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Nuclear Energy AFF

DDI 2008 Kernoff-Olney

Table of Contents
Table of Contents...................................................................................................................................................1
1AC–Observation 1: Inherency............................................................................................................................4
1AC–The Plan........................................................................................................................................................5
1AC–Observation 2: Proliferation.......................................................................................................................6
1AC–Observation 3: Global Warming................................................................................................................9
1AC–Observation 4: Economy...........................................................................................................................12
1AC–Observation 5: Solvency............................................................................................................................16
Inherency–Decline now.......................................................................................................................................20
Inherency–Waste Disposal .................................................................................................................................21
Inherency–Regulations........................................................................................................................................22
Impact–Global Warming....................................................................................................................................23
Solvency–Competitiveness and Readiness.........................................................................................................24
Solvency–Energy..................................................................................................................................................25
Solvency–Econ......................................................................................................................................................27
Solvency–Foreign Relations................................................................................................................................31
Solvency–Global Warming.................................................................................................................................32
Solvency–Nuclear Capacity.................................................................................................................................39
Solvency–Proliferation........................................................................................................................................41
Solvency–Public Health.......................................................................................................................................45
Solvency–Public Perception................................................................................................................................46
Solvency–Generic.................................................................................................................................................47
Solvency Mechanism–Carbon tax......................................................................................................................51
Solvency Mechanism–Cap & Trade...................................................................................................................53
Solvency Mechanism–Deregulation...................................................................................................................54
Solvency Mechanism–GNEP...............................................................................................................................55
Solvency Mechanism–Market pricing of storage..............................................................................................56
Solvency Mechanism–Money..............................................................................................................................58
Solvency Mechanism–Private Waste Management..........................................................................................60
Solvency Mechanism–Repeal Mil.......................................................................................................................63
Solvency Mechanism–Reprocessing...................................................................................................................64
Solvency Mechanism–Subsidies..........................................................................................................................65
Solvency Mechanism–Thorium Reactors..........................................................................................................66
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Solvency Mechanism–Yucca Mountain.............................................................................................................67


Nuclear Power Better than FF............................................................................................................................69
Do Now..................................................................................................................................................................76
US Key–Global Policy..........................................................................................................................................77
US Key–International CP....................................................................................................................................81
US Key–Prolif.......................................................................................................................................................82
USfg Key...............................................................................................................................................................85
Reprocessing Good–Key for Kyoto....................................................................................................................87
Reprocessing Good–Stops Proliferation............................................................................................................89
2AC: Alternative Energy–Generic.....................................................................................................................90
2AC: Alternative Energy–Biofuel......................................................................................................................96
2AC: Alternative Energy–Geothermal..............................................................................................................98
2AC: Alternative Energy–Hydroelectric...........................................................................................................99
2AC: Alternative Energy–Solar........................................................................................................................100
2AC: Alternative Energy–Waves.....................................................................................................................103
2AC: Alternative Energy–Wind.......................................................................................................................105
2AC: Coal DA–Uniqueness...............................................................................................................................111
2AC: Coal DA–Impact Turn.............................................................................................................................112
1AR: Coal DA.....................................................................................................................................................115
2AC: International CP......................................................................................................................................116
2AC: Nuclear Energy Safety.............................................................................................................................119
2AC: Public Perception.....................................................................................................................................121
2AC: States CP...................................................................................................................................................122
2AC: Terrorism..................................................................................................................................................123
2AC: Yucca Mountain.......................................................................................................................................125
2AC: Impact Calculus.......................................................................................................................................127
AT: Chernobyl–Offense....................................................................................................................................128
AT: Chernobyl–Defense....................................................................................................................................129
AT: Meltdown....................................................................................................................................................134
AT: Nuclear Energy  Proliferation..............................................................................................................136
AT: Nuclear Energy  Terrorism...................................................................................................................140
AT: Nuclear Energy is Dirty/Unsafe–Propaganda.........................................................................................143
AT: Nuclear Energy is Dirty/Unsafe................................................................................................................145
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AT: Nuclear Energy is expensive......................................................................................................................151


AT: Nuclear Energy Kills..................................................................................................................................154
AT: Nuclear Energy Radiation.........................................................................................................................155
AT: Oil................................................................................................................................................................157
AT: Nuclear Waste Problematic.......................................................................................................................158
AT: other renewable energies better................................................................................................................159
AT: Plan-Specific PICs......................................................................................................................................167
AT: Yucca Mountain bad..................................................................................................................................168
1NC: Terrorism Turn........................................................................................................................................169
Neg Answers: Inherency–States.......................................................................................................................171
Neg Answers: Inherency....................................................................................................................................172
Neg Answers: No Solvency–Fossil Fuel Tax....................................................................................................174
Neg Answers: No Solvency–Global Warming.................................................................................................175
Neg Answers: Advocates are Corrupt..............................................................................................................179
Neg Answers: Fish..............................................................................................................................................180
Neg Answers: Nuclear Energy is Expensive....................................................................................................181
Neg Asnwers: Nuclear Energy  Proliferation..............................................................................................184
Neg Answers: Nuclear Energy  Global Warming.......................................................................................185
Neg Answers: Nuclear Energy Unsafe.............................................................................................................186
Neg Answers: Nuclear Energy Bad–Generic..................................................................................................187
Neg Answers: Radiation....................................................................................................................................188
Neg Answers: Regulations don’t deter nuclear energy..................................................................................189
Neg Answers: Reprocessing Bad......................................................................................................................191
Neg Answers: Reprocessing Not Cost-Effective..............................................................................................192
Neg Answers: Reprocessing  Proliferation..................................................................................................193
Neg Answers: Terrorism...................................................................................................................................195
Neg Answers: Tradeoff–Renewable Energy....................................................................................................198
Neg Answers: Water..........................................................................................................................................199
Neg Answers: Yucca Mountain bad.................................................................................................................200
Links–Securitization..........................................................................................................................................202
Solvency–Efficiency CP.....................................................................................................................................203

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1AC–Observation 1: Inherency
Unfair regulations are preventing nuclear development in the United States
now.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 12-3-07, “Dispelling Myths About Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2087.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Investors are not averse to nuclear power. Utility companies with nuclear experience have sought to purchase existing plants,
are upgrading their existing power plants, and are extending their operating licenses so that they can produce more energy for a
longer time. Indeed, nuclear energy is so economically viable that it provides about 20 percent of America's electricity
despite the incredibly high regulatory burden.
However, investors are averse to the regulatory risk associated with building new plants. The regulatory burden is
extreme and potentially unpredictable. In the past, opponents of nuclear power have successfully used the regulations to raise
construction costs by filing legal challenges, not based on any underlying safety issue, but simply because they oppose nuclear
power. The incentives in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 are needed not because the market has rejected nuclear power, but
because the market has rejected the excessive regulatory risk and costs imposed by the government. When making
investment decisions, investors must consider the massive costs and losses caused by past government intervention.[11] Until
new plants have been constructed and are in operation, thereby proving that regulatory obstacles have been mitigated both
financially and legally, the burden of proof will remain on government regulators.

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1AC–The Plan
Thus, the plan:
The United States federal government should amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 to allow the private sector to
manage used fuel and repeal the 70,000-ton limitation on the Yucca Mountain.

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1AC–Observation 2: Proliferation
Nuclear power is being implemented globally.

