Nuclear Renaissance Dying on Vine As America Sees Through NEI Funded Propaganda Campaign

The nuclear industry and NEI are livid as they watch their dearly beloved Nuclear Renaissance and all the FREE HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS that come with it withering, dying on the vine as America begins to see through the six year full court press Propaganda Campaign NEI carried out to do away with and discredit the Anti Nuclear Grassroots. We are still here, still standing toe to toe with the industry, and the tide is beginning to turn. A carefully orchestrated Pro Green Nuclear Advertising Tsunami failed to drown out our voices, and people are waking up too some very important reasons why NUCLEAR WILL NOT WORK, key among them described in just two words...Time and Money.

The proposal to include nuclear power in the Kyoto Protocol CDM is currently being discussed at the UN Climate talks in Poznan These talks coincide with a run of bad news for the nuclear industry that makes its claims of clean cheap power even harder to justify. Following the news of soaring costs for the European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) in France and Finland and in the estimated budgets for reactors planned in the US, came the news that South-Africa – till now seen as one of the most promising candidates for a so-called nuclear “renaissance” – is backing off for a while: the planned French reactors are simply too expensive. (TOO EXPENSIVE, backing off...sounds like TIME AND MONEY.)

Sometimes in life, timing is everything, and for the nuclear energy industry the crashing of Wall Street, the two trillion (so far) in bailouts paid for with taxpayer dollars could not have occurred at a worse time. Simply stated, a Nuclear Renaissance, the deployment of a new American Fleet of nuclear reactors requires Energy Subsidy compliments of our taxes in numbers that are STAGGERING in normal times, completely unacceptable when America sits perched on the edge of financial ruin. A Nuclear Renaissance must have a willing populace ready to give reactor owners and the nuclear industry at least $3 trillion dollars, and that figure could quickly soar to at least $9 Trillion, even more if we factor in the costs to be incurred with the wrongful even criminal deployment of GNEP. Congress knows America will not tolerate the tab that NEI wants us to pick up for their renaissance, or more appropriately, resuscitation.

The other reality that is causing Nuclear to wither on the vine as a viable contributor to solving Global Warming...the nuclear industry cannot deliver, cannot deploy enough reactors to make a difference in a timely fashion. The NRC has put dozens of communities at risk by rubber stamping the license renewal applications of America's crumbling fleet of reactors...it was deemed in our best National Interest to RISK 20 more years of operation for failing reactors...we can all hope and pray that the Blind Trust the NRC has placed in the industry's ability to keep these nuclear monsters bandaged together works, but those 20 years will fail to buy the nuclear industry what they need...time, and lots of it. (see below excerpt from Dale Klein Speech)

• Let me begin with the current fleet of nuclear power plants, and the issue of life extensions. As many of you know, about half the current U.S. fleet has received or is in the process of applying for a 20-year license renewal. Many—perhaps most—of today’s commercial nuclear plants, therefore, could have another 20 years of operation. But then what do we do? One of the most challenging projects under way at the NRC right now is asking whether these plants could continue to operate safely from 60 years until… well, we don’t actually know what the technical operating limits of these plants are. And that is the point. In February, the NRC co-sponsored a conference with the Department of Energy to begin figuring out what questions we would need to answer to consider life extensions for plants beyond 60 years. We are only in the early stages, but so far we have determined that there are several areas that we need to closely examine. These include: (It is note here, that the NRC decided to rubber stamp license renewal applications to give the industry until 2050 to get its act together, and deploy REPLACEMENT reactors for America's aging fleet...Dale Klein's admission here that the NRC staff's MOST CHALLENGING project is finding ways to push the life span of these reactors beyond 60 years show us the TRUE FAILURE OF THE INDUSTRY, proves they cannot meet their promised deployment schedules in a timely fashion, cannot HELP AMERICA solve Global Warming.)


