The Flawed Economics of Nuclear Power

Another from the inbox, highlighting just how expensive nuclear energy is.  Hey Link, do you read words?  Best take a look at this before you run for leader!

THE FLAWED ECONOMICS OF NUCLEAR POWER

http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update78.htm

Lester R. Brown

Over the last few years the nuclear industry has used concerns about climate change to argue for a nuclear revival. Although industry representatives may have convinced some political leaders that this is a good idea, there is little evidence of private capital investing in nuclear plants in competitive electricity markets. The reason is simple: nuclear power is uneconomical.

In an excellent recent analysis, “The Nuclear Illusion,” Amory B. Lovins and Imran Sheikh put the cost of electricity from a new nuclear power plant at 14¢ per kilowatt hour and that from a wind farm at 7¢ per kilowatt hour. This comparison includes the costs of fuel, capital, operations and maintenance, and transmission and distribution. It does not include the additional costs for nuclear of disposing of waste, insuring plants against an accident, and decommissioning the plants when they wear out. Given this huge gap, the so-called nuclear revival can succeed only by unloading these costs onto taxpayers. If all the costs of generating nuclear electricity are included in the price to consumers, nuclear power is dead in the water.

To get a sense of the costs of nuclear waste disposal, we need not look beyond the United States, which leads the world with 101,000 megawatts of nuclear-generating capacity (compared with 63,000 megawatts in second-rankedFrance). The United States proposes to store the radioactive waste from its 104 nuclear power reactors in the YuccaMountain nuclear waste repository, roughly 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. The cost of this repository, originally estimated at $58 billion in 2001, climbed to $96 billion by 2008. This comes to a staggering $923 million per reactor–almost $1 billion each-assuming no further repository cost increases. (See data atwww.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update78_data.htm).

In addition to being over budget, the repository is 19 years behind schedule. Originally slated to start accepting waste in 1998, it is now set to do so in 2017, assuming it clears all remaining hurdles. This leaves nuclear waste in storage in 121 temporary facilities in 39 states–sites that are vulnerable both to leakage and to terrorist attacks.

One of the risks of nuclear power is a catastrophic accident like the one at Chernobyl in Russia. The Price-Anderson Act, first enacted by Congress in 1957, shelters U.S. utilities with nuclear power plants from the cost of such an accident. Under the act, utilities are required to maintain private accident insurance of $300 million per reactor–the maximum the insurance industry will provide. In the event of a catastrophic accident, every nuclear utility would be required to contribute up to $95.8 million for each licensed reactor to a pool to help cover the accident’s cost.

The collective cap on nuclear operator liability is $10.2 billion. This compares with an estimate by Sandia National Laboratory that a worst-case accident could cost $700 billion, a sum equal to the recent U.S. financial bailout. So anything above $10.2 billion would be covered by taxpayers.

Another huge cost of nuclear power involves decommissioning the plants when they wear out. A 2004 International Atomic Energy Agency report estimates the decommissioning cost per reactor at $250-500 million, excluding the cost of removing and disposing of the spent nuclear fuel. But recent estimates for some reactors, such as the U.K. Magnox reactors that have high decommissioning waste volumes, decommissioning costs can reach $1.8 billion per reactor.

In addition to the costs just cited, the industry must cope with rising construction and fuel expenses. Two years ago, building a 1,500-megawatt nuclear plant was estimated to cost $2-4 billion. As of late 2008, that figure had climbed past $7 billion, reflecting primarily the scarcity of essential engineering and construction skills in a fading industry.

Nuclear fuel costs have risen even more rapidly. At the beginning of this decade uranium cost roughly $10 per pound. Today it costs more than $60 per pound. The higher uranium price reflects the need to move to ever deeper mines, which increases the energy needed to extract the ore, and the shift to lower-grade ore. In the United States in the late 1950s, for example, uranium ore contained roughly 0.28 percent uranium oxide. By the 1990s, it had dropped to 0.09 percent. This means, of course, that the cost of mining larger quantities of ore, and that of getting it from deeper mines, ensures even higher future costs of nuclear fuel.

