By Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk
The status of Japan's stricken nuclear reactors often changes hour-by-hour, with no end to the crisis in sight. But that hasn't stopped an emerging debate about the future of nuclear power in the United States. Advocates say the emergency shouldn't deter plans to build more reactors, while environmental groups are sounding renewed notes of caution.
Is nuclear power too dangerous? Should Japan's emergency prevent the construction of U.S. reactors? Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk, the RedBlueAmerica columnists, debate the issue.
It's not time to put the kibosh on nuclear power in the United States.
It's also not time to make it a lot easier to build a plant.
And understand: Building a nuclear power plant in the United States is very difficult. It costs lots of money and takes many years of moving through an excruciatingly slow permitting process. Advocates of nuclear power have spent recent years urging that the process be streamlined ― and some environmentalists, seeing nuclear power as an alternative to carbon-belching fossil fuels, have even started to support that view.
They're wrong. The bar to building a nuclear plant should be almost prohibitively high. The permitting process should be slow ― giving engineers and government officials a chance to consider and address all the ways disaster could afflict a plant ― and construction itself remain expensive, in large part because of all the safety measures that must be put in place.
Why? The vast majority of the time, nuclear plants run smoothly. But as Josh Freed, a nuclear power advocate, told the Washington Post: "When nuclear goes wrong, it goes wrong big." The area around the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine, for example, is a virtual no man's land more than 20 years after the disaster there ― and cancer rates for hundreds of miles outside that zone remain precipitously high.
Cheap, mass-produced energy has probably lifted more people out of poverty than any other force. That fact must be acknowledged. But it also comes with a cost ― no matter what form it takes. The health and safety costs that come with nuclear power can be more extreme than most. The disaster in Japan is a warning against the hubristic idea we can ever make it perfectly safe.
It’s true nuclear power is risky. Nuclear power is also very safe. The two statements might be tough to reconcile in the face of the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe ― it's right there on television and TV never lies! But it's a fact.
According to Jay Lehr, director of science at the Heartland Institute (where I serve as a managing editor) and co-editor of "The Encyclopedia of Nuclear Power," coal, oil and natural gas kill tens of thousands of people every year, through pollution, industrial mishaps, and freak incidents such as the gas main explosion in San Bruno, Calif., last year that leveled 38 homes and left seven people dead.
And even in the event that the disaster underway in northern Japan eventually becomes "another Chernobyl," nuclear would nevertheless remain safer than the alternatives.
Truth is, the cost of building a new nuclear power plant in the United States already is prohibitively high. That's why only a handful of new projects, mainly in Georgia and Texas, are anywhere close to beginning construction. It's also why the Obama administration has requested Congress approve $50 billion in loan guarantees to help finance the new plants.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's idea of "fast-tracking" a project is to let a power company do preliminary site work while officials review the license application. And this is no ordinary application.
"If I were to print out an entire license application and stack it on my desk, the pile of paper would be taller than a three story building," writes Jack Gamble, a nuclear engineer and proprietor of the "Nuclear Fissionary" blog. The licensing process alone takes about four years. And only then can construction get underway.
Four years and tens of millions of dollars spent toward navigating the complicated regulatory landscape is probably a small price to pay for public peace of mind. And it's no doubt why, statistically speaking, peat moss and biofuels cause more deaths per terawatt hour than nuclear power does.
We won't know for months or years the extent of the damage wrought by the meltdown in Japan. But fear of nuclear power should not outweigh the facts.
Contact Ben Boychuk at bboychuk@heartland.org and Joel Mathis at joelmmathis@gmail.com. Boychuk and Mathis blog regularly at www.somewhatreasonable.com and joelmathis.blogspot.com.