FAA puts planes too close to Indian Point

FAA puts planes too close to Indian Point
Rockland County, 300 daily planes, and Indian Point is a bad mix for us, a wonderful mix for terrorists! I am a nurse. I have worked in Rockland schools. Our schools must keep a supply of potassium iodide pills on standby, to be given to our children, in the event of a nuclear catastrophe from the Indian Point nuclear power plants in Buchanan. I live within the 10-mile radius of the plant and many of our schools also are located within this radius.
In the age we live in, of terrorism on high alert, after 9/11, it is unforgivable that the FAA, a government agency, a government that is supposed to protect us, to even consider adding 300 planes a day to fly over Rockland County. This number increases the likelihood of terrorist access to one of those planes and easily diverting it a short distance into Indian Point. This would be catastrophic for Rockland, Newark, New York City and the whole tri-state area. The areas in which the FAA is trying to help would have a nuclear disaster on their hands.
Rockland is within the 10-mile radius of Indian Point. This reason overrides all other considerations.
We demand accountability for those in the FAA who supposedly investigated Homeland Security issues. Something is very wrong and dangerous here.
Suzan Cohen
New Hempstead

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agreed on what you are saying, nuke, i just don't see the point of it. who is to say that a plane with a willing psycho at the controls couldn't just ignore the "no fly" space and crash into the plant before jets could even get colse to scrambling?
Posted by: willoughby on Thu Aug 02, 2007 3:59 pm

I have to respond to Suzan Cohen's fear mongering about Indian Point and airplanes. Aircraft impact issues were addressed in the licensing process for all 103 U.S. nuclear power reactors; however the evaluations were based on the premise that such a crash would be accidental. Following 911, the nuclear industry performed further studies and analysis of the risk of terrrost attack against a nuclear facility involving intentional crashing of a commercial jetliner into the facility. Computer analyses of models representative of all U.S. nuclear power plant containment types have been completed. The wing span of the Boeing 767-400 (170 feet)—the aircraft used in the analyses—is slightly longer than the diameter of a typical containment building (140 feet). The aircraft engines are physically separated by approximately 50 feet. This makes it impossible for both an engine and the fuselage to strike the centerline of the containment building. As a result, two analyses were performed. One analysis evaluated the “local” impact of an engine on the structure. The second analysis evaluated the “global” impact from the entire mass of the aircraft on the structure. In both cases, the analysis conservatively assumed that the engine and the fuselage strike perpendicular to the centerline of the structure. This results in the maximum force upon impact to the structure for each case. The analyses indicated that no parts of the engine, the fuselage or the wings—nor the jet fuel—entered the containment buildings. The robust containment structure was not breached, although there was some crushing and spalling (chipping of material at the impact point) of the concrete. The wing span of the Boeing 767-400 (170 feet) is substantially greater than the longest dimension of a typical used fuel pool wall (60 feet). The aircraft engines are physically separated by approximately 50 feet. This makes it impossible for both an engine and the fuselage to strike the mid-point of the pools. As a result, two analyses were performed for both a pressurized water reactor pool and a boiling water reactor pool. One analysis evaluated the “local” impact of an engine on the mid-point of the pool wall. The second analysis evaluated the “global” impact of the fuselage and the portion of the wings that could realistically hit the mid-point of the representative fuel pool wall. In both cases, the analysis conservatively assumed that the engine and the fuselage strike perpendicular to the mid-point of the pool wall. This results in the maximum impact force being applied directly to the structure for each case. The wall’s mid-point would deflect (bend inward) more from this force than for an impact closer to the end of the wall. The stainless steel pool liner ensures that, although the evaluations of the representative used fuel pools determined that there was localized crushing and cracking of the concrete wall, there was no loss of pool cooling water. Because the used fuel pools were not breached, the used fuel is protected and there would be no release of radionuclides to the environment. To summarize, Ms. Cohen's fear of Indian Point is misguided. Osama bin Laden chose the Pentagon, the White House and the Twin Towers as his targets on 911 because they are much easier targets than a solid concrete nuclear containment building. The fact that Indian Point was not chosen shows that the terrorists are more realistic than the anit-nuclear zealots who would succumb to the terrorists threats and close our region's safest, cleanest source of non-polluting electric power.
Posted by: nuclear environmentalist on Thu Aug 02, 2007 11:54 am

Landmark Energy Policy Study Points the Way to U.S. Energy Future without Fossil Fuels or Nuclear Power

Featured articles:
US Energy Future without Fossil Fuels or Nuclear Power, Landmark Study Released Today - July 30, 2007 Landmark Energy Policy Study Points the Way to U.S. Energy Future without Fossil Fuels or Nuclear PowerProtecting Climate Will Require Essentially Complete Elimination of U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions by 2050Takoma Park, MD - At the G-8 summit in Germany in June 2007, President Bush promised to "consider seriously" the European Union goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to limit global temperature rise to about 4 degrees Fahrenheit. A new study concludes that the United States could eliminate almost all of its carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2050. It also concludes that it is possible to do so without the use of nuclear power. The landmark study, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, was produced as a joint project of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
New Book, War In Heaven, by Drs. Helen Caldicott & Craig Eisendrath - March 08, 2007 A revelatory look at the U.S. Government's plan to put weapons in outer space, by two bestselling experts. College Park, MD - In War in Heaven, a Nobel Prize-nominated peace activist and a former U.S. foreign service officer (who helped write the Outer Space Treaty of 1967) look at the history of military uses of space and the current plans for "weaponizing the heavens," including kinetic, laser, nuclear bombardment, and anti-satellite weapons.
Latest Updates:
Nuclear greenwashing Amanda Witherell San Francisco Bay Guardian - June 04, 2007 Global warming has suddenly put nukes back on the agenda — but there's a lot the industry isn't telling you
Patrick Moore's presentation isn't as slick as Al Gore's. The slides he shows lack a certain visual panache and don't compare to the ones in An Inconvenient Truth. Moore himself seems a little frumpy, particularly as he peers out across the audience recently gathered in the Warnors Theatre in Fresno.
But attendees paid $20 to hear the former Greenpeace leader extol the benefits of nuclear energy as a clean, safe, reliable, economic, and — perhaps most important to the current political and media focus on global warming — emissions-free source of power.
A battle won has to be fought again Tracee Hutchison The Age (Australia) - April 04, 2007 Now, 24 years since we sang and danced our nuclear fears away at the bowl, the nuclear genie is out of the bottle again and tomorrow's Nuclear Fools Day concert at the bowl feels like groundhog day, writes Tracee Hutchison.
The Nobel Peace Prize nominee on nukes, global warming, and why we’re closer to Armageddon than ever Kevin Uhrich Los Angeles City Beat - March 25, 2007 Dr. Helen Caldicott has been advocating her own inconvenient truth for over a quarter-century, but her battle against nuclear power and nuclear weapons is still as controversial – and as necessary – as it has ever been. While Oscar-winning presumptive president Al Gore was still a congressman from Tennessee, and voting on what was then the largest military buildup in history, Caldicott was warning of the risks posed by both the nuclear arms race being orchestrated by the Reagan administration and the continued use of commercial nuclear power in communities around the United States.

