![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/nicolas-hippert-C82jAEQkfE0-unsplash-680x453.jpg\")
Image by Nicolas Hippert.<\/p><\/div>\n
For the first time since 1954, no large new atomic reactors are under construction or on order in the United States.<\/p>\n
On March 1, 2024, Vogtle Unit 4 connected to the Georgia grid \u2026years behind schedule and billions over budget.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Once hyped as \u201ctoo cheap to meter,\u201d America\u2019s last large light-water reactor thus forever froze the \u201cPeaceful Atom\u201d in financial failure<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite enormous public hype and subsidies, ZERO new US atomic reactors—large or small— are likely to become significantly available here for at least a decade.<\/p>\n The first will likely be an unproven \u201cSmall Modular Reactor\u201d prototype already leaning toward a trillion-dollar failure.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n When it comes to the myth of nuke power helping to fight global warming\u2026there\u2019s no there there.<\/p>\n Atomic reactors cause climate chaos.\u00a0\u00a0Some 415 reactors directly heat our air and water in concert with mega-explosions like Chernobyl and Fukushima.\u00a0\u00a0All pour radioactive carbon 14 into a lethal brew of filth and wastes.<\/p>\n Despite the latest round of \u201cNuclear Renaissance\u201d hype, the US lacks the industrial capacity to produce impactful new reactors—large or small— before 2030, if then.<\/p>\n The void comes when we most desperately need to reduce carbon emissions.\u00a0 The mega-grift for unproven new nukes cripples the vital transition to renewables, multiplying the planet-killing impacts of fossil fuels\u2026and of decrepit old reactors whose average age is now over 40<\/a>.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The original fantasy that the \u201cPeaceful Atom\u201d would be \u201ctoo cheap to meter\u201d came from Atomic Energy Commission Chair Lewis Strauss, played by Robert Downey, Jr., in \u201cOppenheimer.\u201d<\/p>\n Harry Truman\u2019s 1952 Paley Commission Report on the future of energy had predicted an epic boom in renewables, including 15,000,000 solar heated US homes by 1975<\/a>.<\/p>\n But in December, 1953, President Eisenhower—in a remarkably war-like speech—told the United Nations that \u201cAtoms for Peace\u201d would limitlessly power the planet.<\/p>\n On September 6, 1954, the Navy and Westinghouse began building the first US commercial reactor, which opened at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, on May 26, 1958.<\/p>\n In 1974 Richard Nixon promised a thousand US reactors by the year 2000.\u00a0\u00a0There were in fact 104.\u00a0\u00a0With Vogtle 4\u2019s opening, there are now 94—and none on order or under construction.<\/p>\n Atomic power has become what Forbes Magazine called in 1985 \u201cthe largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n A\u00a02014 study of 180 nukes worldwide said 175 of them cost 117% more than promised, while going 64% beyond schedule<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite the early hype, the Peaceful Atom\u2019s financial catastrophes are too frequent to count, and with price tags too huge to compile, including\u2026<\/p>\n X\u00a0 the 1966 \u201cWe Almost Lost Detroit\u201d accident at Michigan\u2019s Fermi I, costing at least $100 million;<\/p>\n X\u00a0 the 1979 Meltdown at Three Mile Island, which—aside from killing innumerable downwinders—converted a $900 million asset to a $2 billion liability;<\/p>\n X\u00a0 the 1983 Washington Public Power System\u2019s $2 billion pubic bond default, the first of its kind, killing four reactors then under construction;<\/p>\n X\u00a0 Sacramento\u2019s 1989 landslide vote to shut the municipal utility\u2019s money-losing Rancho Seco reactor, where surrounding solar panels (unlike the dead nuke) still produce juice;<\/p>\n X\u00a0 the Public Service of New Hampshire\u2019s 1988 dump of Seabrook Unit Two, fueling the first investor-owned utility bankruptcy since the Great Depression;<\/p>\n X\u00a0 the 1998 failure of New York\u2019s never-to-operate $7 billion Shoreham, which shattered the Long Island Lighting Company;<\/p>\n X\u00a0 the 2017 collapse of South Carolina\u2019s VC Summer, whose $9 billion dead loss joined Vogtle\u2019s $20 billion cost overrun to bankrupt Westinghouse;<\/p>\n X\u00a0 NuScale\u2019s 2023 SMR collapse in Idaho, fusing into financial failure the industry\u2019s ever-escalating crises in safety, seismic instability, un-insurabililty, heat and radiation emissions, terrorism, war.<\/p>\n Massive explosions at Russia\u2019s Kyshtym and New Mexico\u2019s Waste Isolation Pilot Project underscore the industry\u2019s unsolved waste management problem.