As Japan looks to nuclear-free future, the US Senate votes for… more nukes

It’s madness. But even as Japan’s Prime Minister says that after Fukushima, it’s time to prepare for a society that does not rely on nuclear power – his strongest statement yet about ending Japan’s nuclear program – it’s full speed ahead in the US Senate.

The Senate Energy Committee is set to vote tomorrow on three bills that would promote nuclear power, despite everything that has happened in the past four months.

Democracy in Action has a summary of what’s going down:

S. 512 would require the Secretary of Energy to carry out programs to develop and demonstrate two “small modular nuclear reactor” designs, one of 300 MW maximum and one of 50 MW maximum. By comparison, new reactors being ordered by utilities are 1,000 MW or more, but several problematic early U.S. reactors–like Yankee Rowe, Big Rock Point, LaCrosse and others–were actually smaller than 300 MW.

Fukushima Unit 1 was only 460 MW–not a lot larger than these “small modular” reactors.

Here is a factsheet from our friends at IEER & PSR on some of the problems with “small modular reactors.”

S. 1067 would waste $250 million taxpayer dollars over the next five years on a hopeless effort: it would create a new Department of Energy program to try to reduce the manufacturing and construction costs of both large and small new reactors.

And the Committee also may resume consideration of CEDA (Clean Energy Deployment Administration) legislation. This would set up a “clean energy” bank to provide taxpayer loans and loan guarantees to eligible technologies. This legislation does not yet have a bill number, and we haven’t seen the full text yet. While there appears to be some improvement over earlier versions (it may not allow unlimited taxpayer loans), it still perpetuates the fiction that nuclear power and some types of coal are “clean energy.” Until these dirty and dangerous technologies are removed from the definition of clean energy, this type of legislation must be opposed. Otherwise, the “clean energy bank” will simply become another mechanism to channel taxpayer dollars into large, polluting and irresponsible companies that produce lethal radioactive waste, destroy mountains and generally are not deserving of any support.

At a time when they’re finding more radioactive beef in Japan and more radioactive rain in the US Northwest, moving ahead with more nuclear plants is madness.

And at a time when government is being cut across the board – including funding for renewable energy like solar, wind, and geothermal that would go online in the next year or two – it’s totally insane to be spending more government money on a nuclear program that only huge corporations want, that wouldn’t come on line for at least ten years.

Write your Senators – tell them we can’t afford more nuclear plants, we don’t want them, and we don’t need them. (Follow the link to Democracy in Action‘s website, where they’ll hook you up with an easy-to-fill-out email form. Make sure to put in as much of your own words and thoughts as possible…)

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More on nuclear power:

• Fukushima update – contaminated beef found, reactor cleanup will take decades
• After Fukushima, Wikileaks points to the disasters waiting to happen
• High levels of radioactive strontium found near Fukushima
• Japan admits total meltdown, says it was unprepared for Fukushima disaster
• Fukushima radiation found in California milk, fruit, vegetables
• Downwind from the bomb… how we nuked Utah
• Japan melts down, Europe backs off, but US says “Full speed ahead”
• TED Talk: Pro vs Con on Nuclear Energy

(Nuclear fantasy image from The Simpsons, c Fox TV)