Indian Point Nuclear Generating

[Federal Register: August 1, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 147)][Notices] [Page 42134-42135]From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov][DOCID:fr01au07-109] =======================================================================-----------------------------------------------------------------------NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION[Docket Nos. 50-247 and 50-286] Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc., Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit Nos. 2 and 3; Notice of Acceptance for Docketing of the Application and Notice of Opportunity for Hearing Regarding Renewal of Facility Operating License Nos. DPR-26 and DPR-64 for an Additional 20-Year Period The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC or the Commission) is considering an application for the renewal of Operating License Nos. DPR-26 and DPR-64, which authorize Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc., to operate Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit Nos. 2 and 3, respectively, at 3216 megawatts thermal (MWt) for each unit. The renewed licenses would authorize the applicant to operate Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit Nos. 2 and 3 for an additional 20 years beyond the period specified in the current licenses. The current operating licenses for Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit Nos. 2 and 3 expire on September 9, 2013, and December 12, 2015, respectively. Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. submitted the application dated April 23, 2007, as supplemented by letters dated May 3, 2007, and June 21, 2007, pursuant to 10 CFR Part 54, to renew Operating License Nos. DPR-26 and DPR-64 for Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit Nos. 2 and 3, respectively. A Notice of Receipt and Availability of the license renewal application (LRA), ``Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc.; Notice of Receipt and Availability of Application for Renewal of Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit Nos. 2 and 3; Facility Operating Licenses Nos. DPR-26 and DPR-64 for an Additional 20-Year Period,'' was published in the Federal Register on May 11, 2007 (72 FR 26850). The Commission's staff has determined that Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. has submitted sufficient information in accordance with 10 CFR Sections 54.19, 54.21, 54.22, 54.23, 51.45, and 51.53(c) to enable the staff to undertake a review of the application, and the application is therefore acceptable for docketing. The current Docket Nos. 50-247 and 50-286 for Operating License Nos. DPR-26 and DPR-64, respectively, will be retained. The determination to accept the license renewal application for docketing does not constitute a determination that a renewed license should be issued, and does not preclude the NRC staff from requesting additional information as the review proceeds. Before issuance of each requested renewed license, the NRC will have made the findings required by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (the Act), and the Commission's rules and regulations. In accordance with 10 CFR 54.29, the NRC may issue a renewed license on the basis of its review if it finds that actions have been identified and have been or will be taken with respect to: (1) Managing the effects of aging during the period of extended operation on the functionality of structures and components that have been identified as requiring aging management review, and (2) time-limited aging analyses that have been identified as requiring review, such that there is reasonable assurance that the activities authorized by the renewed license will continue to be conducted in accordance with the current licensing basis (CLB), and that any changes made to the plant's CLB comply with the Act and the Commission's regulations. Additionally, in accordance with 10 CFR 51.95(c), the NRC will prepare an environmental impact statement that is a supplement to the Commission's NUREG-1437, ``Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of Nuclear Power Plants,'' dated May 1996. In considering the license renewal application, the Commission must find that the applicable requirements of Subpart A of 10 CFR Part 51 have been satisfied. Pursuant to 10 CFR 51.26, and as part of the environmental scoping process, the staff intends to hold a public scoping meeting. Detailed information regarding the environmental scoping meeting will be the subject of a separate Federal Register notice. Within 60 days after the date of publication of this Federal Register Notice, any person whose interest may be affected by this proceeding and who wishes to participate as a party in the proceeding must file a written request for a hearing or a petition for leave to intervene with respect to the renewal of the license. Requests for a hearing or petitions for leave to intervene must be filed in accordance with the Commission's ``Rules of Practice for Domestic Licensing Proceedings'' in 10 CFR Part 2. Interested persons should consult a current copy of 10 CFR 2.309, which is available at the Commission's Public Document Room (PDR), located at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland 20852 and is accessible from the NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS should contact the NRC's PDR reference staff by telephone at 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737, or by e-mail at pdr@nrc.gov. If a request for a hearing/petition for leave to intervene is filed within the 60-day period, the Commission or a presiding officer designated by the Commission or by the Chief Administrative Judge of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel will rule on the request and/or petition; and the Secretary or the Chief Administrative Judge of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will issue a notice of a hearing or an appropriate order. In the event that no request for a hearing or petition for leave to intervene is filed within the 60-day period, the NRC may, upon completion of its evaluations and upon making the findings required under 10 CFR Parts 51 and 54, renew the license without further notice. As required by 10 CFR 2.309, a petition for leave to intervene shall set forth with particularity the interest of the petitioner in the proceeding, and how that interest may be affected by the results of the proceeding, taking into consideration the limited scope of matters that may be considered pursuant to 10 CFR Parts 51 and 54. The petition must specifically explain the[[Page 42135]]reasons why intervention should be permitted with particular reference to the following factors: (1) The nature of the requestor's/petitioner's right under the Act to be made a party to the proceeding; (2) the nature and extent of the requestor's/petitioner's property, financial, or other interest in the proceeding; and (3) the possible effect of any decision or order which may be entered in the proceeding on the requestor's/petitioner's interest. The petition must also set forth the specific contentions which the petitioner/requestor seeks to have litigated in the proceeding. Each contention must consist of a specific statement of the issue of law or fact to be raised or controverted. In addition, the requestor/petitioner shall provide a brief explanation of the bases of each contention and a concise statement of the alleged facts or the expert opinion that supports the contention on which the requestor/petitioner intends to rely in proving the contention at the hearing. The requestor/petitioner must also provide references to those specific sources and documents of which the requestor/petitioner is aware and on which the requestor/petitioner intends to rely to establish those facts or expert opinion. The requestor/petitioner must provide sufficient information to show that a genuine dispute exists with the applicant on a material issue of law or fact.\1\ Contentions shall be limited to matters within the scope of the action under consideration. The contention must be one that, if proven, would entitle the requestor/petitioner to relief. A requestor/petitioner who fails to satisfy these requirements with respect to at least one contention will not be permitted to participate as a party.--------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ To the extent that the application contains attachments and supporting documents that are not publicly available because they are asserted to contain safeguards or proprietary information, petitioners desiring access to this information should contact the applicant or applicant's counsel to discuss the need for a protective order.--------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Commission requests that each contention be given a separate numeric or alpha designation within one of the following groups: (1) Technical (primarily related to safety concerns); (2) environmental; or (3) miscellaneous. As specified in 10 CFR 2.309, if two or more requestors/petitioners seek to co-sponsor a contention or propose substantially the same contention, the requestors/petitioners will be required to jointly designate a representative who shall have the authority to act for the requestors/petitioners with respect to that contention. Those permitted to intervene become parties to the proceeding, subject to any limitations in the order granting leave to intervene, and have the opportunity to participate fully in the conduct of the hearing. A request for a hearing or a petition for leave to intervene must be filed by: (1) First class mail addressed to the Office of the Secretary of the Commission, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, Attention: Rulemaking and Adjudications Staff; (2) courier, express mail, and expedited delivery services to the Office of the Secretary, Sixteenth Floor, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, Attention: Rulemaking and Adjudications Staff; (3) E-mail addressed to the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, HEARINGDOCKET@NRC.GOV; or (4) facsimile transmission addressed to the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC., Attention: Rulemaking and Adjudications Staff at 301-415-1101 (verification number: 301-415-1966).\2\ A copy of the request for hearing or petition for leave to intervene must also be sent to the Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, and it is requested that copies be transmitted either by means of facsimile transmission to 301-415-3725 or by e-mail to OGCMailCenter@nrc.gov. A copy of the request for hearing or petition for leave to intervene should also be sent to the Assistant General Counsel, Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc., 440 Hamilton Avenue, White Plains, NY 10601.--------------------------------------------------------------------------- \2\ If the request/petition is filed by e-mail or facsimile, an original and two copies of the document must be mailed within 2 (two) business days thereafter to the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001; Attention: Rulemaking and Adjudications Staff.--------------------------------------------------------------------------- Non-timely requests and/or petitions and contentions will not be entertained absent a determination by the Commission, the presiding officer, or the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that the petition, request and/or contentions should be granted based on a balancing of the factors specified in 10 CFR 2.309(a)(1)(i)-(viii). Detailed information about the license renewal process can be found under the Nuclear Reactors icon at http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal.html on the NRC's Web site. Copies of the application to renew the operating licenses for Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit Nos. 2 and 3, are available for public inspection at the Commission's PDR, located at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland 20852-2738, and at http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applications.html, the NRC's Web site while the application is under review. The application may be accessed in ADAMS through the NRC's Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html under ADAMS Accession Numbers ML071210507, ML071280700, and ML071800318. As stated above, persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS may contact the NRC Public Document Room (PDR) Reference staff by telephone at 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. The NRC staff has verified that a copy of the license renewal application is also available to local residents near Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit Nos. 2 and 3 at the White Plains Public Library, 100 Martine Avenue, White Plains, NY 10601; the Field Library, 4 Nelson Avenue, Peekskill, NY 10566; and the Hendrick Hudson Free Library, 185 Kings Ferry Road, Montrose, NY 10548. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 25th day of July, 2007. For The Nuclear Regulatory Commission.Pao-Tsin Kuo,Director, Division of License Renewal, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. E7-14864 Filed 7-31-07; 8:45 am]BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

Indian Point sirens will be tested until Aug. 10

Indian Point sirens will be tested until Aug. 10
Entergy Nuclear will perform daily multiple "silent" tests of the new Indian Point Energy Center emergency alert system today through Aug. 10.
During the silent tests, the public may hear the new sirens pop with some static, similar to tuning a radio.
The testing will take place in the morning, mid-afternoon and early evening.
Local residents should be aware the new sirens do not sound like the current sirens, which have a loud wavering tone.
The sirens are not a signal to evacuate, but rather to alert the public to tune their local Emergency Alert System radio or TV station for important information.
For more information, visit www.entergy-nuclear.com.

House members propose no-fly zone over Indian Point

House members propose no-fly zone over Indian Point
Washington – House Members Maurice Hinchey, Nita Lowey, Eliot Engel and John Hall, all Democrats, Wednesday introduced legislation that would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security to issue a no-fly zone over the Indian Point nuclear power plants.A proposed FAA airspace redesign does not include routes over Indian Point, but the lawmakers said it also does not explicitly prohibit such flights, and fails to adequately recognize the security threat the plant poses in a highly-populated area. They said the Nuclear Regulatory commission also failed to address the situation, prompting their action.The lawmakers said millions of Americans live and work near Indian Point and it is “unconscionable” to allow airplanes anywhere near the plants.

