MIDDLETOWN, Pa., March 26, 2009
Global Warming Gives Nuclear Green Sheen
30 Years After Three Mile Island Disaster, Nuclear Power Gets Big Boost In Public Mind
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The cooling towers of Three Mile Island's Unit 1 Nuclear Power Plant pour steam into the sky in Middletown, Pa., Tuesday, March 17, 2009. Three Mile Island's Unit 2 was the scene of the nations worst commercial nuclear accident on March 28, 1979. Three decades later, fears of an atomic catastrophe have been largely supplanted by fears about global warming, easing nuclear energy into the same sentence as wind and solar power. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
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Interactive Nuclear Disasters Review some of the worst accidents in the history of nuclear power, see how the body responds to radiation exposure and find out if there's a nuclear plant near you.
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Timeline Nuclear Power Pendulum Some key events in the history of nuclear power.
It did not go well.
Those in the standing-room-only crowd listened to economist Doug Biden's thoughts about cheap, reliable nuclear power, but Biden could not calm their nerves or answer their pointed questions: Should they join the tens of thousands of people fleeing south-central Pennsylvania? Should they let their children drink local milk?
Three decades later, fears of an atomic catastrophe have been largely supplanted by fears about global warming, easing nuclear energy into the same sentence as wind and solar power. Dogged by price spikes and an environmental assault on carbon dioxide emissions, fossil fuels are the new clean-energy pariah.
"There's a lot of support for nuclear now, and most of that support is borne out of a concern for the desire to have emissions-free energy sources," said Biden, who still advocates for power companies as the president of Electric Power Generation Association in Pennsylvania.
Policymakers in numerous states are warming to nuclear power, even in states where the facilities are banned. Nuclear reactors generate one-fifth of the nation's power. Some see nuclear as a stable, homegrown energy source in light of last year's oil price spikes. Others see it as a way to meet carbon-reduction goals.
Public interest is emerging, too: A Gallup Poll released in recent days shows 59 percent favor the use of nuclear power, the highest percentage since Gallup first asked the question in 1994.
If the U.S. nuclear industry is hitting a new high point, Saturday marks the anniversary of its low point. Thirty years ago, the partial meltdown of Three Mile Island's Unit 2 put the perils and shortcomings of nuclear power under the world's microscope.
No one was seriously injured in the accident, in which a small amount of radiation was released into the air above the Susquehanna River island 12 miles south of Harrisburg. Studies of area residents have not conclusively linked higher rates of cancer to radiation exposure.
Since then, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not granted one license for a nuclear power plant. The industry says it has made major safety advances, but huge obstacles remain.
It takes years to license and build a reactor. Construction costs billions of dollars. The nation has no long-term storage site for the 2,000 tons of radioactive waste being produced annually by the 104 reactors operating in 31 states.
While some environmental groups grudgingly accept nuclear power as part of the energy landscape, others continue to oppose it. Counting waste costs and government subsidies makes nuclear no more effective than a combination of efficiency measures, desert solar stations, wind power and geothermal energy, they say.
Last month, President Barack Obama called for a cap on greenhouse gas emissions that would almost certainly raise the cost to operate coal- and gas-fired plants. It was another arrow in the quiver of nuclear power advocates who argue that there is no other reliable source of power that is free of greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide.
In the last two years, 26 applications for new reactors have been submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which expects to issue licenses around 2011. No applications were filed in the 28 years following the Three Mile Island accident.
Fast Fact
In red states and blue states, public officials are paving the way for new reactors to call their states home. Even lawmakers in fossil fuel-rich Oklahoma, are advancing a bill that would effectively lift a moratorium on nuclear power.
In the last two years, 26 applications for new reactors have been submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which expects to issue licenses around 2011. No applications were filed in the 28 years following the Three Mile Island accident.
"It makes sense to at least have other options out there," Oklahoma House Speaker Chris Benge said.
Republican Charlie Crist of Florida and Democrats Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Martin O'Malley of Maryland, governors who get high marks from environmental groups, all support proposals for new reactors in their states.
"By no means is (nuclear power) the sole answer to our energy problems, but I think it actually has a definitive place in the whole array of things we need to do to reach our goals of producing enough to meet demand," Rendell said.
In the past year, the Florida Public Service Commission has approved four new reactors, including two at a proposed Progress Energy Inc. plant along central Florida's Gulf Coast.
