Reading Tod Stevens' front page article about "a new chapter" for nuclear energy in Richland, WA, you'd think no one had ever read "Atomic Days," a detailed account of the devastation and delayed cleanup of Hanford's tortured historical connection to the ugly pollution of that sacred site.
We even have the enthusiastic commitment from May Richardson for a "clean nuclear energy" future, which can never, ever happen due to contamination for hundreds of thousands of years of the land. There are places at Hanford where even robots fear to tread.
The ED of Energy Forward Alliance, recently with the Washington Policy Center, Sean O'Brien, tried to separate the power project from the legacy of Hanford, a futile attempt what with radioactive elements downriver to Astoria and downwind to Spokane, as well as residuals of plutonium found on every continent.
Small Modular Reactors, some types which produce plutonium, are still in the experimental state. The Environmental Defense Institute reports that "Of numerous designs, the improved safety of a single SMR is unlikely to compensate for the higher risk of multiple units, each capable of meltdown. SMRs will be susceptible to accidents, terrorist acts, and do not address the spent fuel storage problem."
A media release from the Nuclear Energy Information Service reports: PRESS RELEASE: Small modular reactors are still too expensive, too slow, and too risky.
Additional key takeaways state: "Investment in SMRs will take resources away from carbon-free and lower-cost renewable technologies that are available today and can push the transition from fossil fuels forward significantly in the coming 10 years. Experience with operating and proposed SMRs shows that the reactors will continue to cost far more and take much longer to build than promised by proponents."
The World Information Service on Energy reports that Carbon Dioxide is generated throughout the nuclear industry: "The view that nuclear power is free of CO2 emissions turns out to be a fallacy, originating from disregarding construction, operation, maintenance, upstream processes and downstream processes of a nuclear power plant."
Dr. Mark Cooper, senior research fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School, writes about the small modular reactor (SMR) 'hype cycle' and concludes: "Today, they emphasize small size and speed to market, characteristics on which the alternatives are vastly superior. At the same time they ignore the innovation that has sharply increased renewable load factors and the dramatic advances in information and control technologies that have improved the ability to forecast and integrate renewables."
With Joshua Frank speaking, we hear the words that will live at Hanford for a million years :
"If we are to learn anything from Hanford, it's that nuclear technology, in all its forms, is a clear and present danger to all living things."
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