On FAA fight plans

On FAA fight plans
(Original publication: August 1, 2007)
For more than three hours Monday evening, residents and officials got to sound off on the Federal Aviation Administration's plan that could redirect hundreds of jetliners over Rockland airspace by 2011.
There were dozens of questions, about the process, about noise, about the implications of other suggested options.
But at the end of the night, one question remained unanswered: Will any of it matter?
As Orangetown Supervisor Thom Kleiner notes in his Community View on this page, he and others failed at several attempts to pin down FAA officials as to whether suggestions made at Monday's meeting, hosted by Rep. Eliot Engel, D-Bronx, and attended by 1,000 people, would get a serious review.
The most that the FAA's Steve Kelley, manager of the project to redesign the use of airspace over five states, would say is that the meeting's minutes would be part of what's called the "record of decision."
That could, and underline could, result in a decision that certain suggestions warrant further study.
And so . . .
That's when things get sticky. Any suggestion, such as one a couple of weeks back by Montebello Mayor Jeff Oppenheim that the flight path of Newark Liberty International Airport arrivals be shifted west, would mean that others would be newly impacted, requiring supplemental environmental review that would take time and cost money.
Time might not be a problem, even in a project that has gone on for nine years. But money may not be easy. Officials wanted to sound like they could make additional funding happen, but even Engel hedged a bit, saying he would do everything in his power to try to get money. But he also noted that an effort last week to cut off funding for the project fell flat in the House of Representatives.
It might not be any easier getting more money to study a sliver of change to placate two or three communities, no matter how vocal.
With every adjustment that the FAA might make, there would be new challengers. Sloatsburg and Warwick don't want to see the flight patterns shifted west, a view that would assuredly be shared by New Jersey communities that so far are being spared. Environmental groups don't want them shifted to pass over parkland.
The 11th hour
In essence, we may be too late to the fight to bring about piecemeal changes to benefit Rockland, or Westchester, where almost a dozen communities have been worried about flight plan changes related to other airports in the region. And everyone is rightly concerned about more jets flying over Indian Point. They're unhappy to our south, too, where 1,000 residents were so angry police had to be called to a meeting in Woodcliff Lake. So, what then?
It may well come down to trying to block the entire project in the courts because of its failure to seek broad enough input from the impacted communities.
There's no question that some of our elected officials dropped the ball, failing to realize the local impacts when they received the project's draft environmental impact statement from the FAA.
But the list of those who got the document is way too short to constitute the level of outreach required in such a project. Project manager Kelley, on his earlier visit to Rockland admitted that "we obviously dropped the ball on notification."
Additionally, County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef said that the study failed to properly address potential noise impacts. Beyond that, the FAA has said it has no way to judge the air-pollution impact its proposed changes might have in an area that already can't meet federal Clean Air mandates.
A legal fight
Add to that legitimate concerns that our volunteer emergency services may not be prepared to deal with an airline disaster made exponentially more likely by the addition of hundred more flights over the county. Together, those issues could land us in litigation.
Ramapo Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence, at the meeting he hosted at Town Hall on July 12, said trying to implement the proposed flight paths without a public hearing would probably mean legal challenges from officials and individuals. Vanderhoef held open the option of legal action Monday night, and Kleiner is of a mind to join in if the county does so.
Slim as it might be, this late in the game, it could be our only hope.
A Journal News editorial

The Power Generation Gap - 1st read

I got all the stories, but they are out of order, so check the "leg" below and read in order.

The power generation gap
Can nuclear power help solve global warming? Soaring energy costs? Only if we’re convinced it’s safe. Editor-at-large David Whitford travels cross-country in search of our nuclear future.

Road Trip: Touring America’s nuclear past and present
Click on the interactive map to track David’s journey from the site of the first No Nukes protests to Three Mile Island and the industry’s next generation reactors. (more)• xxxxxxx//-->

The nuclear revival, in pictures
America's experience with nuclear energy is sprawling and complex. These locations and characters are just a few of the players that David encountered during his cross-country trip. (more)• xxxxxxx//-->

Reporter's Notebook: Power Trip
Photos, words and sounds from David’s journey - with a new leg available each day.

Leg 1
Rethinking Three Mile Island
It was billed as the nation's worst commercial nuclear accident, but how bad was it really? (more)• Pictures of Seabrook and Three Mile Island
• Listen to nuclear activist Brian Epstein

Leg 2
America’s nuclear revival
The industry is coming alive in the Midwest's Ohio Valley. Fortune tours the hot spots. (more)• xxxxxxx /-->

Leg 3
The high cost of going nuclear
Power companies are lining up to build new plants after a decade of stagnation. What's standing in the way? (more)

Leg 4
The trouble with nuclear waste
It's not easy building a home for spent radioactive material. The proposed site at Yucca Mountain has been underway for over 30 years. (more)• xxxxxxx //-->

Leg 5
In search of safe nukes
The Idaho National Laboratory is at work on next generation reactors that promise to deliver more reliable energy. (more)
Full Story

Going Nuclear
Nuclear power plants provide about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, but it’s been more than a decade since the last plant went online. Read David Whitford’s full story on what it will take to revive the struggling industry. (more)• xxxxxxx//-->
More Fortune Stories

The amazing Freecycle storyAn Internet community grows around the idea that one man's trash is another's treasure, reports Fortune's Marc Gunther. (more) • xxxxxxx //-->
Attack of the mutant riceAmerica's rice farmers didn't want to grow a genetically engineered crop. Their European customers didn’t want to buy it. So how did it end up in our food? Fortune's Marc Gunther reports. (more) • xxxxxxx //-->
The wizards of ozoneThe Natural Resources Defense Council has morphed from a small law firm into one of the country's most powerful players in corporate America's efforts to go green, writes Fortune's Corey Hajim. (more)
Patagonia: Blueprint for green businessThe story of how Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard took his passion for the outdoors and turned it into an amazing business. From Fortune’s Susan Casey (more) • xxxxxxx //-->
Eastern Germany's sunny futureThe world's largest solar power plant is only the latest addition to Germany's investment in alternative power, Michael Dumiak reports for Fortune. (more) • xxxxxxx //-->
The future of natural gasThe CEO of Sempra Energy outlines the case for rising demand and how his company can benefit. Fortune’s Jon Birger reports (more) • xxxxxxx //-->

In search of safe nukes

In search of safe nukes
The Idaho National Laboratory is at work on next generation reactors that promise to deliver more reliable energy.

David Whitford, Fortune editor-at-large
July 31 2007: 2:43 PM EDT

Editor-at-large David Whitford went on a 7,000 mile road trip to examine America's nuclear past and the resurgent industry's plans for the future. This is the last of five installments from his reporter's notebook.
(Fortune) -- There is a remote valley in southeastern Idaho -- 890 square miles; desolate, dry and stunningly beautiful -- that is the place to go for atomic lore. It's the home of the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), where on December 20, 1951, scientists succeeded for the first time in converting nuclear power into electricity. They lit four 75-watt light bulbs. The next day they lit the whole lab.
Other experiments were less successful. Outside the building housing Experimental Breeder Reactor-1 (and the light bulbs it illuminated), in the corner of the parking lot, sit two dinosaur-like relics of the Cold War.
The Idaho Lab is currently operating three test reactors.

Power Trip
See the stops along the author's route, as he toured America's nuclear plants.Go to map
The power generation gap
"Back in the 1950s," my guide explains, "the US fully believed that the Soviets had built nuclear powered airplanes. At the time we did not have intercontinental ballistic missiles and we could not refuel bombers in flight yet, so that was seen as a priority for the Air Force: to build a nuclear powered bomber that could stay in the air for weeks or even months at a time."
Is nuclear energy a good idea? Post your thoughts.
So INL scientists designed and built two air-cooled nuclear reactors/jet engines, and they worked, sort of. "Only problem was the weight-to-thrust ratio still didn't quite pan out because the reactors" -- at 226 tons each -- "were enormous." In other words, they'd never fly. President Kennedy scrapped the program in March 1963.
By then the United States had plenty of missiles it could throw at the Russians, of course, and had learned how to refuel bombers in flight, and by the way had developed fresh intelligence on the Russian nuclear air fleet. Like WMDs in Iraq, it seems, they never existed.
Today INL researchers are working on several initiatives that will help define nuclear power's future. One is the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP, which the Bush administration has been pushing for the past couple of years. GNEP has several goals. One is to reduce nuclear proliferation by providing fuel suitable for nuclear power plants (but not nuclear weapons) to nations willing to submit to international oversight.
Another is to reduce the volume of nuclear waste by reprocessing spent fuel so that part of it can be reused. GNEP wouldn't eliminate the need for a nuclear waste disposal site like Yucca Mountain, whose development has been stalled since 1997. But it could give us another couple of decades before we have to open another Yucca Mountain. It could also mean that whatever waste we're left with will have a much shorter radioactive life, and therefore won't need to be stored as long.
Next generation
Other INL researchers are helping to develop the next generation of nuclear reactors, known as Generation IV -- potentially safer, more reliable and more versatile (with applications in the coming hydrogen economy) than anything available today. Project director Phil Hildebrandt is hoping to deploy a Gen-IV demonstration reactor by 2018 and have a design that's ready for commercialization by 2025.
Admittedly, that's an optimistic timetable. On the other hand, we're talking about an industry that went from powering four light bulbs to generating 16% of the world's electricity in 50 years. Even David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a staunch critic of the nuclear power industry, rates that an extraordinary accomplishment.
Then he draws his own conclusions, relating to wind, solar and other sources of renewable energy not yet discovered. "If we look forward 50 years," says Lochbaum, "I don't see why we can't make the same kind of [progress], or even better, with renewables."

