With Japan at risk, the nuclear energy debate returns.

Japan’s nuclear power plants were supposed to be safe. Theoretically, one safety mechanism after the other would prevent damage to the plants in the event of an earthquake. But on March 11th, that theory was disproved when a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami washed away backup generators that were designed to keep nuclear reactors cool in the event of a power outage.

Now, frantic efforts to cool the nuclear cores might not be enough. Four of the six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant have faced crises, and toxic radiation is threatening citizens that have already been through the trauma of losing loved ones and seeing their cities flattened to the ground.

For decades, America and other nations have held up Japan as a model of safe nuclear power. President Obama continues to assert that nuclear power is an essential part of a ‘clean energy economy’, and has called for over $50 billion in federal loan guarantees to build new nuclear power plants around the country.

There’s no doubt that we need viable alternatives to fossil fuels, and we need them as soon as possible. But in light of the disaster, we’ve got to ask ourselves: is nuclear power really the answer? What about ongoing environmental effects?

We like to think that major disasters simply won’t happen – and so do nuclear safety regulators and advisers. David Okrent, who advised the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on reactor safety for 20 years, told Bloomberg that reactors are only designed for events that are highly probable, not for anything remotely approaching worst-case-scenario.

“It’s hard to quantify a rare event. When you get to rare events, the design is usually up-to-but-not-including.”

The 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan was certainly a rare event. Japan’s nuclear reactors were designed to withstand up to a 7.2. The designers of the Fukushima Daiichi plant even built a 25-foot tsunami wall between the ocean and the reactors – but the 30-foot wave triggered by the earthquake plowed right through it.

Proponents of nuclear power plants, even those built on major fault lines, are willing to accept the risk of such an event. After all, Mother Nature is unpredictable, and we can’t control when a natural disaster might strike or how powerful it will be. But it’s all too easy to be lulled into a false sense of security as decades pass in between major disasters.

California, which sits on the San Andreas and Hosgri faults as well as the Hayward-Rodgers Creek Fault, has a 99% chance of getting hit by a 6.7 or greater earthquake in the next 30 years. It’s also home to two coastal nuclear power plants, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County and the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Clemente. Diablo Canyon officials believe that their tsunami walls are ‘robust’, but Japanese authorities said the same thing about Fukushima.

And what most Americans don’t realize is that when it comes to potential for catastrophic damage from an earthquake-induced nuclear meltdown at a power plant, California is pretty low on the list. The highest risk is in places you wouldn’t expect.

The reactor with the highest earthquake risk rating is actually the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, New York, just 24 miles north of New York City. Other high-risk locations are found in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Florida. Why would these locations be more prone to core damage from an earthquake, when they’re in areas with far less seismic activity? Mostly because plant designers consider earthquakes to be such a low risk here, they lowered their safety standards for the structures.

Nuclear power is often held up as a ‘clean’ source of energy, and when we’re talking emissions – especially compared to those released by coal-fired power plants – that’s true enough. But what do we do with the radioactive waste? Right now, without a central permanent repository, nuclear waste is stored near the facilities where it’s generated. A plan to turn Nevada’s Yucca Mountain into the nation’s dedicated disposal site was overturned by President Obama when Nevadans protested their backyard being turned into a radioactive wasteland – and can we blame them?

Part of the problem currently unfolding in Japan has to do with spent nuclear fuel rods, which are stored in pools of cooling water to contain high levels of radioactivity. Unlike the fuel rods used in the reactor vessel, spent fuel rods aren’t protected by a steel-and-concrete containment vessel designed to prevent leaks of radiation. Once water evaporates from the pool, the rods overheat and release radioactivity directly into the atmosphere. Clearly, this isn’t a great way to deal with the problem.

Accidental release of radioactivity isn’t unheard of even in the best of circumstances. Last year, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a disturbing report detailing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s inconsistent oversight of radioactive releases from nuclear power plants. UCS reports on over 400 accidental leaks, many of which remained undetected for years. These leaks have resulted in radioactivity contaminating the soil and nearby waterways.

Even beyond the issue of radioactivity, reliance on nuclear power introduces the need to mine a finite resource: uranium. Mines have already cropped up in places like the edge of the Grand Canyon, and more will be needed if the number of nuclear power plants in the U.S. increases as planned. Furthermore, uranium mining is an incredibly water-intensive process.

