Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those working to create a nuclear free world.
By Michael Steinberg
“The 103 nuclear power plants in America produce 20 % of the nation’s electricity without producing a single pound of air pollution or greenhouse gases.”
President George W. Bush, June 22, 2005.
The above quote cited in no nukes activist Dr. Helen Calicott’s 2006 book Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer illustrates the irony of a March 22 Associated Press report “Biden announces $6 Billion to revive dying nuclear plants.”
The names and faces and political parties in power may change, but the shill game remains the same: waste incredible fortunes on dangerous discredited boondoggles.
Nuclear power came into being as a reaction to the public’s horror after the US’s use of nuclear bombs to devastate Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In reaction to this the government instituted the “Atoms for Peace program, most notably encouraging electric companies to build large nuclear power plants with huge subsidies that would produce electricity promised to be “too cheap to meter.”
The Associated Press Article said Biden’s scheme was “intended to bailout financially distressed owners and operators of US nuclear reactors.”
A bidding process started earlier in April to shell out megabucks to nuke owners who have already announced plans to shut down their bankrupt nuclear plants.
The US taxpayer scam is to come from Biden’s $1 Trillion infrastructure bill, enacted last November.
Over the past decade, a number of nuke plants closed prematurely because they no longer made money.
Nuclear reactors in the US were designed to last only 40 years. Most of them started up in the 1970s and 80s. so now many are approaching or have surpassed their operating lives. As they age increasingly expensive repairs keep shutting them down.
For example, Unit 2 at the fittingly named Millstone nuclear plant in my old stomping ground of southeastern Connecticut started up in 1975, making it 47 years old now. Last year its failure to follow established safety rules during Hurricane caused flooding in the reactor building and a subsequent spanking from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Under the Biden scheme, the San Onofre nuclear plant in Southern California, which closed permanently in 2012 after gross mismanagement, could still be operating at great risk of causing another Fukushima.
California’s last nuke plant, the aptly monickered Diablo Canyon, is planning to close its two reactors in a few years, to be replaced with renewable energy generation. But Biden’s boondoggle threatens to undo this too.
Sources: Associated Press, ap.com; Nuclear Power is Not the answer, Dr. Helen Caldicott, 2006.
{ 0 comments… add one now }