• 
  Neutron Embrittlement
  Annealing/Analysis of Reactor Vessel
  Thermal Fatigue
  Environmental
  Qualification of Components
  Chemical control programs; and
  Transition to
  Digital I&C


• 
  No doubt, we will learn as we go along, and perhaps add other issues to that list as we move forward. But I think this list gives you an indication of how complex this issue is—and at least to me, fascinating. As I said, we are only beginning this process, but I do want to add one other point. No matter what the science ultimately leads us to conclude about the feasibility of life extensions beyond 60 years—and I certainly have no intention of prejudging the issue—we will accumulate a vast amount of extremely important information. The data we collect, and the scientific and engineering questions we answer, will contribute to the NRC’s ongoing efforts to implement a risk-informed and performance-based approach to licensing and regulation. Refining and improving our probabilistic risk assessments will enable us to understand, license, and regulate the plants of the future that much more effectively.

To put nuclear where it wants to go, to make them (if they are right) where they want to be in playing a part in reducing CO2, in helping to solve Global Warming, they need to deploy some 200 Nuclear Reactors here in America, a total of 4000 of them world wide by the year 2050. DO the math...just here in America that requires the Nuclear Industry completing and starting up FOUR REACTORS. Right now there is only one company in the entire world that can make a key component of these new reactors. Additionally, there is a huge and increasing worker shortage problem staring the industry in the face...even addressing these and other issues takes time that the industry does not have.

There is an effort to revitalize college programs that will educate and train a new Nuclear Work Force...they cannot produce enough qualified applicants to meet the demand that all these new reactors would create, and for at least the next 15 years, would have trouble filling the positions available at current nuclear facilities as the aging work force retires. It will take 10-15 years to build the necessary manufacturing infrastructure necessary to meet the kind of nuclear demand for new reactor builds that the NEI and World Nuclear are pushing for. No reactor has ever come in on time, and on budget. Being generous, from start to finish it is going to take at least five years per reactor (being WAY GENEROUS HERE)to build a reactor...add to that at least three years to get a permit though and approved (there will be litigation and legal fights for every permit), and we are looking at maybe 2020-2025 before the first NEW BUILD REACTORS start appearing on the American Map. NRC worker shortages, a shortage of ON SITE inspectors will slow the process down even further...as we speak, the worker shortage at the NRC is getting so severe that they are deliberating GREEN LIGHTING reactor inspections at current licensed facilities to free up the required extra inspectors at sites who have had issues...a perfect example of this is Indian Point owned by Entergy.

Time is money, money that we will have to come up with...if you look at the rules the nuclear industry has SNUCK INTO LAW, we the taxpayers will have to pay for ALL THE COST OVERRUNS when the industry gets bogged down. Their hope...stop litigation against their strong armed tactics. Forced nuclear is not an option. Face it NEI, you are losing momentum, and with it your last chance at saving this failing industry...YUCCA MOUNTAIN is gone, and now the DOE, NRC and NEI are so desperate to get a storage facility, any storage facility up and running that they are trotting out the same old game they tried with Low Level Radioactive Waste. Regional Temporary storage facilities...HELLO, IT IS A SCAM.

Nuclear power opponents argue that the industry shouldn't expect or need government support, some fifty years into its existence. In a hotel conference room populated mostly with gray-suited older white men (THINK WALL STREET BAILOUT!), industry executives repeatedly called for an expansion of federal loan guarantees for new nuclear plants. (OVER FIFTY PERCENT LOAN FAILURE RATE on the Nuclear Loans made for the first generation of reactors...let us NOT REPEAT HISTORY.)

Early on in the conference, NEI president and CEO Frank L. "Skip" Bowman said, "We use loan guarantees in this country to support ship building, steel making, student loans, rural electrification, affordable housing, construction of critical transportation infrastructure, and for many other purposes. Please don't tell me that America's electric infrastructure is any less important." He added, "I wish someone would tell me when the word 'subsidy' became a slur, a four-letter word. ... What is there of value in American life that is not subsidized, to some extent?" (No other industry has gotten the amount of GOVERNMENT WELFARE that the Nuclear Industry has recieved, and after 50 years, they are still a failing industry...furthermore, look at the example he used...they are PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE. NEI, Skip Bowman and the nuclear industry want us to TAKE ALL THE FINANCIAL RISKS to build their PRIVATELY OWNED RUN FOR PROFIT REACTORS! Meanwhile, when they screw up (and they will) and there is another CHERNOBYL, we will be left with the TRILLION DOLLAR CLEAN UP TAB thanks to the Price Anderson Act.