The high cost of going nuclear

The high cost of going nuclear
Power companies are lining up to build new plants after a decade of stagnation. What's standing in the way?

By David Whitford, Fortune editor-at-large
July 31 2007: 2:36 PM EDT
Editor-at-large David Whitford went on a 7,000 mile road trip to examine America's nuclear past and the resurgent industry's plans for the future. This is the third of five installments from his reporter's notebook.
(Fortune) -- If the companies that supply nuclear power plants are ready for a revival, the utilities that will operate the plants are champing at the bit.
Dale Klein, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said he's expecting license applications for 27 new nuclear reactors in the next two years. The Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry trade group, says it could be as many as 31.
Southern Company's Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, near Waynesboro, Ga.
Power Trip
See the stops along the author's route, as he toured America's nuclear plants.Go to map
The power generation gap

This is a huge development, considering it's been more than three decades since the last successful attempt to license and build a new nuclear power plant in the United States got underway, and more than ten years since that plant went online.
Is nuclear energy a good idea? Post your thoughts.
I asked MIT professor Andy Kadak how to account for the recent flurry of new activity. "One is that nuclear plant performance has dramatically improved," he said. "In the early 1980s the capacity factor" - how much electricity the average nuclear plant generates, expressed as a percentage of capacity - "was in the low 60s. Today it's the low 90s. We used to have refueling outages that lasted 90 days. Now they do it in 27. Good ones are 21.
"Utilities are making a lot of money from nukes today. That's given the utility CEOs confidence to say, 'Look, these plants are running well, we're making money and if we buy into nuclear, there's no reason not to expect similar performance in the future if we run them as we know how to run them now.'
"That's a big plus. The other thing is deregulation. It forced utilities to be competitive in terms of how much their power costs. That was a factor driving efficiency and lowering operating costs. Then came the new designs. Vendors innovated and made reactors simpler and safer."
Barney Beasley, Chief Executive of Southern Nuclear, added one more key factor: Soaring demand, especially in the fast-growing South, where more than half the new plants are planned.
"Obviously in Georgia we're experiencing a lot of economic growth, a lot of population growth," Beasley said, while showing me around Southern's Vogtle generating station in the piney woods outside Waynesboro, Ga.
Already Vogtle has two huge Westinghouse reactors generating more than 1000 megawatts each; Southern wants to build two more, doubling capacity. "Our projection over the next 20 years in terms of population is we're going to add another entire Atlanta in the state of Georgia," Beasley continues. "We are going to have to provide large base-load units to provide the power."
The largest remaining obstacle to such plans? Cost. Consider a typical scenario in which a utility with a $9 billion market cap wants to build a nuke plant with a $5 billion price tag. "You put that on your balance sheet," as one former utility executive explained to me, "and you know what Wall Street would do with your bond ratings."
The cost factor is the background to the generous set of nuclear subsidies contained in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Among them: a tax credit of 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour for early movers, capped at $6 billion; regulatory risk insurance to cover licensing delays, potentially worth $2 billion; and federal loan guarantees that could pay up to 80 percent in the event of default. (Only the risk insurance applies specifically to nukes; the others cover wind, solar and biofuels as well.)
But at least one utility executive - CEO David Crane of NRG Energy, which plans to add two new reactors to its existing South Texas Project, near Bay City, Texas - thinks the industry may be asking for too much help from taxpayers.
"People in nuclear industry complain that everyone remembers Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," he said. "On the other hand, the nuclear plants remember that, too. They're cautious. They want everybody else to take all the risks.
"Guys, get over it," he said. "Sure, nuclear plants are expensive. And power companies are not as big as oil companies. But one of the things about being in business is you get a reward for taking a risk. I just get the sense that while the industry likes to say, 'The government is not doing enough, the government is not doing enough,' it's time for the industry to step up."

America's nuclear revival

America's nuclear revival
The industry is coming alive in the Midwest's Ohio Valley. Fortune tours the hot spots.

By David Whitford, Fortune editor-at-large
July 31 2007: 2:11 PM EDT

Editor-at-large David Whitford went on a 7,000 mile road trip to examine America's nuclear past and the resurgent industry's plans for the future. This is the second of five installments from his reporter's notebook.
(Fortune) -- One thing I've learned on my 7,000 mile journey through America's nuclear past and present is that when you're driving around scouting for a power plant -- any kind of power plant -- first locate the high-voltage transmission lines. (If you stand directly under those lines, sometimes you can hear the electricity cackle and spatter like rain drops on the roof.)
Then check the lay of the land. Then follow the downward slope to the water. Could be a river you're looking for, could be a lake (natural or man-made). Could be the ocean. But here's the rule: No water, no steam; no steam, no power.
Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station

Power Trip
See the stops along the author's route, as he toured America's nuclear plants.Go to map
The power generation gap

An Idaho lab is at work on next generation reactors that promise to deliver more reliable energy.
That's how I found myself late one Friday night (maybe it was Saturday morning), twisting and turning on steep, curvy roads, descending into Shippingport, Pennsylvania, an old ferry crossing on the Ohio River. All I could see in the darkness were the faint outlines of cooling towers, festooned with blinking red lights.
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Came back the next day to have a look around. A surveyor's stake, set just across the river in Ohio on August 20, 1785, marked the "point of beginning" for plotting the public lands of the United States. That's noteworthy, since Shippingport also marks a different kind beginning point. It's the site of this country's first large-scale commercial nuclear reactor.
Designed by Westinghouse, built in partnership with the Navy, and operated by Duquesne Light Company, the Shippingport reactor began generating electricity in December 1957 and was decommissioned in 1982. (The towers I saw belong to two new nuclear reactors in Shippingport, Beaver Valley 1 and 2, and a coal plant, all operated by FirstEnergy.)
"Atoms for peace"
All that remains of the original plant's history, a security guard tells me when I stop to ask, is the shell of the old control room and a photograph of President Eisenhower -- architect of the "Atoms for Peace" policy -- on the wall at the new training center.
Fifty years after Shippingport, signs of the US nuclear revival are popping up all over this part of the country. In Piketon, Ohio, for example, east of Cincinnati, the former government entity USEC, which is now private, is demonstrating the latest in US owned-and-operated technology for enriching uranium.
USEC hopes to begin supplying enriched Uranium to nuclear fuel fabricators as early as 2009. "What we're trying to do as quickly as we can is position ourselves for the growth of nuclear power," says a company spokesperson.
A market surge
BWXT, formerly Babcock & Wilcox, also hopes to supply the burgeoning industry. The company's cavernous facility in Mount Vernon, Indiana, across the Ohio river from Kentucky, is the only factory in America that can still make large-scale components for nuclear power plants.
Last year BWXT signed an agreement to team up with with French nuclear giant Areva to build reactor vessels for US utilities. Ed Woolsey, the recently retired VP of BWXT's nuclear division who showed me around, told me he expects to be operating at capacity by 2015.
"There is we believe a real strong market that's emerging, and we're preparing ourselves to be in play for that market," he says. "Our biggest challenge is to screen, hire the people, train the people and have them ready to go once the work gets here."

Going nuclear

Going nuclear
The industry is gearing up to build its first new plants in decades. But are we comfortable with that? Join Fortune's David Whitford on a road trip into America's nuclear future.

By David Whitford, Fortune editor-at-large
July 31 2007: 2:40 PM EDT
"We were at heightened security - we were at red," recalls Al Griffith, spokesman for the utility that owns the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire.
I'm standing with Griffith on a lawn of plastic grass (real stuff doesn't grow here?) inside the "owner-controlled area" at Seabrook, the outermost of three security zones. It's a glorious late-spring afternoon. Blue sky, scudding clouds, wind whipping across the tidal flats. Griffith is wearing wrap-around Nike sunglasses and a white polo shirt featuring Seabrook's flying-duck logo. Nice tan on this guy. I follow his gaze past coiled strands of concertina wire, beyond a black-windowed BRE (bullet-resistant enclosure) on stilts, to the salt marsh, which serves as a natural buffer between the reactor complex and the New Hampshire resort town of Hampton Beach.
The entrance to the Yucca Mountain spent-fuel repository, which so far is merely a five mile tunnel.
Atomic Culture: In New Mexico, the minor-league team is called the isotopes.
Harvey Wasserman, No-nukes pioneer: "I intend to make it as difficult for them is possible. Those of us who can still walk will be back in droves.

