Last week, New York’s Climate Change Council passed its final scoping plan with recommendations for implementing the state’s ambitious climate law. It includes continued reliance on current nuclear power plants, as well as the prospect of “advanced” reactors as a potential part of our future energy mix.
This is a mistake. New York cannot rely on nuclear power to meet its climate goals.
Nuclear power is neither clean nor renewable. It is not a climate strategy and should not play a role in our low-carbon energy future.
This month, nuclear fusion took a step forward by producing a little more energy than it uses in a lab, but that’s an entirely different technology and still in its infancy. Experts say fusion will take decades to become a real power source and even longer to become commercial, if ever.
We have renewable and energy storage tools ready for use today and can’t wait to wait for new magical technologies or to continue to rely on the existing dirty, dangerous nuclear fission industry.
Those who campaigned to close Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 (including my organization) are familiar with the costs, risks and negative effects of the nuclear industry. Opened against public outcry after the Chernobyl disaster, it ran for just four days before finally closing. Long Island’s ratepayers were saddled with massive debt from the fiasco and are still paying it off.
Lisa Tyson Credit: Handyman
On September 11, one of the planes that brought down the Twin Towers intentionally buzzed the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, underscoring the nuclear power plants’ safety concerns. At the time, the National Research Council rated the risk of a terrorist attack on US nuclear power plants as “high,” and civil society called for stronger security measures, including air defenses, no-fly zones, and security cordons. None of that happened.
Indian Point closed for good last year, leaving questions about what to do with the more than 4,000 highly radioactive spent fuel rods packed in overflowing, leaking, deteriorating fuel pools.
Times have changed since 1986 and 2001, but the nuclear industry has not. It is still enormously expensive, risky, dirty, with unresolved waste issues, and unfair in its impacts throughout its lifecycle, from uranium mining and milling, to the radioactivity released into the environment of reactor communities, to the disposal of nuclear waste. Spent fuel remains deadly for thousands (and for some isotopes, millions) of years, and there is no way to safely transport or store it.
Three aging nuclear power plants are still operational in New York today, supported by multi-billion dollar subsidies from New York taxpayers. The longer they run, the less reliable and unsafe they become, the more spent fuel they generate, the more expensive they become to operate, and the more public money they consume – money that should be used to expand renewable energy.
Even the industry’s so-called “advanced” reactors are essentially the same old 20th-century fission designs in new packaging. If anything, they’re worse. They would generate up to 30 times more radioactive waste than conventional reactors, would have no safety standards, would be hopelessly uncompetitive, and would take resources away from scaling renewable energy.
This guest post reflects the views of Lisa Tyson, executive director of the Long Island Progressive Coalition.
This guest post reflects the views of Lisa Tyson, executive director of the Long Island Progressive Coalition.
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