Governor Walker and the state legislature seem content avoiding the need to address some of Wisconsin’s biggest problems and instead fixing things that aren’t broken. The unbroken problem the legislature is focused on this week is Wisconsin’s nuclear moratorium. This requirement says that before a nuclear plant can be built, a utility must prove:
- “A federally-licensed facility … with adequate capacity to dispose of high-level nuclear waste from all nuclear power plants operating in this state will be available, as necessary, for disposal of the waste;” and
- “the proposed nuclear plant, in comparison with feasible alternatives, is economically advantageous to ratepayers” in terms of fuel supply, costs for construction, operation, decommissioning, nuclear waste disposal, and any other economic factor.
Even though these commonsense conditions simply protect bill payers and future generations from waste, the legislature has proposed eliminating this law. Removing these protections puts all Wisconsinites at serious risk.
Nuclear energy is an accident waiting to happen. Nuclear energy is vulnerable to natural disasters, terrorism, and human error that can lead to meltdowns and severe radiation leaks, as shown by the tsunami and earthquake in Fukushima, Japan, at Three Mile Island in 1979, at Chernobyl in 1986, and near disasters that occurred when Missouri River floods threatened two nuclear reactors in Nebraska and when the Las Conchas wildfire threatened the Los Alamos Nuclear Research Laboratoray in New Mexico.
It hasn’t even been five years since the Fukishima accident in March of 2011. After a tsunami, flooding ruined the cooling process for the reactors and led to them melting. The accident resulted in large releases of radiation into the Pacific Ocean, the contamination of crops and drinking water, and the evacuation of the local community, including 100,000 people. This September was the first time one of the evacuation limits was lifted. The federal government estimates that a major accident at just one of Wisconsin’s reactors could cost over $40 billion in property damage alone. There is no safe level of radiation. Exposure, caused by an accident or small leaks, can increase the risk of thyroid and other cancers, it may take decades to appear.
Even if nothing goes wrong, new nuclear plants do not make any sense for Wisconsin.
The economics just don’t add up. The estimated cost for building a nuclear reactor is over $10 billion. That’s after the $140 billion the nuclear industry has received in subsidies in the last fifty years. Forcing us to foot the bill for a multi-billion dollar project is irresponsible and unfair. Even the CEO of General Electric said, "If you were a utility CEO and looked at your world today, you would just do gas and wind…You would never do nuclear. The economics are overwhelming.”
Wisconsin already has some of the highest electricity rates in the Midwest. A new nuclear proposal could make our rates skyrocket even further. In other states with new nuclear plants, not only did rates catapult, but some saw their rates increase before the construction even began on new nuclear plants.
Of course, the concern that can’t be overlooked is the radioactive waste created by nuclear energy. This dangerous waste will be around for hundreds of thousands of years. With no federal nuclear waste dumps, the nuclear waste of any new plant would continue to pile up on the shore of our important waterways.
Regardless, adding nuclear plants is not even a conversation we should or need to be having. We have better, more realistic options. Wind, solar, and energy efficiency are much cheaper than nuclear and do not come with the incredible drawbacks. There is no concern of a ‘solar spill’ that could result in the evacuation of communities. Instead, we’d have more energy, fewer emissions, and more family-supporting jobs. This 20th Century form of energy will not be the future in Wisconsin. It is illogical to be having this discussion now, when we have better alternatives that our neighboring states have already embraced and we have to steadily catch up to. It’d be like talking about removing the ban on using lead-based paints.
The reality is we needed to have begun reducing our carbon emissions yesterday. We don’t have time to wait for a nuclear plant to be constructed—a process that would take a decade at least—a decade that we could have spent immediately reducing our carbon emissions by installing energy efficiency upgrades and clean energy.
The irony, of course, is that this comes as the same utilities that support this bill have proposed increasing the mandatory fees for electricity customers—shifting more of the burden on to fixed-income seniors and low-income customers. The utilities (erroneously) blame the need for these increases on customers that have invested in energy efficiency and solar panels. It’s unreasonable to suggest this problem while opening the door for the most expensive form of energy.