Environmental News Service, “Global Nuclear Concerns: Safety, Power, Proliferation


“,http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-10-03.asp, 2004

In 2003, two new nuclear power plants were connected to the grid, in China and in South Korea, and Canada restarted two
units that had been shut down. Construction began on one new power plant, in India. Four units in the United Kingdom were
retired, as was one each in Germany and Japan. Asia continues to be the center for nuclear expansion and growth, with 20
of the 31 reactors under construction located in this region. In fact, the IAEA said, 19 of the last 28 reactors to be connected to
the grid are in the Far East and South Asia. In Western Europe, capacity has remained relatively constant despite nuclear
phase-outs in Germany and Sweden, and in Belgium which passed a phaseout law in January 2003). The most advanced
planning for new European nuclear capacity was in Finland, where in 2003 the utility Teollisuuden Voima Oy selected
Olkiluoto as the site for a fifth Finnish reactor, and signed a contract for a 1600 MW(e) European pressurized water reactor.
During 2003, the Russian Federation continued its program to extend licenses at 11 nuclear power plants. The Russian
nuclear regulatory body, Gosatomnadzor, issued a five year extension for the Kola-1 plant.

The expansion of nuclear technology is inevitable – the US must remain


engaged in promoting secure nuclear power to prevent proliferation

Roger Hagengruber, Chair of Nuclear Energy Study Group, “Nuclear Power”,


http://www.aps.org/policy/reports/popa-reports/proliferation-resistance/upload/proliferation.pdf, 2008
Worldwide, thirty new nuclear plants were under construction in March 2005, with 20 new plants in Asia alone. In
addition to China’s plan to greatly expand its nuclear power program, Indonesia, Vietnam and Egypt have all declared an
interest in building their first civilian nuclear power plants. As evidenced by the current situation in Iran, technological
advances and institutional changes are required to avoid proliferation by countries taking advantage of a global spread of
nuclear power. Consequently, whether or not the United States constructs new nuclear power plants over the next quarter
century, it is vital to US national security that the US remain engaged in the development of proliferation-resistant
nuclear-energy technologies and of technologies that can support new international arrangements to safeguard and
coordinate future fuel-cycle deployment.

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Nuclear power is key to nonprolif and US leadership.

Jack Spencer, Research Fellow @ The Heritage Foundation's Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, 10-9-
07, “Congress Must Implement CSC Treaty to Reinvigorate U.S. Nuclear Industry”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1658.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Failure to engage in the commercial nuclear market risks undermining U.S. leadership on related issues, such as
nonproliferation. Other nations will simply work amongst themselves to achieve their nuclear objectives. Countries such
as Russia, France, and China will fill the policymaking void left by the United States. The United States once led the
world in commercial nuclear technology but has ceded that capability to countries such as France, Japan, Great
Britain, and Russia over the past three decades. A more competitive American industry would provide opportunities for
the United States to re-emerge as a leader in the global commercial nuclear market. Furthermore, CSC implementation
will signal that the U.S. government is committed to the expansion of nuclear power. This commitment by the federal
government is essential to attracting the massive private investment required to rebuild the domestic capabilities needed
to support America's growing commercial nuclear activities

The world is inevitably moving towards nuclear power – resolving waste


storage would encourage peaceful use of nuclear technology and combat
proliferation.

Jim Dawson, Science Editor, American Institute of Physics. 05/05. “Nuclear Power Needs Government
Incentives, Says Task Force,” Physics Today, p.28. http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-
ft/vol_58/iss_5/28_1.shtml [Takumi Murayama]
Policymakers in both the administration and Congress must develop "a clear commitment to a national energy policy" that
gives nuclear power a strong role, the report says. "We urge that the president identify this as a critical priority for the
nation and that Congress take the necessary steps to meet this priority." The report doesn't mention the controversy
surrounding the Yucca Mountain radioactive waste storage project in Nevada (see the story on page 32), but it does say the
waste storage problem must be resolved. But the authors make clear that "the absence of a licensed repository is not a valid
reason for postponing additional nuclear construction."
Another critical aspect of encouraging a new generation of power plants is the concern over nuclear proliferation,
especially in the wake of September 11th. The task force's bottom-line conclusion is that the rest of the world is going to
move forward with energy generation from nuclear power regardless of what the US does, and the US would be better off
participating than sitting on the sidelines.
An increase in the use of nuclear power in the US would actually "serve our non-proliferation objectives," the report says,
because "one of the most efficient and certainly the most thorough ways of disposing of that nuclear material is to burn it
as fuel in commercial nuclear reactors."

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Nuclear energy solves the motivations behind nuclear war

Canberra Times. 07/19/08. “Nuclear power pluses must be weighed with the risks,” A, p. B08. Lexis.
[Takumi Murayama]
The "vast quantities of high level waste" to which she refers amount to something like one semi-trailer load per power station
per year! Whilst she dismisses nuclear power stations because they will be "at least a decade in the making" (and that may be
somewhere near the truth), the need to have a reliable base load non-carbon energy source extends long beyond that.
But perhaps the greatest flaw in the anti-nuclear platform is the assumption that the peaceful use of nuclear power
automatically leads to weapons proliferation, which in turn leads automatically to nuclear Armageddon.
Serious war requires the initiator to have not only the weapons but also the motivation. Many already have the weapons.
Amongst the most likely causes of motivation are resentment caused by being dispossessed of land (terrorism) or by
serious national shortages of food or energy.
Desperate circumstances breed desperate actions. Excluding nuclear power could actually increase the risk of
catastrophic conflict.
Nuclear power does, admittedly, carry an indeterminate but small risk of an accident that could devastate the lives of tens of
thousands of people.
But by rejecting nuclear power there is an equally indeterminate and small risk that the world loses the climate change
race, and devastates the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Proliferation leads to extinction.

Victor Utgoff, Deputy Director of Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division of Institute for Defense Analysis,
Summer 02, “Proliferation, Missile Defence and American Ambitions”, Survival, p.87-90.

The war between Iran and Iraq during the 1980s led to the use of chemical weapons on both sides and exchanges of missiles
against each other’s cities. And more recently, violence in the Middle East escalated in a few months from rocks and small
arms to heavy weapons on one side, and from police actions to air strikes and armoured attacks on the other. Escalation of
violence is also basic human nature. Once the violence starts, retaliatory exchanges of violent acts can escalate to levels
unimagined by the participants before hand. Intense and blinding anger is a common response to fear or humiliation or abuse.
And such anger can lead us to impose on our opponents whatever levels of violence are readily accessible. In sum, widespread
proliferation is likely to lead to an occasional shoot-out with nuclear weapons, and that such shoot-outs will have a
substantial probability of escalating to the maximum destruction possible with the weapons at hand. Unless nuclear
proliferation is stopped, we are headed toward a world that will mirror the American Wild West of the late 1800s. With
most, if not all, nations wearing nuclear ‘six-shooters’ on their hips, the world may even be a more polite place than it is
today, but every once in a while we will all gather on a hill to bury the bodies of dead cities or even whole nations.

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1AC–Observation 3: Global Warming


A nuclear storage facility would revolutionize the domestic industry and global
R&D.

Stratfor, world’s leading online publisher of geopolitical intelligence. 04/16/07. [Takumi Murayama]
The biggest stumbling block to domestic nuclear power is the lack of a nuclear storage facility, Stratfor warned in a
recently published global market brief.
The proposed Yucca Mountain national repository in Nevada remains stalled, while concerns about terrorism have slowed
the Bush Administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) promoting the reprocessing of nuclear fuel. Meanwhile,
the storage of nuclear waste at nuclear facilities has drawn substantial local opposition.
Stratfor's analysis found that the United States may have to take a second look at nuclear energy "since expected GHG
(Global Greenhouse Gases) regulations and requirements for coal plants to use cleaner technology will make coal-power
energy more expensive." Nevertheless, the report suggests that "merely replacing the existing U.S. fleet of nuclear reactors
could be worth as much money as all of the planned expansions in France, Russia and China combined."
"Such a development would not only revolutionize the U.S. domestic nuclear industry but would also lead to expanded
nuclear technology research and development worldwide," Stratfor asserted. "Also U.S. acceptance of nuclear energy will
likely lead to a quick increase in nuclear operations in other industrialized countries that have been hesitant to pursue
further nuclear activity because of safety concerns."

