[ RadSafe ] Overcoming America's nuclear power phobia

[John Jacobus]

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.  My comments are
based on the idea that if your fear-driven politics
was the primary force, all of the nuclear power plants
would be closed.  Rather, they are still money makers
for the utilities.  Despite the financial hardships
these companies have had to endure, e.g.,
retrofitting, increased inspections, increased fees,
etc., they are still operating these plants.  The few
that have been shut down in the 1990s were victims of
bad timing.  They had not become operational, and
therefore profit makers.

I some ways, I agree with your comments about the
regulatory process.  I view it with based on the way
the political system is based, which is reactionary. 
Regulators of all stripe are answerable to the
legislators, at both the state and Federal levels.  Of
course, the legislators are answerable to the public. 
And lobbyists, but that argument is for another day. 
We all have seen the demagoguery of the certain
legislatures, who beat on the regulators for not
"protecting the public."  So, the regulators beat on
the utilities.  It is a sad situation, but it is how
the system works. As you note, nuclear power has not
been outlawed at the Federal level.  Since nuclear
power plants are licensed by the Federal government
and not the states, states cannot shut down nuclear
power plants, even it a voter referendum wants them
to.  Only the plant owners can.  (In California, the
Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Plant, was owned by the
Sacramento Municipal Utility District.) 

While fear-based politics have hurt nuclear power, I
do not think it killed it.  Also, only power companies
can built new plants and need to be motivated to do
so.  I remain optimistic we will see new plants, but
pessimistic that it will not be soon, i.e., withing
five years.  

However, you are wrong in that I did not make any
statements about coal, and will excuse myself from
making any comments about it.  Personally, I would not
like to see new coal plants, but, again, the economics
will determine new developments.

--- Thomas Potter <pottert at erols.com> wrote:

> I believe that in evaluating the limited acceptance
> of nuclear power in the
> US, John Jacobus overestimates the importance of
> economics, underestimates
> the importance of fear-driven political opposition,
> ignores the processes
> through which fear-driven political opposition
> increases nuclear economic
> costs, and, in asserting that costs are "recovered"
> in any event, ignores
> the real impact of those real costs, recovered or
> not, on power generation
> technology selection.  
> 
> Fear-based political opposition has not been
> sufficiently strong to outlaw
> nuclear power at the Federal level.  California
> effectively outlawed it at
> the state level primarily as a means to stop the
> development of one project.
> But limited success here hardly matters because
> other means have worked as
> well.  
> 
> Fear-based political opposition has used
> opportunities in the regulatory
> process to stop the construction of a number of
> individual nuclear power
> plants and other nuclear facilities outright.  In
> addition, fear-based
> political opposition has driven up costs greatly in
> many other specific
> instances and over the various nuclear regulatory
> processes more broadly.
> Power plant construction costs in particular have
> historically been driven
> up unpredictably and sometimes greatly due to
> construction schedule
> extensions often related to regulatory issues. 
> Construction in the US
> regularly required 5-6 years more than in other
> nations.  There is simply no
> aspect of nuclear power in the US today that does
> not bear a high
> fear-driven tax, either hidden or plainly visible. 
> This combination of
> outcomes has greatly discouraged the planning of new
> nuclear power plants,
> despite long experience showing that new nuclear
> should be relatively
> economical, barring long delays in construction. 
> Fear-based worry about all
> things nuclear has reached such a level, at once
> absurd and commonplace,
> that the term "radioactive" has taken on an entirely
> new negative cultural
> meaning unrelated to the physical property the word
> once described, a
> classification of horror that surpasses even
> "taboo."  
> 
> I think John is also wrong about the impotence of
> political opposition to
> coal.  New coal plants have been dead for decades,
> despite substantial
> economic advantages over natural gas, which, until
> recently, replaced new
> coal and nuclear.  Substantial increases in
> coal-fired capacity have
> occurred over the last few decades, but they were
> confined almost entirely
> to those controversial (some would say illegal)
> cases of existing plants
> where capacity could be increased with little or no
> opportunity for public
> opposition.  It is only because natural gas prices
> are increasing from
> merely uneconomic toward entirely unaffordable that
> planning is recently
> turning once more toward coal.  Even so, it is
> generally expected that many
> of the recently proposed new coal projects will
> ultimately be rejected.
> 
> As I see it, the acceptance problem is particularly
> acute for nuclear power
> for two reasons that work together.  The first is
> that opportunity for
> stakeholder impact is greatest in the nuclear
> regulatory process.  This is
> partly by regulatory design, which, with a bow
> toward democracy, has
> attempted to accommodate "stakeholders" more
> extensively.  The limitations
> in achieving this goal seem not to be easily
> forgotten.  Only a small
> portion of the total population of stakeholders can
> ever be able or even
> available to participate in any particular case, and
> the fraction that
> participates will almost always be skewed strongly
> negatively.  We know the
> most outspoken well.  It's practically a traveling
> road show.  The great
> masses of stakeholders who never show up seem always
> considered to be
> apathetic, never simply trusting that regulators
> will make a sound judgment.
> The process then gets skewed in favor of limited
> numbers of local
> stakeholders.  The regulatory process, as designed
> in the past, was easily
> stalled, if not hijacked by such groups.
> 
> The second is that in nuclear proceedings a
> substantially larger fraction of
> participating stakeholders is holding the long,
> wooden, sharp-pointed
> variety.  Their views are clear and strongly held: 
> Every radioactive atom
> causes cancer; all mistakes are disastrous; waste
> will pollute the world.
> Every new expression of these views recapitulates,
> and, in a sense,
> regenerates an important element of the creation
> myth of the environmental
> movement--the response to the creation, use, and
> testing of nuclear weapons.
> To this group of people the decision at hand is not
> about a power plant, but
> about saving the world. Input is not what these
> stakeholders want.  No
> output is what they want, and they will use any
> pretext and opportunity in
> the process any way they can to get it.  If in the
> process they can take pot
> shots at corporate and governmental representatives
> who have unwittingly
> consented to appear in public meetings to
> participate in their own ritual
> public humiliation, so much the better.  If the
> group can muster or appear
> to muster a little political strength, it may be
> able to move the regulatory
> authority to cede its better judgment in favor of
> granting to the most
> vociferous stakeholders what they want, or, failing
> that, at least to draw
> out the process interminably.  The regulator reasons
> that he has
> accommodated political realities, and perhaps
> engendered trust, which, based
> on his humiliating experience (skewed as it may be),
> is sadly lacking.  If
> voters don't like these outcomes, he reasons, they
> will express themselves
> at the polls.  And so they may.  (Could it be that
> they are?)  But win or
> lose, the opposition uses the process to celebrate,
> publicize, re-energize,
> organize, and perhaps even expand its movement.
> 
> The way I see it is that we as a society have
> allowed ourselves to operate
> this way because we have not really needed this
> technology.  We could afford
> to dither.  If and when we clearly need the
> technology, a regulatory process
> that will give the stakeholder voice without so
> easily yielding control will
> be necessary.  (Some change in this direction is
> already occurring.)  If the
> need for nuclear power technology becomes generally
> clear (it will never be
> clear to the most vociferous opponents), such a
> change will be adopted
> quickly.  Until then new nuclear plants will not be
> built.  This is a high
> threshold for acceptance.  I doubt that any of the
> frequently mentioned
> fixes--incentives, hormesis, systematic risk
> assessment, public relations
> advertising, etc., will have much effect.
> 
> Tom Potter



+++++++++++++++++++
"Embarrassed, obscure and feeble sentences are generally, if not always, the result of embarrassed, obscure and feeble thought."
Hugh Blair, 1783

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/