The Invasion of The Super Nukes!! By John Bartels The fact that nuclear power is in trouble hardly needs belaboring. Only four reactors were ordered by utilities in 1977 and only two in 1978. There is a de facto nuclear power plant moratorium in California following the State Energy Commission’s opinion that the Sundesert plant cannot proceed unless a satisfactory method for disposal of high-level radioactive waste has been demonstrated.-Nuclear moratoriums have been voted in Montana and Hawaii, and many such proposals are sure to appear on the ballot in various states in the November. 1980, national elections. In November of this year, the people of Skagit Valley, Washington state, voted two to one against continued construction of two huge nuclear plants there, and the prime sponsor. Puget Sound Power & Light, has temporarily backed off of the projects. I have been told that a poll taken by a Washington daily newspaper about that election showed that the people voting were not voting against a nuclear power plant in their area, but against nuclear power itself. Despite similar situations in different parts of the country—like the decisions to convert the nearly completed Virginia Power Company reactors at North Anna to coal—the perspective of the federal government is quite different. Dr. Alvin Weinberg, “father of the pressurized water reactor,” wrote an article with two colleagues for the June 8. 1979, issue of Science magazine. This article outlines a plan to "fix up" nuclear power to make it acceptable so that another generation of nuke plants can be built. The authors argue that we will need more nukes for several reasons: concentrations of CO2 from coal plants will reach dangerous levels, solar energy will prove to be much more expensive than estimated, nuclear fusion will not be developed, and electricity will continue to encroach on other forms of energy. Then the authors jump into space saying, “ In the long run, we cannot rule out the possibility of a nuclear fission system in the United States consisting of about 1,000 large (one-million kilowatt) reactors by some t im e . . .in the 21st century.” As mad as this sounds, it is worth studying because it shows the federal strategy for accomplishing the siting of the next generation of Trojansize nuclear power plants. This is important because the two problems of siting and financing are what have the nuke program temporarily stalled. Weinberg says, “Our underlying assumption is that the nuclear system will be more acceptable if it is confined to fewer sites rather than dispersed to more sites.” The federal plan is to concentrate the next nukes at 100 existing nuclear power plant sites. By doing so, they hope to overcome environmental objections to siting new plants and the presently unsolved problems of storage of high-level radioactive waste and the decommissioning of plants which have become dangerously radioactive, or “hot.” First, federal laws would be amended so that new plant construction on existing sites would be exempt from the requirements that got the original plants sites. The same expedient approach would be used to deal with waste and “hot” plants. The nukes would keep their own waste on the site, and when the plants had to be shut down permanently, they would simply be abandoned. The federal plan is “an expedient strategy for achieving a nuclear system based on energy centers . . . the policy we propose adds reactors to existing sites one by one. The incremental approach allows the system to develop rather naturally with minimum Stress on existing institutional structures. It may therefore be a more practical approach for achieving a rational long-term siting policy than would one that attempts to legislate nuclear energy centers. . . . “ If the nuclear sites are perceived as enduring for a very long time,” the federal scenario continues, “ then at least the voluminous low-level wastes and the decommissioning reactors could remain on site for as long as the site endures. Such a strategy would reduce the handling and transfer of radioactivity, and would to this degree tend to enhance the acceptability of nuclear energy. Thus part of our study is aimed at elucidating the advantages of large permanent siting, and at estimating the degree to which the proposed policy would create large sites from smaller ones and confer on them a commitment of permanence.” Weinberg only mentions “on-site storage of spent fuel” once in this article, but in fact on-site storage has already been authorized “temporarily” at nuclear plants across the country. This is because the high-level radioactive waste reprocessing and storage facility promised by the federal government ten years ago for spent fuel rods from commercial nuclear electrical plants still doesn’t exist. Weinberg says. “We do conclude that if these wastes are handled for an extended period (that is decades) on site, the eventual requirement for waste transportation and geologic burial... becomes more manageable... and. to this extent an existing-site policy may help moderate the controversy surrounding nuclear waste management.” Having thus “solved" the problems of radioactive waste and decommissioning of radioactive power plants by ignoring them, this federal scenario blandly dismisses the effect of radiation, because of this program, on the . vast majority of Americans. “Most Americans, and 78 of the 100 largest cities, are already located within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant. In addition, many U.S. cities are typically of the order of 100 miles apart. Thus, establishment of new sites would not reduce the exposure of the general population by a large amount. “ It is expected that by 1988, 92 percent of the U.S. population will 12
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