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The green lobby blocks nuclear energy. We have no time to try any other
energy sources.

James Lovelock, creator of Gaia hypothesis (Earth is self-regulating organism) and member of EFN
(Association of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy), 5-24-04, The Independent, “Nuclear Power is the Only
Green Solution,” http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/james-lovelock-nuclear-power-is-the-
only-green-solution-564446.html
We have stayed in ignorance for many reasons; important among them is the denial of climate change in the US where
governments have failed to give their climate scientists the support they needed. The Green lobbies, which should have
given priority to global warming, seem more concerned about threats to people than with threats to the Earth, not noticing that
we are part of the Earth and wholly dependent upon its well being. It may take a disaster worse than last summer's European
deaths to wake us up. Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green
lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all
energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third
of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen. If we fail
to concentrate our minds on the real danger, which is global warming, we may die even sooner, as did more than 20,000
unfortunates from overheating in Europe last summer. I find it sad and ironic that the UK, which leads the world in the
quality of its Earth and climate scientists, rejects their warnings and advice, and prefers to listen to the Greens. But I am a
Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy. Even if they
were right about its dangers, and they are not, its worldwide use as our main source of energy would pose an insignificant
threat compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves and sea levels rising to drown every coastal city of the
world. We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use
nuclear - the one safe, available, energy source - now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.

Nuclear Power is the only clean power source that can satisfy global demand

Jennifer Weeks, CQ Researcher. 03/10/06. CQ Researcher “Nuclear Energy.” [Takumi Murayama]


Now that scientific consensus affirms that greenhouse-gas emissions from human activities are warming Earth's climate, the
nuclear industry contends that nuclear power is the best option for meeting rising energy demand without exacerbating
climate problems. Nuclear reactors generate electricity without emitting carbon dioxide and other pollutants — called
greenhouse gases — that hold heat in the atmosphere. Power plants burning coal, oil and natural gas produced 39 percent of
U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in 2003. [12]
But nuclear-power capacity would have to expand dramatically to eliminate enough greenhouse emissions to make a
difference. Nuclear plants generated 789 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2004 — or about 22 percent of the nation's electrical
power. By 2030 the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that nuclear plants will generate only about 871
terawatt-hours — and that's if six new 1,000-megawatt reactors are built and 2,000 megawatts of uprates (capacity increases)
are made at existing plants. But demand will have risen so sharply by then, says the EIA, that nuclear power will end up
providing only about 16 percent of total U.S. power generation — a smaller share than it provides today. [13]
To significantly reduce climate change, according to a 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study, world nuclear
capacity would have to roughly triple by 2050, with the United States adding 200 or more new reactors. [14]Industry
representatives admit that growth on anything approaching this scale would be a serious challenge.
Even so, some prominent environmentalists have called recently for rethinking the issue of nuclear power in view of the
potential threat from climate change. “Renewable energies, such as wind, geothermal and hydro are part of the solution,” wrote
Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore in early 2005. “Nuclear energy is the only non-greenhouse-gas-emitting power
source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand.” [15]

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Global Warming will lead to MASS extinction, leaving only 1 large land species,
and will take 100 million years to recover species diversity

Sydney Morning Herald, 6/20/03, Global warming 'threatens Earth with mass extinction.'
[Takumi Murayama]
Global warming over the next century could trigger a catastrophe to rival the worst mass extinction in the history of the
planet, scientists have warned. Researchers at Bristol University have discovered that a mere 6 degrees of global warming
was enough to wipe out up to 95 per cent of the species which were alive on earth at the end of the Permian period, 250
million years ago. United Nations scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict up to 6 degrees of
warming for the next 100 years if nothing is done about emissions of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, the chief
cause of global warming. The Permian mass extinction is now thought to have been caused by gigantic volcanic eruptions that
triggered a runaway greenhouse effect and nearly put an end to life on Earth. Conditions in what geologists have termed this
"post apocalyptic greenhouse" were so severe that only one large land animal was left alive and it took 100 million
years for species diversity to re-turn to former levels. This dramatic new finding is revealed in a book by Bristol
University's head of earth sciences, Michael Benton, which chronicles the geological efforts leading up to the discovery and its
potential implications. Professor Benton said: "The Permian crisis nearly marked the end of life. It's estimated that fewer than
one in 10 species survived. "Geologists are only now coming to appreciate the severity of this global catastrophe and to
understand how and why so many species died out so quickly." Other climate experts say they are appalled that a disaster
of such magnitude could be repeated within this century because of human activities. Global warming author Mark
Lynas, who re-cently travelled around the world witnessing the impact of climate change, said the findings must be a wake up
call for politicians and citizens alike. He said: "This is a global emergency. "We are heading for disaster and yet the world is
on fossil fuel autopilot. There needs to be an immediate phase-out of coal, oil and gas and a phase in of clean energy
sources. People can no longer ignore this looming ca-tastrophe."

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1AC–Observation 4: Economy
US is heading toward recession now.

Associated Press. 04/10/08. “Sober IMF forecast for U.S. and global economies”, Lexis
The United States is headed for a recession, dragging world economic growth down along with it, the International
Monetary Fund concluded in a sobering forecast yesterday that underscored the damage inflicted by the housing and credit
debacles. The IMF's World Economic Outlook served as a reminder of just how swiftly economic fortunes in the United
States and beyond can unravel, affecting people, investors and businesses around the globe. The fund slashed growth
projections for the United States - the epicenter of the woes - and for the world economy. The fragile state of affairs greatly
raises the odds that the global economy could fall into a slump, the IMF said. Financial problems that erupted in August 2007
"spread quickly and unpredictably" and caused "extensive damage," the IMF said.

Nuclear power key to the economy

Clean and Safe Energy (CASEnergy) Coalition, grassroots coalition of more than 1,600 members that unites
people across business, environmental, academic, consumer and labor community to support nuclear energy. 07.
“Coalition Statement on Spent Fuel Management.” [Takumi Murayama]
Time has shown that the current fleet of nuclear plants is essential for this nation’s economic growth and development by
providing reliable, affordable energy and a new fleet of nuclear plants will be instrumental to continuing this development as
well as meeting the rising electricity demand and clean air goals before us. A comprehensive used fuel management policy
has a tremendous positive impact on ensuring that the stewardship of used nuclear fuel is aligned with an era in which new
nuclear power plants are being built in the United States and globally.

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Congress must provide incentives now to build more nuclear plants. Nuclear
power will revive U.S. leadership and benefit foreign and local markets.

PR Newswire, 6-17-08, “Nuclear Energy’s Resurgence Promises to Spur Job Growth,”


http://www.forbes.com/prnewswire/feeds/prnewswire/2008/06/17/prnewswire200806171059PR_NEWS_USPR
_____NETU094.html [Jiajia Huang]
Each nuclear plant provides 400 to 700 high-paying jobs. -- Depending on construction methods, each new reactor could
require as many as 4,000 workers per project at peak periods. -- According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the median
annual salary for nuclear engineers is $82,900 -- approximately $8,000 more than all other engineering disciplines except
petroleum engineering. -- Each of the country's 104 reactors generates an estimated $430 million a year in total output for
the local community, and nearly $40 million per year in total labor income. "Nuclear power provides a clean energy
solution that produces no greenhouse gases and is good for the economy," said Whitman. "A renewed focus on nuclear
energy will translate into tens of thousands of high-paying American jobs needed to build and operate new reactors."
The CASEnergy white paper details the favorable impact of the nuclear industry's resurgence on jobs and the economy -- this
at a time when employment is currently 5.5% and the country needs 25 percent more electricity by 2030, according to
projections by the U.S. Department of Energy.
To realize the economic potential that new reactor projects offer, the nation must invest in the education infrastructure needed
to cultivate the next generation of workers. Close collaboration between energy companies, government and secondary
educational institutions is critical. Although interest among students in nuclear energy careers is growing rapidly, new reactor
construction may be the next catalyst to drive enrollment in college and university programs and create substantial numbers of
new nuclear professionals.
New nuclear plants will also drive the demand for skilled craft labor focused on three areas -- construction, operation and
maintenance. As many as 185,000 new construction workers will be needed in the nuclear energy industry by 2015 for new
positions and to replace approximately 95,000 retiring workers. Joint apprenticeship and training programs in the building and
construction industry are important to ensure that the industry maintains a highly skilled work force.
The CASEnergy Coalition and its more than 1,600 members will work to promote the use of nuclear energy to stimulate our
nation's economy and protect our environment, but it calls on industry, government and educators for support. The need for
energy is a non-partisan issue and the support for nuclear energy is bi-partisan. Those who authored a foreword to the white
paper stated:

