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Last modified by ISU Debate ISU Debate on 2012/10/03 10:48
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| 10/03/2012 | Round 2Tournament: UMKC | Round: | Opponent: | Judge: A. Incentives must be QPQ
Incentives work on a quid pro quo basis – this for that. If you change your behavior, I’ll give you a reward. One could say that coercion is an incentive program – do as I say and I’ll let you live. However, I define an incentive as getting something you didn’t have before in exchange for new behavior, so that pretty much puts coercion in its own box, one separate from incentives. But fundamental problems plague the incentive approach. Like coercion, incentives are poor motivators in the long run, for at least two reasons – unintended consequences and perverse incentives. Incentives are defined as promises made in exchange for performance; ¶ rewarded after the performance occurs (Mahoney, 1979; 1989; Maxwell, 2000: 245-¶ 247). The sequence is as follows: promise – performance – rewards. Rewards are ¶ defined as the consequence of performance. Here the sequence is performance¶ followed by rewards. B. Violations there are 2 Observation 1 Text: The United States Congress should require the executive branch to condition the implementation of a twenty-percent investment tax credit for the deployment of domestic nuclear fuel recycling on all relevant parties entering into a binding process of negotiated rulemaking for no more than a year. Observation 2: Solvency and Net Benefit: Counterplan solves the affirmative, current attempts to increase energy production are doomed to failure because they don’t take into account industry and labor opposition—wich will spin the aff as an environmental policy and gut it Avoids political backlash American Political Science Association 9/19/12 8 Of 13 Election Forecasts Predict Obama Wins 2012 Popular Vote; WASHINGTON, Sept. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Several forecast models developed by prominent political scientists predict President Obama will win the popular vote in the 2012 US presidential election, with 8 of 13 polls giving Barack Obama the edge over Mitt Romney. Nevertheless, it will be extremely close with the average of all forecast models predicting Obama will receive 50.2% of the two-party popular vote. For comparison, in 2008, Obama received 53.7% of the two-party popular vote. Five of the 13 models predict a modest to close popular-vote plurality for Barack Obama, though three of these are on the cusp of predicting a tossup; five predict a modest to close popular vote victory for Mitt Romney; and three regard the election as a tossup. The forecasts range from predicting a 53.8% vote for Obama to a 53.1% vote for Romney.¶ All of the predictions appear in an election-themed symposium in the October issue of PS: Political Science and Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association (APSA). The forecasts are based on different combinations of statistical and historical data and differ in their complexity and how far in advance their predictions were made. The earliest forecast was made 299 days in advance while the latest was made 57 days before the election. Together, these forecasts use a range of approaches and indicators that are critical to understanding national electoral processes and the dynamics at work in US presidential elections. Most want to shift away from nuclear power – especially independents Even as independent candidates continue to struggle, across the country the ranks of independent voters who think the parties care more about winning elections than about solving the nation's problems are swelling. Their number, along with their disaffection with the two-party political system, is growing exponentially. About 40 percent of all American voters now call themselves independents, a bigger group than those who say they are either Democrats or Republicans -- and the largest number of independent voters in 70 years. In some states, independents now are a majority of the voters.¶ Every election since World War II has been determined by voters in the middle. They elected Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The margin by which Obama carried the independent vote in crucial swing states around the country was one of the significant factors in his victory and will undoubtedly be critical to whether or not he is reelected.¶ The Republican victories in the 2010 midterm election were also decided by these voters. Independents supported Democrats by 18 points in 2006. But driven by their concern about the nation's economy and strong opposition to Democratic spending and health-care initiatives, they supported Republican congressional candidates in 2010 by the overwhelming margin of 56 to 38 percent, a 36-point swing from 2006.¶ But despite their critical role in general election outcomes, the independent voters have little to say about whom the parties select to run for office. In half the states in the country the primary process is closed to them. An electoral system that all Americans pay for with their tax dollars is run solely by and for the two major political parties. Which means the American electoral system is not fully democratic.