Smart Energy Solutions In the News

BALTIMORE -- When an addict goes to a clinic for treatment, doctors treat the patient in an effort to wean him off the dangerous drugs that could ruin his life. They wouldn’t offer him another deadly drug to replace the first. Unfortunately, some policy-makers want to treat our nation’s addiction to fossil fuels by making us dependent on dangerous nuclear power instead.

Seizing on growing concerns about global warming, overdependence on imported fossil fuels and a seemingly favorable political climate, the nuclear industry has been working to achieve a “nuclear renaissance” and resurrect an otherwise dying industry. After 30 years without a single new order for a nuclear power plant, several companies are now in the early stages of proposing new plants in the United States. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects 19 new nuclear reactor applications between 2007 and 2009 alone, and dozens of old plants are gearing up for license renewals ahead of schedule.

In Maryland, Constellation Energy has proposed building a new reactor at Calvert Cliffs in southern Maryland, 40 miles from the nation’s capital. Marylanders and D.C. residents should oppose it because it would be enormously expensive, threaten public health and safety, and damage the environment.

Constellation Energy estimates that designing and building the plant will cost $2.5 billion to $3 billion, if the plant is built on schedule. Cost estimates for building nuclear power plants, however, are notoriously inaccurate. Areva, a French-government-owned company and Constellation’s partner in the proposed reactor, has fallen 1.5 years behind on the construction of a reactor of the same size and design in Finland, adding $922 million to the cost of the plant. Reactors of the same design proposed for construction in China are estimated at $6 billion.

Nuclear industry officials concede that they wouldn’t be trying to build new nuclear power plants without government subsidies. Unfortunately, the 2005 Federal Energy Policy Act gave extensive handouts to the nuclear industry, Calvert County has already promised $300 million in tax breaks to Constellation for the new reactor if built, and Congress is considering giving the industry extensive loan guarantees, protecting its investors if the project fails.

If the high financial cost of nuclear power isn’t reason enough, the health and safety risks should seal the deal. If built, the new reactor at Calvert Cliffs would generate an estimated 1.375 tons of radioactive waste during its 40 years of operation.

Radioactive waste generated at nuclear power plants must be guarded and kept from the environment for tens of thousands of years. Already, the federal government has spent decades and billions of dollars unsuccessfully trying to devise a storage solution for nuclear waste.

The two existing reactors at Calvert Cliffs have been fined for safety failures. For example, the NRC, no enemy of the nuclear power industry, fined the plant $50,000 in 1996 for problem with emergency equipment that had been identified in 1992 but still had not been repaired four years later!

For lack of a real solution, Constellation plans to store the waste on-site at the plant, near the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. If the proposed federal nuclear waste repository at Yucca MountainNevada is ever opened, waste from Calvert Cliffs will be transported by rail or truck to there, passing within five miles of 3.1 million people in Maryland alone. In fact, the Capitol Beltway would be one transit route. An accident or attack involving a transport vehicle could expose thousands of people to radiation.

Switching to nuclear power will not solve our energy woes. In fact, the “nuclear renaissance” would be a bad deal for American consumers, the environment, public safety and national security.

In the post 9/11 era, terrorists could target the Calvert Cliff nuclear reactors, threatening southern Maryland and the surrounding area, including D.C. In fact, three experts on protecting reactors from terrorist attacks, who wrote recently in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, have taken the NRC to task for bending to industry pressure and failing to upgrade nuclear plant security consistent with the post-Sept. 11 threat environment.

Meanwhile, energy efficiency and renewable energy offer a real solution to global warming without the dangers of nuclear power. Maryland should invest in these safer efforts and encourage their development.

The bottom line on nuclear power is that it is an expensive and risky way to address global warming. And shifting from one dangerous addiction to another — from fossil fuels to nuclear power — is the last thing the doctor would order. Let’s let sleeping dogs lie.

Steven Soifer is associate professor of social work at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, and Johanna E. Neumann is a policy advocate at the Maryland Public Interest Research Group.