·
The
Legislature is picking winners and losers. The amendment that passed the Commerce Committee does nothing to
protect ratepayers who will be forced to pay for the new plant through
their monthly bills while MidAmerican Energy stands to profit from the
plant. In other words, this bill socializes the investment and
privatizes the profit. This is not how the free market is
supposed to operate.
Pre-emptive
bailout. Ratepayers
would be forced to pay all costs including licensing, construction and
production and any litigation costs or expenses incurred even if the
project is canceled. Private investors are skittish about
putting their money into nuclear power. This bill takes all the
risk away from private investors and shareholders.
How big will it really be?
MidAmerican Energy President Bill Fehrman told legislators in
2011 that the proposed plant would be 1,000 to 1,600 megawatts.
Sen. Matt McCoy told fellow Senators during a Commerce
Committee meeting on March 13, 2012, that the proposed plant would be
600 megawatts from small module reactors (SMRs). Nothing in the
bill restricts MidAmerican Energy to using SMRs.
Simply "fixing" ratemaking principles is
not enough to fix HF561. The bill before the Senate does not restrict
MidAmerican Energy to a particular technology. If the energy company
chooses to build a conventional nuclear power plant, it has that
option available. It seems very unlikely that the Iowa Utilities Board
would ever require MidAmerican Energy to stop construction.
The baseload argument is a myth.
MidAmerican Energy maintains it
needs the nuclear power plant to provide "baseload" to its
customers. The reality is MidAmerican does not need a central power
plant for baseload. Renewable sources can generate the energy and the
capacity needed. The company will most likely sell its excess
electricity to other states leaving Iowans with all of the safety and
financial risk. Find
more information about baseload.
The
Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant
north of Omaha has a Current Electric Rating of 478.6 MW
and provides electricity to approximately 754,000 people in southeast
Nebraska, including Omaha.Fort Calhoun has not been producing power for nearly a
year. While shut down for refueling, the Missouri River flooded, then
a fire knocked out the used fuel cooling system.
According to the Associated Press, “…the
[Nuclear Regulatory Commission] said [in its March 12, 2012 report]
the fire is considered a major concern because it could have happened
any time and because workers didn’t fully investigate an unusual
smell in the area three days earlier, which could have led them to
discover the problem and prevent the fire.”3
The plant hasn’t operated for almost a year and the lights haven’t
gone off in Omaha.
Iowans don't support nuclear
power. The issue isn't only about the thousands of Iowans
who have already contacted their legislators through phone calls and
emails. Iowans simply don't want it. Poll IOWA's survey of
600 Iowans in April 2011 found that 74 percent opposed paying higher
electric rates for a new nuclear power plant while 17 percent favored
it. In addition, Poll IOWA respondents indicated 70 percent
preferred investing in renewable sources while 22 percent preferred
nuclear reactors.4 A May 2011
poll of 400 likely voters 50 and older indicated that 77 percent
opposed this measure with more than half (52%) strongly opposed and 20
percent somewhat opposed to the advanced ratemaking principles
forwarded in HF561.5
Americans in general don't want it.
According to a Civil Society Institute poll in March 2012, nearly 60
percent of respondents indicated they are less supportive of nuclear
power expansion in the U.S. now than they were before the Fukushima
disaster. Meanwhile, 77 percent of respondents indicated they
are now more supportive than they were a year ago "to using clean
renewable energy resources - such as wind and solar - and increased
energy efficiency as an alternative to more nuclear power in the
United States."6 In
another national survey, The Harris Poll asked 2,056 adults if the
benefits outweighed the risks from a list of energy generation
sources. The Midwest respondents indicated that 74 percent
thought solar energy risks outweighed the benefits; 76 percent
indicated wind risks outweighed the benefits but only 40 percent
thought nuclear risks outweighed the benefits.7
The future of renewable sources
in jeopardy. The addition of a new nuclear power plant would
take all discussion about additional renewable energy sources off
the table for 60-65 years. As technology improves and the cost
decreases for wind and solar, small-scale renewable power would not be
realized in Iowa for several generations.
Bloated jobs estimates.
According to a University of Massachusetts report, more jobs are
created per $1 million investment in renewable energy sources than are
created with nuclear power.8
The report indicates that solar and wind eclipse nuclear in the
number of jobs created.