\u00a0 So does radioactive devastation at California\u2019s Santa Susanna<\/a> and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation<\/a> in Washington State.<\/p>\n After seven decades of experience, massive 21st<\/sup>\u00a0century catastrophes continue in the US, Finland, France, England.<\/p>\n Westinghouse\u2019s Summer\/Vogtle bankruptcy follows 70 years of a \u201cnegative learning curve.\u201d<\/p>\n Finland\u2019s Olkiluoto, France\u2019s Flamanville and England\u2019s double reactor project at Hinckley Point are all hugely over budget and years behind schedule.\u00a0\u00a0Olkiluoto has occasionally shut to make way for cheaper wind and hydro<\/a>.<\/p>\n Many of France\u2019s flagship 56 reactors regularly curtail their output for generic repairs\u2026or as rivers become too global-heated to cool the cores without serious downstream eco-damage.<\/p>\n But Germany\u2019s 2023 final reactor closures allow more than half its power to come more cheaply and reliably from ren<\/a>ewables.<\/p>\n California\u2019s similar-sized economy now often gets 100+% of its power from renewables, dwarfing remnant double reactors at Diablo Canyon, now costing $1+ billion\/year over market<\/a>.<\/p>\n Undaunted, Brussels\u2019 World Nuclear Summit just hyped a tripled global fleet, calling for investments beyond $5 trillion to fund a production schedule than many believe is simply impossible.<\/p>\n The international banking response has been a grim \u201cJust Say No\u201d\u2026accompanied by a vote of confidence in a renewable future<\/a>.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n But most terrifying is the demand that decrepit reactors (average age 42+) operate without meaningful inspections or insurance<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thus Congress has just extended the 1957 Price-Anderson Act which exempts reactor owners from liability for a major disaster, an official vote of no confidence in the industry\u2019s ability to guarantee the public safety.<\/p>\n With the February 29 passage of the Advanced Atomic Reactor Act, the industry stands to grift billions in public subsidies for decrepit reactors whose licenses they want to extend for 60-80 years while fighting basic safety inspections from federal regulators.<\/p>\n Thus the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—whose financial support comes from the operation of the reactors it supposedly regulates—is infamous for its blind eye to the deep structural and operational holes that could soon doom the aging US fleet.<\/p>\n The NRC is currently green-lighting operations at Diablo\u2019s 40-year-old Unit One despite a dangerously embrittled core that could irradiate all of downwind California.\u00a0 Ohio\u2019s Davis-Besse is riddled with mismanagement and decay.\u00a0 Ohio\u2019s Perry, Virginia\u2019s North Anna and Diablo have all been recently shaken earthquakes.\u00a0 California\u2019s San Onofre shut in 2014 because its newly-installed unfixable steam turbines leaked radiation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Convicted of 92 federal felony manslaughter counts, Diablo\u2019s Pacific Gas & Electric is a criminal operation.\u00a0 Its 2010 negligence at San Bruno gas lines incinerated eight people.\u00a0 Its faulty transmission lines killed 84 people in northern California\u2019s infamous 2017 Camp Fire.\u00a0 No PG&E executive went to prison any of those killings.\u00a0 In 2021 its CEO was paid $51.2 million<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0.<\/p>\n For the public, the costs in health, ecological and economic damage at any US reactor could climb into the trillions, with radioactive clouds and multiple bankruptcies leaving countless victims dead, destroyed, destitute.<\/p>\n According to the US Government Accountability Office, from 2001 to 2006 alone, more than 150 reactor incidents violated acceptable safety guidelines.\u00a0\u00a0A 2010 survey of US nuclear accidents showed least 56 by then involved loss of human life or more than $50,000 in property damage.<\/p>\n Said former Vice President Al Gore in 2009:<\/p>\n \u201cOf the 253 nuclear power reactors originally ordered in the United States from 1953 to 2008, 48 percent were canceled, 11 percent were prematurely shut down, 14 percent experienced at least a one-year-or-more outage, and 27 percent are operating without having a year-plus outage. Thus, only about one fourth of those ordered, or about half of those completed, are still operating and have proved relatively reliable<\/a>.[53]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Yet New York is dumping $7.6+ billion into keeping four decrepit reactors on line (one of which opened in 1969).