The perennially optimistic strained to find evidence of a new centrism
in President Obama's State of the Union address. Well, the Hyde Park
liberal embraced nuclear power, they say. And he did seem to.
" … To create more … clean energy jobs," the president intoned, "we
need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means
building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this
country."
It's a nice sentiment. The Nuclear Energy Institute pronounced itself
"delighted." But hold the champagne.
The other nuclear news this week is that the Obama administration's new
budget will propose to zero out funding for Nevada's Yucca Mountain
nuclear repository — in effect, killing it. Instead, the Energy
Department has announced the formation of a "blue ribbon" commission "to
provide recommendations for developing a safe, long-term solution to
managing the nation's used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste." It will
consist of the usual blue ribbon members (Lee Hamilton, Brent Scowcroft,
Susan Eisenhower) and produce an interim report in 18 months and a final
report in 24. The commission will have 15 members and God knows how many
staff, and accordingly, the costs will run into the millions.
And why are we forming yet another blue ribbon commission to study a
matter that has already been studied to death? The commission is
empowered to study "all options" except the one that has already been
chosen by the United States government. So much for the previous blue
ribbon commission that had settled on the Yucca Mountain site.
American taxpayers have already invested more than $13 billion over 30
years to build the facility and make it redundantly safe. In 1982, the
U.S. government agreed to begin accepting nuclear waste at the site in
1998. Failure to meet that deadline has already cost us $565 million in
legal settlements and is estimated to run up to $11 billion over the
next decade.
The Yucca Mountain repository is 1,000 feet underground in the most
lifeless desert of North America. Its storage tunnels have been
engineered to enhance the natural protective effect of thick rock by
adding multiple layers of steel, titanium drip shields to prevent
erosion, and other safety features to ensure that the waste (which
becomes less harmful with the passage of time) will not leak.
How safe is it? Consider millirems, units of radiation. A cross-country
airplane ride subjects travelers to 2 or 3 millirems (from cosmic rays).
A dental x-ray yields 1 millirem. People who live in Denver get twice
the dose (50 per year) as those who live at sea level. An earlier Energy
Department study examined whether the Yucca containment facility could
withstand normal aging, plus volcanoes and earthquakes. The conclusion
was that it would emit no more than 1 millirem per year of radiation for
750,000 years!
But goodbye to all that. It wasn't safe enough for Sen. Harry Reid,
D-Nev., who has worked to kill the Yucca facility. (Reid was not alone
among Nevada politicians. Former Sen. Chic Hecht had memorably promised
to oppose "nuclear suppositories" in his state.) And it was not safe
enough for Barack Obama, who campaigned energetically in Nevada
promising to terminate the project. In addition to zeroing out funding,
the administration proposes to suspend the license application for the
facility and withdraw it completely within the month.
Why are they wasting our time and money on a new blue ribbon commission
to go over plowed ground? The administration hopes that the commission
will reassure the nuclear industry that provision will be made for the
waste. But when? In another 30 years? At the cost of another $13 billion
or more?
There is nothing dishonorable about opposing nuclear energy — though
the greenies who claim that global warming is their chief worry have
some explaining to do if they reject nuclear power — but there is
something dishonest about claiming to favor nuclear power while
simultaneously short-circuiting the most viable solution to the problem
of long-term waste storage.
They are wasting their time, squandering our money, and insulting our
intelligence.