¶ After the primaries are over, politicians need the independent voters to win and woo them with attention in November. But once they have their victory or -- to use the vernacular -- get what they want, independent voters are forgotten as quickly as a one-night stand. Democratic and Republican office holders are beholden to their base supporters, the special interests who donate time and money to them and the parties that control both candidate selection and the agenda. Obama win key to US-Russia relations – Romney’s agenda is belligerent and controversial. 1NC-Solvency Despite five decades of development and more than $20 billion spent worldwide, sodium-cooled reactors have not been technically mastered, much less commercialized. The operating record of these reactors is very uneven, with major problems afflicting even the newest. France's Superphenix, the world's largest sodium-cooled reactor, was permanently closed in 1998 after 14 years of sporadic operation. Monju in Japan, the newest reactor, had a sodium fire only 20 months after it was commissioned in 1994. It remains closed.¶ As for IFRs, the 1996 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study cited by Stanford concluded that there were several safety issues that remain to be resolved and that using advanced sodium-cooled reactors for transmutation "would require substantial development, testing, and large-scale demonstration under Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety review and licensing before one could proceed with confidence."¶ Nuclear reactor explosion causes extinction Mammals and some of the most sensitive flowering plants (lily), insects, mollusks, top Bony Fish and top Reptiles. Only amphibian species would manifest increased mutations, cancers, morbidities, mortalities and extinctions beyond 10,000 km. downwind (North America, Western Europe and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere) during 1986-87. Overall, it is clear that unprecedented, enormous quantities of radioactivity were deposited throughout Europe, and the genetic effects will be harming the millions of contaminated people for the next 100 years. It takes about two years for atmospheric radioactivity to cross the equatorial barrier into the southern hemisphere, so in 1988 the amphibian decimations due to Chernobyl's huge radioactive releases became truly global. It will be 100 years plus before the global Cs-137 and Sr-90 radioactive contaminations return to pre-Chernobyl levels, PROVIDED no more Chernobyls recontaminate the Earth in the meantime. Chernobyl's Cs-137 and Kr-85 releases threaten Human Survival on a global scale; one or two more Chernobyls before 2015 AD would remove all doubt about Human Extinction on a global scale. Nuclear power is decisively on the decline—Fukushima, economics, and delays On May 5, 2012, Japan shut down its Tomari 3 nuclear reactor on the northern island of Hokkaido for inspection, marking the first time in over 40 years that the country had not a single nuclear power plant generating electricity. The March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown shattered public confidence in atomic energy, thus far making it politically impossible to restart any of the reactors taken offline. And the disaster’s legacy has spread far beyond Japan. Some European countries have decided to phase out their nuclear programs entirely. In other countries, nuclear plans are proceeding with caution. But with the world’s fleet of reactors aging, and with new plants suffering construction delays and cost increases, it is possible that world nuclear electricity generation has peaked and begun a long-term decline. Prior to the Fukushima crisis, Japan had 54 reactors providing close to 30 percent of its electricity, with plans to increase this share to more than 50 percent by 2030. But nuclear power dropped to just 18 percent of Japan’s electricity over the course of 2011. When the quake and tsunami hit, 16 reactors had already been temporarily shut down for inspections or maintenance; another 13 underwent emergency shutoffs, including the four Fukushima Daiichi reactors now permanently shut down. Others were subsequently closed due to earthquake vulnerability or for regular inspection. Now that Tomari 3 is offline, all 44,200 megawatts of Japan’s nuclear capacity that are listed as “operational” by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are in fact idle with no set date for restart. Next to Japan, the most dramatic shift in nuclear energy policy following Fukushima occurred in Germany. Within days of the disaster, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Germany’s seven oldest reactors, all built before 1980, would shut down immediately. And in May 2011, the government declared that Germany would phase out nuclear entirely by 2022. Nuclear power generated 18 percent of the country’s electricity in 2011, down from 24 percent in recent years and well below the peak in 1997 of 31 percent. Just before Germany’s phaseout decision, Switzerland abandoned plans for three new reactors that were going through the approval process. The government also announced that all five of the country’s reactors—which for years had provided some 40 percent of its