Few nuclear power plants are being built in countries with competitive electricity markets. The reason is simple. Nuclear cannot compete with other electricity sources. This explains why nuclear plant construction is now concentrated in countries like Russia and China where nuclear development is state-controlled. The high cost of nuclear power also explains why so few plants are being built compared with a generation ago.

In an illuminating article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, nuclear consultant Mycle Schneider projects an imminent decline in world nuclear generating capacity. He notes there are currently 439 operating reactors worldwide. To date, 119 reactors have been closed, at an average age of 22 years. If we generously assume a much longer average lifespan of 40 years, then 93 reactors will close between 2008 and 2015. Another 192 will close between 2016 and 2025. And the remaining 154 will close after 2025.

But only 36 nuclear reactors are currently under construction worldwide–31 of them in Eastern Europe and Asia. Although there is much talk of building new nuclear plants in the United States, there are none under construction.

What these numbers indicate, Schneider points out, is that plant closings will soon exceed plant openings–and by a widening margin in the years ahead. The trend is clear. From 2000 to 2005, an average of 4,000 megawatts of nuclear generating capacity was added each year. Since 2005, this has dropped to only 1,000 megawatts of additional capacity per year.

Even if all reactors scheduled to come online by 2015 make it, the projected closing of 93 nuclear reactors by then will drop nuclear power generation roughly 10 percent below the current level. Unless governments start routinely granting operating permits for reactors more than 40 years old, a half-century of growth in world nuclear generating capacity is about to be replaced by a long-term decline.

Despite all the industry hype about a nuclear future, private investors are openly skeptical. In fact, while little private capital is going into nuclear power, investors are pouring tens of billions of dollars into wind farms each year. And while the world’s nuclear generating capacity is estimated to expand by only 1,000 megawatts this year, wind generating capacity will likely grow by 30,000 megawatts. In addition, solar cell installations and the construction of solar thermal and geothermal power plants are all growing by leaps and bounds.

The reason for this extraordinary gap between the construction of nuclear power plants and wind farms is simple: wind is much more attractive economically. Wind yields more energy, more jobs, and more carbon reduction per dollar invested than nuclear. Though nuclear power plants are still being built in some countries and governments are talking them up in others, the reality is that we are entering the age of wind, solar, and geothermal energy.

# # #

Lester R. Brown is president of Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, available at www.earthpolicy.org for free downloading.

Data and additional resources are at www.earthpolicy.org

For information contact:

Media Contact:

Reah Janise Kauffman

Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 12

E-mail: rjk (at) earthpolicy.org

Research Contact:

Janet Larsen

Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 14

E-mail: jlarsen (at) earthpolicy.org

Earth Policy Institute

1350 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 403

Washington, DC 20036

Web: www.earthpolicy.org

Lester R. Brown

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African civil society hits back at uranium mining

From the inbox:

African civil society hits back at uranium mining

by Brigitte Weidlich

The Namibian

October 28, 2008

African communities are gathering to take up the fight against

international companies which are mining uranium on their land

and their own governments, as they are driven off their land,

suffer exposure to radiation and toxic waste at mining sites, a

seminar on uranium mining was informed.

“We have formed a civil society organisation and took the

Australian mining company Paladin to court,” Reinford Mwangobe

of Citizens for Justice (CFJ) told the seminar, organised by

Earthlife Namibia and the Labour Resource and Research

Institute (LaRRi).

“The matter was then settled out of court and Paladin, which also

has a uranium mine in Namibia, made some concessions like

agreeing to pay US $10 million for social development projects

and clean water provision to the rural communities in the mining

area.”

Mwangobe said 12 Australian companies would start mining

uranium in Malawi soon, with Paladin starting in January 2009.

Malawi had no laws in place for handling and transporting

radioactive materials, Mwangobe added.

“Rural people who had lived for decades on their ancestral land

were kicked off and only paid US $70 as compensation.

The locals have no benefits from mining, only some government

officials and Paladin,” he stated.

“The best way to act against such companies was to take the

case to their own countries and alert shareholders who did not

want bad publicity and their share prices drop.”

A representative from Tanzania, Anthony Lyamunda, said 20

international companies were lined up for uranium mining in his

country.