Industry
|
Direct
|
Indirect
|
Induced
|
Total Jobs
|
Solar
|
5.4
|
4.40
|
3.92
|
13.72
|
Biomass
|
7.4
|
5.00
|
4.96
|
17.36
|
Wind
|
4.6
|
4.90
|
3.8
|
13.3
|
Nuclear
|
1.2
|
1.80
|
1.2
|
4.2
|
A million
years of waste. After decades of trying to find an
appropriate strategy for the highly radioactive spent fuel, a site has
yet to be found. The U.S. Department of Energy sought a site
that could accommodate storage for 10,000 years. However, the
District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled that the Energy department
needed to find a depository that could store spent fuel for up to
1,000,000 years.9 Although the
Energy department had considered Yucca Mountain in Nevada as well as
sites in Texas and Washington state, the department has now abandoned
those possibilities. A solution has not yet been found and there
is no recognition that an appropriate site will ever be found.
However, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering allowing
nuclear power plants to store spent fuel on site for 300 years until a
permanent depository can be found.
Isn't it easier and quicker to deal with spent fuel by not building
any additional plants?
Water contamination. Tritium,
a naturally occurring radioactive form of hydrogen, is produced in the
atmosphere when cosmic rays collide with air molecules and is found in
very small or trace amounts in groundwater throughout the world.
Tritium is also a byproduct of the production of electricity by
nuclear power plants. Most of the tritium produced in nuclear power
plants stems from a chemical, known as boron, absorbing neutrons from
the plant’s chain reaction. Tritium can bond with oxygen to
form water. When this happens, the resulting water (called
“tritiated water”) is radioactive. Tritiated water (not to be
confused with heavy water) is chemically identical to normal water and
the tritium cannot be filtered out of the water. Tritium is
almost always found as tritiated water and primarily enters the body
when people eat or drink food or water containing tritium or absorb it
through their skin. People can also inhale tritium as a gas in the
air.10 According to
the Nuclear Regulation Commission, a body exposed to tritium absorbs
it evenly in the soft tissues and the body excretes half of the
tritium within 10 days.
There are other forms of water
pollution attributed to nuclear power and the plants that produce
it.
-
Heavy
metals and salts build up in the plants' water systems.
These pollutants can contaminate lakes and rivers and can be
particularly harmful to water quality, aquatic life and humans who
drink the water.
-
According
to the Environmental Protection Commission, runoff water that
comes in contact with the reactors can contaminate groundwater.
-
Nuclear
power plants are constructed on large amounts of land that must be
cleared. Such construction could potentially contaminate the
land making it uninhabitable to plants and wildlife.
-
Finally,
the radioactive waste can be a potential contaminant to the
water. Currently, waste is stored at the site in steel
containers. However, if any of these steel containers spring
a leak -- as happened at the Daiichi plant in Fukushima --
radioactive chemicals can pollute nearby waters.11
MidAmerican Energy has not identified where it plans
to site the plant nor what kind of cooling technology it plans to
use. Any thermal discharge into a water body will effect the
plants and animals that rely on that water source for survival.
This
image shows the thermal discharge from a nuclear plant into a lake.
The warm water (red) discharged from the circulating water system
enters the lake via a long canal and then cools as it flows
counterclockwise around the lake, guided by a long weir wall. The
cooled water (dark blue) is drawn back into the plant’s intake
structure for another cycle.12
This
drawing shows the discharge piping routed along the river bottom to
diffuse the warm water
discharged
from the circulating water system into the river. The diffuser pipes
extend out into the river along its bed for optimal mixing between
the warm discharge water and the cooler river water.13
First
of a Kind Technology? Each 45 MWe
small module reactor produced would use pressurized water fuel rods in 17x17 bundles that
are one-half the length of conventional rods. Each module would be in
a separate containment, but would operate in the same large pool of
water. The modules would be refueled every two years.14
NuScale, the likely provider of the nuclear
reactors MidAmerican Energy proposes, began its
pre-application review meetings with the NRC in July 2008. The formal
application is expected to be submitted in 2012.15
The Design
Certification proceeding was expected to take at least 24 to 36 months after
the application was submitted. NuScale’s
design may not be certified for several years.