electricity—will close permanently as their operating licenses expire over the next 22 years. Italy, which had discontinued its nuclear program after the infamous 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine, had in 2010 decided to restart it. But in a June 2011 referendum, more than 90 percent of Italian voters chose to ban nuclear power. Later in 2011, Belgium announced plans to phase out the seven reactors that provide more than half of the country’s electricity. Even in France, with a world-leading 77 percent of its electricity coming from nuclear power, newly elected President François Hollande has said he intends to reduce this share to roughly 50 percent by 2025. According to IAEA data, 13 reactors with a combined 11,400 megawatts were permanently shut down in Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom in 2011. Seven new reactors totaling 4,000 megawatts were connected to the grid—three in China and one each in India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia—with less than 1,000 megawatts added through increasing, or “uprating,” existing nuclear plant capacities. As of May 2012, after two new reactor connections in South Korea and two permanent U.K. shutdowns, the world’s 435 operational nuclear reactors total 370,000 megawatts of capacity. Actual nuclear electricity generation in 2011 fell to 2,520 terawatt-hours, 5 percent below the 2006 peak. The growth in nuclear generating capacity had slowed to a crawl well before the Fukushima disaster. From 1970 to 1986, cumulative capacity grew at a brisk 19 percent annual rate. Even after Chernobyl, nuclear power capacity grew at 4 percent a year until 1990. But since then the annual growth rate has been just 0.7 percent. (See data.) In contrast to the backlash in places like Japan and Germany, a number of countries reaffirmed their commitment to nuclear power, while indicating that safety would be a priority. This includes the three countries building the most new reactors: China (with 26 reactors under construction), Russia (11), and India (7). Immediately after the Fukushima incident, China suspended its reactor approval process to review the safety of existing plants, but the government has since indicated that the 26,600 megawatts under construction will move forward. Russia still intends to double its nuclear generating capacity by 2020, and India plans to increase its capacity 14-fold to 63,000 megawatts by 2032. Of the 62 reactors the IAEA lists as under construction, only 15 have a projected date for connecting to the grid. (Not one of China’s 26 units under construction does.) Some of these reactors have been listed this way for more than 20 years. A prime example is the only U.S. reactor under construction, the Watts Bar 2 unit in Tennessee, which started construction in 1972. In April 2012, the startup date was moved from August 2012 to sometime in 2015, as the estimated cost rose 68 percent. The United States, home to roughly one quarter of the world’s nuclear generating capacity, gets 19 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. The last new U.S. reactor to connect to the grid was Watts Bar 1 in 1996. In early 2012, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved construction permits for four 1,100-megawatt reactors at two existing nuclear plants in the southeastern states of Georgia and South Carolina, the first permits for new plants since 1978. In that region, utilities are allowed to increase their customers’ rates to defray the cost of nuclear plants even before construction begins. Despite this advantage, the four permitted reactors may well see the kind of delays and cost escalation that have become typical for the industry. For example, in May 2012, Progress Energy announced that grid connection for the first unit of its planned two-reactor project in Florida would be pushed back three years to 2024. With this delay, the estimated total cost jumped from $17 billion to as high as $24 billion. Indeed, unlike other energy technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels, where increasing deployment generally leads to economies of scale and falling costs, nuclear power has seen the opposite trend. Even the most recently completed plant in France cost more than three times as much to build and took twice as long to finish as the first plant did. Nuclear costs would be even more prohibitive if the damages for which nuclear utilities were liable in case of a meltdown were in line with realistic estimates of potential harm. In the United States, nuclear plant operators pay into a $12-billion fund that would be used in case of an accident. But an estimate from Sandia National Laboratory indicates that a worst-case incident could cost more than $700 billion. The poor economic case for nuclear power helps explain why most new nuclear construction is happening in countries with government-controlled electricity markets: private investors are leery of the risks. New nuclear capacity additions over the long term are unlikely to make up for shutdowns as the world’s reactors, already averaging 27 years in operation, age further. Nearly 180 reactors have reached age 30 or higher. The 140 reactors already permanently shut down averaged 23 years of service at the