April 2001

Nuclear energy, and its waste, make comeback

For years the nuclear industry has been quietly preparing for an opportunity to gain its lost prominence as an energy provider. Now, with the administration's support, they are using California's apparent energy crisis as the pretext for reviving an industry once struck down by mass opposition. In sync with President Bush, Senator Murkowski (R-Alaska) is pushing the "National Energy Security Act of 2001" that goes far beyond opening up the fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling.

Declaring "We have an energy crisis in this country," Murkowski says the solution is increased energy production, so his bill will "concentrate on increasing the supply of conventional energy--clean coal, nuclear, gas and oil." Subsidizing those industries is the focus of the bill--to the tune of $20 billion to be handed over to corporations such as Exxon-Mobil which made record profits of $17 billion last year.

It's no surprise that Murkowski, Bush, and Cheney want to award their oil industry buddies gigantic subsidies from tax money. But less noticed is the nearly $1 billion in spending on nuclear power. Besides proposing tax credits, subsidized loans, and direct state funding for nuclear power reactors, the bill extends the Price-Anderson Act, a kind of free liability insurance just for nukes. And where Bush and his allies are for the free market when that means rejecting price caps on electricity for California's working people, they are all for price guarantees for nuclear power producers, in case the electricity they produce should get too cheap.

What's not in the bill is anything more than token support for renewable energy such as solar or wind power, or any measures to improve efficiency. Small increases in auto fuel mileage standards would save more oil than could ever be pumped out of the Arctic . But would that help oil and nuclear corporations?

As if Congress could decree it, Murkowski's act declares nuclear power a "renewable energy resource!" He even wants nukes to qualify for Clean Air Act non-pollution credits. The Clinton administration similarly wanted international global warming accords to allow industrialized countries to earn greenhouse gas credits for building nukes in the Third World--until vociferous protests from below forced a near--unanimous rejection of this position in last November's talks at The Hague.

As for nuclear waste, Murkowski and the administration not only want to shove the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level waste dump down Nevada's throat, the bill would also establish an Office of Spent Nuclear Fuel Research to encourage "recycling" of radioactive waste, including spent nuclear fuel. Recycling, long ago banned by the U.S. because it would provide an abundant source of plutonium for whoever wanted to make an atomic bomb, also multiplies the amount of radioactive waste, which cannot safely be disposed of. Today this waste is piling up at reactors across the country, and is one of the biggest obstacles to reviving the industry.

What has been occurring with deregulation is a major restructuring of the nuclear industry, with big mergers and a handful of companies buying up old nukes at bargain prices. By 2005 there may be as few as five companies owning all U.S. commercial reactors.

Ratepayers are paying three times over for this restructuring. First, nuclear, which was supposed to be "too cheap to meter," turned out to be so costly that it drove up electricity rates wherever it was used, which gave part of the impetus for deregulation. Second, in California and other deregulating states, part of the high rates consumers are paying goes to reimburse utilities for "stranded costs," that is, the money they wasted building nukes that so many of us vehemently opposed in the first place. Third, the cash in their decommissioning funds, collected from consumers to pay for the eventual dismantling of highly contaminated plants when they shut down, would go untaxed under Murkowski's bill, and we should not be surprised if all the cash is spent and taxpayers get stuck with the tab a second time.

Internationally, the global warming talks illustrate part of the restructuring strategy: Western governments would obtain greenhouse credits by building nukes in Central and Eastern Europe that would generate electricity with less environmental and safety regulations. China, desperate to power its massive industrialization, would guarantee the industry business by receiving virtually unregulated nukes. Mexico and Canada would be energy satellites for the U.S.

Beyond the vested interests of the nuclear and fossil fuel industries, there is a deeper cause for the desperate drive to intensify energy production even to the point of exhaustion of all oil reserves and to lift all environmental restrictions. Capitalism's inherent tendency is toward ever-growing production, with such reckless compulsion that it "allows its actual movement to be determined as much and as little by the sight of the coming degradation and final depopulation of the human race, as by the probable fall of the earth into the sun" (CAPITAL, Vol. I, by Karl Marx).

The hunger for ever more oil-burning and nuclear fission proves that capitalism is not sustainable ecologically. Its total disregard for human life calls for nothing less than a total uprooting of this anti-human, nature-destroying social order.

--Franklin Dmitryev