Made in
China? In order to reduce costs, it
is likely that manufacturing will move to countries with cheaper labor
forces, such as China, where severe quality problems have arisen in
many products from drywall to infant formula to rabies vaccine.16
Iowans deserve to know before the plant is built what would happen if a defect in
the small module reactors
was discovered and how it would be mitigated
Remembering
past disasters. The Commerce Committee approved the
amendment and the bill two days after the first anniversary of the
Fukushima tsunami/earthquake/nuclear power plant disaster. The
Fukushima disaster resulted in 7 million Japanese acres
contaminated with radioactive cesium.
In Iowa, that equates to a $7 billion loss in corn and $47 billion in land lost.
A nuclear accident in Iowa would devastate our economy. Japan
has permanently closed all of its 80 nuclear power plants and
approximately 80,000 Japanese people were permanently
evacuated from their homes. See
"Images
Released of the Tsunami Striking Fukushima."
Iowans are entitled to know how they
would be protected -- and evacuated -- from a nuclear accident at
MidAmerican Energy's proposed site in the event of an E4 or E5
tornado, flooding as experienced numerous times in the past few years
by the Missouri, Des Moines, Cedar, Iowa and Mississippi Rivers, an earthquake
from the New Madrid Fault, a blizzard-like snow storm or any other natural
disaster.
Iowans deserve
better than this.
Citations:
1
Perry Beeman, "MidAmerican president: Iowans face 10 percent rate increase for nuclear
plant,” The Des Moines Register, March 17, 2011. http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2011/03/17/117527/
Nancy
Gaarder, “OPPD flood costs:
$44.5 million,” Omaha World Herald, August 11, 2011.
3
Josh Funk, "Feds: Nebraska nuke plant fire was serious threat,"
Associated Press, March 13, 2012. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iK9i9kAul9-Cj5oY9GFINpl_3K8g?docId=9ca86489bc424644ba7ad2dc2473992e
4
Poll IOWA, "Iowans and the proposed nuclear energy
bill," http://polliowa.org/?q=press-release/iowans-and-proposed-nuclear-energy-bill
5
Rod Boshart, "Poll: Older Iowans oppose power plant
funding shift," Sioux City Journal, May 31, 2011.
http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/state-and-regional/article_20d4a130-435e-54f8-ab92-5d7ef175495d.html
6
Civil Society Institute, "SURVEY: AMERICANS NOT WARMING
UP TO NUCLEAR POWER ONE YEAR AFTER FUKUSHIMA: Contrary to Industry
Predictions, Reactor Disaster Seen As Having a "Lasting Chill"
on Perceptions; It's Not All Fukushima: 3 in 5 Americans Less
Supportive Due to Woes of U.S. Nuclear Industry in Last Year.'" http://www.civilsocietyinstitute.org/media/030712release.cfm
7
PRNewswire, "One Year Post Fukushima, Americans Are
Divided About the Risks of Nuclear Power," March 14, 2012.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/one-year-post-fukushima-americans-are-divided-about-the-risks-of-nuclear-power-142618056.html
8
Heidi Garrett-Peltier and Robert Pollin, "How Infrastructure
Investments Support the U.S. Economy: Employment, Productivity and
Growth," University of Massachusetts Political Economy and
Research Institute, January 2009.
9
Nuclear Energy Institute vs. EPA, 373F.3D1251(D.C.Cir.2004).
10
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, “Backgrounder
on Tritium, Radiation Protection Limits, and Drinking Water Standards.”
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/tritium-radiation-fs.html
11
e-How Health, “Ways That
Nuclear Plants Affect Water Pollution.”
http://www.ehow.com/info_8488811_ways-plants-affect-water-pollution.html
12
David Lochbaum, “Got
Water?,” Union of Concerned Scientists, October 2007.
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/20071204-ucs-brief-got-water.pdf
13
Ibid.
14
Arjun Makhijani and Michele Boyd, "Small Modular Reactors: No Solution for the Cost, Safety, and Waste
Problems of Nuclear Power," Institute for Energy and
Environmental Research and Physicians for Social Responsibility,
September 2010. http://www.psr.org/nuclear-bailout/resources/small-modular-reactors-no.pdf
15
Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/advanced/nuscale.html
Op cit. Makhijani and Boyd.