time of closure. While some reactors have been granted lifetime extensions beyond the typical 40 years—many U.S. units have, for example—these may not be as readily approved after the demise of the four Fukushima reactors, which averaged 37 years old when disaster struck. Whether or not nuclear generation has truly peaked will depend on a number of factors, including how many Japanese reactors resume operation, how many licenses are extended for aging reactors worldwide, and the pace and magnitude of uprating existing units. But regardless of whether the peak has already come or will do so soon, poor economics and sluggish new construction indicate that nuclear power is on a decline path. Rather than replacing this energy source with fossil fuels, thus boosting carbon emissions and encouraging runaway climate change, the world can use this opportunity to pursue a much safer electricity sector powered largely by wind, solar, and geothermal energy. We know that the potential is there: leading carbon-emitting countries—including China, the United States, India, Russia, and Japan—could meet their electricity needs with wind alone. There's a hole in the nuclear workforce, not just in Finland but across the Western world. For the moment, the operator of the Olkiluoto 3 plant, power utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO), is getting by with its most experienced staff. As those workers retire, though, the skills shortage could become a crisis. "The nuclear industry has been in the desert for years and years and the question is how to revamp it and how to revamp human resources," said Colette Lewiner from Cap Gemini, a consultancy firm which raised concerns about the aging nuclear workforce in a report in 2008 and has warned "there will be no nuclear power renaissance" without efforts to tackle the problem. "The industry needs to ramp up and it needs to do it quickly." Bottlenecks prevent industry expansion Construction Bottlenecks. Another obstacle for getting new nuclear construction under way is the capacity to make ultra-large forging. Pressure vessels--at the core of a nuclear reactor--can be made in several pieces. However, most utilities now want vessels forged in a single piece. Welds can become brittle and leak radiation (older reactors slated for U.S. license extensions have their welds rigorously checked before approval). No welds can decrease the time a reactor is shut down for safety inspections, saving the reactor money. Only one company in the world, Japan Steel Works, currently can forge reactor vessels this way (Bloomberg). The company can only do about five a year, though it hopes to expand to twelve per year by 2012. The company's current order backlog is about three years. This requires utilities to place orders well in advance of construction, plunking down about $100 million just to get in the queue. Utilities are also considering using smaller forgings. Also on the table are more experimental reactors such as pebble-bed modular reactors, which do not require a pressure vessel. Expansion is slow—reactors take 10 years to build At Best, No New Reactors Could Be Completed Until 2016 No new reactors are now under construction in the United States. The nuclear industry will not complete the first new reactor until 2016, optimistically assuming construction will take four years after regulatory approval. From application development to operation, the nuclear industry expects that a new nuclear reactor would take 10 years to build. 71 ƒ Construction cannot begin on any new reactors until the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approves a reactor design and issues a license. This is not likely to happen before 2011 or 2012. ƒ To date, reactor manufacturers have submitted plans for three new types of nuclear reactor designs for certification. The NRC expects official hearings around the suitability of these designs to begin in 2010 or 2011, with decisions arriving later. 72 One type of reactor is already certified through 2012, but then must be re-certified. 73 ƒ Power companies have submitted applications to build and operate 26 new reactors, with as many as eight more expected. 74 As of October 2009, the NRC is actively reviewing applications for 22 of these reactors. 75 The nuclear industry expects this process to take up to four years for the first reactors, followed by public hearings and a rulemaking. 76 Later reactors may take two to three years. 77 The nuclear industry estimates that construction work on a new reactor could be completed in four years. 78 If the NRC begins to issue licenses in 2012, that would imply that as many as three new reactors could be online by 2016, with two more by 2018. 