1. “The history of nuclear power in America is one of rushed and slipshod engineering, unwarranted assurances of public safety, political influence and financial chicanery, inept and duplicitous regulators, and mismanagement on a grand scale.” Nothing biased in this line and yet absolutely no further discussion or references on these claims. How about this 2020 study than compares the safety record of global energy sources with the conclusion that “Nuclear energy and renewables are far, far safer than fossil fuels,” or this press report that “Nuclear Power Continues To Break Records In Safety And Generation.” Just lazy, false and unjustified claims…
2. “Many alternative reactor designs are pitched as if they’re novel. They’re not.” Mike then goes on to cite exactly one example, the Natrium reactor, being promoted by TerraPower, a firm founded by Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates who is making progress in Wyoming to site 4 reactors with their utility partner, PacifiCorp, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway. Hiltzik wants you to know that this is a bad idea because the Navy had issues with this technology…in 1957! Are you kidding us? Oh, and the 1959 “explosion” of a sodium-cooled test reactor at a government Lab, the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, which was actually an overheat of 13 of the 43 fuel elements which hurt absolutely no one and the reactor was restarted in 1960. Mike, don’t you think technology and safe engineering has progressed since 1960? After all, we’ve been to the Moon a few times and have a lot of that tech that the 60’s dreamed about in Star Trek.
3. “He cautions against “fetishizing nuclear power so it’s part of every solution.” His view is “you don’t compromise safety to keep a nuclear plant open so you can meet a carbon target — you need to have minimum, stringent safety standards.” The “he” is Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists and the standard “go to source” for any journalist wanting an anti-nuclear press quote. We do agree with his position on needing stringent safety standards. But its tough to take his seminal work seriously when his primary conclusion is “Nearly all of the NLWRs currently on the drawing board fail to provide significant enough improvements over LWRs to justify their considerable risks.” Ok, these are concerned scientists. How does a scientist define or even set test parameters for “significant-enough improvements’? What about the term “nearly all”? Some do? And if they are still “on the drawing board” how can you justify any conclusions about safety improvements? Any why are you comparing current technology to the legacy LWR’s designed in the 50’s? And why are there more caveats in a scientific review than what you hear in a 30 second drug ad? We’re sensing a trend about back to the future with these guys. It’s no longer the 1950’s. We’ll have more on the “Union of Concerned Scientists” and their position on nuclear energy in another blog.
4. “there’s hardly any doubt that Diablo Canyon should be shut down, and the sooner the better” Mike spends the rest of the article raising concerns with the recent recommendation by both of former President Obama’s Secretaries of Energy in a joint Op-Ed published in his own Los Angeles Times on 21 November, 2021 to invest in the life extension of the Diablo Nuclear Plant in California by…wait for it…discussing Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s gas and power line woes over the last two decades as an indictment on their safety record as a utility even though Diablo has operated safely since the 80’s. This guy reaches farther than my kid on Halloween night. If you would prefer to read a balanced and comprehensive review of the current nuclear industry instead of Hiltzik’s 60’s era uninformed activist drivel, please check out this recent article published by Professor Jason Bordoff, a columnist at Foreign Policy, the co-founding dean of the Columbia Climate School, and the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
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