(continued on next page)

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"We need to maintain and grow a safe, clean nuclear industry to protect our nation's future energy security and reduce the
threat of global warming. Congress must provide support and incentives to the nuclear industry to help redevelop its workforce,
facilities and capacity, which, in turn, can restore our lead in safe, efficient nuclear manufacturing, while creating tens of
thousands of highly-skilled jobs." -- U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air
and Nuclear Safety -- "Nuclear power is growing in the world and our own energy and environmental needs can serve as a
springboard to rebuild American technology and manufacturing capabilities to something approaching the leadership the
nation once enjoyed, contributing to foreign markets as well as supporting our own. A recent nuclear energy roundtable
that Senator Carper and I co-chaired in November with representatives of the government, industry, academia, and labor
leaders including John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO, confirmed my belief that the ongoing resurgence in nuclear power
provides a unique opportunity for the United States to reclaim its leadership role in the advancement of nuclear
technologies and revitalizing nuclear component manufacturing base which should create many high paying jobs for American
workers." -- U.S. Senator George Voinovich (R-OH), Ranking Member of the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear
Safety -- "Through a renewed commitment to nuclear power, we have a unique opportunity, and a responsibility, to
simultaneously cut greenhouse gases, maintain the affordability of our electricity supply, and give a boost to our ailing
economy. The construction of dozens of new plants on American soil will foster the rebirth of our domestic manufacturing
industry and create tens of thousands of new, high-paying jobs. Not only will our environment be better for it, our
national security will also be fortified. Millions of households will be powered by zero-emission nuclear power and our
nation's economy will be powered by nuclear as well." -- U.S. Congressman Fred Upton (R-MI), Ranking Republican on the
House Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality -- "In light of what high gas prices are doing not only to our local economy,
but our national and global economy, the time to act with respect to alternative and renewable energy sources is now.
Nuclear energy is a clean and efficient form of power. Its potential is important to our energy policy nationally. It is proven
over the years to be safe and reliable and will play a large role as one of our sources to overcome our dependence on foreign
oil." -- Bill Saffo, Mayor of Wilmington, N.C. -- "We must continue to support the expansion of nuclear energy to maintain
jobs and economic growth in America. A robust economy demands more energy, even as we pursue alternative means such as
conservation and efficiency. Failure to supply those increased energy demands will raise energy costs for manufacturers and
consumers and hurt our global competitiveness." -- John Engler, President and CEO, National Association of Manufacturers --
"As a college student, I chose to study nuclear engineering because I was fascinated by the science and I believed nuclear
science and technology make important contributions to society. Working in the industry more than met those expectations
and I've enjoyed many challenging opportunities to learn and grow. Plus, I know I'm doing my part to make the world a better
place." -- Lisa Stiles, Project Manager, Strategic Staffing and Knowledge Management, Dominion Nuclear. -- "The industry
needs engineers, technicians and other professionals to support, operate and maintain existing nuclear plants. Moreover, well
educated and trained workers are needed for all of the new plants that are being ordered to meet growing energy demand while
cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and to conduct research and development on the next generation of reactors. To cultivate
job creation and seize on the opportunities ahead, we must invest in our educational infrastructure by strengthening existing
educational and training programs while developing new and innovative programs to attract and retain a skilled workforce." --
Gilbert J. Brown, PhD., Professor and Coordinator, Nuclear Engineering Program, University of Massachusetts Lowell -- "The
nuclear industry is experiencing growth in both new plant builds and a multitude of exciting, rewarding and diverse job
opportunities. Today's young professionals in the nuclear industry are excited to be part of an industry that will not only
support long-term career opportunities but also provides the world with clean, safe, and reliable energy and innovative nuclear
science & technology solutions." -- Michael Kurzeja, Vice President, North American Young Generation in Nuclear About the
Clean and Safe Energy (CASEnergy) Coalition

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Nuclear Energy is critical to US and world economies through US exports.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 7-2-08, “Nuclear Energy: What We Can Learn From Other Nations”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1977.cfm, [Crystal Xia]

Affordable energy is critical to sustaining economic competitiveness in economies with high labor costs, expensive
environmental mandates, and other regulatory expenditures. This is especially true in economies that depend on energy-
intensive activities like manufacturing, such as the Finnish and U.S. economies. Finland concluded that access to vast
quantities of affordable energy should be a top national priority, and nuclear was an obvious choice. These countries and
others searching to expand their nuclear capacity have an opportunity to fuel their respective economies through the
thousands of jobs, both temporary and permanent, that nuclear energy creates. A global nuclear renaissance will attract
construction jobs as well as high-skill engineering jobs to operate the plants. Thus, two of the greatest benefits of building
more nuclear reactors, if done correctly, will be more jobs and cleaner, cheaper energy. Countries that do not choose to
produce clean energy in a carbon constrained world will inevitably pay more to produce energy, resulting in higher input costs
and higher prices for consumers on the open market. As the economic consequences of higher fossil-fuel costs spread to
countries that do not produce nuclear power, many countries will likely increase imports of nuclear electricity from foreign
suppliers. While less expensive and more reliable than other non-nuclear, non-emitting sources, this energy will surely cost
more to import than it would have had to produce it domestically. In the end, the countries that have barred nuclear power
from being produced in their respective countries will ultimately rely on nuclear power, albeit at a more expensive imported
price.

Economic decline will spawn escalating wars that can go nuclear

Bernardo V. Lopez, journalist for BusinessWorld. 09/10/98. “Global recession phase two: Catastrophic (Private
sector views),” BusinessWorld, p.12. Lexis. [Takumi Murayama]

What would it be like if global recession becomes full bloom? The results will be catastrophic.
Certainly, global recession will spawn wars of all kinds. Ethnic wars can easily escalate in the grapple for dwindling food
stocks as in India-Pakistan-Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Indonesia. Regional conflicts in key flashpoints can
easily erupt such as in the Middle East, Korea, and Taiwan. In the Philippines, as in some Latin American countries,
splintered insurgency forces may take advantage of the economic drought to regroup and reemerge in the countryside.
Unemployment worldwide will be in the billions. Famine can be triggered in key Third World nations with India, North
Korea, Ethiopia and other African countries as first candidates. Food riots and the breakdown of law and order are
possibilities.

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1AC–Observation 5: Solvency
Deregulation is empirically proven to boost nuclear research

EnergyBiz, bimonthly business magazine for leaders in the new power industry. 02/06/08. “Running Smarter -
Upgrading Nuclear Operations.” [Takumi Murayama]
Talk about a turnaround. The average capacity factor of nuclear plants around 1990 was a dismal 70 percent, according to
statistics collected by the Nuclear Energy Institute. When the 1992 energy act ushered in the era of deregulation, the only
future for nuclear that Wall Street and the industry could see was decommissioning and sunken costs. Today, the average for
all 104 plants is about 90 percent, with some plants running closer to 95 percent.
Adrian Heymer, NEI's senior director for new plant development, points to similarly impressive improvements in unplanned
outages and productivity, with the number of workers-per-megawatt falling from 1.2 at the end of the 1980s to around 0.7
today. Even in a highly competitive energy environment, nuclear is, at least on an operational basis, not only price competitive
but in some instances the cheapest of all available alternatives. In fact, operating costs per kilowatt-hour in 2006 were 1.68
cents for nuclear versus 2.2 cents for coal, according to NEI.
The real agent of change has been structural. Many nuclear operators have put in place a management structure with
specific lines of responsibility, clearly articulated goals, a standardization of best practices, and a commitment to continuous
improvement. Add the economies of scale and deep pool of skilled and experienced personnel that come from sheer size
and you have the formula for success that's transformed even poorly performing plants into profitable sites.