79 However, this schedule could very well be too optimistic. New court decision makes licensing impossible On June 8, the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, unanimously ruled that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) cannot license or re-license any nuclear plant until it examines environmental dangers and consequences of long-term on-site spent fuel waste storage. That decision will have profound impacts upon nuclear development throughout the nation. Petitioners that successfully sought the ruling include four states (Connecticut, New Jersey New York, and Vermont), an Indian community, and a number of environmental groups. The big story behind it involves a political battle between environmentalists who have succeeded in blocking completion of a permanent national repository for spent fuels, others that don’t want the wastes stored at sites near them, groups that are against nuclear development everywhere, and those who regard nuclear power development to be a major and essential part of our country’s power mix. Thus far, the first three groups are clearly winning, and the Obama administration-influenced NRC is working to tip the scale in their favor. Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Geoff Fettus responded to the ruling as a “game changer”, saying, “This forces the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to take a hard look at the environmental consequences of producing highly radioactive nuclear waste without a long-term disposal solution. The court found: ’The Commission apparently has no long-term plan other than hoping for a geologic repository,’” Unfortunately, he, and the court, are right. The Appeals Court, in fact, did conclude that, “We recognize that the Commission is in a difficult position given the political problems concerning the storage of spent nuclear fuel. Nonetheless, the Commission’s obligations under NEPA National Environmental Policy Act require a more thorough analysis than provided in the WCD Waste Confidence Decision Update. We note that the Commission is currently conducting an EIS Environmental Impact Statement regarding the environmental impacts of SNF spent nuclear fuel storage beyond the sixty-year post-license period at issue in this case, and some or all of the problems here may be addressed in such rule-making. In any case, we grant the petitions for review, vacate the WCD Update and TSR Temporary Storage Rule, and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.” It’s not that we don’t need those 104 nuclear power plants which provide about 20% of all U.S. electricity, don’t produce any dreaded CO2 emissions, and have never killed anyone. And since the president is determined to shut down as many of the coal-fired plants which provide about 45% of our electricity as possible, wouldn’t you imagine he might wish to encourage a few more to be built? After all, it has been three and one-half decades since this has occurred. There can be little doubt that a major reason for the dearth of new nuclear development has been the industry’s inability to compete in the energy marketplace without subsidies, including loan guarantees. And while I have repeatedly argued against subsidies for any and all energy sources, nuclear, which currently supplies a substantial portion of our nation’s power supply, should be allowed opportunities, like any industry, to compete in those markets without unwarranted and unreasonable interference. Yet as reported in an excellent Heritage Foundation paper authored by Cornelius Milmoe and Jack Spencer, this clearly isn’t the case. Under marching orders from the Obama White House and Senate leader Harry Reid’s central command battalion, the NRC is waging a devastating nuclear war against atomic power expansion. DA: Terrorism Nuclear power plants are targets for terrorists In this day and age, nuclear power plants are also obvious targets for terrorists, inviting assault by plane, truck bombs, armed attack, or covert intrusion into the reactor's control room. The subsequent meltdown could induce the death of hundreds of thousands of people in heavily populated areas, and they would expire slowly and painfully, some over days and others over years from acute ra¬diation illness, cancer, leukemia, congenital deformities, or genetic disease. Such an attack at the Indian Point reactors, thirty-five miles from Manhattan, for instance, would effectively incapacitate the world's main financial center for the rest of time. An attack on one of the thirteen reactors surrounding Chicago would wreak similar catastrophic medical consequences. Amazingly, security at U.S. nuclear power plants remains at virtually the same lax levels as prior to the 9/11 attacks. NRC standards don’t even have safeguards against airplanes for new designs New nuclear reactors need not be designed to withstand suicide attacks by big airplanes, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided Tuesday. Instead, the commission proposed that designers be required to analyze how their reactors can be built to mitigate the effects of such an attack, ''to the extent practicable.'' The commission's staff characterized the vote, which was 4 to 1, as an additional step to improve plant security in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The chairman, Dale Klein, said in a statement, ''This proposal gives us the chance to assess and make practicable changes to new reactor designs early in the design process.'' In fact, however, the commission has already approved two designs, one by General Electric and one by Westinghouse, for which no such analysis was required. Extinction The intense radioactive heat within today's operating reactors is the hottest anywhere on the planet. So are the hellish levels of radioactivity. Because