Al Gedicks Public Testimony to Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy
PUBLIC TESTIMONY OF AL GEDICKS BEFORE THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENERGY ON TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 2016;
RE: SENATE BILL 288
RELATING TO REQUIREMENTS FOR APPROVAL AND CONSTRUCTION OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS AND CHANGES TO THE STATE’S ENERGY PRIORITIES POLICY. BY SENATORS LASEE AND WANGGAARD.
My name is Al Gedicks and I am an environmental sociologist and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. I have written extensively about the impact of past uranium mining on Native American communities. I am also the executive secretary of the Wisconsin Resources Protection Council, a statewide environmental organization.
My main concern about Senate Bill 288 is that it is seeks to promote a technology that is not affordable and is a barrier to a clean-energy future, not a part of it. Furthermore, if Wisconsin’s common sense moratorium on new nuclear power plants is repealed, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will have all the more reason to reconsider the Wolf River Batholith as a permanent nuclear waste repository.
The idea that nuclear power is clean defies common sense. Would a truly “clean energy” source produce “one of the most hazardous substances on earth” according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office? Of course not.
The argument that nuclear power is affordable is not supported by the evidence. The Toshiba-Westinghouse AP 1000 reactors under construction at Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle and SCANA’s VC Summer at South Carolina are at least 39 months delayed, with more delays expected. They are also billions of dollars over budget. Plant Vogtle was originally estimated at $14 billion for two reactors and is now nearly $21 billion. Many of Vogtle’s critics are retirees who live on Social Security benefits who have told the Public Service Commission how much they are hurt by rising power bills. “I’ll be dead before I get any of the benefits from the reactors, which I didn’t want in the first place,” said Gloria Tatum at a recent hearing.
The lead-time for new nuclear plants is 10 to 15 years, too late in the battle to forestall global warming. Nuclear power, no matter the reactor design, cannot address climate change in time. Renewables are faster to deploy and can provide low-carbon power more cheaply than nuclear and without the dangers of nuclear waste.
A recent report from Dr. Arjun Makhijani at the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research emphasizes that:
An objective assessment of the facts leads to the clear conclusion that
nuclear power is already economically obsolete, quite apart from a number
of other considerations. The same amount of money can produce far greater
CO2 reductions with wind and solar energy than with nuclear. The time-
related financial and climate risks (delayed, costly, and cancelled plants)
of nuclear power also point in the same direction.
These are just some of the most obvious and compelling reasons to preserve Wisconsin’s common sense nuclear power moratorium. Less obvious but just as if not more compelling is the message that this legislation will be sending to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) at the precise moment when the DOE is launching a so-called “consent-based process” to site an underground repository for high-level nuclear waste in the aftermath of the failed attempt to site such a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, in part because of the State of Nevada’s opposition to that proposed disposal facility. Nine states have banned the construction of new reactors until the waste problem is solved or until substantial progress is made on the issue.
The DOE is desperate to find a host for a permanent geologic repository for nuclear waste and Wisconsin is high on the list of potential sites because of the granite bedrock of the Wolf River Batholith in northeastern Wisconsin. In the 1980s the DOE ranked Wisconsin’s Wolf River Batholith as Number Two for a second high-level nuclear waste repository. The proposed area for the facility would encompass 1,024 square miles and extend over seven counties, including Langlade, Shawano, Waupaca, Menominee, Portage, Marathon and Oconto counties, and the land of three tribes (Stockbridge-Munsee, Menominee and Ho-Chunk).
Groundwater movement in the granite could carry harmful radioactive contaminants into drinking water. Radioactive contaminated water would then flow from the Wolf River into the Fox River, which connects to Lake Winnebago and Green Bay, putting the people and the environment in this area at risk. Wisconsin citizens and Indian tribes were overwhelmingly opposed to becoming nuclear guinea pigs for the DOE. In a 1983 statewide referendum, 89% voted against a nuclear waste disposal site in Wisconsin. In January 1986 the DOE conducted several public hearings in the potentially affected communities. After massive public opposition at the public hearings the DOE said it would indefinitely postpone the search for the second nuclear waste site.
This legislation ignores the entire history of Wisconsin citizen and tribal opposition to a nuclear waste repository in the state. Have the representatives and senators that have signed on to this bill consulted their constituents in potentially affected communities about becoming a host for a nuclear waste repository? Because that is a much more likely outcome for Wisconsin than ever seeing a new nuclear reactor being built and becoming operational.
A typical nuclear reactor will generate 20 to 30 tons of high-level nuclear waste annually. Regardless of what the nuclear industry and its proponents say, there is no known way to safely dispose of this waste, which remains dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. The only existing geologic repository for nuclear waste in this country is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Until quite recently, this site was considered the model of safe nuclear waste storage. But on Valentine’s Day 2014, plutonium and other radioactive elements were accidentally released into the atmosphere from the WIPP Site. One millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled into your lungs, can cause lung cancer. “What makes this event so disturbing,” said Robert Alvarez, a nuclear waste expert and a former assistant to the energy secretary, “is that radiation went half a mile up the shaft into the open environment. Twenty two workers were exposed to small amounts of radiation.” The plant has been shut down since the accident.
There is no good reason to expose Wisconsin communities and Indian tribes to the risks of radioactive contamination when there are nuclear-free and carbon-free renewable energy technologies that are truly cleaner, safer, faster and cheaper. Let’s not repeal the Nuclear Moratorium Law simply because the nuclear industry can’t or won’t play by the common sense rules that have protected Wisconsin citizens for 33 years.