His people recently started the civil society Foundation for

Environmental Management and Campaign Against Poverty

(Femapo) to help 450 000 rural people living in 786 villages in

the areas were uranium mining was taking place or planned.

“These activities are threatening our natural resources, which we

need to survive and we plan a uranium conference in the affected

regions of our country and a national one early 2009,” Lyamunda

told the 50 participants.

A member of the Topnaar community in the Namib-Naukluft Park,

where about 20 uranium-mining companies are prospecting for

uranium, attended the seminar with a member of the Nama

community from Warmbad in southern Namibia, where “heavy

drilling, prospecting and destruction” of their land took place, as

Gerald Ruiters put it.

“What will Earthlife Namibia do as civil society organisation? Will

you be able to drag these companies to court? We are living there

since the 16th century and nobody has consulted us, people just

arrive and carry out these activities,” Ruiters criticised.

Bertchen Kohrs of Earthlife said the NGO had commissioned

several studies on the environmental risks of uranium mining and

the public seminar, co-organised with LaRRi, was one of several

activities.

“We are at the start of a big uranium rush in Namibia and

campaigning activities will unfold accordingly,” Kohrs said.

Support NIRS

Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) provides great info and does other great work.  Please support NIRS if you are able.

[R]egardless of who wins next Tuesday, the task before us all is daunting:*26 applications for new atomic reactors in the U.S. are already pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and hearings already have begun on a few of these.

*The NRC is preparing for lengthy hearings that the nuclear industry wants to lead to the licensing of the scientifically indefensible Yucca Mountain radioactive waste dump.

*The nuclear industry is continuing its efforts to import radioactive waste from other countries, threatening to turn the United States of America into the world’s atomic waste dumping ground.

NIRS is working around-the-clock to stop all of these dangerous prospects, and even more. Any one of them–even a single new reactor application–can take months of work.

We know you want us to do this work–that’s why you support NIRS. But to do the job right, to meet the rapidly-growing workload, we need another staff member.

We have some great applicants for a new position at NIRS. Strong, active people who will provide exactly the kind of organizing and grassroots assistance needed right now. But we need to be sure that we can support a new person. That’s where you come in.

A strong show of support from you, right now, will make it possible for us to hire a new staff member, someone who will make a real difference in the fight against nuclear power and for a nuclear-free, carbon-free energy future. Will you support us with a contribution of $50, $25, or whatever you can afford on our secure website?

We figured out the other day that the nuclear power industry spends about $2.4 million to create one single job–and most of those jobs are temporary. We’ll create a new job–and it will be permanent and much more important–if you’ll support us with just 1.5 percent of that amount!

This position is really needed if we’re going to effectively challenge the nuclear industry’s plans for resurgence. And I will be so proud to introduce you to our new staffer, especially because you are the ones who can make this position happen.

The way we’re going to stop those 26 proposed new reactors is through person-power, through grassroots organizing, support and empowerment, through targeted and strategic campaigns aimed at the industry’s weakest spots: their financing, their deadly radioactive waste, their ongoing safety and security problems.

You are the ones who can make that kind of people-power happen. Please support NIRS now, as generously as you can; help us hire another dedicated staffer, help us build the movement that can truly create the nuclear-free, carbon-free future we all embrace.

Thanks for all you do.

Michael Mariotte

Executive Director

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine?

From Counterpunch, something the Premier and the Opposition and all those named to the all-male, pro-nuke commission in SK need to read!  Why, oh why, does Saskatchewan always have to be so backasswards?

The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine?
By BARBARA ROSE JOHNSTON

We are a world of some 192 separate nations. Yet, increasingly the notion of independent nation is irrelevant. In this World United, where economic, political, and environmental crises fester and erupt in local and globalized ways, we all “feel the pain” – though some experience more than their fair share. The inequitable experience of human and environmental crisis is most painfully obvious when considering what we humans do to secure and maintain access to the critical resources that feed our increasing addiction to consumption. And, when we confront the devastating consequences of feeding that habit.

