American Forum

Pam Solo

AMERICAN FORUM
By Pam Solo and Grant Smith

The reactor disaster in Fukushima is so fresh in our memories that it may seem incomprehensible to think that the history of that tragic (and still unfolding) event in Japan could ever be rewritten and distorted. But history tells us that the nuclear power industry is very adept at revising the facts about every major reactor disaster.

Consider the Three Mile Island (TMI) reactor crisis in the United States. Thanks to years of industry propaganda, many Americans now assume that the panic that followed in the wake of this near-disaster situation derailed the nuclear power industry in the United States, halting its forward momentum in its prime. (Just watch: If the industry falters after Fukushima, it will once again pin the blame on “unreasoning panic” by the public.)

Panic was not the issue after the Three Mile Island. In reality, the U.S. nuclear power industry was already dead in the water by the time of the TMI accident. The culprit was not unreasoning panic on the part of the public. What killed nuclear power more than a quarter of a century ago was cold, hard economics: Nuclear power was just too expensive to build.

Remember the promises made about nuclear power?

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AMERICAN FORUM

By Rick Weidman

When I served as an Army medic in Vietnam, I often saw a 19-year-old solider whose job was to spray an herbicide called Agent Orange on anything green inside my base. The same was true around the perimeter, to deny cover to any enemy intruders and to ensure a clear line of fire in case of enemy attack.

As I visited numerous American military bases in Vietnam during the war, they all looked like moonscapes. They were stripped of grass and foliage by the same chemical for the same reasons.

Now, more than 40 years after the war, we know that Agent Orange contained dioxin, which is among the world’s most lethal toxins. American veterans of Vietnam fought a long, hard postwar struggle to get our Veterans Administration to compensate troops for a dozen diseases associated with Agent Orange/dioxin. But what about the Vietnamese who were also exposed? And what about the leftover “hot spots” of dioxin that still exist there and continue to harm people to this very day?


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IOWA FORUM

By Mark Cooper

Why would anyone pay a $150 for something that costs $100? They wouldn’t if they had a choice, and that’s the problem with new nuclear reactors. Wall Street knows that new reactors cost too much and won’t fund them. But MidAmerican wants to build them, so the company is looking to the Iowa ratepayer to play the fool.

MidAmerican’s 636,000 customers in Iowa are captive customers; they can’t shop for the best power deal. Historically, when a utility wants to add new generating capacity it must build the plant and begin producing electricity before seeking to recover the costs from its customers. They can only recover costs that are reasonable and prudent. And the utility’s rate of return on its investment in the new plant should be commensurate with the risk the utility faces in undertaking the project.

MidAmerican, through HSB 124 and SSB 1144, wants to turn the whole process on its head. As a result, all three of these traditional consumer protections would be dramatically weakened.


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OHIO FORUM

By Pat Marida and Beatrice Brailsford

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is considering giving a $2 billion loan guarantee to United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) to build a uranium enrichment facility in Ohio. Many in the state are hailing this project for bringing in much-needed jobs, but financially, the project is on shaky ground and is unlikely to bring anything but debt and dashed hopes to Ohio’s residents.

U.S. taxpayers are already on the hook for $2 billion in guarantees that DOE offered to the French government-owned company Areva to build a similar uranium enrichment facility in Idaho. Once that $3.3 billion facility gets a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and begins operating in four years or so, it is supposed to supply fuel to about 50 nuclear reactors, but not exclusively to plants in the U.S.

All this taxpayer money is being waved around in the name of moving the U.S. toward a clean energy policy. But what are American taxpayers being asked to invest in? Let’s take a closer look at the bets Washington is making with our tax dollars.


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AMERICAN FORUM

By Michael Mariotte

American taxpayers bailed out the banks. They bailed out auto manufacturers. But at least they were our banks and automakers. Now, taxpayers are once again being asked to lend a hand. This time it's to subsidize multi-billion-dollar foreign companies with names like Toshiba, Hitachi and Areva. If the going gets rough for them, taxpayers will be forced to dig into their pockets to bail them out, too.

America needs to invest in new forms of energy: to combat climate change and increase security by reducing our dependence on foreign suppliers. But that reality is being used by some on Capitol Hill to justify the expenditure of billions of dollars to construct new nuclear reactors – a high-cost, high-risk gamble.

Various proposals in both the House and Senate call for as much as $54 billion in taxpayer-supplied loan guarantees for new reactors. Another bill would put no ceiling on the amount of guarantees.

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AMERICAN FORUM

By Dr. Jeffery Patterson

GEORGIA FORUM

By Peter A. Bradford

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