An amendment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act would boost the private sector and put the US at the
forefront of nuclear energy development.

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
The current approach to managing used nuclear fuel is systemically broken. It was developed to support a nuclear
industry that was largely believed to be in decline; that is no longer the case. The federal government promised to take title
of the used fuel and dispose of it; this removed any incentive for the private sector to develop better ways to manage the
fuel that could be more consistent with an emerging nuclear industry. And the federal government has proven incapable
of fulfilling its obligations to dispose of the fuel.
The current system is driven by government programs and politics. There is little connection between used-fuel management
programs and the needs of the nuclear industry. Any successful plan must grow out of the private sector. The time has
come for the federal government to step aside and allow utilities, nuclear technology companies, and consumers to manage
used nuclear fuel. Overhauling the nation's nuclear-waste management regime will not be easy. It will require a
significant amendment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and a long-term commitment by Congress, the Administration,
and industry. But developing such a system would put the United States well on its way to re-establishing itself as a
global leader in nuclear energy.

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Federal deregulation on Yucca Mountain will act as an incentive to new plants

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982[1] attempted to establish a comprehensive disposal strategy for high-level nuclear
waste. This strategy has failed. The gov ernment has spent billions of dollars without opening a repository, has yet to receive
any waste, and is amassing billions of dollars of liability. Furthermore, the strategy has removed any incentive to find more
workable alter natives. For those that actually produce waste and would benefit most from its efficient disposal, this strat egy
has created a disincentive for developing sustain able, market-based waste-management strategies.
The strategy codified in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act seemed straightforward and economically sound when it was developed
in the early 1980s. It charged the fed eral government with disposing of used nuclear fuel and created a structure through which
users of nuclear energy would pay a set fee for the service--a fee that has never been adjusted, even for inflation. These
payments would go to the Nuclear Waste Fund, which the federal government could access through congressional appro-
priations to pay for disposal activities.
The federal government has accumulated approx imately $27 billion (fees plus interest) in the Nuclear Waste Fund and has
spent about $8 billion to prepare the repository for operations, leaving a balance of around $19 billion. Utility payments into
the fund total about $750 million annually. Yet the repository has never opened, despite the expenditure of billions of dollars.
The taxpayers have fared no better. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act set January 31, 1998, as the deadline for the federal
government to begin receiving used fuel. The government's refusal to take possession of the used fuel has made both the
federal government and the taxpayers liable to the nuclear power plant operators for an increasingly enormous amount that is
projected to reach $7 billion by 2017.[2]
The federal government's inability to fulfill its legal obligations under the 1982 act has often been cited as a significant
obstacle to building additional nuclear power plants. Given nuclear power's poten tial to help solve many of the nation's
energy prob lems, now is the time to break the impasse over managing the nation's used nuclear fuel.
The United States has 58,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste stored at more than 100 sites in 39 states,[3] and its 104
commercial nuclear reactors produce approximately 2,000 tons of used fuel every year. The Yucca Mountain repository's
capac ity is statutorily limited to 70,000 tons of waste (not to mention the problems associated with even opening the
repository). Of this, 63,000 tons will be allocated to commercial waste, and 7,000 tons will be allocated to the Department of
Energy (DOE).
These are arbitrary limitations that Congress set without regard to Yucca's actual capacity. As cur rently defined by the
Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Yucca would reach capacity in about three years unless the law is changed. Thus, even if Yucca
becomes operational, it will not be a permanent solution, and the nation would soon be back at the drawing board.
The repository's actual capacity, however, is much larger than the current limit. Congress should repeal the 70,000-ton
limitation immediately and instead let technology, science, and physical capac ity determine the limit. Recent studies have
found that the Yucca repository could safely hold 120,000 tons of waste. According to the DOE, that should be enough to hold
all of the used fuel produced by cur rently operating reactors.[4] Some believe the capac ity is even greater.

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Waste disposal is key to nuclear energy.

Paul P. Craig, University of California, Davis. 11/99. “HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE: The Status of
Yucca Mountain,” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, Vol. 24: 461-486.
[Takumi Murayama]
The nuclear industry has moved vigorously in an effort to force the government to honor its legal obligation to take
over high-level nuclear waste. The industry is motivated by two major considerations. Energy prices have plummeted,
making natural gas-fired electricity generation relatively cheap and undercutting nuclear electricity. Under “rate-of-return”
regulation with returns to shareholders based on capital investment, there was a time when capital-intensive nuclear power
plants were attractive. With deregulation, utilities are seeking to unburden themselves of the “sunk costs” of nuclear plants.
Increasingly the economics of nuclear plants are driven by operating and maintenance (O&M) rather than capital costs.
Utilities have economic incentives to close inefficient plants and to consider shutdown of any plant with the prospect of
large upkeep expenses, such as replacement of failing steam generators or construction of spent-fuel storage facilities.
Utilities have filed several lawsuits seeking to force the government to take ownership of spent nuclear fuel. On July 23, 1996,
a federal appeals court ruled that DOE was required to meet the 1998 deadline. On November 14, 1997, the courts confirmed
that DOE was required to meet the January 1, 1998, deadline, and ruled that utilities must continue to pay into the nuclear
waste fund even if DOE does not accept fuel, and the utilities must seek redress for damages under civil law (36).
Subsequently, several utilities filed suit in civil court.
The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI; www.nei.org), a nuclear-industry organization, insists that high-level nuclear waste be
removed from reactor sites. However, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), which has built an interim storage
facility at its closed Rancho Seco (CA) reactor, has indicated that it has no objection to the federal government (DOE) taking
ownership of the facility. In 1999, DOE Secretary Bill Richardson proposed that the DOE take ownership of spent fuel at both
operating and closed reactors. Utilities and environmental groups reacted mostly negatively. For now, excepting a few
instances of consolidation, spent fuel is staying put at the reactors where it was produced.

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And, Fear of nuclear energy is the creation of flawed logic and


misrepresentations.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 12-3-07, “Dispelling Myths About Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2087.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Perhaps the greatest myths surrounding nuclear power concern the consequences of past accidents and their association
with current risks. All of these myths depend on a basic construct of flawed logic and misrepresentations that is riddled
with logical and factual errors. First, the consequences of Chernobyl are overblown to invoke general fear of nuclear power.
Next, the Three Mile Island accident is falsely equated with Chernobyl to create the illusion of danger at home. Finally, any
accident, no matter how minor, is portrayed as being ever so close to another nuclear catastrophe to demonstrate the
dangers of new nuclear power. This myth can be dispelled outright simply by revisiting the real consequences of Chernobyl
and Three Mile Island in terms of actual fatalities. Although any loss of life is a tragedy, a more realistic presentation of the
facts would use these accidents to demonstrate the inherent safety of nuclear power. Chernobyl was the result of human
error and poor design. Of the fewer than 50 fatalities,[12] most were rescue workers who unknowingly entered contaminated
areas without being informed of the danger. The World Heath Organization says that up to 4,000 fatalities could ultimately
result from Chernobyl-related cancers, but this has not yet happened. The primary health effect was a spike in thyroid cancer
among children, with 4,000-5,000 children diagnosed with the cancer between 1992 and 2002. Of these, 15 children died, but
99 percent of cases were resolved favorably. No clear evidence indicates any increase in other cancers among the most heavily
affected populations. Of course, this does not mean that cancers could not increase at some future date. Interestingly, the World
Health Organization has also identified a condition called "paralyzing fatalism," which is caused by "persistent myths and mis-
perceptions about the threat of radiation."[13] In other words, the propagation of ignorance by anti-nuclear activists has
caused more harm to the affected populations than has the radioactive fallout from the actual accident. The most serious
accident in U.S. history involved the partial meltdown of a reactor core at Three Mile Island, but no deaths or injuries resulted.
The local population of 2 million people received an average estimated dose of about 1 millirem--insignificant compared to the
100-125 millirems that each person receives annually from naturally occurring background radiation in the area.[14] Other
incidents have occurred since then, and all have been resolved safely. For example, safety inspections revealed a hole
forming in a vessel-head at the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio. Although only an inch of steel cladding prevented the hole from
opening, the NRC found that the plant could have operated another 13 months and that the steel cladding could have withstood
pressures 125 percent above normal operations.[15]

