Nuclear power is not safe, clean, or healthy for basically everything it interacts with. From the environment to ourselves, nuclear power production and disposal has created hazards for everything around it. "Nuclear power releases toxic radiation on a routine basis; it is not carbon-free—its carbon footprint is substantially higher than its competitors; it uses far more water in an era of water scarcity; it requires a vast and polluting nuclear fuel chain simply to function." (Nuclear Information and Resource Service) It's complicated, unneccessary, and creates dangerous situations for everyone, but we still protect our nuclear plants. Why?
Corporate greed wants to protect the industry standard because change to a different, renewable, and cleaner energy source costs a lot of money to do, so the benefits in the long run don't out weigh the immediate gains from the capitalists. Instead, corporate news media writes off Nuclear power as "clean" energy by making radical, misinformed claims. "A crucial detail to those promoting nuclear power as "clean" is corporate media's rubber stamp of the myth that nuclear power is carbon-free." (Huff 104) (Advertisement) In mentioning these "carbon-free" and non green house gas emitting power plants, they stray away from water run off, which is a huge factor in nuclear power. They leave out radioactive waste such as plutonium and uranium that stick around for millenniums. They include pros without any of the cons, making it seem like they updated the past into a new, clean, and reliable system, when in fact it is the exact same system.
Take the example of Indian Point. Indian Point is a nuclear plant on the outskirts of New York City that has been plagued with safety problems. It is not ready for any attacks upon the plant that could potentially injure or kill millions of people. "The results of OSRE have been consistently dismal and appear to be worsening. About 50% of plants nationwide failed during the first round (1993-2000)." The OSRE is a designed mock test to test the security's ability to recognize terroristic acts. These numbers are shameful. Not to mention the problems with the infrastructure itself. "Radioactive releases result from plant accidents and accidents happen. On February 15, 2000, IP-2 suffered a ruptured steam generator tube that released 20,000 gallons of radioactive coolant into the plant. The incident resulted from poor plant maintenance and lax oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The accident, a stage 2 event, triggered a radioactive release to the atmosphere. The NRC gave the plant its worst rating because of the previous plant operator’s failure to detect flaws in a steam generator tube before the February 2000 leak. One week after the accident, 200 gallons of radioactive water were accidentally released into the Hudson River. Since at least August 2005, radioactive toxins such as tritium and strontium-90 have been leaking from at least two spent fuel pools at Indian Point into the groundwater and the Hudson River. In January 2007 it was reported that strontium-90 was detected in four out of twelve Hudson River fish tested. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission relies upon self-reporting and computer modeling from reactor operators to track radioactive releases and their projected dispersion. A significant portion of the environmental monitoring data is extrapolated – virtual, not real. However, radioactive releases from Indian Point’s routine operation often are not fully detected or reported. In fact, accidental releases may not be completely verified or documented."(Riverkeeper) With the coming of the expiration of Indian Point's license agreement, Hope is on the horizon.
When these accidents happen, they are down played by corporate media to seem isolated. They act as if incidents are "over there" and not close to home, when in reality ecosystem and environments are all delicately connected and influenced by one another. "Environmental catastrophes are framed as isolated events, with a beginning, maybe a bit of passing human interest, and an end, and the ongoing environmental damage seldom hits the press."(Huff 102) (Example) These events are picked up, explained, apologized for, and forgot and we accept this. It's incredibly dangerous for us, is what we don't realize, as radioactivity and pollutants multiply without our realization.
Bioaccumulation is a real problem that not many people would know about from power plants. Bioaccumulation is the process in which nuclear waste and particles multiply as they work their way up the food chain. "In 1963, one week after the atmospheric nuclear bomb test in Russia, scientists observed the magnifying power of bioaccumulation when they detected radioactive iodine in the thyroids of North American mammals." (Huff 105) In isolating environmental events, especially that involve nuclear plants in radiation, the news media has blinded us all with it's censorship of the true nature of nuclear power. (Example)
For more information:
- http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/03/24/inside-america-s-most-dangerous-nuclear-plant/
- http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/americas-nuclear-nightmare-a-dozen-fukushimas-waiting-to-happen-20110427
- http://www.emagazine.com/daily-news/germany-backs-away-from-nuclear
