Nuclear Power: Implications of Loan Guarantees for Reactors with Foreign Control and Foreign Jobs
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Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Nuclear Power: Implications of Loan Guarantees for Reactors with Foreign Control and Foreign Jobs
As the United States government does what it can to halt Iran's nuclear program, it may be suspected that it is seeking to build up its own nuclear industry, denying Iran the capacity to develop its own technology while pressuring it to open itself up for US technological export and to become dependent on it. That suspicion, however, is not exactly justified, as far as the part about US development of US industry is concerned. The US government has no integrated energy and industrial policy to match its foreign policy. The US power elite's commitment to deregulation and liberalization, more often than not, trumps the rhetoric of "national security" through "energy security" marshaled to forge the consensus for their foreign policy. "The notion that taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for more nuclear power means energy independence in the United States is a hoax that could cost unwary U.S. taxpayers tens of billions of dollars while richly benefiting profitable foreign corporations and non-U.S. workers," according to a report just published by Nuclear Information & Resource Service (see below).
Nuclear Power: Implications of Loan Guarantees for Reactors with Foreign Control and Foreign Jobs
For more information, visit
Nuclear Power: Implications of Loan Guarantees for Reactors with Foreign Control and Foreign Jobs
For more information, visit
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See also: Daniel Pope's review (http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=23595) of Justin Pemberton's film The Nuclear Comeback (http://icarusfilms.com/new2008/nuc.html). Pope, Professor of History at the University of Oregon and the author of Nuclear Implosions: The Rise and Fall of the Washington Public Power Supply System (http://books.google.com/books?id=6OWFheGYDpoC) among other books, focuses on the economics of a possible resurgence in the nuclear power industry:
"Nevertheless, the economics of nuclear power render a comeback of the sort its most fervent backers espouse unlikely. Not only are there no plant starts in the United States, but recent experience in Europe and Canada also does not augur well for a major revival. Finland’s Olkiluoto 3 project has fallen years behind its original construction schedule and will come in at least 50 percent over budget. In Ontario, Bruce Power recently canceled plans for two new nuclear plants at its Darlington installation as cost estimates soared. Britain’s strategy for underground storage of high-level nuclear waste is encountering resistance. No permanent repository is likely before 2040 at the earliest. Even in France, the nuclear industry’s poster child, the one new plant under construction, Flamanville 3, has experienced unforeseen difficulties. For better or worse, a nuclear comeback will in all likelihood not provide a major contribution to solving the problems of climate change in the next decade or two. Whether it ever will remains to be seen."
For a brief clip from Pemberton's film, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKzyqbgi_ao
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