[cdn-nucl-l] More nonsense...

[Jim Muckerheide <jmuckerheide@delphi.com>]

...the nature of the "debate."

Regards, Jim
============

December 19, 2000

Nuclear power no defence against a new oil crisis

Lawrence Solomon National Post

After Egypt and Syria invaded Israel in October, 1973, to start the Yom Kippur
War, the Arab oil-exporting nations punished the West for its support of
Israel by slashing oil production and raising oil prices. Western governments,
seeking energy independence, hastened their plans to adopt nuclear power,
which they universally saw as the fuel of the future.

After Muslim fundamentalists toppled the Shah of Iran in 1979, they installed
Ayatollah Khomeini in his place and punished the West with a second OPEC oil
crisis. The West made even bigger plans to get off oil and on to
nuclear-powered electricity.

Today, the Middle East is again in turmoil. A new Palestinian Intifada is in
full force, and peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians are in
disarray. The United States is more dependent on foreign oil than in 1973. A
militarily strong Saddam Hussein is once again flexing his muscles, and oil
prices are once again high.

Many in the West are again seeking salvation in nuclear power. They forget
that it failed utterly to counteract the clout of the Arab oil-exporting
countries in the previous two OPEC oil crises, and they don't understand that
a new attempt to turn to nuclear power could only make us more dependent, not
less, on Arab oil.

Over the entire history of nuclear power, North American utilities built 150
nuclear reactors. All of them were planned or under construction before the
first OPEC embargo. North American utilities subsequently placed hundreds more
nuclear reactors on the drawing boards. None of these post-OPEC reactors were
built -- none -- despite overwhelming public support, despite the utilities'
monopoly powers, despite the billions of dollars governments provided in
subsidies. Canada's last nuclear plant to be completed was Ontario Hydro's
Darlington station outside Toronto. Ontario Hydro first started spending money
on Darlington in 1970; it formally ordered it built in 1976 after receiving
government permission; and it finished the job in 1993, more than 20 years
later. The last U.S. reactor to be completed was ordered in 1974.

Most electric utilities abandoned their nuclear plans by the late 1980s --
some of them 90% or more complete. In the quarter-century since the first OPEC
oil crisis, the frantic pro-nuclear efforts by North American governments to
ramp up nuclear production were for naught: Apart from plants already in the
pipeline, not one additional kilowatt-hour of power was produced.

Elsewhere in the world, nuclear power's failure to replace oil is little
different. Only Third World and Eastern Bloc countries still aggressively
pursue nuclear power -- largely because Western governments seeking to keep
their nuclear manufacturers alive have plied them with nearly free reactors.
In 1974, the International Atomic Energy Agency predicted 4,500,000 megawatts
of nuclear capacity. In fact, the world now has less than 10% as much and,
according to U.S. Department of Energy projections, the relatively small
amount that does exist will be halved over the next two decades, as reactors
reach the end of their useful lives.

In Canada, despite mammoth subsidies by governments, nuclear power meets less
than 3% of our energy needs, about half as much as provided by wood. Yet
because most of that 3% is concentrated in just one province -- Ontario -- and
in just one type of energy production -- electricity -- it has made us
extremely vulnerable to disruption. Of Ontario's 21 nuclear reactors, nine
have produced no power for at least 21 months, and some or all of the
remaining 12 could be permanently shut down should a common design problem
surface.

North America overcame the OPEC energy crises without the help of new nuclear
plants. It did so partly by developing new oil and gas fields at home and
mostly -- overwhelmingly -- by insulating our homes, improving our industrial
processes and otherwise increasing our efficiency. Ontario, the most
nuclearized jurisdiction in North America, consumes about as much power today
as it did a decade ago, despite an economy 30% larger.

In the event of a new OPEC crisis, nuclear reactors couldn't be built quickly
enough to help, but we would nevertheless be secure. In part, our energy needs
would be met from the great untapped potential for conservation and efficiency
improvements and in part from small-scale technologies that can be brought on
stream in 12 to 18 months, compared with the 10 to 14 years typical of nuclear
plants.

When the U.K. fully deregulated its power system a decade ago, the free market
rapidly shut down many existing nuclear and coal plants and embarked on the
biggest building boom in the country's history, much of it small-scale and
almost all of it based on co-generation and other high-efficiency gas
technologies. Unlike the highly politicized, partial deregulations we're
seeing in California, Alberta and other jurisdictions now facing power
shortages, the U.K.'s approach -- privatizing everything but a few nuclear
plants (which no one then wanted) and deregulating the power sector to
encourage investment -- created a power glut while lowering rates and phasing
out the most environmentally harmful forms of energy.

Because nuclear reactors take so long to build, and because they are so
susceptible to premature closure -- few are now expected to last their
predicted service lives -- they are the most vulnerable of technologies. Had
the International Atomic Energy Agency's prediction come true, our society
truly would be dependent on nuclear power, and when serious problems arose, as
they invariably have, we would truly have been vulnerable to OPEC blackmail.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute, a
division of Energy Probe Research Foundation. LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com