America, here is TRUTH...what the DOE and NEI hope, is they can fool one, two, up to four communities into playing host to what is supposed to be a temporary storage facility. Once they get you under contract, they get Congress to pass a law making YOUR COMMUNITY IT, IT beign the national repository for all the nuclear SHIT.

Look at any part of the nuclear fuel cycle, and you see FAILURE, and as these failures mount, TIME becomes more and more an issue. DOE's MOX facility that is not even working yet just lost its ONLY CUSTOMER, Billions of American Tax dollars down the toilet. Classifying Depleted Uranium as a future use resource bought the NRC a quarter of a century, but now the time has come to DEAL WITH THE WASTE...they have NO PLACE TO PUT IT, so now they want to reclassify the waste as the least dangerous in the world. FALSE...in fact, Depleted Uranium gets more and more dangerous as the decay process creates far more dangerous daughter chains of cancer causing radiation. Again, the industry and agency meant to oversee it have failed, and are running out of options and time and they know it.

With each passing say and week, the failures of the industry are mounting. America is not willing to go for nuclear until they can PROVE they can deal with their waste streams, and short of picking a part of America to act as a SACRIFICE ZONE (think Marshall Islands), the nuclear industry cannot safely deal with their waste streams, have no way of putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle.
March 25, 3:38 PM (Full Article)

After some fleeting references during the recently concluded presidential election campaign, any mention of expanding the nation's nuclear power generating capacity seems to have vanished. The "nuclear" in the proposed 2010 Federal Budget is for continued research on storage and disposal of waste, securing weapons and the destruction of warheads. The preliminary budget outline for the next ten years (2010 through 2019) calls for spending $15 billion per year on renewable energies for both research and implementation by way of subsidies and direct investment. The funding is to come from the proposed "cap and trade" permits greenhouse gas emissions that will be "sold" by the federal government. The renewables mentioned include but are not limited to wind, solar, geothermal and biomass. Nuclear power research or implementation is not found.

Currently, about 89% of US electrical generation comes from 3 sources: 49% from coal, 21% from nuclear and 19% from natural gas. At present, wind generation contributes about 2%, geothermal 0.3% and solar 0.004%. The other major source is hydroelectric power at around 6%.

In France, 78% of electrical power generation is from nuclear; Belgium is 54%; Republic of Korea (South Korea) is 39%, etc down to China that generates about 2% of their total electricity from nuclear plants. Interestingly, of the 29 nuclear plants currently being built around the world, 15 are in Asia with 7 in India and 4 in China. There are currently 435 plants worldwide with 103 in the US followed by France with 59, Japan with 55 and Russia with 31.

In the US, there are 26 applications to built nuclear power generating plants. The last plant to be placed on line was in 1996 based on an application entered in the 1970s. The approval process is estimated at 15 to 20 years and plants, depending on their capacity and location and expected length of time for approval can cost from $5 billion to $12 billion dollars. Most need to be backed by government loan guarantees of privately arranged financing. Included in plant costs are reserve funds for storage and transportation of any nuclear waste and eventual decommissioning and clean up.

Nuclear Reactor Waste...FORCED Community Hosting.

How many of us have heard President Obama speaking about shared responsibility, our duty as Americans to make sacrifices for America. Are we about to be FORCED into being Radioactive Waste HOST COMMUNITIES...an article from December 2008 leads me to pose this question to our readers.

The US nuclear waste issue – solved

Nuclear energy is a must. Disposal is within our reach.

