Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

SUN EDITORIAL:

Nuclear power’s future

Rush to build more power plants should be tempered by safety concerns

Advocates of nuclear energy expect it to be a significant source of electrical power in America for many years to come. Since 2007, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received applications to build 26 reactors and expects 11 more in the next five years.

Although there is no serious belief that all of those plants will be built, the renewed interest has been called a nuclear renaissance. However, the nuclear accident in Japan, which continues to bring more bad news, is putting a damper on that renaissance. Two-thirds of the public are, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, against nuclear plant construction, and just over half of Americans think nuclear power is safe.

Still, the nuclear power industry puts on a happy face, referring to what it says is its strong safety record. Some nuclear power proponents note that the problems happened at an old plant and point out that the industry would be building state-of-the-art facilities.

That might sound convincing, but it masks the reality of the situation. In Japan, nuclear power plants are built with earthquakes and tsunamis in mind, but engineers didn’t plan for anything close to what happened. After all, a massive earthquake and a monstrous tsunami were considered so unlikely that the situation was unthinkable.

And never mind that America has more than 100 aging nuclear reactors that were built decades ago. What about them? Are they safe considering they’re no longer state-of-the-art?

As we have noted before, there’s a terrible arrogance in the nuclear industry, from plant safety to the way it handles nuclear waste, which will last for tens of thousands of years after the plants close.

Next week brings a chilling reminder of the problems that nuclear power presents — the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The area around Chernobyl is contaminated by radiation and thousands of people have died from the effects of the accident. Now, officials are trying to build a structure over the former reactor to contain the radiation because the current “sarcophagus” designed to contain it is in terrible shape. They are asking the international community to help pay for construction costs, which have been estimated at more than $2 billion.

Of course, safety standards in the United States are rigorous, and it can be argued that something like that would never happen here. But Three Mile Island was never supposed to happen. Nor was there ever supposed to be a problem at a nuclear plant in Ohio that made news several years ago when an acid leak eroded the reactor vessel and threatened to cause an explosion. Federal prosecutors convicted key plant officials on charges related to covering up the incident. Human error, negligence and worst-case scenarios aren’t supposed to happen.

The dangers of nuclear power can’t be easily dismissed. Speaking during a visit Wednesday to the Chernobyl plant, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted there are plenty of nuclear power plants being planned around the world.

“To many, nuclear energy looks to be a relatively clean and logical choice in an era of increasing resource scarcity,” Ban said. “Yet the record requires us to ask painful questions: Have we correctly calculated its risks and costs? Are we doing all we can to keep the world’s people safe? The unfortunate truth is that we are likely to see more such disasters.”

That’s a sobering assessment that should be carefully considered. America can’t take nuclear safety too lightly.

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