Power Trip
See the stops along the author's route, as he toured America's nuclear plants.Go to map
The power generation gap
It was a Friday night, Griffith continues: March 21, 2003. One day after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The whole country was on red alert. In Seabrook fog lay heavy on the marsh. Just before 9 P.M., something out there, something deep in the darkness, triggered the "perimeter intruder detection system." At nearly the same moment, on the opposite side of the 900-acre complex, an unfamiliar vehicle approached a checkpoint. When armed guards waved the vehicle down, the driver suddenly reversed direction. Plant security, confronting what it now believed to be a simultaneous incursion by two unidentified intruders, tripped the alarm and declared a "security event." Local police sealed the exits. The armed heavies from the Seacoast Emergency Response Team arrived in force. "It was craziness," says Griffith, who was out drinking with friends that night when his pager went off. "Total lockdown." Griffith, besieged by media calls, didn't sleep for three days.
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Four years later the identity of the marsh intruder remains a mystery, although authorities have narrowed the list of suspects. It was a "heron or turkey or some damn thing," says Griffith. And the occupants of the suspicious vehicle? Two skittish underage kids on a beer run who somehow missed the turnoff to DeMoulas Market Basket, then panicked and fled.
Listening to Griffith's story, I'm not sure whether I should feel reassured or alarmed. What I do know is that 54 years after President Eisenhower envisioned a future in which the awesome power of the atom would "serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind," a lot of us are still spooked. Griffith's own mother is so unnerved by what her son does for a living that she refuses to set foot inside the plant, which, by the way, has a visitor center, a nature trail, and a museum frequented by schoolchildren.
"We have found in demographic studies that particularly older Americans - they associate nuclear, the 'N word,' with explosion, with bombs, with war," says Griffith. "It's a difficult branding issue." The July 16 earthquake in Japan, which caused a fire at the largest nuclear-power complex in the world, tipped over barrels of contaminated material, and spilled hundreds of gallons of low-level radioactive water into the sea, reminded us that it's not just branding - the product has flaws.
Factor in all that, plus the daunting economics of nuclear power and the still-unsolved puzzle of how to safely dispose of nuclear waste, and you begin to understand why it's been more than three decades since the last successful attempt to license and build a nuclear power plant in the U.S. got underway.
It may surprise you to know that nuclear power has stayed with us all these years, stubbornly clinging to about a 20% share of U.S. electricity generation - about the same as natural gas but lagging far behind coal at 50%. (Globally, nukes have a 16% market share.) And while no new plants have come online since 1996 (construction began on that one in 1973), suddenly we're hearing lots of talk about a nuclear revival - or "renaissance," as the boosters call it. In June, Dale Klein, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), told a fired-up gathering of industry leaders in Atlanta that he's expecting applications for 27 new reactors over the next two years. "There is no serious opposition," says Tony Earley, CEO of Detroit's DTE Energy (Charts, Fortune 500), which hopes to file at least one of those applications. "This train is moving."
A lot of the push is coming from the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which is stuffed with generous subsidies for nuclear power and other alternatives to fossil fuels. Among them: billions of dollars in tax credits, loan guarantees, and insurance to cover licensing delays. Big corporations know which way the political wind is blowing. Texas power utility TXU (Charts, Fortune 500) won support from environmentalists for a $32 billion buyout deal in February in part by scrapping plans to build a fleet of coal-fired generating plants and pledging instead to build as many as five jumbo nuclear plants. GE (Charts, Fortune 500) and Hitachi, meanwhile, have created a multibillion-dollar partnership to build reactors, betting not only on power-hungry Asia but also on new thinking in the U.S. "It's hard to believe simultaneously in energy security and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions without believing in nuclear power," GE CEO Jeff Immelt told reporters in July. "It's just intellectually dishonest."
Probably the earliest a new reactor could come online in the U.S. is 2015, and even that seems optimistic. There is plenty of opposition, despite what Earley says. And anything could happen over the next decade or so to knock the train off its track. A terrorist attack on a nuclear facility anywhere in the world would halt all progress overnight. So would another Chernobyl. But right now the momentum is swinging nuclear's way. Among the many green-light factors: rising natural-gas prices; soaring electricity demand; the looming prospect of a carbon tax; a new, streamlined regulatory process; and growing acceptance by environmentalists that nuclear energy, which emits no greenhouse gases, could have a vital role in saving the planet.
This developing story has continental sweep, a huge cast of characters, multiple moving parts. So much of what we think we know we haven't reexamined in years. If we're going to try to reconcile nuclear power's cloudy past with the industry's bright vision of the future, we need to see for ourselves. Road trip, anyone?
Pausing now at a stoplight on Highway 1 as I'm leaving the Seabrook plant, I consult the GPS, turn the wheel of my little SUV toward the setting sun, and go. Already I have lots of questions. Who has the skill and know-how to build all those new plants? Where will we put them? How are we going to pay for them? Is the technology really safe? What about the waste? I'm just getting started. Two weeks, I figure this'll take. Seven thousand zigzaggy miles through America's nuclear past, present, and future. The most important lesson I will learn: Things are not always as we remember them.
How bad was Three Mile Island?
I'm on the river road south of Middletown, Pa., when I come upon a handsome blue historical marker commemorating "the nation's worst commercial nuclear accident." (You haven't lived until you've beheld a roadside monument to an event that occurred during your lifetime.) Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station is right there across the road, the iconic towers rising from a fern-shaped island in the Susquehanna River. Reminds me of the first time I saw the Eiffel Tower. Similar hyperboloid sweep, but that's not what's so striking. It's the weirdness - the sudden, disorienting displacement of a familiar mental image, derived from 1,000 pictures, by the thing itself.
Those towers carry a lot of symbolic weight, almost none of it appropriate. There's nothing specifically nuclear about them, for one thing. They're just cooling towers. A lot of coal-fired electricity plants use the same technology. That engine roar coming from the towers that sounds like a giant waterfall? That's all it is, water falling: 200,000 gallons per minute at about 110 degrees Fahrenheit, but not radioactive. And that's just water vapor coming out of the tops, of course, not poisonous smoke.
What's more, the towers played no part in the accident, even if they did wind up on the cover of Time. That whole drama began and ended several hundred feet away inside the Unit 2 containment building - starting before dawn on March 28, 1979, and unfolding over several days - and yes, it was undeniably scary and bad. There was an explosion inside the building, a partial meltdown of the reactor core, purposeful venting of radioactive gases, and a voluntary evacuation covering five square miles. The PR was inept, inflaming public fears. (Strange but true: The China Syndrome was playing in first-run theaters that week. As the tension builds, a nuclear engineer tells Jane Fonda that a meltdown could render an area "the size of Pennsylvania" uninhabitable.)
The cleanup took 14 years and cost $1 billion. Unit 1, while undamaged, did not reopen until 1986. Unit 2 is a sarcophagus, still highly radioactive, sealed tight until somebody figures out what to do about the remnants of hot fuel scattered around the basement of the containment building.
But guess what? No one died at Three Mile Island. No one even got hurt. Hard evidence simply does not exist that any living thing, animal or vegetable, was significantly harmed by the small amount of radiation released during the accident. Even in the most extreme cases, the exposure was less than anyone living in the area receives from natural sources. Eric Epstein, head of the citizen's group Three Mile Island Alert, whom I met for lunch at Kuppy's Diner in nearby Middletown, is certainly no fan of nuclear power, which he describes as a "very expensive economic adventure" and an "economic boondoggle." "They're still married to hubris," Epstein rails. "They can't get past their own arrogance." So where does Epstein live? Twelve miles from the plant. "I like the area," he says, shrugging his shoulders. "I encourage people to move here."
The other thing you can't pin on Three Mile Island is the blame (or credit, depending on your point of view) for halting the expansion of nuclear power in the U.S. In 1974, President Nixon predicted we'd have 1,000 commercial nuclear reactors operating by the end of the century. Not even close. No more than 250 were ever ordered, only 170 filed for permits, just 130 opened, and 104 remain. What happened? Construction delays, cost overruns, high interest rates, systemic safety issues, a whole lot of no-nukes protesters, and a surprising dropoff in electricity demand, all of which predate 1979. Three Mile Island didn't kill the nuclear dream. It was just another nail in the coffin.
Can the industry be trusted?
On to Washington. David Lochbaum is a respected critic. He was smitten at an early age by the magic of the atom. He has thrilling childhood memories of visiting the world's first nuclear aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise, in the shipyard at Newport News, Va., and hearing about all the cool peacetime projects that his dad was working on at Westinghouse, like plutonium-powered artificial hearts and floating nuclear power plants. None of those projects came to fruition, but no matter. "It seemed nuclear had a lot of promise," says Lochbaum. "I wanted to follow that up."
Trained as a nuclear engineer, Lochbaum spent 17 years working in nuclear power plants across the South. What finally ruined it for him, he says, was the industry's lackadaisical attitude toward safety. When his bosses didn't respond to his concerns, he went to the NRC. When the NRC failed to act, he took the issue to Congress as a whistleblower, and in 1996 he crossed over to the other side, becoming director of the Nuclear Safety Project with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in Washington, D.C. I met him in his cramped office on H Street, working well past dark one Thursday evening. Behind his desk is an old wall map labeled "Nuclear Power Reactor Sites in the United States - March 1979." Still largely accurate, I can't help but notice.
Lochbaum says he'd never have taken this job if UCS were an abolitionist outfit, but unlike Greenpeace, for instance, UCS is not opposed to the idea of nuclear power. Its concerns are more practical: that we'll ask too much of nuclear and it will fail to deliver for any number of reasons - political protests, disappointing technology, terrorism. UCS's bottom line: We should focus society's resources on renewables, conservation, and efficiency, not nuclear.
Especially, Lochbaum would argue, given the nuclear industry's propensity to screw up. Lochbaum said something to a reporter in June 2001 that he thinks "in hindsight was probably bad judgment." But it was clearly revealing. The question had to do with plant security - how a terrorist might cause trouble. "Buy a comfortable chair," Lochbaum riffed. "Buy a big-screen TV. Buy plenty of snacks and beverages. Sit back and watch sports while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear industry undermine safety until they cause an accident." In other words, Lochbaum says, "it's not the antinukes, it's not an overzealous regulator that's been the industry's worst nightmare - it's themselves." While he believes most plants are run "very well" (Lochbaum's favorite nuclear operator is Dominion (Charts, Fortune 500), with two plants in Virginia and one each in Connecticut and Wisconsin), he sees a "widening gap between the haves and have-nots." His suggestion: more regulation and more enforcement.
Can we build them fast enough?