Ulcerating consequences become crises that feed the political debates of our time. While the competition to win the hearts and minds of the US electorate has involved almost artistic efforts to paint a caricature of character, there is occasional attention to governance and agenda setting: What to do in the face of economic disaster? War? New national security threats? And, how to respond to the challenge of transforming our resource and energy dependencies?

Today I read that it is the development of clean, green energies that may be the global salvation to our current economic woes, our oil dependencies, and thus reduce the militarism fueled by the desire to get, to keep, and to return to our former glorious age of ever-expanding consumption. According to some, including the current US administration, the European Union, Russia, India, China, and both of the major candidates for US President, nuclear energy may be the ultimate salvation, the cost-effective strategy best suited to cut-carbon emissions while powering us along into a new age of consumption. And governments have taken action to smooth the way for this energy transition. Thus, in 2007, following the U.S. lead with its 2006 Advanced Energy Initiative and the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, the European Union adopted legislation labeling nuclear power as an approved strategy for reducing greenhouse emissions.

As in other countries, the American nuclear power industry is gearing up to build 34 new nuclear plants (adding to the current stock of 103 commercial reactors) and factories are being built to fabricate the parts for these facilities. To fuel this boom uranium tailings are being re-mined and new claims dot the southwest landscape, including mining claims in many of our major national Parks: the Grand Canyon, Moab, Arches National Monument. This is a global phenomena: the escalating value of uranium ore has prompted expansion, recommissioning of existing mining, and new contracts for uranium mining in the United States, Canada, Australia, Guatemala, Argentina, Brazil, India, Armenia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Finland, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, Niger, Namibia, Malawi, Zambia, and South Africa.

Because nuclear energy was been redefined by the Bush administration as a national security concern, social and environmental safeguards can be legally ignored. Thus, as one example of many recent rulings, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under its enhanced authority to dismiss environmental and social safeguard legislation recently ruled that onsite above ground dry cask storage of PG&E’s radioactive waste at Diablo Canyon in California can go forward without further study of whether such storage is safe from terror attacks or adequately protects the health of nearby residents. The NRC’s ruling overturns a federal court order to consider these concerns.

Is nuclear energy truly the clean, green machine that the Nuclear Energy Institute and its proponents make it out to be? Is it truly cost-effective? Will nuclear power finally prove to be a “safely-harnessed” source of sustaining energy? Or, will we once again, be lured into what many folks see to be a dance with the devil?

The answer to these questions depends upon how you define “clean” and what you define as an acceptable “cost.”

The average cost to build a nuclear power plant is reportedly some 2 billion dollars, though a 2007 estimate including costs to generate power by Lew Hay, chairman and CEO of Florida Power and Light, suggests that “the cost of a two-unit plant will be on the order of magnitude of $13 to $14 billion.” Actual flow of energy will not occur for years. Technological innovation has reduced the time it takes to build a nuclear reactor, it will still take some 7 – 12 years after plans are approved for energy to flow.

For those communities and workers that host the nuclear fuel chain — uranium mining, milling, enrichment, energy and military use, and storage of wastes — the label of “clean” and the notion of a “cost-effective” energy system is, simply and sadly, ludicrous. The no-emissions carbon footprint label assigned by the Nuclear Energy Institute ignores the significant environmental impact resulting from mining, transportation, processing fuel, using water as energy and coolant, and building nuclear power facilities. Cost-effective energy becomes an even more problematic label when you factor in the short-term and long-term health consequences of absorbing toxic heavy metals and the radioactive nature of these exposures, and the health care costs of treating such illness and disease.

And then there are the stewardship costs of protecting, storing, and (maybe some day) remediating nuclear waste. The cleanup for the 680-acre site of the Uravan uranium and vanadium mine and processing facility in Colorado completed in September 2008 reportedly cost $120 million. Cleanup costs from mining, milling, and the inevitable spills and releases associated with Manhattan Project research and Cold War militarism at 17 nuclear weapons plants have been projected in reports to Congress to reach between $100 billion to $200 billion dollars — and this estimate does not include the clean-up costs associated with nuclear weapons detonation, nor the cleanup of dumped waste from nuclear submarines. The eventual decommissioning of an aged nuclear power plant is currently priced at $300 million or more per plant. The costs to create, build, monitor and secure a safe storage facility for substances that pose a threat for tens of thousands of years to come are harder to estimate, given the many unknowns in the future.

