The Case Against Nuclear Power

The pending Senate Energy Bill will support a "new generation" nuclear power plants. But they will be no different from the last generation, which have been a "lethal failure" according to Harvey Wasserman.

1 minute read

August 21, 2007, 10:30 AM PDT

By Michael Dudley

"Gargantuan loan guarantees for a 'new generation' of nuke reactors define the Senate's version of the Energy Bill that Congress will consider right after Labor Day.

Its backers say the $50 billion-plus in radioactive pork will give us "inherently safe" reactors

which is what they said about the last crop, including Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and hundreds of billions in cost overruns and abysmal failure.

Nuke reactors are no safer than those coal mines just littered with fresh corpses, than that collapsed Minnesota bridge, or than the levees that let Katrina swamp New Orleans, and are poised to do it again.

The first "new generation" nuke is already swamped with cost overruns and absurd miscalculations. Finnish regulators are screaming at Areva, the French-based nuke pushers, about corner-cutting and costly delays.

But these are merely the latest in the endless flow of "nuke nuggets" that have made the world's 430-plus reactors history's most lethal and expensive technological failure."

FULL STORY: ‘Nuke Nuggets’ Glow for the Senate’s Radioactive Rip-off

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 in Common Dreams

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