The fact of the matter is, nuclear power is risky, harmful to the environment, and expensive. Why should we accept this technology as a cleaner replacement for coal-fired plants when we could be using natural sources of power that are far safer? Large-scale solar and wind power generation projects, not to mention wave power, algae and other biofuels, offer literally endless sources of energy without the danger of wayward radioactivity. They will require a shift in research and development, to be sure. And it’s up to us to do so.

Editor’s note 3.18.11: the opening description of this article has been modified from the original version for tone. We appreciate constructive feedback from our readers.

Image: daveeza

The post The Nuclear Option appeared first on EcoSalon.

Urban sprawl, pollution, over-consumption, deforestation…like it or not, U.S. taxpayers are still paying for all of these things to occur in America and beyond. Despite recent investments in green jobs and technology, an array of government subsidies pay big dirty industries like oil, coal and factory farms to destroy the environment in every way possible while greener, healthier industries like solar power and vegetable farms get a pittance.

10. Highways

When gas prices rose dramatically in 2008, Americans began flocking to mass transit in droves, resulting in declining revenues for the Federal Highway Trust Fund. Naturally, the Bush Administration’s response was to take money from already underfunded mass transit and use it to pay for highways that are already, as Slate put it, “paved with gold”. Billions of dollars are pumped into the highway system every year, which encourages the polluting car culture and leads to further sprawl, while mass transit continues to fall by the wayside.

9. SUVs

In case you aren’t already taking optimal advantage of the polluting power of our nation’s sprawling web of highways, the government would like to make your impact even greater by setting you up in a nice gas-guzzling subsidized SUV. A portion of the tax code revised in 2003 gives business owners a huge deduction for up to 30% of a large vehicle’s cost, which can add up to $25,000 in the case of a Hummer – far more than the credit given to individual purchasers of energy-efficient vehicles. Attempts to axe this provision in 2007 failed.

You only get the credit if it seats more than 9 passengers or weighs more than 14,000 pounds, but they don’t really care whether your business actually requires such a vehicle. So, by all means, get the Escalade.

8. Paper Mills

Paper mills cut down trees while sucking up massive amounts of fossil fuels and get big money from the government to do it – all through a loophole in a law that was supposed to benefit renewable energy. A law enacted in 2005 contains a section that gives businesses an incentive to mix alternative energy sources with fossil fuels. To qualify for the tax credit, paper companies started adding diesel fuel to “black liquor”, a pulp-making byproduct that they were already using to generate electricity on its own.

But time might be running out for this egregious misuse of taxpayer money: the unemployment extension bill approved by the Senate and on its way to the House would eliminate this loophole and use the funds for health care. (Editor’s note: We’ve contacted both the editor and writer of this story at BusinessWeek to confirm that this loophole will still be closed in the bill just passed by the Senate, and will update if more information becomes available. In the meantime, there’s this resource which seems to confirm the loophole is in fact being closed.)

7. Commercial Fishing

About half of the $713 million in subsidies given to the U.S. fishing industry directly contributes to overfishing, according to a new study by the Environmental Working Group. The subsidies – which equal about a fifth of the value of the catch itself – lower overhead costs and promote increased fishing capacity, meaning more fish are caught than can be naturally replaced.

Overfishing is a huge environmental problem – up to 25% of the world’s fishery stocks are overexploited or depleted, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.  But that’s not the only result of the subsidies; because roughly half of the money goes toward fuel costs, other consequences include wasteful fuel consumption as well as air and water pollution.

6. Nuclear Power

The nuclear industry’s decade-long, $600 million lobbying effort finally paid off as President Obama agreed to grant loan guarantees for nuclear power plants.  Obama has been promising since the early days of his campaign that he would find a way to “safely harness nuclear power”, but the $55 billion taxpayer-backed loan guarantees are going forward despite continued reservations about uranium mining and the storage of radioactive waste.

5. Factory Farming

American factory farms are literally filthy cesspools of their own making, and who else is cleaning up all that shit but American taxpayers? Giant factory farms make up just 2% of the livestock farms in the U.S. yet raise 40% of all animals in the U.S., and they do it using practices that are not only harmful to workers and the animals themselves, but to the environment.

The government heavily subsidizes factory farms so they can provide über-cheap meat and dairy, raising as many animals as possible in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of care. And why should they care about finding better ways to manage manure when the government hands them $125 million annually to “deal” with the consequences, and then doesn’t bother to check up on them?

Despite the backwards funding given to clean them up, gaping lagoons of livestock waste packed with pollutants continue to be one of the biggest environmental problems in America, fouling our water and causing those depressing dead zones in our oceans.