What might be the costs of failure for future generations when our reliance upon human ingenuity proves woefully misplaced and we fail to develop the technologies for transmutation and detoxification of medium and high-level wastes?

What are the costs of failing to put the power of the atom back into Pandora’s Box?

Such talk of the economic costs is typically met with an industry or government response that urges a fearful public to place their trust in science. The placating mantra includes in one form or another the message that: Innovative nuclear power technology and responsible occupational health and safety procedures means that modern nuclear facilities are safe facilities. When the very rare error in operations and the release of radiation occurs, such incidents pose no threat to human health. Tritium, strontium-90, cesium-137, radioiodine, radon, and other radiogenic materials may find their way into the rivers, aquifers, soils, atmosphere, the food chain, and the human body, but science has shown that these relatively low-level exposures pose no deadly threat.

China, for example, announced in an October 24, 2008 news release the results of a government-funded long-term study on nuclear plant operations, proclaiming that over the course of a 25-year period nuclear power was generated with no adverse health impact on area residents. These findings reflect a study of health records for people living within 80 kilometers of a nuclear power station in Shenzen, Guangdong Province, which examined the death rate of infants and children, malignant tumor deaths, birth defects, and radiation levels in food and drinking water.

Deconstruct the press release and unsettling questions come to the surface. It is unclear from the report what isotopes were released, and at what levels. And, it is unclear if measured health outcomes were limited to the typical focus on deadly cancers and birth defects, rather than the many chronic and degenerative illnesses we now know to be associated with radiation exposure (for example, metabolic, cardiovascular, pulmonary, and immune system disorders), the incidence of treatable cancers (such as thyroid and prostate cancer), or the occurrence of cancers that take decades to emerge (lung cancers may not develop for 20 or more years following exposure to uranium and its radionuclides).

While singular studies of a facet of the nuclear cycle and selected aspects of human health– the operation of one nuclear power plant and deadly cancer or birth defect health records — produce comforting “cherry-picked” findings there are many other studies that offer contradictory conclusions on the long-term health outcomes from low-level exposures. Studies, for example, found in the once-classified archives of the US Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, the Atomic Energy Commission, and it’s eventual predecessor the Department of Energy.

Some of these studies explored the health and mortality of uranium miners. Cold War-era studies of Navajo miners and mill workers, for example, found acute and chronic health effects resulting from exposure to the low-level emissions of uranium and its radioisotopes: Lung cancer, nonmalignant respiratory diseases, lymphatic and hematopoietic cancers other than leukemia, kidney disease, miscarriage, and cleft palate and other birth defects.
Others studies considered the long-term consequences of living in a radioactive environment. The United States government, for example, monitored over a forty-year period the movement of radionuclides from nuclear weapons testing fallout concentrated in the marine and terrestrial environment of the Marshall Islands studying how radiation moved through the ecosystem, foodchain, and the bodies of the people of Rongelap, Utrik, Majuro, and other Marshallese communities. Some of the many health problems documented by the Marshall Islands long-term study include changes in fertility, increased rates of birth defect, increased rates of cancers, physical and mental retardation, metabolic disorders, premature aging, and an array of cancers. These problems have been confirmed by the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in the Marshall Islands, which has issued personal injury compensation awards for 36 radiogenic medical conditions (http://www.nuclearclaimstribunal.com/).

Still, other studies are emerging from European research on Chernobyl and the consequences of living in its’ fallout-zone. Not only is their widespread occurrence of thyroid cancers and disease (by some estimates, 200,000 children have or will develop thyroid cancer as a result of the exposure to radioiodine), post-Chernobyl studies confirm increased metabolic disorders and demonstrate that small doses of radiation produce genetic effects on human populations. In a May 2001 study published in the British medical journal Lancet, children born to Chernobyl clean-up teams were discovered to have an unexpectedly high genetic mutation rate when compared with siblings born before the accident. Researchers compared children born to clean-up workers now living either in the Ukraine or Israel using a using multi-site DNA fingerprinting procedure. Siblings conceived before exposure served as internal controls. External controls (non-exposed families) were also included in the study. A sevenfold increase in the number of new mutations in DNA was found for children born after their parents Chernobyl exposure – demonstrating that low doses of radiation can induce multiple changes in human germline DNA.