\u00a0\u00a0Ohio\u2019s legislature recently pocketed $61 million in bribes to scam a $1 billion taxpayer bailout for two 40 and 50-year old nukes irradiating Lake Erie.\u00a0 Michigan wants $8 billion to revive the 51-year-old Palisades reactor—which shut two years ago—even though Holtec (the waste management company designated to revive Palisades) has no experience building or operating any nuclear power reactor.\u00a0 Pieces of the reactor have already been sold off for scrap.<\/a><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Aside from operating old uninsured reactors in lethal perpetuity, the industry has hyped three options:<\/p>\n X\u00a0 Oft-mentioned thorium-fueled reactor designs have no existing prototypes here in the US, and have no prospects for impacting the American energy picture<\/a> in the near future<\/a>.<\/p>\n X\u00a0 Fusion research, centered on the multi-billion-Euro ITER facility in France, has no credible date for a working prototype<\/a>.<\/p>\n X\u00a0 As for Small Modular Reactors, the industry-leading Wyoming-based NuScale just lost its sole tangible order due to soaring costs and fading deadlines.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Warns Ed Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists:\u00a0“I think the current hype about SMRs is mostly a bunch of hot air<\/a>\u2026Most of these startups greatly underestimate the resources and time necessary to develop new nuclear technologies<\/a>.”<\/p>\n As prices soar, the earliest workable SMR prototypes are years away.\u00a0\u00a0Mass deployment—even for Bill Gates\u2019s hugely funded Terrapower and other SMR developers— can\u2019t come significantly on line until well into the 2030s, if then.<\/p>\n Projected costs are already very far beyond currently available renewables\u2026and rising.<\/p>\n According to nuclear expert Lindsay Krall, in conjunction with research conducted by former NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane, SMRs could create thirty times more radioactive wastes per kilowatt-hour than the original light water reactors now reaching oblivion.\u00a0\u00a0Like them, the SMRs would emit radioactive carbon while generating planetary heat<\/a> and threatening major disasters that remain uninsured<\/a>.<\/p>\n Current cost projections show Gates would do far better investing in Wyoming\u2019s abundant wind power than in the SMR factory he wants to begin building there this summer.\u00a0 Proven wind technology is far cheaper to run and quicker to deploy than any new nuclear technology still in speculative development.<\/a><\/p>\n .Indeed, amidst all the billions being thrown at yet another \u201cNuclear Renaissance,\u201d renewable energy far outstrips the risky, unproven SMRs on which the industry is gambling so many public billions<\/a>.<\/p>\n As you read this, electricity \u201ctoo cheap to meter\u201d DOES pour from west Texas wind turbines spinning through fierce winter nights as locals charge their house and car batteries, run their computers, lights and washing machines for free<\/a>.<\/p>\n The first off-shore US wind turbines have opened near Long Island, with cost projections far below nuclear<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite persistent official sabotage, wind power may finally come to Lake Erie, one of the world\u2019s most powerful wind resources<\/a>.<\/p>\n The costs of solar \u201cphotovoltaic\u201d cells have recently risen slightly due to interest and supply chain issues<\/p>\n But since their 1953 inception at Bell Labs, PV—and wind power—have soared in direct opposition to atomic power, combining epic price drops with rising efficiency.\u00a0\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Thus renewables are now public enemy number one for a fossil\/nuclear industry whose larcenous end game means to grab endless public money while desperately sabotaging Solartopia.<\/p>\n In 2014, Ohio\u2019s corrupt, gerrymandered legislature imposed a \u201cset back clause\u201d that killed $4 billion in wind projects. Ohio\u2019s \u201cNorth Coast\u201d is ideal for commercial wind, with steady breezes, flat terrain, farmers seeking lease payments, and ample transmission to Toledo, Cleveland, Akron et. al.<\/a><\/p>\n Privately funded projects promised trillions of cheap, clean, safe, carbon-free kilowatt-hours along with thousands of jobs and saving hundreds of farms.\u00a0\u00a0But with a single sentence the legislature killed it all\u2026while also freezing additional turbine development in Lake Erie\u2019s powerful wind streams<\/a>.