Just held was the second in a series of “Forums for a Nuclear-Free New York” to counter the drive by Gov. Kathy Hochul to make New York the “center” of a nuclear power revival in the United States. Hochul’s Public Service Commission has ordered a $33 billion bailout of four old upstate nuclear power stations. She is also pushing for five gigawatts of new nuclear power, the equivalent of five large nuclear power plants.
The $33 billion is to be paid by all electric ratepayers in New York over 20 years.
This session’s title: “Why Nuclear Power Is Neither Low-Carbon nor Emissions-Free.” It followed an initial session on “Safe and Affordable Energy” featuring Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and author of No Miracles Needed, a book about how existing green power sources led by solar and wind could provide all the energy the U.S. and world require.
Also featured was Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project, who presented research linking nuclear power plants to cancer and other illnesses in nearby communities.
Introducing the session was Doug Wood, associate director of Grassroots Environmental Education, based in Port Washington. Wood said: “We are proud to be part of the coalition of groups and individuals working to bring some science, some sanity, and some common sense to the discussion of nuclear power in New York.”
The moderator was Lance Gould, former executive editor of The Huffington Post and deputy managing editor of the New York Daily News, now CEO of Brooklyn Story Lab. Gould said: “As the climate crisis accelerates, we’re hearing renewed claims from the nuclear industry and some policymakers that nuclear power should be embraced as environmentally friendly. But environmental advocates and frontline communities argue that this narrative leaves out critical realities, including nuclear’s full carbon footprint.”
The webinar featured Susan Shapiro, an environmental attorney whose cases included stopping the discharge of heated water into the Hudson River in violation of the Clean Water Act from the now-shut-down Indian Point nuclear plants 25 miles from New York City. Also featured was Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, a nuclear physicist who has worked on radioactive issues in the U.S. and internationally for five decades.
A main Hochul claim is that nuclear power is “zero-emission” and thus needed, she says, as an answer to climate change.
“What I am going to be focusing on today is the nuclear spin, the greenwashing of nuclear energy,” said Shapiro. “I want to make it really clear to everyone here that it is patently untrue that nuclear energy is zero-emissions or a carbon-free source of energy. Nuclear reactors emit a whole host of pollutants … ionizing radiation, thermal waste heat, and a radioactive form of carbon, Carbon-14, as radioactive CO2 and methane. Also, they release radioactive water vapor as tritium.”
To claim nuclear is emissions-free “is a fraud on the public,” said Shapiro. “Nuclear energy does not deserve one cent of zero-emissions credits. New York State and other states have been diverting billions in public funds under the guise of zero-emissions credits to nuclear, even though the legislatures have earmarked these funds to build a clean, renewable energy future.”
“Also, the life cycle of nuclear energy has a very large carbon footprint,” she said. This includes uranium “mining, milling, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, transportation, decommissioning, and nuclear waste storage in perpetuity.”
“The nuclear lobby has been lobbying that their fraud on the public has worked,” said Shapiro.
“Now,” she said, “Governor Hochul and the PSC have approved $33 billion from the Zero Emissions Energy Credit Fund to keep the four nuclear reactors going. And they did this without conducting any type of cost-benefit analysis or environmental impact study.”
Meanwhile, Hochul is calling for five gigawatts of new nuclear power in New York.
“And now,” said Shapiro, “there’s a proposal for another $100 billion to fund the fantasy of experimental, untested, non-existent SMRs (small modular reactors) to be placed all over the state.”
The giving of funds for nuclear power, she said, is “throwing our good money after bad, nuclear subsidies … locking us into a dirty future of extractive, unsustainable energy.”
Shapiro said nuclear power is “no longer a political issue” since most “politicians on both sides rely on nuclear donations … and support nuclear energy.”
Thus, “We must educate the public and the politicians that nuclear is not zero emissions, not carbon-free, and not part of a solution to climate change. The fraud on the public that nuclear is zero emissions has to be stopped. It has handicapped the implementation of cost-effective and sustainable clean energy.”
Shapiro said: “We don’t need nuclear or fossil fuels. One is heroin and one is meth. We have a solution. We have solar, wind, geothermal — all the renewable energy solutions which, working together and complementing each other, will solve our energy future in a clean way, as Mark Jacobson discussed.”
Dr. Resnikoff, whose research on radioactivity began in 1974 investigating leaks and safety issues at the subsequently closed nuclear reprocessing center in West Valley, upstate New York, said it is false “that nuclear power does not heat up the planet, does not produce harmful carbons, and is the solution to our energy needs.”
He detailed emissions from nuclear power, including Carbon-14. Emitted during the “60 years that a reactor would operate,” with “400 reactors in the world, I’ve calculated the total amount of Carbon-14 produced in terms of curies” would be “1.63 million curies,” a huge and hazardous amount of radioactivity.
Resnikoff said: “It’s far less expensive and faster [in dealing with climate change] to save energy and to use solar panels and wind.”
To see videos of the webinars, visit https://www.grassrootsinfo.org/forums
Hochul, a Democrat, has declared, “I embrace” nuclear power, and her Republican opponent in this year’s gubernatorial election, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, supports it. Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado sought to take on Hochul in a Democratic primary and has called nuclear power a “detraction” from implementing renewable energy, but this month suspended his challenge, citing a lack of a “viable path forward.”