When we consider the costs of an energy policy that relies upon nuclear power, we must consider the “cradle to grave” health care costs as well as the economic costs. And, we must also factor in those lesser quantifiable, but very real, costs associated with life in a radioactive setting.

For example, the aforementioned Marshallese not only live in an isolated, contaminated setting, but they struggle with the fear and anxiety of additional exposures, the sociocultural and economic damages resulting from the loss of access to radioactive lands that sustained a traditional way of life, and, the traumas of living with radiogenic illnesses. In a nation that lacks a single oncologist or cancer treatment facility, the Marshallese experience extremely high rates of cancer; degenerative conditions associated with radiation exposure; miscarriage and infertility; and, the birth of congenitally deformed children. They endure the problems associated with raising physically disabled children, caring for increasingly feeble elderly, suffering from the fear and anxiety of additional exposures, and confronting the reality of intergenerational effects.

The Marshallese medical studies declassified in the 1990s include documents demonstrating that Atomic Energy Commission scientists fully expected adverse health effects to not only occur in the first generation of people exposed to fallout, but in the subsequent generations of people who live in a contaminated setting. The Marshallese health records bear out these expectations. Radiogenic disease in acute and chronic forms not only occur from acute exposure to ionizing radiation, but also develop following repeated exposure to low-level radiation, and are evident in the subsequent generations who inherit mutations resulting from parental exposures.
Move outside the local, and consider the global ramifications of massive numbers of people suffering the health care consequences of radiogenic disease, not only as a result of uranium fuel production and nuclear power plant operations, but the increased ways in which power plant waste is incorporated in military and police actions.

Depleted uranium, the uranium remaining after its use as nuclear reactor fuel, is a low-level emitting heavy metal (60% of the radioactivity of natural purified uranium). Due to its high density it is used as counterweights in aircraft, and radiation shields in medical radiation therapy machines. It is also used in military and police operations as defensive armor and armor-penetrating ordnance. According to the World Health Organization the behavior of depleted uranium in the body is identical to that of natural uranium. Many of the world’s citizens and soldiers have absorbed through inhalation or penetration fragments of depleted uranium. A toxic heavy metal that emits low-level radiation, depleted uranium can be carried to and damage the lymph tissues and thus the immune system, kidneys, and developing fetuses. It can affect the bones, the reproductive organs, and the function of the brain and neurological system.

To our leaders, I plead. As you consider the relative costs and benefits of various energy strategies with an eye towards the skies and a concern for the security of our nations, ask yourself: What do these findings mean to me, to my children, and, to a world seemingly hell-bent on this path towards nuclear dependency?

Energy, at what cost?

Barbara Rose Johnston is an anthropologist and senior research fellow at the Center for Political Ecology, and a member of the expert advisory group for UNESCO’s Water and Cultural Diversity Project.  She is the co-author of The Consequential Dangers of Nuclear War: the Rongelap Report. Her documentation of dam legacy issues in Guatemala is available in Spanish and English at http://www.centerforpoliticalecology.org/chixoy.html. She can be reached at: bjohnston@igc.org

The world backs Iran’s right to enrich uranium: Chomsky

Hafta wonder if this, from Chomsky, in the tehran times will quieten the shrieking of those who want to bomb Iran.

The world backs Iran’s right to enrich uranium: Chomsky

BERLIN (IRNA) — The world supports Iran’s right to enrich uranium, Noam Chomsky said in an exclusive telephone interview with IRNA in Berlin on Saturday.

Chomsky lashed out at Western media reports saying Tehran was “defying the world” with its nuclear program.

“That’s a funny definition of the ‘world’. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), for example, which is the majority of countries, endorses Iran’s right to enrich uranium,” Chomsky observed.

“Now nobody thinks they have the right to develop nuclear weapons. However, that’s a different issue. But the majority of the (American) population agrees (on Iran’s right to enrich uranium),” he added.