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Inherency–Decline now
In the squo, current nuclear power plants will begin to decline in production and shut down in the near
future.
Paul L. Joscow, MIT, “THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR POWER IN THE UNITED STATES:
ECONOMIC AND REGULATORY CHALLENGES”, Dec. 27th, 2006.

Nuclear power now accounts for almost 20% of the electricity produced in the United States. However, the last nuclear
power plant completed in the U.S. entered commercial operation in 1994 and no new nuclear plants have received
construction permits since 1979. If the existing fleet of nuclear plants were to run only until the end of their initial
license periods, the supply of electricity from nuclear power would begin to decline in about 2015 and reach zero in
about 2030. Under current economic conditions, these plants would be replaced primarily with a mix of coal and
natural-gas fired plants.

Although nuclear energy is a safe and efficient alternative energy source, congress is excluding it from
environmental legislation.
Jack Spencer, The Heritage Foundation, “Congress Should Not Overlook Benefits of Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.heritage.org/research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1704.cfm, 2007
Congress is considering an assortment of legislative proposals to ostensibly curb greenhouse gases and promote energy
independence. Unfortunately, the result of most of these proposals would be less energy, greater dependence on foreign
sources of energy, and higher prices. Most of the bills focus too much on the process of energy production rather than on the
product itself. For example, some language under consideration excludes nuclear power by creating mandates that can only
be fulfilled with other sources of energy; or it creates so-called renewable portfolio standards that mandate only certain types of
energy production. This approach artificially eliminates energy sources that are compatible with Congress's proclaimed
goals of reducing CO2 emissions and energy dependence. Nuclear technology is a proven, safe, affordable, and
environmentally friendly energy source. It can generate massive amounts of electricity with almost no atmospheric
emissions and can offset America's growing dependence on foreign energy sources.

Nuclear power is vanishing in the squo – federal intervention is needed.

David Hughes, “Nuclear power - unsafe, dirty and expensive”, http://www.post-


gazette.com/forum/19990328edhughes7.asp, 1999

Despite being on the short end of government research and development funding, renewable energy technologies' share of U.S.
generating capacity (11 percent compared with 14 percent for nuclear) is growing at double-digit rates. According to a recent study
by the Worldwatch Institute, nuclear power "has reached its peak and will begin a sustained decline in the year 2002 to its
eventual demise." Even France, the world leader in nuclear power usage with 70 percent of its electricity nuclear-generated, has
established a moratorium on nuclear plant construction. In the United States, no new power plants have been ordered since
the mid-1970s. Many utility companies, including Duquesne Light, are planning to unload their nuclear plants. Existing
nuclear plants are being purchased for next to nothing , demonstrating their low market value. Only its position near the
top of the corporate welfare rolls enables the nuclear industry to hang on

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Inherency–Waste Disposal
Increased coal power costs necessitate US nuclear energy development, which
is blocked by the lack of a nuclear storage facility. One would revolutionize not
only the domestic industry, but also global R&D, even in other safety-
conscious countries

Stratfor, world’s leading online publisher of geopolitical intelligence. 04/16/07. [Takumi Murayama]
The biggest stumbling block to domestic nuclear power is the lack of a nuclear storage facility, Stratfor warned in a
recently published global market brief.
The proposed Yucca Mountain national repository in Nevada remains stalled, while concerns about terrorism have slowed
the Bush Administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) promoting the reprocessing of nuclear fuel.
Meanwhile, the storage of nuclear waste at nuclear facilities has drawn substantial local opposition.
Stratfor's analysis found that the United States may have to take a second look at nuclear energy "since expected GHG
(Global Greenhouse Gases) regulations and requirements for coal plants to use cleaner technology will make coal-
power energy more expensive." Nevertheless, the report suggests that "merely replacing the existing U.S. fleet of nuclear
reactors could be worth as much money as all of the planned expansions in France, Russia and China combined."
"Such a development would not only revolutionize the U.S. domestic nuclear industry but would also lead to expanded
nuclear technology research and development worldwide," Stratfor asserted. "Also U.S. acceptance of nuclear energy will
likely lead to a quick increase in nuclear operations in other industrialized countries that have been hesitant to pursue
further nuclear activity because of safety concerns."

Current government programs are detrimental to nuclear power development

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
The problem is that the federal government has never been able to fulfill its current waste disposal obligations, much less
introduce new and innova tive methods of waste management. Although the Department of Energy under its current
leadership has opened the door to reform, that leadership will soon be replaced when the new President appoints his own team.
Administrations come and go, but inflexible rules and bureaucracies that oversee waste management seem to endure forever,
making it impossible for the government to respond effec tively to a rapidly changing industry. When it does attempt to
respond, it often acts in ways that make no business sense and are inconsistent with the actual state of the industry.
Many of these efforts culminate in large govern ment programs. While some of these programs have some near-term
benefit insofar as they demonstrate political support for nuclear power, encourage pri vate and public research and
development, and develop the nuclear industry, they inevitably do more harm than good. They are run inefficiently, are
often never completed, cost the taxpayers billions of dollars, and are often not economically rational. Furthermore, they
often forgo long-term planning, and this leads to unsustainable programs that ulti mately set industry back by providing fodder
for anti-nuclear critics and discouraging progress in the private sector.

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Inherency–Regulations
Unfair regulations are killing the nuclear industry.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 12-3-07, “Dispelling Myths About Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2087.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Investors are not averse to nuclear power. Utility companies with nuclear experience have sought to purchase existing plants,
are upgrading their existing power plants, and are extending their operating licenses so that they can produce more energy for a
longer time. Indeed, nuclear energy is so economically viable that it provides about 20 percent of America's electricity
despite the incredibly high regulatory burden.
However, investors are averse to the regulatory risk associated with building new plants. The regulatory burden is
extreme and potentially unpredictable. In the past, opponents of nuclear power have successfully used the regulations to
raise construction costs by filing legal challenges, not based on any underlying safety issue, but simply because they oppose
nuclear power. The incentives in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 are needed not because the market has rejected nuclear power,
but because the market has rejected the excessive regulatory risk and costs imposed by the government. When making
investment decisions, investors must consider the massive costs and losses caused by past government intervention.[11] Until
new plants have been constructed and are in operation, thereby proving that regulatory obstacles have been mitigated both
financially and legally, the burden of proof will remain on government regulators.

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Impact–Global Warming
Global warming is the single greatest threat to civilization.