Bill Johnson, chief executive of the Raleigh, N.C.-based utility, said the proposal met two important criteria for public acceptance: It dovetailed with Crist's anti-global warming agenda and the desire for reasonably priced power.
Down the Susquehanna River from Rendell's office in the Pennsylvania Capitol, the destroyed Three Mile Island Unit 2 remains sealed.
Its core was shipped away years ago and what is left inside the containment building remains highly radioactive.
Next to it is Three Mile Island's Unit 1, now owned by Exelon Corp. and still churning out electricity. Three Mile Island would even make a fine place to build another reactor - were it not for the memory of the 1979 accident, perhaps.
"I think politically that would be difficult," Biden said.
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The secrets of tennis legend 
The oil companies keep all of us dependent on oil, via legal and unlawful means.
There is also the manipulation of oil and commodities prices that has not only cheated us but...
And don't forget the oil industry's constant misleading campaign and lobbying against healthier, more efficient, cheaper and better energy fuels, systems, devices, etc.
To drop oil and gas just to fastrack into renewables is so full of not having any common sense that we would be the laughing stock of the world. The cost would be in the trillions and there would be very little to show for it except the enviros would be sitting pretty.
The only cost effective way to make the change would be to use what we have and phase it out when the other is affordable for all, even if it takes ten years. The enviros have caused far more of the 'problems' themselves with the wrong policys and a general lack of real knowledge about what they took over in the early 70s. They have succeded in making the U S a consumer nation and destroying our ability to be an industrial nation ever again. Industry has moved out of our country because of the enviro policys, not, 'as the libs have told you', the Bush administration.
Ask yourselves, "who tends to gain the most financilly," you, or the enviros and their politition friends? It took a long time for the oil companys to make a trillion dollars, how long do you think it will take the enviros? Look around, it seems the only numbers the liberals seem to know anymore is trillion, and its you and me and our kids and grand kids and their grand kids, that will have to pay for it. Again, who will gain the most financially?
Fastrack is simply a money and power scam.
50 % of all the energy in Conn has been Nuclear for over 35 years. Look it up. No problems. All of France has been Nuclear for 50 years.
If we are serious about energy. we need to 1. Build 20 New Nuclear facilities during the next 10 years.
2. Mandate that all cars by HyBRIDs so as to use this CHEAP energy.
I/// if We do that, there would be no need for so much ARAB OIL... What is holding us back ???
We've spent a trillion dollars on nuclear energy research (exclusive of bomb research) over the last 30 years, so I suppose we might as well get something out of it. But imagine if the same research commitment went into solar, wind, wave, geothermal, salinity, or OTEC?
The powers that be plug nuclear because it has a fuel. And oil has shown how profitable that can be for those with the resources to monopolize that fuel. For the same reason, these powers prevent research spending on solar, wind, wave, geothermal, salinity, and OTEC. Free fuel means freedom for the little guys, and they can't have that.
Solar and Windmills = Re-colonization by the British Empire Under Neo-Fuedalism
I view cleaning our air and water, improving fuel efficiency, and making America energy independent...all as a step forward, not backwards.
The problem in their minds is that you are still alive and cluttering their dreams.
I hear a lot of people whine that even if we start tomorrow, it will still be ten years or more before new plants would come online. Well then, I guess we'd better get going! The same is true of new oil drilling in places like ANWR, but most of these same folks are all for that. If we are ever to become energy independent and stop being slaves to Islamic oil terrorists, we need to move to an energy source that we can produce here. Wind, solar, fuel cell, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear all need to come together. The technology is here...the only things holding it up are politics and a public kept ignorant and misinformed.
P.S. This has nothing to do with global warming. Gore wants us to continue using fossil fuel. Think about it...if America converted to clean energy, who would buy his carbon credits???
- by fo_sho_yo March 27, 2009 1:05 AM EDT
- The reaction to the Three Mile Island incident was the exact opposite of what it should have been. Three Mile Island showed us that EVEN in the event of a catastrophe at a nuclear power plant, the dozens of fail-safes and protective measures built into the plants still worked. What happened at Three Mile was EXACTLY what was supposed to happen in the event of a meltdown. Unlike Chernobyl, the incident proved that American nuclear power is a safe energy source.
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