One More Reason To

One More Reason to Wonder Why

SOLAR POWER OR NUCLEAR POISON?

This is the second in a series of articles focusing on the energy crisis. The first article of (Oil Profits Speed Up As Traffic Slows Down, SUN, January 11, 1974) centered on the oil companies push for profits and political power. To reach these goals, the industry has contrived an oil shortage with the burden of the problem falling on the individual consumer. But while the current energy shortage is only a power play by the oil industry, the U.S. is facing a real crisis over the depletion of natural resources. While Americana make up only 6% of the worlds population, they use 30% of the worlds resources (other estimates range as high as 60%). The Nixon administration 's plans for solving the energy crisis are inadequate, and primarily benefit the people who created it -- the oil monopolies. The rest of the series will focus on alternatives to the Nixon program.)

The sun -- worshiped throughout history as a source of power and life -- could be one of the cheapest and most reliable solutions to the energy crisis. While fossil fuels may be depleted in as few as 30 years. solar energy will continue for billions.

Four hundred solar scientists at a conference overwhelmingly believed that solar heating could be in commercial use in five years. Sun-powered central generating stations could be operating ten years from now -- at the same time the Federal government expects to have the first of its dangerous fast-breeder nuclear plants in operation.

The Nixon administration, the AEC and the public utilities appear to be firmly behind the development of widescale nuclear power plants to solve the growing shortage of fossil fuels. Nixon has encouraged the AEC to accelerate the the licensing and construction of nuclear plants. In his budget for 1973. Nixon gave $563 million for nuclear research, compared to $15 million for solar.

THE NUCLEAR EXPLOSION

The Nixon proposal calls for speeding up a ten year nuclear program into six years. One victim of this plan is the public hearing which will be eliminated for up to 18 months.

In the past, the public hearings served to point out the faults of nuclear plants, and have prevented some serious mistakes from being made. The existing nuclear programs is beset with problems, and plants which are already operating have run into a series of technical difficulties which make them unreliable. The two plants in Michigan, operated by Consumers Power, have both been closed because of low-level radiation leaks. No one is sure when they will reopen.

Despite such problems, the AEC predicted that nuclear fission will provide 30% of the country's total energy in-put by the year 2000. Atomic generators currently supply about 2% of the total energy input, or approximately 14,700 megawatts distributed evenly among 29 relatively small plants. By 2000, this country may be producing 1,200,000 electrical megawatts from an average of 24 plants in each of the fifty states.

In addition to large numbers of American nuclear facilities, other non-communist countries are predicted to generate 1,460,000 megawatts from nuclear plants and communist countries 600,000 mw. more. The combined production of long-lived radioactive waste in the year 2000 will be the equivalent of 3 million Hiroshima atom bombs per year!

NUCLEAR GARBAGE

The radioactive wastes produced by atomic plants pose one of the most serious problems of nuclear technology. While the possibility of a nuclear accident in a reactor is relatively small possibility, waste disposal is a disadvantage which lasts half a million years. During the year 2000 (and each year after that)America's nuclear plants alone will create as much strontium 90 and other long-lived radioactive wastes as 1,200.000 Hiroshima bombs, plus at least 600,000 pounds of radioactive plutonium.

Dr. Frank Pittman, former AEC director of reactor development, has called plutonium the "most toxic substance known to man." Less than one-millionth of a pound can cause cancer if absorbed by the human body, yet 600,000 pounds will produced annually, and will remain dangerous for a half million years.

The AEC is expected to come up with a proposal for storing wastes, probably somewhere in Idaho or Nevada. According to Pittman. the total radioactive wastes between now and the year 2000 will amount to 80.000 one by ten foot canisters, enough to fill a one-story warehouse covering an acre of land. Not only is there the risk of accidents during cross-country transport to the storage site, but the contents must be kept cool (probably by some sort of water system) to keep the contents from melting the containers and releasing radioactive material into the environment.

An additional problem is security. The radioactive materials could be the target of theft or sabotage. The current problem of an individual or organization with sufficient resources stealing radioactive materials to create a nuclear weapon increases as large amounts of radioactive materials are shipped across the country. While it may be easier to steal an existing nuclear weapon than to make one, it only requires 5 kilograms of plutonium to make an atomic bomb. Current plants produce 200-300 kg. of plutonium annually.

THE SOLAR ALTERNATIVE

But solar energy does not have any of these disadvantages. It does not produce any by-products useful in the production of nuclear weapons, helping to escalate the international arms race. It will never bring on a major war, like competition for the world's oil resources, and it does not pollute the environment like active or fossil fuels.

What solar energy can do is provide an inexhaustible source of enormous amounts of clean energy. There are numerous conversion methods by which solar energy can be utilized for heat and power, such as thermal, photosyntheses, bioconversion, photovoltaics, wind and ocean temperature differences.

Solar energy is already being used successfully to heat homes (some have used solar energy for as long as thirty years), and a wife-husband research team have designed a commercial generating system which they are trying to find the research money to build. This same team has proposed a national system which could provide enough electricity for the entire country's needs through the year 2000, and would require only 14,000 square miles of desert.

Solar energy is not being used now because in most cases, the costs are prohibitive. But with support behind a solar program, building heating could be available at a reasonable cost in five years, building cooling in 6-10 years, synthetic fuels from organic materials in 5-8 years and electricity production on a large scale in 10-15 years.

SO WHY NUCLEAR POWER?

The advantages of solar energy seem obvious, yet nuclear power dominates Nixon's "Operation Independence". Without research and development funds, solar energy will remain expensive and impractical.

Like the energy crisis itself, the source of the problem once again centers on the oil companies The major oil trusts own over 50% of uranium reserves and 25% of the uranium milling capacity. As demand for uranium increases, prices will shoot up for this relatively rare resource. As Ralph Nader has pointed out, "The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun." As fossil fuels run out, the oil industry plans to maintain its stranglehold over the energy business by creating U.S. dependency on nuclear power.

But even nuclear power will not last forever. According to Dr. John Bockris, founder of modern electro-chemistry, "If we use uranium in reactors we could go on for perhaps two or three hundred years; that's by no means forever."

"It's obvious that we musn't arrange things just to stagger on another twenty years," he said. "We must arrange things this time so that we can live without fear of energy loss for as far ahead as we can see."

Bockris, who is concerned that nuclear power may cause vast numbers of deaths, believes that the threat to the auto and oil industries will prevent the development of other energy sources, such as solar energy. "I'm very pessimistic about what can be done. I can't say anything positive." He suggests that by 1985, Americans will be cold and mad enough to revolt over the oil industry's manipulation of energy resources.

Current solutions to the energy crisis are being based on profits, not people. The oil companies have never been concerned about the ultimate effects of their manipulation of energy for profits, the cause of the current shortage.

Solar energy can provide a long-term, safe solution to the declining fossil fuels. But it will be developed at the long-term decline of the oil industries, and for that reason may not be developed at all. The energy crisis is making people aware that the profit-oriented capitalist system is not working for them. Is it worth it to build nuclear monstrosities to keep making a limited number of oil officials happy and rich?

--Ellen Hoffman

"The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun." Ralph Nader