James Lovelock, creator of Gaia hypothesis (Earth is self-regulating organism) and member of EFN
(Association of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy), 5-24-04, The Independent, “Nuclear Power is the Only
Green Solution,” http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/james-lovelock-nuclear-power-is-the-
only-green-solution-564446.html
Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, was far-sighted to say that global warming is a more serious threat than
terrorism. He may even have underestimated, because, since he spoke, new evidence of climate change suggests it could be
even more serious, and the greatest danger that civilisation has faced so far. Most of us are aware of some degree of
warming; winters are warmer and spring comes earlier. But in the Arctic, warming is more than twice as great as here in
Europe and in summertime, torrents of melt water now plunge from Greenland's kilometre-high glaciers. The complete
dissolution of Greenland's icy mountains will take time, but by then the sea will have risen seven metres, enough to make
uninhabitable all of the low lying coastal cities of the world, including London, Venice, Calcutta, New York and Tokyo.
Even a two metre rise is enough to put most of southern Florida under water. The floating ice of the Arctic Ocean is even
more vulnerable to warming; in 30 years, its white reflecting ice, the area of the US, may become dark sea that absorbs the
warmth of summer sunlight, and further hastens the end of the Greenland ice. The North Pole, goal of so many explorers, will
then be no more than a point on the ocean surface. Not only the Arctic is changing; climatologists warn a four-degree rise in
temperature is enough to eliminate the vast Amazon forests in a catastrophe for their people, their biodiversity, and for the
world, which would lose one of its great natural air conditioners. The scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change reported in 2001 that global temperature would rise between two and six degrees Celsius by 2100. Their
grim forecast was made perceptible by last summer's excessive heat; and according to Swiss meteorologists, the Europe-wide
hot spell that killed over 20,000 was wholly different from any previous heat wave. The odds against it being a mere
deviation from the norm were 300,000 to one. It was a warning of worse to come.

Global Warming is more dangerous than International Terrorism

John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office and co-chair of the scientific
assessment working group of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, 07/23/03, Guardian,
"Comment & Analysis: Global warming is now a weapon of mass destruction: It kills more people than
terrorism, yet Blair and Bush do nothing" [Takumi Murayama]
If political leaders have one duty above all others, it is to protect the security of their people. Thus it was, according to the
prime minister, to protect Britain's security against Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction that this country went to
war in Iraq. And yet our long-term security is threatened by a problem at least as dangerous as chemical, nuclear or
biological weapons, or indeed international terrorism: human-induced climate change.
As a climate scientist who has worked on this issue for several decades, first as head of the Met Office, and then as co-chair of
scientific assessment for the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change, the impacts of global warming are such that I
have no hesitation in describing it as a "weapon of mass destruction".
Like terrorism, this weapon knows no boundaries. It can strike anywhere, in any form - a heatwave in one place, a drought
or a flood or a storm surge in another. Nor is this just a problem for the future. The 1990s were probably the warmest decade in
the last 1,000 years, and 1998 the warmest year. Global warming is already upon us.

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Solvency–Competitiveness and Readiness


Nuclear technology research is key to competitiveness and readiness.

Jack Spencer, Research Fellow @ The Heritage Foundation's Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, 10-9-
07, "The Nuclear Renaissance: Ten Principles to Guide U.S. Policy,"
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1640.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
1. Avoid creating dependency-based vulnerabilities. To the casual observer, nuclear energy is domestically produced. The
plants exist in America, are generally operated by Americans, and generate electricity distributed to Americans. This is a
narrow view, however; it does not respect the significance of the industrial and intellectual base that produces the people,
components, and fuel necessary to build and operate nuclear plants. After three decades of decline, the domestic industrial
base does not have the capacity to produce the components for a single reactor. This lack of capacity goes beyond items
that are easily found on the international market. Essential components, such as heavy forgings (the enormous pieces of metal
out of which components are manufactured) and specialized piping, are not available domestically and are in limited supply
internationally. These industrial bottlenecks could be difficult to overcome as nuclear plant construction ramps up. Ultimately,
there is little difference between relying on foreign oil or foreign manufacturing if both allow America's ability to produce
energy to be disrupted by foreign interests. This reliance creates opportunities for others to exercise power over the U.S.
Minimizing these leverage points is central to advancing national interests. The Administration and Congress must avoid
the potential vulnerabilities and risks associated with foreign energy dependence. 2. Establish technological leadership across
the spectrum of military, civilian, and commercial nuclear activities. The international influx of investment to the
commercial nuclear sector (public and private) almost guarantees that more advanced nuclear technologies, some of
which could threaten the United States, will become available to unfriendly actors. Preventing this requires that the U.S.
and its allies establish technological superiority across the spectrum of nuclear activities. Close links among civil,
commercial, and military nuclear technologies will assure that those nations with the most advanced commercial and
industrial capabilities are able to develop the most advanced military technologies. Therefore, it is vitally important that
America's nuclear industrial base, along with that of its close allies, both commercial and military, remain globally
preeminent.

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Solvency–Energy
Nuclear power is the solution to the energy problem.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
Physical reality -- not arguments about corporate greed, hypothetical risks, radiation exposure, or waste disposal --
ought to inform decisions vital to the future of the world. Because diversity and redundancy are important for safety and
security, renewable energy sources ought to retain a place in the energy economy of the century to come. But nuclear
power should be central. Despite its outstanding record, it has instead been relegated by its opponents to the same twilight
zone of contentious ideological conflict as abortion and evolution. It deserves better. Nuclear power is environmentally safe,
practical, and affordable. It is not the problem -- it is one of the best solutions.

Increasing nuclear energy will improve the U.S.’s energy security and help its
foreign relations, particularly with Russia.

Lionel Beehner, former senior writer for the Council on Foreign Relations, 4-25-06, Council on Foreign
Relations, “Chernobyl, Nuclear Power, and Foreign Policy,”
http://www.cfr.org/publication/10534/chernobyl_nuclear_power_and_foreign_policy.html [Jiajia Huang]
Some experts say the revival of nuclear power may improve America's energy security and reduce its dependency on
countries like Saudi Arabia for its energy needs. But Ferguson says that any new nuclear plants built, while reducing the
United States' use of coal, would constitute "a drop in the bucket" in terms of affecting its overall supply, and would have little
effect on reducing its addiction to overseas oil. "Nuclear power is not going to lessen our need for oil unless we do something
to improve the efficiency of trucks and other automobiles," he says. The growing use of nuclear power abroad, however,
may affect U.S. foreign policy because of its role in alleviating global warming and curbing greenhouse gases. It may
also affect the U.S. relationship with Russia and other post-Soviet states like Ukraine, as countries in the region seek
sources of energy outside of the Kremlin's control, and increasingly look to Washington to help finance their nuclear
ambitions. Then, of course, there is the threat posed by civilian nuclear-power programs evolving into offensive nuclear-arms
programs, something U.S. policymakers say is happening in Iran and North Korea.

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Nuclear power is the only way to guarantee survival.

Ed Hiserodt, engineer and expert in power generation technology, 4-30-07, “Myths about Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/3481, [CXia]
In fact, to turn our backs on nuclear power may be to court disaster. With growing demand worldwide for energy, we may
suffer supply disruptions in some of the fossil fuels that currently support our modern way of life. To fail now to rebuild our
nuclear infrastructure would be to court disaster, something one of the chief scientists responsible for the development of
nuclear technology was already warning about decades ago. In 1979, in the wake of the incident at Three Mile Island, famed
nuclear scientist Edward Teller issued a prophetic warning that now sounds as relevant today as it did then: “The citizens of
the United States have just begun to recognize the impact of the world’s growing energy shortage. Gasoline lines,
electrical brownouts and higher prices are minor irritants. They are nothing compared to what may lie ahead. In a struggle for
survival, politics, law, religion, and even humanity may be forgotten. When the objective is to stay alive, the end may
seem to justify the means. In that event, the world may indeed return to the ‘simpler’ life of the past, but millions of us will
not be alive to discover its disadvantages. When our existence is at stake, we cannot afford to turn our backs on any
source of energy, we need them all.”

