggests that “rejected suggestions like the filtered vent system should be considered again.” Other scientists and experts suggested similar reevaluations of public safety regulations. From von Hippel’s piece:
In 1982, a colleague and I pointed out that not all U.S. reactor containments would have survived the T.M.I. [Three Mile Island] accident, and we suggested that all U.S. reactors be retrofitted with a robust filter system made of sand and charcoal that could filter the gases that would have to be released if a containment was approaching its failure pressure. The nuclear utilities resisted, however, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as usual, did not press for change.
The Fukushima accident suggests once more that the “defense in depth” design of current nuclear reactors may not be deep enough and that previously rejected suggestions like the filtered vent system should be considered again. [New York Times, 3/13/11] [Media Matters, 3/14/11]
AP: Poor Handling Of Expanding Nuclear Waste Poses Threat In Case Of Accident Or Attack. The Associated Press reported that current storage of an expanding amount of nuclear waste puts the U.S. at risk of a release of radiation, as occurred in Fukushima, while alternatives such as storing the waste in Yucca Mountain or reprocessing the spent fuel pose their own risks and political backlash:
The U.S. has 71,862 tons of the waste, according to state-by-state numbers obtained by The Associated Press. But the nation has no place to permanently store the material, which stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years.
Plans to store nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain have been abandoned, but even if a facility had been built there, America already has more waste than it could have handled.
Three-quarters of the waste sits in water-filled cooling pools like those at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex in Japan, outside the thick concrete-and-steel barriers meant to guard against a radioactive release from a nuclear reactor.
Spent fuel at Dai-ichi overheated, possibly melting fuel-rod casings and spewing radiation into the air, after Japan’s tsunami knocked out power to cooling systems at the plant.
The rest of the spent fuel from commercial U.S. reactors has been put into dry cask storage, but regulators only envision those as a solution for about a century and the waste would eventually have to be deposited into a Yucca-like facility.
The U.S. nuclear industry says the waste is being stored safely at power-plant sites, though it has long pushed for a long-term storage facility. Meanwhile, the industry’s collective pile of waste is growing by about 2,200 tons a year; experts say some of the pools in the United States contain four times the amount of spent fuel that they were designed to handle.
[...]
Safety advocates have long urged the NRC to force utility operators to reduce the amount of spent fuel in their pools. The more tightly packed they are, the more quickly they can overheat and spew radiation into the environment in case of an accident, a natural disaster or a terrorist attack.
[...]
Some countries — such as France, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom — reprocess their spent fuel into new nuclear fuel to help reduce the amount of waste.
The remaining waste is solidified into a glass. It needs to be stored in a long-term waste repository, but reprocessing reduces the volume of waste by three-quarters.
Because reprocessing isolates plutonium, which can be used to make a nuclear weapon, Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter put a stop to it in the U.S. The ban was later overturned, but the country still does not reprocess. [Associated Press, 3/22/11]
GAO: Nuclear Waste Fire Could Lead To “Widespread Contamination.” The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that if a fire were to occur in a spent fuel pool (containing nuclear waste), the probability of which is “difficult to quantify” but may be “low,” there could be “widespread contamination”:
Studies show that the key risk posed by spent nuclear fuel involves a release of radiation that could harm human health or the environment. The highest consequence event posing such a risk would be a self-sustaining fire in a drained or partially drained spent fuel pool, resulting in a severe widespread release of radiation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which regulates the nation’s spent nuclear fuel, considers the probability of such an event to be low. According to studies GAO reviewed, the probability of such a fire is difficult to quantify because of the variables affecting whether a fire starts and spreads. Studies show that this low-probability scenario could have high consequences, however, depending on the severity of the radiation release. These consequences include widespread contamination, a significant increase in the probability of fatal cancer in the affected population, and the possibility of early fatalities. According to studies and NRC officials, mitigating procedures, such as replacement water to respond to a loss of pool water from an accident or attack, could help prevent a fire. Because a decision on a permanent means of disposing of spent fuel may not be made for years, NRC officials and others may need to make interim decisions, which could be informed by past studies on stored spent fuel. [Government Accountability Office, 8/15/12]
Study: More Protections Needed To Protect Against Terrorist Attacks On Nuclear Plants. Reuters reported that none of the U.S.’s 104 nuclear reactors is protected against at 9/11-style attack:
U.S. nuclear power plants are not adequately protected from threats, including the theft of bomb-grade material that could be used to make weapons and attacks intended to cause a reactor meltdown, a University of Texas report said on Thursday.
Not one of the country’s 104 commercial nuclear reactors or three research reactors is protected against an attack involving multiple players such as the ones carried out by 19 airplane hijackers on 9/11, said the report by the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project, or NPPP, at the University of Texas, Austin.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) only requires power plants to protect against attacks carried out by five or six people, according to the report, entitled Protecting U.S. Nuclear Facilities from Terrorist Attack. In addition, the NRC does not require plants to protect themselves against attacks from high-powered sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. [Reuters, 8/15/13]
Media Matters for America – Research Items
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