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Senator and Presidential candidate John McCain's proposes to build 45 new reactors in the U.S. by 2030. A widely heralded view holds that nuclear power is experiencing a dramatic worldwide revival and vibrant growth, because it’s competitive, necessary, reliable, secure, and vital for fuel security and climate protection. That’s all false.
In fact, as pointed out by the Rocky Mountain Institute (click here to read article) nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options. We encourage you to write your local newspapers to make make clear that this plan is folly and will meet with overwhelming public opposition. Below is a sample letter you can use for your local publications. It's about 200 words, so should fit into most publications' guidelines. Feel free to use it as is, or make any changes you want. But don't feel free not to take this opportunity to respond! We hope each one of you-and your colleagues as well-will send in a letter today! Dear Editor, John McCain's plan to build 45 new reactors by 2030 demonstrates more about his connections to nuclear industry lobbyists than to any real concern about addressing climate change. As the experts at Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) have pointed out*, nuclear power provides far less climate protection per dollar than any of its competitors. Indeed, RMI notes that "spending a dollar on new nuclear energy instead of energy efficiency has a worse net effect on the climate than spending a dollar on coal-fired electricity instead of on nuclear electricity!" Moreover, because nuclear power is so expensive, only massive taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies would enable the construction of new atomic reactors. Such investment would divert the resources from those solutions that really work: renewable energy, energy efficiency, cogeneration, smart grids and distributed generation are the clean, affordable means to reduce carbon emissions and meet our energy needs, not nuclear power. Clean energy sources don't produce lethal radioactive waste, don't require massive security, don't make residents live in fear of a meltdown, and don't enable the spread of nuclear weapons. The choice is easy. But Senator McCain has made the wrong one. *"The Nuclear Illusion," by Amory B. Lovins and Imran Sheikh, Ambio, November 2008 preprint; available at: http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E08-01_AmbioNuclIlusion.pdf Our thanks to Michael Mariotte at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service for the above information. |
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