Iran has repeatedly announced that the production or acquisition of nuclear weapons would be a violation of the Islamic teachings and laws it adheres to.

The distinguished 80-year-old professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said, “Public opinion here overwhelmingly holds that Iran should have the right to develop nuclear energy.”

Chomsky reaffirmed also that Iran was “of course entitled to uranium enrichment as a member of the NPT.”

The U.S. scholar made clear that most Americans reject the Iran policy of President George W. Bush.

“With regard to Iran, a substantial segment of pretty mainstream opinion has been harshly critical of the confrontational approach and has called for negotiations and diplomacy,” Chomsky noted.

He added that there could have been a U.S.-Iran “rapprochement for the last 10 years.”

“It did not happen because the extremism of the Bush administration was simply directed at making relations harsher, more bitter, militarizing them, and that’s why the Bush administration even antagonized allies,” Chomsky explained.

Asked whether the U.S.-Iran estrangement would eventually end, he pointed to the possibility of a “working relationship” between the two countries.

Chomsky emphasized that a working relationship between the U.S. and Iran could “improve the overall situation” in the Middle East.

“There is a strong establishment pressure… moving towards a diplomatic and developmental approach rather than a military approach.

“The American popular opinion is strongly in support of it,” Chomsky added.

He emphasized Washington’s hostile stance toward Tehran stems from Iran’s refusal “to subordinate itself to the U.S. will.”

“Iran is an independent actor. It is defiant of the U.S. and that’s not tolerated,” Chomsky stated.

“In fact, that’s official policy going back to War II, in which the U.S. would try to create a world order in which it is dominant. No exercise of sovereignty should be tolerated, if it intervenes with U.S. efforts to construct a certain kind of world order,” he added.

The American professor said the U.S. government views Iran as an “impediment” to its energy interests in the Middle East.

“Nobody is seriously concerned about Iranian aggression. There has been no sign of any. But they are upset about Iran’s influence in the region. Also, in the background is the concern that Iran might turn East. That’s not discussed very much, but that’s certainly a policy concern,” the U.S. political dissident added.

Chomsky’s political activism dates back to the Vietnam War, when he established himself as a prominent critic of U.S. foreign and domestic policy.

Opponents of Quebec’s nuclear plans get fired up

.

You gotta love it when community comes together like this!  And you gotta love Quebeckers, especially, for showing us how to do it!

Opponents of Quebec’s nuclear plans get fired up

Gentilly 2 reactor to be refurbished. Scientists, artists and activists

say province made decisions without any public hearings

Montreal Gazette, Wednesday, October 8, 2008, Page: A10

Dozens of prominent Quebec artists, scientists and media personalities

joined about 60 environmental and social groups yesterday to launch a

vast campaign to pressure Quebec’s Liberal government to cancel plans

to refurbish the province’s only nuclear reactor.

In August, Hydro-Québec and the minister responsible for the Mauricie

region, Julie Boulet, announced the Gentilly 2 nuclear plant in

Bécancour would be refurbished at an estimated cost of $1.9 billion.

That plant produces about three per cent of Quebec’s electricity.

At a news conference yesterday, scientists and nuclear experts,

including Université de Montréal professor Eric Notebaert, scientist

and broadcaster David Suzuki, radiation specialist Ian Fairlie, and

Université Laval professor of nuclear physics Michel Duguay, outlined

their concerns about the environmental, health, social and economic

risks of rebuilding the Gentilly 2 plant.

“(Premier) Jean Charest should be ashamed that this project is going

ahead without public debate,” said Gordon Edwards, a nuclear energy

expert and president of the Regroupement pour la surveillance du

nucléaire.

Duguay said Quebec does not need nuclear power to stabilize its

network, a point made clear by the fact that the grid has functioned

just fine whenever Gentilly 2 has been down for maintenance, “which is

at least 20 per cent of the time,” he said.

Others said Quebec should learn from Ontario’s mistakes, since nuclear

energy in that province has lead to massive cost overruns and frequent

breakdowns.

“In Canada, nuclear energy has proven itself to be expensive and

unreliable,” David Suzuki said in a statement read by his Quebec

director, Karel Maynard. “It makes no sense to pour more money into a

non-renewable and troublesome form of energy.”