Indian Point has operated so long, its accumulated radioactive burden far exceeds that of Chernobyl, which ran only four years before it exploded. Some believe the WTC jets could have collapsed or breached either of the Indian Point containment domes. But at very least the massive impact and intense jet fuel fire would destroy the human ability to control the plants' functions. Vital cooling systems, backup power generators and communications networks would crumble. Indeed, Indian Point Unit One was shut because activists warned that its lack of an emergency core cooling system made it an unacceptable risk. The government ultimately agreed. But today terrorist attacks could destroy those same critical cooling and control systems that are vital to not only the Unit Two and Three reactor cores, but to the spent fuel pools that sit on site. The assault would not require a large jet. The safety systems are extremely complex and virtually indefensible. One or more could be wiped out with a wide range of easily deployed small aircraft, ground-based weapons, truck bombs or even chemical/biological assaults aimed at the operating work force. Dozens of US reactors have repeatedly failed even modest security tests over the years. Even heightened wartime standards cannot guarantee protection of the vast, supremely sensitive controls required for reactor safety. Without continous monitoring and guaranteed water flow, the thousands of tons of radioactive rods in the cores and the thousands more stored in those fragile pools would rapidly melt into super-hot radioactive balls of lava that would burn into the ground and the water table and, ultimately, the Hudson. Indeed, a jetcrash like the one on 9/11 or other forms of terrorist assault at Indian Point could yield three infernal fireballs of molten radioactive lava burning through the earth and into the aquifer and the river. Striking water they would blast gigantic billows of horribly radioactive steam into the atmosphere. Prevailing winds from the north and west might initially drive these clouds of mass death downriver into New York City and east into Westchester and Long Island. But at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, winds ultimately shifted around the compass to irradiate all surrounding areas with the devastating poisons released by the on-going fiery torrent. At Indian Point, thousands of square miles would have been saturated with the most lethal clouds ever created or imagined, depositing relentless genetic poisons that would kill forever. In nearby communities like Buchanan, Nyack, Monsey and scores more, infants and small children would quickly die en masse. Virtually all pregnant women would spontaneously abort, or ultimately give birth to horribly deformed offspring. Ghastly sores, rashes, ulcerations and burns would afflict the skin of millions. Emphysema, heart attacks, stroke, multiple organ failure, hair loss, nausea, inability to eat or drink or swallow, diarrhea and incontinance, sterility and impotence, asthma, blindness, and more would kill thousands on the spot, and doom hundreds of thousands if not millions. A terrible metallic taste would afflict virtually everyone downwind in New York, New Jersey and New England, a ghoulish curse similar to that endured by the fliers who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagaskai, by those living downwind from nuclear bomb tests in the south seas and Nevada, and by victims caught in the downdrafts from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Then comes the abominable wave of cancers, leukemias, lymphomas, tumors and hellish diseases for which new names will have to be invented, and new dimensions of agony will beg description. Indeed, those who survived the initial wave of radiation would envy those who did not. Evacuation would be impossible, but thousands would die trying. Bridges and highways would become killing fields for those attempting to escape to destinations that would soon enough become equally deadly as the winds shifted. Attempts to quench the fires would be futile. At Chernobyl, pilots flying helicopters that dropped boron on the fiery core died in droves. At Indian Point, such missions would be a sure ticket to death. Their utility would be doubtful as the molten cores rage uncontrolled for days, weeks and years, spewing ever more devastation into the ecosphere. More than 800,000 Soviet draftees were forced through Chernobyl's seething remains in a futile attempt to clean it up. They are dying in droves. Who would now volunteer for such an American task force? The radioactive cloud from Chernobyl blanketed the vast Ukraine and Belarus landscape, then carried over Europe and into the jetstream, surging through the west coast of the United States within ten days, carrying across our northern tier, circling the globe, then coming back again. The radioactive clouds from Indian Point would enshroud New York, New Jersey, New England, and carry deep into the Atlantic and up into Canada and across to Europe and around the globe again and again. The immediate damage would render thousands of the world's most populous and expensive square miles permanently uninhabitable. All five boroughs of New York City would be an apocalyptic