[NukeNet] Action Needed Now Re Nuke Power

Wed Dec 5 17:01:33 EST 2007

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Linda Gunter
To: smirnowb at ix.netcom.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 4:03 PM
Subject: Hooray for our side but more to do


      This Week at Beyond Nuclear

      Week of December 3, 2007

      1. Action Item
      Hooray for our side - but more work to do. Thanks largely to public
pressure, Senator Pete Domenici has been forced to withdraw his unlimited
federal loan guarantees for new reactors from the energy bill! This is an
important victory but the battle is not over. Domenici's next move is to
insert a similar provision into the energy and water appropriations bill
instead and just ask for the first $25 billion in nuclear loan guarantees
for 2008. (He already tried to slip it through in the farm bill.) Beyond
Nuclear is keeping the pressure on and so can you. Please continue to urge
your members of congress to oppose the $25 billion in nuclear loan
guarantees for fiscal year 2008, no matter what bill it's attached to. It
doesn't matter which bill Domenici tries to hide this massive nuclear
subsidy in. Together we can root it out and zero it out.

      2. Educating the Candidates

      What does "agnostic" mean? Hillary Clinton has said she is "agnostic"
about nuclear power. According to the dictionary this would make her "a
person who believes that nothing can be known about the existence of
[nuclear power] or of anything except material things." Here are five
"material things" we know about nuclear power: (1) It produces mountains of
radioactive waste, dangerous for millennia and with no management solution.
(2) It spreads nuclear-weapons-usable materials around the world, worsening
global security. (3) It routinely releases radiation, dangerous to human and
animal health. (4) It is too costly and too slow to serve as an option in
addressing climate change. (5) It is vulnerable to attack or accident with
consequences that could render vast areas permanently uninhabitable. Please
make these points to candidate Clinton along the campaign trail, then ask
her if she is still "agnostic?"

      3. Speaking Tours and Media Coverage

      A letter in the Washington Post. Paul Gunter's letter to the editor -
A Reactor's Risk - appeared in the Washington Post on December 3rd and is
reprinted here:

      Scott Burnell of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was quoted in a
Nov. 28 Metro article ["Happy in Their Haven Beside the Nuclear Plant"] as
saying that water in Virginia's Lake Anna never comes in contact with the
North Anna nuclear reactor.

      But it does. The two-unit reactor site routinely discharges into Lake
Anna not only tremendous amounts of heat -- because the reactors are only 33
percent thermally efficient, 67 percent of the fission-generated heat is
dumped -- but also radioactivity. According to NRC records, since 2000
alone, the reactor's operators have released more than 5,700 curies of
radioactive water (tritium with a radioactive half-life of 12.3 years) into
the lake.

      It is increasingly uncertain what constitutes a "permissible"
radiation exposure. The NRC's "protective" standard for radioactive tritium
in drinking water is 1 million picocuries per liter. While the Environmental
Protection Agency standard is 20,000 picocuries per liter, Colorado and
California have set theirs at 400 per liter.

      Granted, people don't drink out of the lake, but federal economic
consideration of the cost to industry to allow for such dumping has
outweighed just how easily this radioactive form of hydrogen can be
absorbed, inhaled and ingested. Tritium exposure is proven to cause cancer
and birth defects. There is no clinical safe dose.

      Eleven reactors discharge into the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Water
consumption and thermal pollution by power plants (fossil-fueled and
nuclear) are increasingly contentious issues. Radioactive contamination of
ground and surface waters from accidental leaks and routine permitted
discharges are also under increasing scrutiny for the sake of public health
and safety.

      Paul Gunter, Beyond Nuclear

      A letter in the Las Vegas Sun. Kevin Kamps' letter to the editor -
NRC's objectivity on Yucca is questionable - appeared on December 5th and is
reprinted here:

      Nevadans beware: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not a
neutral party in the Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding, but rather a
biased advocate of the dump.

      Regarding today's hearing, an article in Saturday's Las Vegas Sun
reported that "on one side will be lawyers from the Energy Department (DOE)
and the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the industry's main lobbying arm. On
the other will be Nevada and (Judy) Treichel (of the nonprofit Nevada
Nuclear Waste Task Force)."

      But carefully watch NRC's technical staff and its Office of General
Counsel and you will likely witness them walk in remarkable lockstep with
DOE and NEI. This has been NRC's tradition for decades in literally hundreds
of nuclear licensing proceedings. In fact, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California
objected to this scandalous history at the contentious Yucca hearing she
chaired Oct. 31 in Washington, D.C.

      To be fair, the Pre-License Application Presiding Officer board should
be commended for ruling in 2004 that DOE's license application documentation
was absurdly half-baked. Let's hope the PAPO board is as clear-headed and
courageous this time around, as DOE's document submission - despite its
astronomical 30 million pages - is still substantially incomplete. It even
lacks the computer projection on just how badly the dump will leak deadly
radioactivity into Amargosa Valley's drinking and irrigation water supply
over time!

      But NRC's staff and lawyers have never met a nuclear application they
didn't like. Rather then protecting public health and safety, they can -
scandalously - be counted on to do DOE and NEI's bidding.
      Kevin Kamps, Takoma Park, Md.

      A Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free Future? Linda Gunter's presentation at
the November 27 New Hampshire Technical College conference was
well-received. Linda made the case that the most compelling reason not to
use nuclear power to address climate change is that expansion of civilian
nuclear technology inevitably also expands nuclear weapons arsenals around
the world. This in turn elevates global insecurities, provokes conflict, and
risks a nuclear exchange, detracting from our capacity to confront climate
change. (For more, see http://www.beyondnuclear.org/nuclearweapons.html)

      4. Your Support Needed
      As we head into 2008, a critical election year, Beyond Nuclear will be
taking its message - about climate change and nuclear power and the link to
nuclear weapons - around the country. No matter who is elected in November,
candidates and voters must make their choices based on accurate,
scientifically sound information. Beyond Nuclear aims to provide that, so no
one goes to the polls with any illusions that nuclear power is anything
other than a dangerous, dirty and expensive technology that must be
abandoned. To support the work of Beyond Nuclear, please visit our Web site
at www.beyondnuclear.org/donate.html and make a donation today. Please give
as generously as you can.


      Beyond Nuclear at NPRI
      6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 400
      Takoma Park, MD 20912
      Tel: 301.270.2209 Fax: 301.270.4000
      Email: info at beyondnuclear.org
      Web: www.beyondnuclear.org


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