Next day, right around the corner at the Nuclear Energy Institute, I ask the industry's chief lobbyist, Alex Flint, what he thinks of Lochbaum's prescription. Good for the industry? Flint, who wears an impressive power suit and a bright-yellow tie, peers at me through thin-rimmed glasses for several long seconds. "My guys have over $100 billion worth of capital tied up in nuclear plants," he says finally. "They're concerned about the vagaries of overzealous regulators." He goes on: "We're going to submit combined operating and licensing applications at the end of this year for a number of plants. We estimate it'll take 42 months to get through the licensing process. We estimate it'll take us 40 months after we get the license to bring a plant online and actually start getting revenue." The only way that works, he says, is with a "broad base of support for nuclear power where we don't care who is in office one year or any other year. The industry has a time line that's longer than most politicians' time lines."
In fact, that consensus may already exist, thanks to the complex politics of global warming. Flint doesn't line up with environmentalists on every issue, but on climate change he's a true believer. ("I won't let my wife buy a beach house because I don't believe the water level will stay where it is until I get the mortgage paid off. That's my personal view.") So if Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton want to talk about nuclear power as a solution to global warming, Flint is happy to have that conversation.
Bottom line: Flint, who was majority staff director for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee when the Republicans were in control, says the last time he tried to count the hard-core antinukers in Congress, "I couldn't get to 20." Even Al Gore is wavering. Gore pointedly ignored nuclear power when he addressed ways to reduce carbon emissions in his film, An Inconvenient Truth, but in March he told a House committee hearing, "I'm not an absolutist in being opposed to nuclear. I think it's likely to play some role."
Flint knows that nuclear power all by itself can't solve the climate crisis. The industry will be hard-pressed to simply preserve its global market share as electricity production booms over the next half-century, much less steal share from fossil fuels. In the U.S. alone, according to a new study by the Council on Foreign Relations, given the age of the existing nuclear fleet, "the replacement rate would be on the order of one new reactor every four to five months over the next 40 years." This in an industry that's been dormant for 30 years, at a time when commodity prices for steel and concrete are soaring, and when qualified welders are almost as hard to find as nuclear engineers.
"I get very frustrated with people who say it takes too many nuclear plants to solve our climate problems," says Flint. "It takes a lot fewer nuclear plants than it does other technologies." Any way you look at it, he says, the investment required to meet the projected growth in demand for electricity in the U.S. is on the order of $750 billion to $1 trillion. "So the greatest issue for me is, How is that investment going to be made? Is it going to be made in coal, gas, nuclear, wind, solar? Yes, it takes a lot of nuclear power plants, but it takes a lot of anything."
What's the worst that could happen?
Turns out we had a near miss not long ago in the Midwest. I leave D.C., heading west and north, up through West Virginia and into western Pennsylvania, over the spine of the Appalachians. PENNSYLVANIA PRESENTS THE FUTURE OF COAL, the billboard says, CLEAN, GREEN ENERGY. And here and there, up on the ridgelines, stand small clusters of wind turbines, like scouts in an advancing army. Next day I arrive in Oak Harbor, Ohio, then head for the shoreline of Lake Erie. At the turnoff to Turtle Creek Marina I pull over by the side of the road and just sit for a while, staring at the cooling tower that looms above the Happy Hooker bait shop.
Unless you live around here, or in Toledo, 30 miles west, or possibly in Cleveland or Detroit, both less than 90 miles away, the name Davis-Besse may not mean anything to you. That's just lucky. During a refueling outage at Davis-Besse in 2002, employees discovered a "large cavity" about the size of a football in the head of the pressurized vessel that houses the reactor core. The cause of the cavity was later traced to leaks in nozzles that penetrate the interior of the vessel head. The water in the nozzles was slightly acidic. When it evaporated, it left behind boric acid, which over time ate through the 6 1/2-inch-thick carbon-steel head all the way down to 1/4-inch-thick stainless-steel cladding. As the hole widened, the internal pressure on the cladding intensified.
Scientists at Oak Ridge National Lab have since determined that if the plant had continued operating, the cladding ultimately would have burst. (Plant owner FirstEnergy (Charts, Fortune 500) says it would have found the leak in time to take "appropriate steps.") Had the cladding burst, the core would probably have suffered a meltdown, releasing about the same amount of radioactivity as at Three Mile Island - only this time it would not have been contained. "They came very close to an accident that would have been much worse than Three Mile Island and not as bad as Chernobyl," says Lochbaum. "You don't ever want to be in a place where those are your bookends."
Both the leakage and its corrosive effects were known issues. The industry committed in 1989 to investigate such leaks. Yet somehow Davis-Besse escaped detection until it was almost too late. What's more, in April 2000 an NRC inspector was handed a truly ugly photograph of the Davis-Besse reactor vessel head covered in acidic crud. No one saw it again until after the accident. The episode cost the utility company around $600 million.
Can the no-nukes movement regroup?
Sunday afternoon in Bexley, Ohio, east of Columbus. I'm standing on a quiet, tree-canopied street at the top of Harvey Wasserman's driveway, waiting for him to come outside, meanwhile reading the bumper stickers on his cars: BUSH LIED, PEOPLE DIED; CELEBRATE DIVERSITY; THE DEATH PENALTY IS DEAD WRONG. Makes sense. Three decades ago Wasserman was a leader in the Clamshell Alliance, the grassroots movement that delayed the opening of the Unit 1 Seabrook nuclear reactor for many years while making sure Unit 2 was never completed. Today, it happens, is the 30th anniversary of a landmark Clamshell victory - the release of 550 demonstrators who had spent two weeks locked up in New Hampshire armories. It was a huge win for the burgeoning movement. Wasserman was at Seabrook that day, handling communications with the press. Now he's a college professor, an author, a father of five daughters, and a Volvo driver living in the suburbs, but the fire still burns.
"I was present at the creation of the antinuclear movement," Wasserman tells me by way of introduction, once we're settled at a picnic table. "I actually coined the phrase 'No nukes.' It came through my typewriter." His opposition to nukes has not wavered since he was living on a Massachusetts commune in 1973 ("All those stories you've heard about hippie farms are true"), helping lead his first successful protest. "Not safe," he says now, "not economical, not green, not a solution to global warming." He gleefully searches for another phrase. "We have been trying for 30 years to drive a stake through the heart of this industry, but it doesn't seem to have one!"
In his book Solartopia!, Wasserman envisions a clean-energy future in which all our energy needs are satisfied by solar, wind, hydro, and biofuels. "If we put our minds to it, we could have all of that before they bring the next nuke online," he says. "The finances are going in the opposite direction of the nuclear power industry. Where do you find on Wall Street people lining up to invest in nuclear plants? No one can simultaneously argue for a free-market economy and for nuclear power. You can't! You cannot do nuclear power without massive federal subsidies. It's just not going to happen."
Before I leave, Wasserman has one more point to make: "I do intend to make it as difficult for them as possible. I will tell you that the antinuclear network is very much intact. It's a geezer battalion - I'm 61." He is silent for a moment, remembering. "In '77, I was 31. It was just so much fun. Some people are actually looking forward to doing it again. Those of us who can still walk will be back in droves, with our kids. This is not going to be a walk in the park for these guys."
Who will build them if they come?
Follow the Ohio River in the direction the current flows, all the way to the toe of Indiana, through Evansville and into tiny Mount Vernon, past the Civil War statue on the village square (a Union soldier; across the river he'd be a Reb) and out the other side of town, and you come to BWXT's Mount Vernon facility, the only factory in America that can still build large-scale nuclear components.
GE and Westinghouse used to do a lot of that kind of work too, building complex reactor vessels from massive forgings born in the steel mills of eastern Pennsylvania and shipping them worldwide. Both have since shed their nuclear manufacturing divisions and today focus on design. That leaves BWXT, and in time it will have to go to Japan Steel Works for its forgings.
When the bottom fell out of the market in 1978, the Mount Vernon plant went from employing 1,400 people to a ghost factory, ultimately allowing its coveted "N" security stamp - required for nuclear work - to expire. It got the stamp back a year ago, and already things are picking up. Right now Mount Vernon is working on two 60-ton replacement reactor heads for PG&E's Diablo Canyon facility in California. Plant manager Michael Keene and his boss Rod Woolsey, VP of the nuclear division, take me on a tightlipped tour of the factory floor, refusing to say much about the gleaming steel reactor vessels - some as big as circus elephants, others more like whales - I observe along the way. "Government" is all I can get out of them. Workers circulate on bicycles. No hardhats, which seems odd. Until I grasp that if anything in this pantheon topples, it will flatten my whole body, not just my head.
Back in D.C., BWXT lobbyists are working hard to juice the order flow, angling for legislation that would open up foreign markets to U.S. manufacturers and pushing for someone to stand up on the national stage and articulate a thrilling goal say, 30 new nuclear plants by 2030. Pointing out that much of the domestic nuclear industry is down to at most a single supplier for every major type of component, they're also asking for tax credits to train new workers and tax incentives on capital improvements. "If we can't do this type of blue-collar work," BWXT's chief lobbyist, Craig Hansen, told me, "we might as well throw our hands up and say we are no longer a manufacturing country." His pointed warning: "We may exchange one form of energy dependence for another form of energy dependence."
What will happen in an emergency?
I'm following another river road, this one tracking the Mississippi near Hahnville, La., 20 miles west of New Orleans in what used to be rice and sugarcane country. Now it's an industrial zone. There's a big Union Carbide chemical plant in Hahnville, and right next door, a nuclear plant, Entergy's Waterford 3 reactor, and outside Waterford 3, a hair-raising public-information billboard, headlined WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN AN EMERGENCY AT WATERFORD 3?
"If there is a problem, state and parish officials will decide how severe it is. Most problems will not affect you. If the experts decide there is a serious emergency, however, you may have to protect yourself. Stay as calm as you can. You will have some time to take the needed steps. Remember that nuclear plants do not explode.
"Do not use your telephone. Do not call or go to your children's school. Cover your nose and mouth with a handkerchief or other cloth. Close the windows and doors if you are in a building or car.
"What if you are told to SHELTER IN PLACE? Go inside your house or some other building. Stay inside until your radio or TV says you can leave safely. Keep your pets inside.
"What if you are told to evacuate? Get your family together and prepare to leave. Pack only what you will need most."
Reading that, my heart goes out to Ann Jupiter, who has lived in the shadow of Waterford 3 since it was built in 1985. "It's always scary," she told me when I stopped to visit. "When it ain't doing nothing, it's scary."
What's it really like inside a nuclear power plant?
More than halfway through my journey now, crossing Texas today from Bay City on the gulf to the New Mexico border, I'm thinking about all the nuclear plants I've seen so far - a total of 14 reactors in nine states - and what I've learned.
I've learned that nuclear power is concentrated along the Eastern Seaboard but that Illinois has more nuclear plants (11) and generates more nuclear power (nearly 95 million megawatt-hours) than any other state.