These two Biased Pro Nuclear HACKS should be ashamed of making such a misleading and dishonest statement. Talk about Nuclear Propaganda of the most unsavory kind! It sadly gets worse, as these two suggest Force Hosting of Commercial Nuclear Projects including WASTE DISPOSAL. Forcing nuclear genocide on a community for the convenience of the Nuclear Industry is not disposal within reach sirs.

David S. Kosson Professor and Chairman Professor of Chemical Engineering Office: Room 267A, Jacobs Hall Address: Vanderbilt University VU Station B-35 1831 Nashville, TN 37235-1831 Phone: 615/322-1064 Fax: 615/322-3365 Email: david.kosson@vanderbilt.edu

By David S. Kosson and Charles W. Powers

from the November 12, 2008 edition

Nashville, Tenn. - President-elect Barack Obama supports nuclear power to increase US energy independence and fight global warming (Actually, he said we needed to look at, and be able to SAFELY store the waste...forced HOSTING is out of the question.) – but only if a path to safe nuclear waste disposal is opened. Yucca mountain is out of the question, and communities such as mine are being cheated when the NRC wants to leave waste insitu on site at Reactor Sites such as Indian Point...tell me, how much do you and President Obama feel my wife's breast cancer is worth? Reactors are nuclear abortion machines...how many stillborn birth are acceptable in your mind for the convenience of nuclear energy? Fortunately, there is a two-step plan that can open that path and lead to an effective waste solution within eight years. And it embraces citizen consent. (ALARM BELLS FOLKS...NEI comes in, spreads some money around, spoon feeds a CHOSEN COMMUNITY their Pro Nuclear Propaganda and Pablum....sign right here. Here is a clue...every reactor community agree to host our current reactors for a period of FORTY YEARS. Now through NRC rubber stamping of License Renewal Applications, we are being RAPED, forced to host unsafe reactors for 20 more years in the name of a Nuclear Renaissance, in the name of NATIONAL SECURITY. )

In 1987, Congress cut off comparative site evaluations and closed all discussion of permanent nuclear waste locations except Yucca Mountain, in Nevada. It taxed nuclear utilities to pay for it, racking up $26 billion to date. NOT EXACTLY...actually, it is US THE CITIZENS through a monthly surcharge that have put together than $26 Billion. In fact, if a Class Action Attorney is interested, I have a group of citizens that want to SUE to get that money back since DOE has broken its contract with us.

The Energy Department did what Congress required: It studied Yucca and recently submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to approve site construction. FALSIFIED REPORTS AND STUDIES, and your teams still had to admit that YUCCA MOUNTAIN WILL NOT WORK FOR LONG TERM STORAGE.

However, few informed observers believe that the facility can be completed without the cooperation of Nevada, which is dead set against it. As they well should be. Be honest...you folks cannot even guarantee safe storage for 20 years...look at Dry Cask storage, and the supposed SAFE Spent Fuel Pools where the waste is at currently ARE ALL LEAKING. Critics perceive the site as too risky and as a threat to tourism. They would be right, but since you and yours depend on the NUCLEAR INDUSTRY for your meal tickets, you tout the PARTY LINE. Let you live within three miles of a reactor (Indian Point) that is leaking tritium, strontium 90 and other radioactive contaminants into the environment, let your wife get breast cancer, or give birth to a stillborn child, and then TELL ME HOW SAFE NUCLEAR IS. On top of that, Nevadans seem to feel that the federal government is unfairly pushing the facility on the state. Decades of complex administrative delays and judicial battles loom. AGAIN, they would be right. DOE wanted to form compacts for the long term storage of LLRW...or so they said. Their real plan was to get two, if they were luck three LLRW sites up and running under the Compact bait and switch, and then after the fact turn them into NATIONAL storage facilities...how do I know this? I found Secretary HAzel O'Leary's Senate Sub Committee Testimony that was used to kill the Midwest Compact back in the early nineties.