<\/p>\n The lawmakers then pocketed $61 million in bribes to throw a $1 billion lifeline to the dangerously decayed Davis-Besse and Perry nukes\u2026plus two ancient coal burners, one of them in Indiana\u2026while killing the state\u2019s highly successful energy efficiency programs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Likewise, California is attacking a rooftop solar industry that once employed 70,000 workers installing a PV network producing far more power far more cheaply than the state\u2019s decrepit, uninsured Diablo Canyon atomic reactors.\u00a0\u00a0Killing at least 17,000 jobs, the Public Utilities Commission hurled countless solar firms toward bankruptcy.<\/a><\/p>\n But Newsom\u2019s legislature is handing a $1.4 billion lifeline to Diablo reactors endangered by earthquakes and riddled with severe structural decay.\u00a0\u00a0Diablo produces far less power than the state\u2019s rooftop solar industry, but does it at $1 billion over annual market prices.<\/a><\/p>\n Overall the bottom line is this:\u00a0 the United States now gets more usable power from wind and solar than from coal or nuclear.\u00a0 Gas and oil will soon follow.<\/p>\n Because with thousands of square miles of usable rooftops spread throughout the US, and with millions of acres on land and water usable for large-scale wind generation, the fossil\/nuclear industry is now facing oblivion.<\/p>\n The ultimate Solartopian threat to King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes, Gas) has arrived.\u00a0 With proven available technology in wind, solar, batteries, efficiency, geothermal, some bio-fuels and more, an era has ended.\u00a0 Within a few short years, our energy picture can be totally dominated by renewables that are cheaper, cleaner, safer, faster to build and more than fossil or nuclear fuels<\/a>.<\/p>\n For what has been humankind\u2019s biggest business—obsolete energy—it\u2019s a wholly unacceptable image of extinction.<\/p>\n Thus, across the land, bought governors, legislatures and utility commissions are waging a desperate, last-ditch war against renewables while handing billions to dangerously decayed reactors whose half-century history of failure forever deepens<\/a>.<\/p>\n Renewables\u2019 accelerating cost, safety and reliability breakthroughs join battery and efficiency technologies for a definitive market advantage over the obsolete fossil\/nuclear technologies that are destroying our ability to survive on this planet.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWe need to massively develop renewable energies,\u201d says France\u2019s Prime Minister Macron, \u201cbecause it is the only way to meet our immediate electricity needs, since it takes 15 years to build a nuclear reactor<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n But rear-guard bail-outs and the continual demand to run unsafe planet-hearing old reactors until they explode threaten our survival.<\/p>\n So do the nuclear industry\u2019s roots in the weapons production that gave it birth.\u00a0\u00a0Said Macron in 2022, \u201cWithout civilian nuclear energy there is no military use of this technology \u2013 and without military use there is no <\/em>civilian nuclear energy<\/em>.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Thus nuclear power\u00a0boils,\u00a0irradiates, threatens and bankrupts us all.<\/p>\n But nuclear weapons and all that \u201cRenaissance\u201d hype aside, the market and Mother Nature are clearly pushing for Solartopia.\u00a0 What\u2019s likely the biggest techno-ecological-economic revolution in human history—the conversion to renewable energy—is very much upon us.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n But to get there, quickly burying the \u201cPeaceful Atom\u201d and its fossil-fueled partners will be the task of our lifetimes.<\/p>\n The post Nuclear Power\u2019s Lethal, Larcenous End Game<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 For the first time since 1954, no large new atomic reactors are under construction or on order in the United States. On March 1, 2024, Vogtle Unit 4 connected to the Georgia grid \u2026years behind schedule and billions over budget.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Once hyped as \u201ctoo cheap to meter,\u201d America\u2019s last large light-water reactor thus forever froze More<\/a><\/p>\n The post Nuclear Power\u2019s Lethal, Larcenous End Game<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12991,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630746"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12991"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1630746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1630747,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630746\/revisions\/1630747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1630746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1630746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1630746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}