4.  Corn Ethanol

In the quest to beat back fossil fuels, cleaner fuels that we can grow seemed like a good idea – until we realized that some, like corn, make a huge dent in the world’s food supply. But that isn’t stopping the U.S. government from giving billions in subsidies to the corn industry in general, and corn ethanol in particular.

Corn-based ethanol gobbled up 76% of federal government renewable energy subsidies in 2007, leaving little for more environmentally sound renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Worse yet, it’s a huge drain on water resources, gulping down up to 2,138 liters of water per liter of ethanol.

This isn’t just an unwise investment – it’s also destroying the rainforest. As American farmers have abandoned soy for subsidized corn, soy prices have risen worldwide – and led to an increase in Amazon deforestation. Brazil is the world’s second-largest producer of soy next to the U.S., and growing demand has meant more clear-cutting for soy plantations.

3. Processed Foods

Ethanol isn’t the only product that comes to us courtesy of U.S. corn subsidies. There’s also plenty of craptastic processed “food” products packed with multiple subsidized ingredients: wheat, sugar, soy and of course, corn. Gee, could the obesity epidemic have anything to do with the fact that our government makes junk food cheap, and encourages its consumption through the food stamp program?

It’s a sad state of affairs when a Twinkie costs less, calorically speaking, than a carrot. Meanwhile, farmers who produce fruits and vegetables (aside from corn), don’t get a dime in government subsidies. While the government is considering junk food taxes, a change to the Farm Bill might be more efficient.

2. Coal

You would think that the coal industry’s long-held dominance of the American energy market would have eliminated the need for subsidies. After all, the industry spent $47 million last year on PR alone. But the fact is, coal companies are milking the government for all it’s worth while continuing to pump greenhouse gases and carcinogens into the air and turn the Appalachian Mountains into post-apocalyptic hellholes.

Coal subsidies have survived this long because of the industry’s staggering influence on lawmakers, and because constituents in coal states often fear the economic repercussions of a scaled-back coal industry more than they fear the harm to their health and homes. And on top of the federal coal subsidies lumped in under “˜fossil fuels’, the industry gets untold breaks on a state and local level in places like Kentucky, where the coal industry netted $115 million in subsidies in 2006.

1. Oil

Climate change: brought to you by the U.S. government! According to a study by the Environmental Law Institute, fossil fuels received over $70 billion in subsidies between 2002 and 2008, while traditional sources of renewable energy were given just $12.2 billion.

But the oil industry won’t even admit that the direct spending and tax breaks they get are subsidies – they prefer to call them “incentives”, and claim that attempts to roll back some of those subsidies are actually “new taxes”.

As Grist notes, the ELI report is actually pretty conservative – it didn’t include things like military spending to defend oil in the Middle East or infrastructure spending. But the fossil fuel industry’s free ride is almost over: President Obama’s new federal budget proposal wipes out these breaks and increases funding for clean energy research (and, unfortunately, nuclear power).

Photo credits: The following photos are from Flickr and licensed for commercial use under Creative Commons: “Freeway” by Payton Chung; “SUV” by The Car Spy; “Paper mill in Washington State” by Jan Tik; “Fish face” by Andy Welsh; “Nuclear reactor” by Intamin10; “Factory farm protest sign” by johnnyalive; “Corn” by normanack;  “Coal” by Duncan Harris; “Oil rig” by kenhodge13.

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Capitalizing on the pro-nuclear-power views of President Obama, privately held companies and investors, in particular Bill Gates and Nathan Mhyrvold, are investing in the development of miniature and traveling wave nuclear reactors that could use spent uranium from nuclear power plants to safely supply energy to our humble abodes.

At least entrepreneurs are talking directly about what to do to solve nuclear waste problems. Because this week the Obama Administration released its plan to reduce and put limits on the usage of the United States’ nuclear arsenal, but disappointingly failed to address the costs and impact of nuclear waste from power plants and the weapons industry, on our health and the environment.

The Nuclear Posture Review, a 49-page document, contains plenty of prose about aging nuclear warheads and facilities that are in decline, and admits these need to be revamped to better handle nuclear materials. But words like cancer, sludge and water pollution did not appear. The phrase “safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal” was repeated copiously, though.

The nuclear lobby spent almost half-a-million dollars in the last four months of 2009 to sway public and political opinion, according to Business Week. And perhaps not surprisingly, Gallup polls show that Americans are more approving of nuclear power these days than they have been in decades. They are also more willing to accept environmental suffering in exchange for more sources of energy.

