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Legislation to lift nuclear plant ban
Republican lawmakers work to decrease carbon footprint via new energy source
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Three Republican legislators proposed ideas for new legislation Monday to repeal the state’s ban on construction of new nuclear power plants.
Rep. Michael Huebsch, R-West Salem, Rep. Phil Montgomery, R-Green Bay, and Sen. Joe Liebham, R-Sheboygan, said in a statement Monday they are crafting the bill as a way to prevent energy shortages, unsustainable price increases and utility taxes.
The statement also said the findings and recommendations of Gov. Jim Doyle’s Task Force on Global Warming are not complete because plans to reduce emissions are not coupled with new baseload energy generators.
Huebsch said if the state is going to be serious about lessoning the dependence on oil and coal, the only option is nuclear power.
“Nuclear is the only baseload source that is carbon free,” Huebsch said. “I don’t intend to exclude wind power and biomass, but they can only supplement a greater energy source.”
He added the bill will be introduced in the next couple of weeks, and he hopes after many previously unsuccessful attempts it will pass through the Legislature.
When asked about the dangers and problems of nuclear waste containment and disposal, Huebsch said the same could be said about fossil fuels.
“There is no good waste disposal plan for oil and coal,” Huebsch said. “Any-one who has researched nuclear power plants knows the new designs actually produce less waste, so it can be stored on site.”
According to Kevin Brady, spokesperson for Senate Committee on Commerce, Utilities, Energy and Rail Chair Jeffrey Plale, D-South Milwaukee, supports the recommendations of Doyle’s task force on the whole.
“[Plale] was a member of governor’s task force on global warming and supported the recommendations of the task force, which included lifting the ban,” Brady said.
Brady added Plale is working with other legislators to draft an outline and expects to see a full and active debate on the legislation.
According to Assembly Committee on Natural Resources Chair Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison, however, the state has no ban on new nuclear power plants.
“Wisconsin law has no ban on nuclear power plants but two criteria it needs to make,” Black said. “One is a place to dispose of waste, and two, it has be economical compared to alternatives.”
Black said he thinks the current criteria make sense because nuclear waste stays highly poisonous for 10,000 years, so it needs to be kept in a safe place and the state should concentrate producing electricity through the most economically reasonable method.
“I don’t think this (bill) has much of a chance in the Legislature,” Black said. “Many similar bills have been proposed and have failed.”
Black also said removing the criteria for nuclear energy plants was not part of the Global Warming Task Force’s recommendations. He added he is part of the group that is drafting legislation based on those recommendations called the Clean Energy Jobs Act and said their proposals will be introduced next month.
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“Wisconsin law has no ban on nuclear power plants but two criteria it needs to make,” Black said. “One is a place to dispose of waste, and two, it has be economical compared to alternatives.”
“…the state should concentrate producing electricity through the most economically reasonable method.”
The state is not in the business of producing energy; private corporations produce energy. Whether nuclear is economical is determined by the market, not by bureaucrats.
Having to prove to a bunch of bureaucrats that your business venture will make money in order to proceed is a defacto ban. If Microsoft, Apple, Google or Standard Oil had to convince a bunch of politicians that their ideas were viable would they even exist today? I doubt it.
A note to Mr. Black: The state should stay out of economics.
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Not all the concerns surrounding the proposed expansion of nuclear generating capacity in Wisconsin are centered on economic factors alone. There is the issue of safety. Consider the fact that if an explosion were to occur at a coal-fired power plant, the accident could result in the death or serious injury of a relative handful of people. That kind of event would cause an unfortunate, but localized disaster. But when a meltdown takes place at a nuke plant, say comparable to the “partial” one at Three Mile Island 30 years ago, the possible consequences are on the order of the catastrophic. Luckily for the eastern US and Canada, the Pennsylvania disaster of March/April 1979 didn’t result in a catastrophic, full scale meltdown. If it had, the radioactive discharge into the environment would have been in the range of one billion curies, akin to the levels released by a one-meagaton nuclear blast.
Still, up to 13 million curies of radioactive noble gases, including xenon-133 and krypton-85, WERE discharged into the atmosphere, as documented by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in April 1979. In addition, substantial amounts of the particularly dangerous iodine-131 were vented into the air over east-central Pennsylvania. Three Mile Island #2 also discharged a significant quantity of radioactive water into the Susquehanna River. While it’s true that the impact of these emissions is being debated to this very day, I think it’s safe to say that impact was entirely negative. There have been a significant number of radioactive leaks at US atomic generating facilities since then. Serious accidents at various nuke plants in New York State, Illinois and Texas have polluted the air and groundwater with radioactive isotopes.
You would think that the miserable safety record of the U.S. nuclear industry speaks loudly enough for Wisconsin politicians at the highest levels to comprehend the awful truth. For example, on Feb. 15, 2000, radioactive steam was released into the atmosphere at the Indian Point 2 reactor located in New York state’s Hudson Valley region. The leak was caused by a breach in an aging steam generator. At first, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission claimed there was no release of radioactivity; the NRC later admitted that there was a leak, but said it posed no threat to public safety. Hardly reassuring! Also, according to the New York Times, the very deadly and persistant element strontium-90 has also been detected in test wells near the now-defunct Indian Point reactor number 1.
Just some important factors to consider before we rush headlong into the nuclear option.