Nuclear power not solution to global warming

 By Julian Boggs and Maureen McCue

The Iowa Climate Change Advisory Council recently released its findings outlining the disastrous effects that rising global warming pollution will have on Iowa's climate (Dec. 2: “Climate studies project more Iowa flooding”). Perhaps most alarming is the prediction that peak water flow in Iowa's waterways will increase 50 percent by 2050, increasing flow and threatening Iowa's cities and fields with more frequent and intense flooding.

Clearly, swift action needs to be taken, both to anticipate the reality of our changing climate patterns and to prevent the worst effects of global warming. While smart, sensible solutions like energy efficiency, wind and solar are ready-to-go, proven ways to reduce our pollution, the nuclear energy industry has been quietly pushing for huge federal subsidies as part of a national clean energy and climate strategy and billing itself as the critical “solution to global warming.”

The reality, though, is that nuclear power could barely make a dent in our global warming pollution in the next 20 years. Even if the nuclear industry realized its highest ambition of building 100 new nuclear reactors by 2030, Environment Iowa's recent analysis shows that nuclear power is too slow to cut emissions in the near term, which is the most important thing we can do to minimize the impacts of global warming.

Moreover, nuclear power is too expensive. Building 100 new reactors would require an estimated $600 billion, and many estimates are even higher. Given the enormous expense of building new nuclear power plants, it's no wonder that Wall Street investors are not interested in financing these plants, so the industry is lobbying for taxpayer-backed loans.

We can't imagine a worse idea. If subprime mortgages were a disaster, loans to nuclear power would be even worse: the Congressional Budget Office expects 50 percent of all loans to nuclear power projects to default.

Unfortunately, the end product of all this money would be radioactive waste, and not jobs for Americans. The investment required per construction job to build a power plant is $1.75 million. To create a permanent position: $19 million. In contrast, the Center for American Progress estimates that investment in renewable infrastructure creates a job per $50,000 spent.

That is why it simply makes no sense, now more than ever, to throw precious federal dollars at the nuclear power industry. Each dollar spent on nuclear energy is one fewer dollar spent on wind or solar or energy efficiency. And jobs.

Finally, we can't ignore the risk to our health and safety. At many points in the nuclear fuel life cycle, nuclear power poses serious risks to public health - to the miners and their families, to the communities around the plants, and those downstream from the radioactive waste disposal sites.

Fortunately, we have a senator who can recognize a raw deal when it comes his way. As a presidential candidate in the 1992, Tom Harkin took a stand against nuclear and we expect he'll do the same with the current legislation. We applaud Se. Harkin's past opposition to nuclear and hope that he uses his clout in the Senate to ensure that massive giveaways to the nuclear energy stay out of the Senate climate and energy bill.

Iowa needs more clean energy jobs, not taxpayer–funded boondoggles. Keep it clean, Senator. Keep it nuclear-free.

Julian Boggs is the Great Plains field associate for Environment Iowa, a citizen-based environmental advocacy organization (visit http://www.environmentiowa.org/); Dr. Maureen McCue is state coordinator for Physicians for Social Responsibility, non-profit advocacy organization that advocates policies to prevent nuclear war and proliferation and to slow and reverse global warming and toxic degradation of the environment (www.psr.org/).