This is all despite some good arguments against nuclear power from the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth.

Sierra Club notes that nuclear reactors, even the safest ones, can be susceptible to natural disaster and rendered unsafe. As recently as 2007, an earthquake in Japan impacted a nuclear power plant there, releasing radioactive water into the Sea of Japan. Friends of Earth suggests that nuclear power investments are a distraction from better renewable energy and efficiency alternatives. They found that “from 1948 to 1998, the government awarded nearly $75 billion in handouts to the nuclear power industry while spending less than $15 billion on renewable energy and only about $12 billion on energy efficiency measures.”

But nuclear energy and science insiders resoundingly believe nuclear is part of the essential, global, clean energy solution. Prof. Kathryn Higley, the acting department head at Oregon State University’s Nuclear Engineering & Radiation Health Physics department, points out that some environmentalists who changed their mind and supported nuclear power, over time, include some of our favorites!

They are: Stewart Brand, a founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, one of the Greenpeace founders Patrick Moore, Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel, and Gwyneth Cravens, author of The Power to Save the World.

Some anti-nuke environmentalists, Higley believes, hold on to outdated fears. “While I’m not advocating that you go and hug a fuel rod, we understand very well by now how radiation interacts with matter,” she says. “We understand the hazards of radiation and radioactive material more than any other type of hazard, today. In fact, we use radiation and radioactive materials to diagnose and treat a variety of diseases, including cancer now.”

Higley explains that in order to meet growing demands for energy, while limiting the CO2 emissions that are produced from power facilities, we are limited currently to hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, and nuclear energy. Some of these low CO2 technologies are limited in their ability to expand capacity, she says, and have their own negative impacts on the environment. For example: hydro dams adversely effect salmon populations in the Northwest today, and solar works, only where it is sunny.

Waste not, want not, Higley believes: “Spent nuclear fuel shouldn’t be viewed as waste! There is so much energy left in the fuel, so it is really silly to permanently dispose of it. New fuel reprocessing techniques can reduce waste volume as well as the radiotoxicity of the residual material so that the volume of real waste is very small and…more easily stored.”

Are no nukes, good nukes to you? Or can you see a way to make the problem into the solution? Learn more about nuclear weapons, waste and how it can get recycled, with the links and resources below. Then call it like you see it, here or on Twitter @ecosalon.

Basic Reading:

– A Smartplanet.com article on the Bill Gates-backed Terrapower plan to develop “traveling wave” nuclear reactors, safe for home-use

– “Can Bill Gates and Toshiba save us from global warming? They plan a miniature traveling-wave nuclear reactor in every home, to spell the end of climate change…” – Interesting opinions on the idea of home, mini-reactors curated by blogger Richi Jennings for Computer World

– “Not that long ago, any Democratic president daring to fly a ‘More Nukes’ banner would have been fried by his own base. But Obama’s request for $54 billion in federal loan guarantees, and his State of the Union pitch for a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,’ have barely moved the ire meter… [T]here is still no solution to the radioactive-waste storage problem. Current plants produce 2,200 tons of waste a year, all of which has to be stored on-site. Do the math: That’s more than 60,000 tons over the last 30 years. Some California plants are storing their waste next to seismic faults. ” – A political op-ed by Dick Polman via the Philadelphia Inquirer

– “Energy development and energy independence are enormous issues our nation must continue to address aggressively. The economy will recover, growth will resume and energy deficiencies will, once again, be front and center as topics of major concern. That’s why it is heartening to see the Obama administration tackle energy issues head-on, with aggressive support for all forms of energy, including new nuclear plants…” A pro-nuclear argument from the Salt Lake City Tribune

– The U.S. Department of Energy Environmental Management page, detailing different types of nuclear waste, and admitting that the D.O.E. lacks information about the impact of nuclear waste and possibility for true, environmental restoration around contaminated land and water

Further Resources:

The Sierra Club’s guide to nuclear waste issues

“A False Solution to Climate Crisis,” statement by Friends of the Earth, and their anti-nuclear campaign website, NuclearLie.org

An Associated Press story on recent, nuclear waste management issues and politics in Utah

Roger Alford’s news brief on nuclear politics and past problems in Kentucky via Business Week

A discussion on the Flickr comment board of investor Steve Jurvetson, about Bill Gates’ TED talk on the Nuclear Future

This is the latest installment of EcoMeme, a column featuring eco news, tech and business highlights by EcoSalon columnist and tech editor Lora Kolodny.

Image: World Economic Forum

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