By John LaForge, Nukewatch staff Cover story, CounterPunch magazine, March 2014, Vol. 21. No. 2, pp. 10-14
No safe dose – Every radiation monitoring agency says so
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- What happened to the ‘Nuclear Renaissance’
No safe dose – Every radiation monitoring agency says soFor many years the US government’s estimate of the public’s average radiation exposure over a one-year period was 170 mR per year up until 1987.58 However, this estimate by the National Council on Radiation Protection’s (NCRP) was doubled — to 360 millirem (mR) of whole body exposure59 — in 1987, 18 months after the April 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe spewed between one billion60 and nine billion61 curies of long-lived radioactive materials around the world.A few years ago the NCRP again nearly doubled its estimate, to 620 mR per year. The NCRP reported at the time that the latest increase was due mostly to rapid growth in the use of medical X-rays and radioisotopes in medicine, things like tracer isotopes, whole-head dental scans, whole body X-ray scans at airports and high-dose medical CT and PET scans. It is true that the use of CT and PET scans has skyrocketed. In 1980, there were three million CT scans performed in this country. The number rose to 62 million in 2006,62 to about 70 million in 2007,63 and, according to NBC News, to 72 million in 2009.64 Some researchers now say that CT scans are the primary cause of breast cancer in US women. In 2011, the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, published an exhaustive analysis that found that medical radiation, particularly the large radiation dose delivered by CT scans, is the foremost identifiable cause of breast cancer in US women.65What happened to the ‘Nuclear Renaissance’?World Bank won’t invest in future nuclear Speaking in New York City Nov. 27, World Bank president Dr. Jim Yong Kim appealed for billions of dollars to provide electricity for the poorest nations, but said the bank would not invest in nuclear power. Kim said, “The World Bank Group does not engage in providing support for nuclear power. … our focus is on finding ways of working in hydroelectric power, in geo-thermal, in solar, in wind. We are really focusing on increasing investment in those modalities and we don’t do nuclear energy.” A week earlier, Dr. Kim said governments weren’t doing enough to confront climate change which in light of his Nov. 27 statement shows that the Bank knows nuclear power can’t help.66 Perhaps Mr. Kim and the WBG took to heart the advice of the generally overlooked recommendations of the awkwardly named US Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. The CPWMDPT concluded in its 2009 report “The Clock is Ticking” that governments can and should help stop the spread of nuclear weapons by “… discouraging, to the extent possible, the use of financial incentives in the promotion of civil nuclear power.”67 New reactors all contain the (plutonium) potential to add new nuclear weapons to the world’s arsenals. This is an underreported downside to any nuclear “renaissance,” and the bomb threat posed by new reactors seems to occur to pro-nuclear heads of state, like Obama and Netanyahu, only when they are fear mongering over Iran’s and North Korea’s putative uranium fuel enrichment. Ex-Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair says nuclear industry “going away” Last October, Gregory Jaczko, who was chairman of the US NRC when the Fukushima-Daiichi catastrophe started, told the electrical engineering journal Spectrum, “The industry is going away. Four reactors are being built, but there’s absolutely no money and no desire to finance more plants than that. So in 20 or 30 years we’re going to have very few nuclear power plants in this country — and that’s just a fact.” Earlier in the year Jaczko warned, as the New York Times reported, “All 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the US have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology…” Pointing out how “highly unusual” it is for an ex-NRC chairman to so “bluntly criticize” the industry, the Times said Jaczko “supports fazing them out rather than trying to extend their lives.”68
Also last October, Switzerland's state-controlled energy company BKW said its Muehleberg reactor — 11 miles west of Bern — would go offline in 2019, as the country seeks to exit nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. The Swiss parliament has approved a phase-out of the country’s power reactors by 2034. Since 2011, Muehleberg has been the scene of repeated anti-nuclear protests demanding immediate shutdown. 69 Exelon Scraps Reactor Plans, Takes $100 M. Loss Blaming “market conditions” for the cancellations, Exelon Corp. the largest commercial reactor operator in the US with a fleet of 22, announced last June that it would scrap plans to expand production at two reactor sites. The firm said its decision not to proceed with construction at the La Salle station in Illinois and the Limerick site in Pennsylvania would lead the company to take a $100 million charge in the second quarter.70 A year earlier the company’s formerchairman and CEO John Rowe, announced to an industry gathering, “… let me also state unequivocally that new ones don’t make any sense right now…. It just isn’t economic, and it’s not economic within a foreseeable time frame.”71 Germany’s RWE quits nuclear industry it led German gas and electricity giant RWE announced in June 2012 that it would exit the nuclear power sector altogether and instead invest in solar power. Germany’s largest utility with 72,000 employees and 17 million customers, RWE had been one of the most vehement defenders of nuclear power. About 7,000 people descended on its Bremen headquarters in April 2011 demanding that it leave the poison power biz.72 Reactor lobby: ‘You ought to build gas’ Scientific American noted in 2012 that “no nuclear renaissance appears to be imminent.” The magazine interviewed Marvin Fertel, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a lobbying arm of the nuclear industry, who said, “We won’t build large numbers of new nuclear in the US in the near term.” Rather than more expensive nuclear reactors, Fertel said, “Today, you ought to build gas.”73 Utility chief admits ‘Nuclear can’t compete’ Bill Johnson, CEO of Progress Energy, one of the utilities filing for a construction license but with no plans to actually build a new reactor, said in 2012, “Nuclear can’t compete today.”74 Europe’s largest reactor builder is out Siemens, the largest engineering conglomerate in Europe, fired a shot heard round the world in 2011, declaring that following Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear power by 2022, it would stop building reactors anywhere in the world. Siemens built all of Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors and was the first industry giant to announce such departure. “The chapter for us is closed,” said Peter Löscher, the chief executive.75 Renewable generation overtakes US reactors Download 385.92 Kb. Share with your friends:
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