Month: April 2021

March 10, 2021

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: FUKUSHIMA LESSON:  DON’T BET YOUR PLANET ON RISKY NUCLEAR POWER

CONTACTS:  Lou Novak, Board Vice Chair, Alliance To Halt Fermi-3                       (313) 623-4709 / lounovak@gmail.com

Jeff Alson, Alliance Energy Policy Analyst, Retired Environmental Engineer                       (734) 476-3399 / jeffalson56@gmail.com

The 10th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster this Thursday, March 11 is a stark reminder that nuclear power is an incredibly risky and unworkable climate strategy.  After Fukushima, Japan shut down all its nuclear reactors to protect public safety and re-opened mothballed coal, oil, and natural gas plants to replace the lost electricity.  A decade later, only a few nuclear plants are on line, and Japan’s greenhouse emissions have skyrocketed due to greater dependence on fossil fuels.

“The painful lesson is that Japan’s risky reliance on nuclear power prior to Fukushima has led to a decade-long climate nightmare as well as a public health and environmental catastrophe,” says Lou Novak, Board Vice Chair of Alliance To Halt Fermi-3 (ATHF3).  “From the metro Detroiter’s point of view, it’s unsettling that Fermi-2 near Monroe and the Fukushima reactors have the same deficient reactor design.”

As we look to the future, nuclear power is not only the riskiest climate strategy, but also the most dangerous, slowest, and expensive way to address the climate crisis:
A)  Dangerous, due to the potential for high levels of radiation exposure due to accidents at both power plants and high-level waste storage facilities.  “A recent report by Greenpeace Japan warns that radioactive contamination remains widespread around Fukushima with 325 square miles of land poisoned by cesium, presenting a very real long term threat to human health and the environment,” says Vice Chair Novak.
B)  Slowest, because nuclear plants take 20 years or more to design, license, and build.  We must address the climate crisis much more quickly.
C)  Most expensive, because all U.S. nuclear plants have suffered massive cost overruns, and dollars wasted on nuclear are unavailable for much cheaper renewables and grid modernization projects which could prevent future disasters like in Texas last month.

“Nuclear power is a giant climate and public safety gamble,” concludes Jeff Alson, Alliance Energy Policy Analyst.  “It’s a losing bet.  Our children and grandchildren deserve better.”

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The Alliance To Halt Fermi-3 (ATHF3) is an activist board of directors with 24 supporting and endorsing organizations.  The Alliance has been a 501(c)3 organization since 2012 that supports the ultimate transformation of our current national electricity grid from large, for-profit nuclear, coal, and natural gas plants to publicly-owned, decentralized solar and wind projects, integrated with efficiency improvements and energy storage in order to achieve zero net greenhouse gas emissions and good-paying green energy jobs.
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