I've learned that nuclear plants are almost always off someplace by themselves, which makes sense. People don't want to live next to one if they can help it. Animals don't care, though. In fact, animals find a lot to like wherever there's a nuclear plant, starting with the absence of human beings. Plus nuclear plants don't make a lot of noise. They don't poison the air with dirty smokestacks, the way coal plants do. They don't kill birds, the way wind turbines sometimes do. No wonder so many nuclear plants are surrounded by nature preserves.
I've learned that the inside of a nuclear plant is all cramped corridors and shiny floors and exposed pipes. That you have to wear earplugs in the turbine room and a hardhat almost everywhere, but that the earplugs go in your pocket and the hardhat comes off when you and your escort knock on the control room door and ask permission to enter. Nothing dangling - that's the rule in the control room - and nothing that might fall off our head and trip a switch that's better left untripped.
I've learned about the etymology of SCRAM, an acronym reportedly coined by Enrico Fermi, who presided over the world's first nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago on Dec. 2, 1942. Fermi stationed a colleague, Norman Hillberry, next to the rope used to raise and lower the control rods, with an ax. Hillberry's job, if called upon, was to chop the rope with a single swing, immediately halting the reaction. Hillberry's title, the story goes, was Safety Control Rod Ax Man. I didn't see any axmen in the control rooms I visited, but I saw plenty of red SCRAM switches - same thing. Sometimes they're labeled "RX Trip." Give one a 45-degree clockwise yank, and the control rods plunge into the core and the reactor shuts down in seconds.
I've learned that since Three Mile Island, every nuclear plant in America has at least two inspectors from the NRC onsite at all times. They have the best passes available, offering free run of the plant, anytime, anywhere. And since Three Mile Island, I've also learned, every control room operator spends a week in training and testing at regular intervals in a customized simulator room, identical in every detail to the control room where the operator works.
I've learned that a nuclear plant is like a refrigerator it hums along pretty well all by itself, with minimal human intervention, except when you have to shut it down. Then you have a lot of work to do. I've learned that spent fuel rods are stored in 40 feet of water; that while a fuel-rod pool room is technically an RCA (radiation-controlled area), you can walk right up to the edge of the pool and look down in there and gaze upon the fuel rods in their honeycomb tombs, hot and glowing from the radiation still in them, and not worry about getting sick. But if you were to tumble into the pool and dive down to the bottom and touch one, you'd never make it back to the surface.
Will we have to rely on a foreign source of fuel?
I arrive around lunchtime in tiny Eunice, N.M.? Pretty bleak, this place, at least to my Eastern eyes: all pump jacks and natural-gas lines, otherwise not so much as a bump on the landscape. "It's good when it's good" is how Brenda Brooks from nearby Hobbs assesses the local economy, "and it's really bad when it's really bad." Which helps explain Brooks' new job. She's director of communications and community affairs for Urenco, a European consortium that's building the first advanced fuel-enrichment plant in the U.S., just 4 1/2 miles east of Eunice. The hope in the U.S. is that the new factory will help lessen our reliance on foreign sources of enriched uranium, much of which now comes from Russia. The hope in Eunice is that it will bring a measure of economic stability to the region, once it's up and running in 2009 and employing 300 people. Already, says Brooks, there are hundreds of construction workers on site, most of them living in overstuffed trailer parks in Eunice and Hobbs. Community resistance was minimal, but Urenco was taking no chances. The company flew community leaders to the Netherlands to see an identical plant that has been operating safely for years. "There's a day care across the street, and there's nobody running around with four legs and horns growing out of their forehead," says Brooks. "It's all cool."
Where will we store the waste?
The Yucca Mountain tour starts here in Las Vegas, at the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. "There is a billion or two dollars' worth of science studies, but there's no nuclear waste out there," says Allen Benson, publicity director. Benson has been here 11 years, so he has given this rap a few times before. Says there's room at Yucca Mountain for "70,000 metric tons" of nuclear waste. (Which tells you something right away. It tells you that the origins of this hoary federal program date all the way back to that hopeful period when it seemed possible that Americans might be persuaded to convert to metric weights and measures. He means 77,000 regular tons.) "Whatever happens with nuclear power, nuclear renaissance, what have you," says Benson, "we currently have about 55,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel already, which something has to be done with." Absolute best-case scenario: Waste starts arriving in 2017. "That means everything occurs as we need, we get the appropriations we need - but it does not account for litigation. There will be litigation. We have no illusions about that." Nye County, the vast chunk of desert mountainscape that encompasses not only Yucca Mountain but also a former nuclear bomb test site, is not the issue. Nye County has been cashing Energy Department tax-equivalency checks for years - in 2007 it got $11.25 million, or about one-third of its operating budget. But nine other counties are contiguous to Nye including Las Vegas County - and the law says they all get their say. Already the NRC has built a dedicated facility in Las Vegas, out near the airport, just to host the hearings. Those get underway late next year.
The costs so far are staggering: About $9 billion since the inception of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1983. But that's just the beginning. What Benson calls the "total system life-cycle cost" - covering final regulatory approval, complete construction, the transport of radioactive waste to the site, and the storing of said waste in such a way that all interested parties are satisfied that it won't be disturbed for at least 10,000 years - that total stands at $58.5 billion. "We're working on a revised total-cost analysis," says Benson. "It will be higher." Yucca was supposed to begin receiving waste in 1998. When that didn't happen, the utilities were forced to make other plans. Existing spent fuel pools, like the ones I've seen, are at about 80% of capacity and projected to reach 100% by 2015. The next option is what's known as dry cask storage - basically, burying the spent fuel rods onsite. And Plan B, if Yucca Mountain never gets approval to begin receiving waste? There is no Plan B.
The drive to Yucca Mountain from Las Vegas in the Energy Department van takes about two hours. We park at the north entrance to the tunnel, don hardhats, and poke our heads inside. It's U-shaped, I'm told, and five miles long, but we venture just far enough to escape the heat. According to the plans, one day this tunnel will be the path down which sealed canisters of radioactive waste travel to their final resting place 1,000 feet below the ridgeline of the mountain. Construction of the tombs, however, has yet to begin, pending licensing approval. Other than testing, all progress at Yucca has been stalled since 1997.
What can a convert teach us?
Stewart Brand is a greenie from way back. Creator of the Whole Earth Catalog in his hippie days. Taught a generation about organic farming and composting toilets and how to live off the land. His house is a tugboat in San Francisco Bay, but his office is in a flowery, forested nook in Sausalito, Calif. Brand greets me all dressed in black, right down to his sandals - that's his style. White hair, what's left of it. Blue-gray eyes. A reading chair in the corner of his office and a grandfather clock. Many shelves of books, meticulously organized. Knows right where to find the ones he wants, pulls them out while we talk, drops them on the table, thunk.
"What did you think of Yucca Mountain?" he wants to know. Weird, I say. Dickensian. Probably doomed.
"Depending on how you count it, somewhere between $6 billion and $13 billion has been thrown down that rat hole," he says, and for that he blames ... himself. "Me and my fellow environmentalists," he means, "who said you've gotta prove that this is absolutely, perfectly safe for 10,000 years. You can't do scenarios for 10,000 years - everything flies apart. One hundred fifty or 200 years from now, humanity will either be pretty much unrecognizable, hovering around in terms of communication and starting to speciate new kinds of Homo sapiens, or if not that, we'll be back in the Stone Age, in which case a bit of radiation in Nevada is the least of our problems. So the whole thing, I think - not entirely intentionally - was set up as a self-defeating proposition."
There are alternatives. Brand got involved a couple of years ago with Canada's national debate on what to do about its nuclear waste. The solution Canada came up with? Rather than stash it for 10,000 years, put it away for 175 years, specifically seven generations. "Basically put it there while we think about it," says Brand. "See what other options come along. Each new generation of nuclear reactor is safer and cheaper and smaller and smarter than the previous one, and that will probably continue. Likewise whatever we might want to do with the spent fuel." Brand, if you haven't figured it out, is a convert. Or in his words, a "mild nuclear proponent." For Brand, the only real issue is global warming. And nuclear power, he believes, may be our best option. "From coal you get carbon dioxide. Billions of tons of carbon dioxide. The difference in consequence is enormous. In the context of carbon dioxide, suddenly spent fuel looks pretty good."
Brave nuke world?
The end of my journey brings me all the way back to the beginning, to the Idaho National Laboratory in southern Idaho. It was here, on Dec. 20, 1951, that Walter Zinn, a veteran of the Manhattan Project, fired up Experimental Breeder Reactor-1 and illuminated a string of four 75-watt light bulbs; the next day he lit the whole building. That was the first time atomic power had ever been used to generate electricity. Today EBR-1 is a tourist attraction. Not a very popular one - only about 5,000 visitors a year - but here it is, the original reactor vessel (you can stand on the head; it was decommissioned in 1964), the control room (retro, of course, but so are the new ones), and a string of replacement bulbs the tour guide assures me look just like the originals. High on the wall behind the reactor, preserved behind glass, are the chalk signatures of the 17 scientists and one janitor who were present that day. Afterward one of the scientists, Reid Cameron, climbed back up the ladder and sketched a crude illustration to go with the list of names, something he thought emblematic of their achievement. I can't make it out at first. Some kind of wild-eyed creature whose breath is the wind. Turns out it's the devil.
Over the years Idaho Lab scientists have designed and built 52 test reactors. Three are operational today, including the largest test reactor in the world. The mood at the lab these days is more hopeful than it's been in decades. Phil Hildebrandt, who's working on so-called Generation IV reactors - far-off technology that's safer, more reliable, and more versatile (with potential applications in the coming hydrogen economy) than anything that's out there today - says, "This is not unlike what we did 55 years ago with the Shippingport reactor in Pennsylvania. It's where government and the commercial world partner to develop things that are difficult for the commercial world to develop by itself."
Kathryn McCarthy, 45, a staff scientist at the lab since 1991, would be happy just to see one new plant built before she retires. "I'm sort of from that generation where we haven't done anything real," she says. "I've done lot of things on paper, a lot of testing. But to actually see that move to the next step and have a plant come online would be a huge deal, it really would."
Flying home that night, I'm thinking about what I've learned. I'm remembering what Stewart Brand said when I left him in Sausalito. Two important things. To his old friends in the antinuke movement, "Don't let up for a minute. Keep bearing down. But take in hand the other things that need to happen besides solar and wind and biofuels to actually get ahead of a problem that is already far ahead of us." And to his old enemies? "I'm sorry. I was wrong, you were right. I'm sorry."