wasteland. The World Trade Center would be rendered as unusable and even more lethal by a jet crash at Indian Point than it was by the direct hits of 9/11. All real estate and economic value would be poisonously radioactive throughout the entire region. Irreplaceable trillions in human capital would be forever lost. As at Three Mile Island, where thousands of farm and wild animals died in heaps, and as at Chernobyl, where soil, water and plant life have been hopelessly irradiated, natural eco-systems on which human and all other life depends would be permanently and irrevocably destroyed, Spiritually, psychologically, financially, ecologically, our nation would never recover. This is what we missed by a mere forty miles near New York City on September 11. Now that we are at war, this is what could be happening as you read this. There are 103 of these potential Bombs of the Apocalypse now operating in the United States. They generate just 18% of America's electricity, just 8% of our total energy. As with reactors elsewhere, the two at Indian Point have both been off-line for long periods of time with no appreciable impact on life in New York. Already an extremely expensive source of electricity, the cost of attempting to defend these reactors will put nuclear energy even further off the competitive scale. Since its deregulation crisis, California---already the nation's second-most efficient state---cut further into its electric consumption by some 15%. Within a year the US could cheaply replace virtually with increased efficiency all the reactors now so much more expensive to operate and protect. Yet, as the bombs fall and the terror escalates, Congress is fast-tracking a form of legal immunity to protect the operators of reactors like Indian Point from liability in case of a meltdown or terrorist attack. Why is our nation handing its proclaimed enemies the weapons of our own mass destruction, and then shielding from liability the companies that insist on continuing to operate them? Do we take this war seriously? Are we committed to the survival of our nation? If so, the ticking reactor bombs that could obliterate the very core of our life and of all future generations must be shut down. DA: Prolif Nuclear power expansion causes nuclear war Nuclear power station disasters can be caused by natural phenomena, such as earthquakes and tsunamis, operator errors (Chernobyl), equipment failures, or terrorist attacks. Nevertheless, the resulting thousands of deaths could be much fewer than those from a nuclear war resulting from the proliferation of nuclear weapons driven in part by so-called ‘peaceful’ nuclear power. Even a regional nuclear war, such as between India and Pakistan, could bring on a ‘nuclear winter’ resulting in global agricultural collapse and mass starvation (Robock and Toon 2009), this in addition to the regional devastation from the blast, firestorms and irradiation.D!ssent No.36, Spring 2011, 13-18 4 The governments of the following countries used nuclear power programs to help produce their first nuclear weapons: India, Pakistan, North Korea and South Africa (subsequently dismantled); while the governments of the UK and probably France used nuclear power programs to expand their armouries of nuclear weapons produced originally in military programs. The governments of the following countries attempted unsuccessfully to use nuclear power to produce nuclear weapons: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Iran, South Korea and Taiwan. All except Iran discontinued their programs for various reasons before completion. Australia’s attempt under the Gorton government in the 1960s was fortunately aborted by a change of Prime Minister (Broinowski 2003). One of the advantages of using nuclear power, rather than a purely military program, is that it allows a government to come very close to producing nuclear weapons without actually being identified as a nuclear weapons state. For example, Japan has the scientific and engineering capabilities and large quantities of plutonium, so arms control experts believe that Japan could assemble nuclear bombs within a few days or weeks if it decided that the geopolitical situation demanded it. Clearly, the more nuclear countries that have nuclear power, the greater the probability of nuclear war. DA: Accidents Accidents are inevitable with nuclear power In the aftermath of Fukushima and, twenty five years earlier, Chernobyl, it should be obvious that nuclear power is capable of catastrophic accidents whose effects could reach across space and time. Yet, many proponents of nuclear energy keep arguing that reactors can be operated safely without accidents. However, the key question is not whether it can be safe, but whether it will be safe—across countries, across many facilities operated by a variety of organizations with multiple priorities, including cost-cutting and profit-making, and using multiple technologies, each with its own vulnerabilities. There are two ways of approaching this question. First, there is a history of small and large accidents at nuclear reactors. This history shows us that accidents occur in most, if not all, countries, involving various reactor designs, initiated by internal and external events, and with different patterns of progressions. Many of these accidents did not escalate purely by chance, often involving the intervention of human operators rather than any technical safety feature. Such interventions cannot be taken for granted and so it seems all but inevitable that nuclear reactors will experience accidents. Second, at a deeper level, all nuclear power plants share some common structural features, though to different extents. The most influential work that explored these features was Charles Perrow’s conceptualization of what happened at Three Mile Island in 1979 as a “normal accident” whose origins lay in the structural characteristics of the system. 