So, half a century after we started generating nuclear power, used nuclear fuel continues to accumulate at more than 100 temporary storage facilities near nuclear power plants. It's a daily reminder of the unfulfilled federal promise to own and begin moving the material by 1998. CLASS ACTION ATTORNEYS...take note...1998! TWENTY SIX BILLION...Pro Bono? Email Me strikeforcenews@aol.com

Much of the problem stems from an anachronistic policy enacted in 1982. The policy essentially stipulated that used fuel should be disposed of in a geologic repository as soon as one becomes available. But, if used fuel is allowed to sit in safe storage for 90 years, much of the heat and radioactivity decays away. This reduces the size, complexity, and cost of underground disposal. It also buys time. During the cool-down period, used fuel could be transformed from waste into a major source of energy if we can satisfy the tough engineering, cost, and security challenges involved in reprocessing it. FOLKS, DO NOT BE FOOLED.

1. This is the SAME BAIT AND SWITCH they did with Depleted Uranium from the Gaseous Diffusion plants. With the stroke of a pen they turned HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF BARRELS of CANCER CAUSING Depleted Uranium WASTE into potential future use resources because some sick twisted scientist figured out you could create Armor Piercing Munitions with it...what he failed to tell you, what the government failed to tell you was we have enough of this Depleted Uranium to last us about 100,000 years...unless we all kill ourselves first.

2. The above paragraph is a SALES PITCH FOR GNEP...an unproven, untested theory of reprocessing of waste that will A) Make the United States the WASTE DUMP for all the world's radioactive waste streams, and B) leave waste sitting unsafely in host communities for CENTURIES under the guise it was NO LONGER WASTE, but a potential future use resource with a value attached thereof.

To reverse the current outdated policy, we need to set up four regional used-fuel storage facilities to act as transfer stations. THIS IS THE SAME SCAM they tried to use in selling communities on Low Level Radioactive Waste Facilities...I sat in on DOZENS of meetings, and trust me...if your community is chosen, they will write laws and statutes in such a way as to FORCE YOU INTO BEING HOST, just as they tried to do with the State of Ohio. These would provide geographic equity and allow relocation of the backlog of used fuel to locations where it can be stored safely, securely, and efficiently for up to 90 years before reprocessing or permanent disposal. Indian Point Spent Fuel was supposed to be GONE by 1998...we are now being told it could be sitting here WELL BEYOND 2060! Do you want to believe a Pro Nuclear sales pitch, or the voice of people that have LIVED THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY LIES? This can be done with existing revenue and provides the time to implement the second part of the plan: developing and demonstrating an acceptable approach for permanent geologic disposal. TRANSLATED...Senator Reid is OLD, and things are always in flux in Washington DC...we just need time to get in some new faces, do some more heavy handed lobbying and elbow twisting.

The key to making interim storage work is to make informed consent, equity, and fair compensation the basis for temporary storage. One possibility is to use a "reverse auction" to enable prospective host communities to win regional support for the sites: Under the president's leadership, the federal government would allot, say, a billion dollars, and request bids from interested communities detailing how they would spend it to address the local impacts of and statewide concerns about the proposed facility. Large-tract federal sites would be especially attractive. For starters, lets make this RETRO-ACTIVE...we have 104 ACTIVE NUCLEAR REACTORS....ONE BILLION EACH for each of those reactors is $104 Billion.

A) $104 Billion is over TEN TIMES the entire amount of liability the Commercial Nuclear Industry has in the case of a significant accident or terrorist attack. Scary when the nuclear industry's own reports say a serious accident at a site such as Indian Point would quickly see damages in excess of HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS.

B) Lets show you just how DISRESPECTFUL of host communities these two assHOLES and the nuclear industry are. The industry wants us the tax payer to give them 100 percent loan guarantees for a reactor that is estimated to cost $10-15 Billion dollars each...keep in mind, that the last ten projects had 300 percent COST OVER RUNS, and that extra $30 Billion a reactor would be AUTOMATICALLY PICKED UP by tax payers. They want two build 200 of these reactors which is a TOTAL COST OF NINE TRILLION DOLLARS two thirds of that sum paid for with Federal Tax Payer dollars, the other $3trillion paid for with our taxes. But in their GENEROSITY, they want to make FOUR COMMUNITIES fight over and DIVIDE between themselves ONE BILLION DOLLARS...in short, about $250 million each, less than the $400 million AIG will pay out in Bonus money with our taxes.

