Coal plant rejected, Fla. utility turns to risky nukes
As my fellow Facing South blogger Randy Neal reports today, the Florida Public Service Commission this week unanimously nixed Florida Power & Light's proposal to build a $5.7 billion coal-fired power plant on the western edge of Lake Okeechobee.Environmental advocates had warned that the plan to build two 980-megawatt generating units near Moore Haven, Fla. would have emitted an unacceptable amount of greenhouse gases, polluted the Everglades with mercury and depleted already-imperiled local water supplies.
Randy noted that Southern Alliance for Clean Energy Director Stephen Smith said:
"It is time that FPL get serious about investing in energy efficiency and clean energy which will not threaten the future health and safety of their customers."But rather than do that, FP&L rushed to replace the vanquished coal plant with another unsafe, polluting and costly alternative: nuclear power.
One day after its coal-plant plans were dashed, FP&L asked Miami-Dade County for zoning permission to add up to two additional reactors at its Turkey Point nuclear plant, which would bring the state's total number of nukes up to six.
Indeed, building more nukes could be the energy wave of the future -- especially in the South.
That was the message delivered yesterday by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission chief at a conference in Orlando. Dr. Dale Klein said his agency anticipates a surge of license applications this year and next -- and he predicted that Florida, Virginia and South Carolina would be at the forefront of the atomic renaissance.
The NRC and other pro-nuclear advocates like to point out that nuclear power plants discharge virtually no carbon dioxide compared to plants that burn fossil fuels. However, this argument neglects the fact that nuclear plants emit to the environment other dangerous pollution in the form of cancer-causing radionuclides such as cesium-137, iodine-131 and strontium-90.
Indeed, Joseph Mangano, an epidemiologist with the nonprofit Radiation and Public Health Project, recently examined cancer rates in the area around Progress Energy's Crystal River nuclear plant in Levy County, Fla. He found that before Crystal River opened in 1977, the county's cancer death rate was 18 percent below the U.S. average. But since then, the county's rate has climbed to 1 percent above the national average, with particularly large increases in radiation-sensitive cancers including leukemia, lymphoma and breast cancer. Though it's impossible to say that the increase in cancer is directly tied to the plant, the findings certainly raise serious questions that demand further research as well as regulatory caution.
There are also big problems with the nuclear industry's claims that reactors are a solution to global warming. First of all, studies have noted that at least 1,500 reactors would have to be constructed to make any significant dent in greenhouse gas emissions. That in turn would lead to the depletion of known uranium reserves and necessitate mining of lower-grade uranium -- which would increase greenhouse gas emissions.
Greenhouse gases are also produced during uranium milling, processing, enrichment, fuel fabrication and long-term waste storage, which remains a thorny technical and political problem. Furthermore, building so many nukes would be enormously expensive, with U.S. reactors in recent decades costing an average of about $4 billion each -- money that couldn't be invested in energy efficiency and safer technologies.
As the watchdog Nuclear Information and Resource Service concludes in its fact sheet (PDF) on nukes and global warming:
Our choice is stark: we can choose nuclear power, or we can address global warming. We can't do both.
Labels: energy policy, Florida, nuclear power, public health
6 Comments:
Claims that nuclear reactors are a solution to global warming are never made by the NRC, occasionally by the industry, and frequently by technically literate people with no dealings with it.
Recent uranium prices rises have been very large, percentage-wise, but very small in dollars per barrel-of-oil-equivalent; it's now up to $3.50 a barrel. The real barrel would have brought in a lot of tax.
So we find that lots of people like NNadir and me boost the nuke only because it's the right thing to do, but fraudulent studies such as the ones that say nuclear isn't low-carbon invariably come from people who live off oil and gas taxes; to them, that three fifty a barrel means tens of dollars their friend the tax man might have had that instead stay in the masses' pockets.
The appearance that a so-called "progressive" cares more about those tens of dollars in fossil fuel tax than the lives nuclear might have saved if it had been used instead are polling-booth poison.
Nuclear is clean, safe, and cheap, and the people know it. They know cheap doesn't please everyone, and the people it doesn't please don't please them.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Run cars on boron
On the contrary. When over 60% of our electricity is currently generated by fossil fuels, we don't stand a chance at addressing climate change without nuclear energy.
But you're right about one thing: Nuclear energy can't do it alone. It will take every bit of nuclear, wind, solar, hydro, and any other renewable expansion JUST to cover the expected increases in energy demand - not to mention replacing any of our fossil fuel dependency.
Since nuclear is the only large-scale energy source capable of being expanded to cover baseload demand increases, by decrying nuclear, you are against our last best chance at doing anything meaningful to control greenhouse gas emissions.
That is, if you even believe in this climate change thing.
Cancer rates went up in a county that has changed from farm and ranches into a retirement haven. And the raw data is used to detail nuclear as the possible threat. How about median age adjustment?
The nuclear industry is aware of global warming concerns, but does not use that as justification. If man-made global warming is discredited, nuclear doesn't want to lose its reason to exist. But for those that consider greenhouse gases the over-riding factor, there is no real competition to nuclear.
For every dollar invested in energy efficiency in the U.S. displaces nearly seven times as much carbon dioxide as a dollar invested in nuclear power. Efficiency is a far better option for the U.S. in economically as well as for the health and safety of every American citizen.
On a personal note, as a child I could hear the test sirens from Turkey Point from my school and recall when the cooling towers cracked under the wind from Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Its easier to sit from afar and say hypothetically that nuclear power should be part of the solution, it is a different story when the potential fall-out and/or waste could affect children in your community. No community should have to live with such risk, not when there are better options available.
- Valerie True, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy
JW Fuller raises valid points about the limits of the RPHP's work, which is why their findings suggest only association, not causation. But I would point out something Mangano wrote in the op-ed that I linked to: "Since Crystal River opened, Citrus County's death rate age 20-54 has been a staggering 49% higher than the U.S. for cancer – but 26% lower for all other causes. Something is causing lots of local young adults to die (only) of cancer."
Fuller's claim that "for those that consider greenhouse gases the over-riding factor, there is no real competition to nuclear" is simply untrue. There are many organizations and individuals who argue convincingly that pursuing nuclear power would be a setback for addressing climate change; for more on this, please refer to the work of the Rocky Mountain Institute.
(BTW, my previous comment should have noted that Citrus County is next to and directly southeast of Levy County.)
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