1 Normal Accident Theory (NAT) identifies two characteristics, interactive complexity and tight coupling, that make nuclear reactors and similar technologies prone to catastrophic accidents. Interactive complexity pertains to the potential for hidden and unexpected interactions between different parts of the system, and tight coupling refers to the time dependency of the system and the presence of strictly prescribed steps and invariant sequences in operation that cannot be changed. According to Perrow, these are inherent features of nuclear reactors, and there is a limit to how far they can be reduced through engineering efforts. Meltdowns cause extinction Reuters said the 1995 Kobe quake caused $100 billion in damage, up to then the most costly ever natural disaster. This time, from quake and tsunami damage alone, that figure will be dwarfed. Moreover, under a worst case core meltdown, all bets are off as the entire region and beyond will be threatened with permanent contamination, making the most affected areas unsafe to live in. On March 12, Stratfor Global Intelligence issued a "Red Alert: Nuclear Meltdown at Quake-Damaged Japanese Plant," saying: Fukushima Daiichi "nuclear power plant in Okuma, Japan, appears to have caused a reactor meltdown." Stratfor downplayed its seriousness, adding that such an event "does not necessarily mean a nuclear disaster," that already may have happened - the ultimate nightmare short of nuclear winter. According to Stratfor, "(A)s long as the reactor core, which is specifically designed to contain high levels of heat, pressure and radiation, remains intact, the melted fuel can be dealt with. If the (core's) breached but the containment facility built around (it) remains intact, the melted fuel can be....entombed within specialized concrete" as at Chernobyl in 1986. In fact, that disaster killed nearly one million people worldwide from nuclear radiation exposure. In their book titled, "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment," Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko said: "For the past 23 years, it has been clear that there is a danger greater than nuclear weapons concealed within nuclear power. Emissions from this one reactor exceeded a hundred-fold the radioactive contamination of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki." "No citizen of any country can be assured that he or she can be protected from radioactive contamination. One nuclear reactor can pollute half the globe. Chernobyl fallout covers the entire Northern Hemisphere." Stratfor explained that if Fukushima's floor cracked, "it is highly likely that the melting fuel will burn through (its) containment system and enter the ground. This has never happened before," at least not reported. If now occurring, "containment goes from being merely dangerous, time consuming and expensive to nearly impossible," making the quake, aftershocks, and tsunamis seem mild by comparison. Potentially, millions of lives will be jeopardized. Japanese officials said Fukushima's reactor container wasn't breached. Stratfor and others said it was, making the potential calamity far worse than reported. Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said the explosion at Fukushima's Saiichi No. 1 facility could only have been caused by a core meltdown. In fact, 3 or more reactors are affected or at risk. Events are fluid and developing, but remain very serious. The possibility of an extreme catastrophe can't be discounted. Moreover, independent nuclear safety analyst John Large told Al Jazeera that by venting radioactive steam from the inner reactor to the outer dome, a reaction may have occurred, causing the explosion. "When I look at the size of the explosion," he said, "it is my opinion that there could be a very large leak (because) fuel continues to generate heat." Already, Fukushima way exceeds Three Mile Island that experienced a partial core meltdown in Unit 2. Finally it was brought under control, but coverup and denial concealed full details until much later. According to anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman, Japan's quake fallout may cause nuclear disaster, saying: "This is a very serious situation. If the cooling system fails (apparently it has at two or more plants), the super-heated radioactive fuel rods will melt, and (if so) you could conceivably have an explosion," that, in fact, occurred. As a result, massive radiation releases may follow, impacting the entire region. "It could be, literally, an apocalyptic event. |
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