If such compensation is combined with a program that includes local representatives in facility oversight, and that accurately informs citizens of the safety systems and the crucial national interests served (TRANSLATED...we will play on the patriotism of some small rural communities, and make sure you give them a really BIG FLAG at city hall!), many communities and states are likely to welcome these facilities.

At the same time, the US needs to continue locating permanent disposal sites that the nation will eventually need. Why will we need ALL THESE ADDITIONAL SITES? Because if you read GNEP, it makes the entire world's nuclear waste streams the responsibility of the United States of America. The search should be modified to ensure that the facilities are both safe and welcomed by the host community and state.

And then there's the safety question. The best way to gain public acceptance of a repository is to design it with multiple layers of protection, adopted through a deliberate, step-by-step process that uses pilot projects to test out the designs as the facility evolves. (WARNING...go reread that sentence folks....we will start them off small, get them USED TO BEING SLOWLY POISONED by building A SMALL TEST PROJECT...here is the HOOK THEY FUCK YOU WITH FOLKS....to test out the designs AS THE FACILITY EVOLVES! GET IT? They will hook you by making you think in you are just hosting a SMALL TEST PROJECT, but look at the truth of the SMALL PRINT.) The standards we adopt should be protective, achievable, and credible. Once again, potential hosts must be convinced that all decisions about repository implementation will be fully transparent and made with their concurrence. Speak to ANY CITIZEN that has ever sat through an NRC Kangaroo Court Public Meeting!...They listen to you, tell you exactly how they are going to screw you, then against your wishes they do EXACTLY WHAT IT IS THEY WANT TO DO. Call up the NRC as ask them how many Generic Letters are active right now...a generic letter excuses ALL LICENSEES from the rules meant to protect us the General Public.The eventual success of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., which handles military radioactive waste was achieved in this fashion. The SAME PLANT up for a five year license renewal that the citizens DO NOT WANT, but which they are being told they will ACCEPT? That Waste Isolation Pilot Plant?

If Nevada decides it wants some part in this process, the current Yucca Mountain license application could be amended since there will be time for pilot demonstration steps, appropriate compensation, more flexible transportation options, etc. READ THIS FOLKS...its carefully crafted BRIBERY and BLACKMAIL all rolled into one sentence. What is crucial though, and I BRING THIS TO THE ATTENTION OF SENATOR REID...they admit they cannot MOVE FORWARD without a license amendment...WHY YOU ASK...because DOE cannot MEET THE TERMS REQUIRED for their CURRENT APPLICATION, and they DESPERATELY DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO START ALL OVER. They will PAY YOU BLOOD MONEY for those Indian SACRED GROUNDS...come on REID, they are only FUCKING INDIANS...yes folks, this is the WAY THE MILITARY/COMMERCIAL NUCLEAR INDUSTRY THINKS!

A new independent federal commission should handle the overall siting process and a public corporation (akin to the Tennessee Valley Authority) designed specifically for operating new facilities. WARNING...WARNING...WARNING!!! TVA is the most despicable and dishonest Authority ever envisioned, a beast that CANNOT BE KILLED. All American citizens should be VERY AFRAID.

For national, economic, and environmental security reasons, it is now time for presidential leadership to embrace informed consent, fairer burden sharing, and appropriate compensation to meet this critical national energy need. PLEASE READ THIS SENTENCE AGAIN...now, let me paint it RAW AND UGLY...as I write this post the NEI, DOE, DOD and the Military/Commercial Industry are in NEGOTIATIONS, ARE LOBBYING for a PRESIDENTIAL EXECUTIVE ORDER THAT WILL TAKE AWAY YOUR SAY, WILL DE FACTO MAKE WHAT IS CONTAINED IN THIS ARTICLE HAPPEN.

• David S. Kosson and Charles W. Powers are professors of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University. They focus on development of multidisciplinary solutions to nuclear waste management issues.