Rethinking Three Mile Island

Rethinking Three Mile Island
It was billed as the nation's worst commercial nuclear accident, but how bad was it really?

By David Whitford, Fortune editor-at-large
July 31 2007: 2:02 PM EDT
Editor-at-large David Whitford went on a 7,000 mile road trip to examine America's nuclear past and the resurgent industry's plans for the future. This is the first of five installments from his reporter's notebook.
(Fortune) -- Ralph DeSantis was home in bed before dawn on March 28, 1979 when his phone rang. It was his shift supervisor at Three Mile Island (TMI), calling from the plant. "'We have an emergency at Unit II and it's serious,'" is the first thing DeSantis remembers hearing. Then he heard the alarms going off.
Twenty-eight years after the worst accident in the history of the US nuclear power industry, the alarms are still going off, and the consequences are still being felt. That's why I made TMI one of my first stops on a two-week, 7,000-mile road trip through the past, present and future of nuclear power in America.
The accident at Unit 2 gave the industry a bad name, but Unit 1 still runs smoothly.

Power Trip
See the stops along the author's route, as he toured America's nuclear plants.Go to map
The power generation gap
• Going nuclear
The industry is gearing up to build its first new plants in decades.
• Rethinking Three Mile Island
How bad was the accident really?
• America’s nuclear revival
The industry is coming alive in the Midwest's Ohio Valley.
• The high cost of going nuclear
Will power companies foot the bill?
• The trouble with nuclear waste
It's not easy building a home for spent radioactive material.
• In search of safe nukes
An Idaho lab is at work on next generation reactors that promise to deliver more reliable energy.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/storysupplement/nuketour/2007/index.htm

DeSantis showed me around. He still works at TMI, although his job has changed. He used to be a security guard. Now he's a flack, a function which - and this is hard to believe - did not exist at Three Mile Island before the accident.
Somebody had to manage the crush of reporters, DeSantis stepped in, and that's what he's been doing ever since. So there's one small consequence of TMI: a new career for DeSantis, not to mention greatly expanded job opportunities for flacks throughout the industry.
TMI also confirmed a lot of people's worst fears about nuclear power, including, I'll admit, my own. I never really examined those fears again until recently, and I don't think I'm alone in that regard. After TMI, nuclear power sort of fell off the radar in the United States. Whatever your feelings 30 years ago, chances are you still feel the same way.
Impact on health
I think the question we need to ask ourselves now is pretty simple: Is it time to take a fresh look at nuclear power? One of the experts I talked to before I began my trip was Andy Kadak, a professor in the top-ranked nuclear engineering department at MIT. I asked Kadak, What were the health consequences of TMI? "Nothing," he insisted, "Practically speaking, nothing."
Then he addressed Chernobyl. "That was a worst-case scenario. Ten kilometers were significantly affected, but were cleaned up. Thirty kilometers were made into a restricted zone, but now people are coming back, rightly or wrongly. There was radiation distributed around the world - but it was probably less than what was emitted by nuclear weapons testing back in the '50s or '60s. It was clearly unacceptable.
"But I don't think it gets any worse than that. You had a burning fire throwing up this radioactive debris and distributing it all over the planet. It doesn't get worse than that." Kadak's conclusion: "Even in the worst-case scenarios it's very hard to see a global nuclear nightmare occurring because of a nuclear accident."
Putting things in perspective
Kadak and others led me to James Lovelock's fascinating book, "The Revenge of Gaia." Lovelock is a British environmental scientist who has come to the hard conclusion that the unprecedented challenge of global warming leaves us no choice but to make a massive global investment in nuclear power, which emits no greenhouse gasses.
Are there safety risks associated with that? Well, sure, but here's how Lovelock puts those risks in perspective.
How many people died at TMI, Lovelock asks? Zero. How many at Chernobyl? According to an authoritative study conducted by the United Nation's World Health Organization 19 years after the accident, no more than 75 people died at Chernobyl. And remember, that was a worst-case scenario.
What about the long-term risks of cancer for those exposed to radiation from Chernobyl? The United Nations Scientific Committee on the the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) reported last year that "among the residents of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, there had been up to the year 2002 about 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported in children and adolescents who were exposed at the time of the accident, and more cases can be expected during the next decades."
There were consequences, in other words. The risks are real.
But Lovelock then asks us to consider China's Yangtze Dam, a huge source of squeaky clean hydroelectric power. "If the dam burst," Lovelock points out, whether because of an earthquake or an act of terrorism, "perhaps as many as a million people would be killed in the wave of water roaring down the course of the Yangtze River."
A million people. Why is that an acceptable risk, and nuclear power is not?