The groups noted that the refurbishing was announced without any

public hearings on the environmental or health impacts it might have.

Notebaert and Fairlie explained that nuclear fission releases

radioactive isotopes, which if inhaled or consumed in food and water

can cause cell and DNA damage. While exposure to very high doses

causes death, lower repeated doses can cause cancer and birth defects.

Gentilly 2 also releases a radioactive hydrogen isotope called

tritium. Canada and Quebec tolerate relatively high levels of this

substance in air and water: 467 times higher than California’s

standards, for example.

Laure Waridel of Nature Québec explained why the campaign solicited

the help of 24 prominent local musicians and artists, including Michel

Rivard, Jacques Languirand, Diane Dufresne and Richard Séguin.

“No one can bring people together more effectively than musicians and

artists, and we need a massive social movement to oppose this

project,” she said.

For more information on the campaign or to sign an online petition, go

to www.naturequebec.org

Events: Dr Gordon Edwards (Anti-Nuke) & Dr Jeremy Whitlock (Pro-Nuke)

NUCLEAR ENERGY FORUM – Hear from both sides of the debate

MONDAY OCT 20th Saskatoon
7:00 pm Third Ave United Church    311 24th St E Saskatoon

October 20th 1:30pm
NUCLEAR DEBATE  What are the pros & cons of Nuclear?
How does nuclear affect you as a student?
ROOM 241 ARTS UofS Campus Saskatoon

TUESDAY OCT 21st Regina  7:00-9:00pm
FORUM ON NUCLEAR ENERGY ISSUES
ROYAL SASKATCHEWAN MUSEUM
2445 Albert St Regina

PLEASE FORWARD FAR & WIDE-LET’S MAKE THESE EVENTS GREAT SUCCESSES

Gordon Edwards: president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to education and research on all issues related to nuclear energy, whether civilian or military, including non-nuclear alternatives, especially those pertaining to Canada. CCNR maintains an internet site www.ccnr.org Dr. Edwards has a PhD in Mathematics and is a professor at Vanier College in Montreal. He has been featured on radio and television programs including David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things and Pierre Berton’s The Great Debate. He was interviewed on CBC Newsworld in January 2008, as an expert on issues of nuclear safety.

Dr. Edwards has been a consultant to many governmental and non-governmental organizations, including the Auditor General of Canada, the Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning, the Select Committee on Ontario Hydro Affairs, the Mohawks of Kanesetake, and the Siting Task Force for Radioactive Waste. Dr. Edwards received the 2006 Nuclear-Free Future Award in the category of Education “for his enduring role in demystifying nuclear technology and helping the public understand its vulnerable predicament.”

Jeremy Whitlock: speaking on behalf of the Canadian Nuclear Society (CNS). Past-president of the CNS and co-chair of the CNS Education and Communication Committee. The CNS is dedicated to communication on all issues related to nuclear science and engineering.

<>Dr. Whitlock has a PhD in Engineering Physics, he is a reactor physicist at the Chalk River Laboratories of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), a federally-owned crown corporation, currently the Manager of Non-Proliferation and Safeguards, with responsibility for ensuring that CANDU technology meets its international obligations in this area.

Dr. Whitlock is an educator and speaker on nuclear topics, and has been interviewed on CBC Radio One, CTV NewsNet, and other media outlets as an expert on nuclear issues. He has a regular column in the Bulletin of the Canadian Nuclear Society, and has received both the CNS Education and Communication Award and the CNS Fellow award for his work on communication with the public. He maintains a website called “The Canadian Nuclear FAQ” www.nuclearfaq.ca which contains frequently asked question with responses.

October 20th 1:30 event: sponsored by the USSU & the Office of Sustainability

October 20th & 21st evening events:  program partners:  Saskatoon Public Library & Unitarian Congregation of Saskatoon with help from Saskatchewan Council for International Cooperation, Saskatchewan Environmental Society, Canadian Nuclear Society SK, Saskatoon Peace Coalition, University of Saskatchewan Student’s Union,  Veterans Against Nuclear Arms, and generous individuals