Safe? Nuclear Industry in the US

• $6 million: How much the Nuclear Energy Institute and Exelon spent to lobby federal officials last year
• $4.6 million: The amount they gave in campaign contributions to congressional candidates over the past two years

  source: MAPLight.org, a nonpartisan organization that tracks the influence of money in politics,

Still wondering why the US is sticking with nuclear?

There are 23 nuclear reactors currently operating in the US that have the same General Electric Mark I design as those that have failed so catastrophically at Fukushima.

The flaws in this design are fundamental, cannot be fixed, and have been documented for 40 years now, says the Nuclear Information and Resource Service.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a history of bowing to industry demands that prevents it from keeping plants truly safe. As President Obama once said, the NRC is a "captive" of the industry.

Decades-old nuclear power plants are currently being relicensed for years of further use, even as they fail to meet today’s safety standards, Parenti explains. The plants are also obtaining permission to forgo routine maintenance. This leads to near-disasters such as the Ohio plant that just happened to discover a football-size hole in a containment vessel.

In California, two nuclear plants sit on major fault lines that are vulnerable to earthquakes.

Here’s what Amory Lovins, one of the top of leaders in our field, says:

Each dollar spent on a new reactor buys about 2-10 times less carbon savings, 20-40 times slower, than spending that dollar on the cheaper, faster, safer solutions that make nuclear power unnecessary and uneconomic: efficient use of electricity, making heat and power together in factories or buildings ("cogeneration"), and renewable energy. The last two made 18% of the world’s 2009 electricity (while nuclear made 13%, reversing their 2000 shares)–and made over 90% of the 2007-08 increase in global electricity production.

Those smarter choices are sweeping the global energy market. Half the world’s new generating capacity in 2008 and 2009 was renewable. In 2010, renewables, excluding big hydro dams, won $151 billion of private investment and added over 50 billion watts (70% the total capacity of all 23 Fukushima-style U.S. reactors) while nuclear got zero private investment and kept losing capacity. Supposedly unreliable windpower made 43-52% of four German states’ total 2010 electricity. Non-nuclear Denmark, 21% windpowered, plans to get entirely off fossil fuels. Hawai’i plans 70% renewables by 2025.

In fact, Lovins asserts that nuclear power "will reduce and retard climate protection." Why? shifting the tens of billions invested in nuclear power to efficiency and renewables reduce far more carbon per dollar.

If you think of yourself as conservative, ask why nuclear requires such huge amounts of your tax dollars and guarantees and can’t buy adequate private insurance. If you have a small business that can’t buy insurance because what you do is too risky, you don’t stay in business.

If you are an environmentalist, ask why nuclear power isn’t required to meet a cost-efficient market test against investments in energy conservation and renewables.

If you believe they should be permanently closed, please  take a moment to tell that to President Obama, your Congressmembers, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). You can do that with one letter here.