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Solvency–Econ
Nuclear Development is a boon for local economies in terms of jobs, both in
construction and operation

Clean and Safe Energy (CASEnergy) Coalition, grassroots coalition of more than 1,600 members that unites
people across business, environmental, academic, consumer and labor community to support nuclear energy.
06/17/08. “Nuclear Energy's Resurgence Promises to Spur Job Growth.”
[Takumi Murayama]
The Clean and Safe Energy Coalition (CASEnergy Coalition) today released a new white paper titled, Job Creation in the
Nuclear Renaissance that catalogues the potential for tens of thousands of American jobs in the nuclear energy industry
in the next decade.
Coalition Co-chair Christine Todd Whitman, former EPA administrator and New Jersey governor, was joined by a
diverse group of leaders to support the positive economic and environmental impact of nuclear energy in the United
States. Among those who support the findings of the white paper are:
-- U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-DE)
-- U.S. Senator George Voinovich (R-OH)
-- U.S. Representative James Clyburn (D-SC)
-- U.S. Representative Fred Upton (R-MI)
-- U.S. Representative Jason Altmire (D-PA)
-- Mayor Bill Saffo, Wilmington, NC
-- John Engler, President and CEO, National Association of Manufacturers
-- Mark Ayers, President, Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO
-- Dr. Patrick Moore, Co-Founder, Greenpeace
-- Lisa Stiles, Project Manager, Strategic Staffing and Knowledge Management, Dominion Nuclear
-- Michael Kurzeja, Vice President, North American Young Generation in Nuclear
-- Gilbert J. Brown, Ph.D., Professor and Coordinator, Nuclear Engineering Program, University of Massachusetts Lowell
The white paper examines the job growth potential for existing and future nuclear power plants and finds that nuclear
plants are a boon to local economies. Altogether, 12,000 to 21,000 new jobs will be added to the U.S. market if some 30
reactors currently planned for construction are built. These are long-term jobs that would exist throughout the
operation of the reactor, promising decades of employment.
-- Each nuclear plant provides 400 to 700 high-paying jobs.
-- Depending on construction methods, each new reactor could require as many as 4,000 workers per project at peak periods.
-- According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the median annual salary for nuclear engineers is $82,900 -- approximately
$8,000 more than all other engineering disciplines except petroleum engineering.
-- Each of the country's 104 reactors generates an estimated $430 million a year in total output for the local community, and
nearly $40 million per year in total labor income.
"Nuclear power provides a clean energy solution that produces no greenhouse gases and is good for the economy," said
Whitman. "A renewed focus on nuclear energy will translate into tens of thousands of high-paying American jobs needed to
build and operate new reactors."

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Increased Nuclear Development also leads a substantial increase in nuclear


professionals

Clean and Safe Energy (CASEnergy) Coalition, grassroots coalition of more than 1,600 members that unites
people across business, environmental, academic, consumer and labor community to support nuclear energy.
06/17/08. “Nuclear Energy's Resurgence Promises to Spur Job Growth.”
[Takumi Murayama]
To realize the economic potential that new reactor projects offer, the nation must invest in the education infrastructure
needed to cultivate the next generation of workers. Close collaboration between energy companies, government and
secondary educational institutions is critical. Although interest among students in nuclear energy careers is growing rapidly,
new reactor construction may be the next catalyst to drive enrollment in college and university programs and create
substantial numbers of new nuclear professionals.
New nuclear plants will also drive the demand for skilled craft labor focused on three areas -- construction, operation and
maintenance. As many as 185,000 new construction workers will be needed in the nuclear energy industry by 2015 for new
positions and to replace approximately 95,000 retiring workers. Joint apprenticeship and training programs in the building and
construction industry are important to ensure that the industry maintains a highly skilled work force.

Nuclear energy acts as a huge boost to economic growth and high-paying jobs

Clean and Safe Energy (CASEnergy) Coalition, grassroots coalition of more than 1,600 members that unites
people across business, environmental, academic, consumer and labor community to support nuclear energy.
06/17/08. “Nuclear Energy's Resurgence Promises to Spur Job Growth.”
[Takumi Murayama]
Nuclear energy boosts economic growth and supports high-paying jobs. The average nuclear energy plant produces enough
electricity to power 750,000 to one million households and businesses in the United States. With the help of nuclear energy, the
United States has reduced the share of electricity generated from oil by more than 80 percent since the 1970s. Moreover,
nuclear energy has helped improve the standard of living for Americans living near a plant through high-paying jobs and
services. Click here to learn about top schools with nuclear engineering programs.
More Jobs
For each construction, manufacturing, or operations job created at a nuclear power plant, four new jobs are created in
the job market to provide goods and services.
Each nuclear plant employs an average of approximately 500 employees from the local community and generates an
additional 500 jobs in the local area.
Each new American nuclear plant will create 1,400-1,800 construction jobs and add 400 to 700 permanent positions to
support continued operations.
Every dollar spent by a nuclear plant generates approximately $1.13 in the local economy of that plant.
The economic activity of a nuclear plant generates on average around $20 million in state and local tax revenues.
Economic activity from the average nuclear plant generates approximately $430 million in total output (production of
goods and services) and about $60 million in total labor income in the local economy.
Employees at U.S. nuclear plants earn salaries approximately 36 percent higher than the average earnings in the
communities surrounding the plants.
According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2006, the average annual salary for nuclear engineers was
$82,900.

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Nuclear power key to continue economic development

Clean and Safe Energy (CASEnergy) Coalition, grassroots coalition of more than 1,600 members that unites
people across business, environmental, academic, consumer and labor community to support nuclear energy. 07.
“Coalition Statement on Spent Fuel Management.” [Takumi Murayama]
Time has shown that the current fleet of nuclear plants is essential for this nation’s economic growth and development by
providing reliable, affordable energy and a new fleet of nuclear plants will be instrumental to continuing this development
as well as meeting the rising electricity demand and clean air goals before us. A comprehensive used fuel management
policy has a tremendous positive impact on ensuring that the stewardship of used nuclear fuel is aligned with an era in which
new nuclear power plants are being built in the United States and globally.

Using nuclear energy now bolsters the US economy and saves money in the
long run

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 7-2-08, “Nuclear Energy: What We Can Learn From Other Nations”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1977.cfm, [Crystal Xia]

Affordable energy is critical to sustaining economic competitiveness in economies with high labor costs, expensive
environmental mandates, and other regulatory expenditures. This is especially true in economies that depend on energy-
intensive activities like manufacturing, such as the Finnish and U.S. economies. Finland concluded that access to vast
quantities of affordable energy should be a top national priority, and nuclear was an obvious choice. These countries and
others searching to expand their nuclear capacity have an opportunity to fuel their respective economies through the
thousands of jobs, both temporary and permanent, that nuclear energy creates. A global nuclear renaissance will attract
construction jobs as well as high-skill engineering jobs to operate the plants. Thus, two of the greatest benefits of building
more nuclear reactors, if done correctly, will be more jobs and cleaner, cheaper energy. Countries that do not choose to
produce clean energy in a carbon constrained world will inevitably pay more to produce energy, resulting in higher input costs
and higher prices for consumers on the open market. As the economic consequences of higher fossil-fuel costs spread to
countries that do not produce nuclear power, many countries will likely increase imports of nuclear electricity from
foreign suppliers. While less expensive and more reliable than other non-nuclear, non-emitting sources, this energy will
surely cost more to import than it would have had to produce it domestically. In the end, the countries that have barred
nuclear power from being produced in their respective countries will ultimately rely on nuclear power, albeit at a more
expensive imported price.

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30 nuclear power reactors will provide 12,000 to 21,000 new jobs

Dr. Patrick Moore, Co-Chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, co-founder and former leader of
Greenpeace, 6-08, Nuclear Power International, “Nuclear Power—Energy Creating Jobs,”
http://pepei.pennnet.com/display_article/332480/140/ARTCL/none/none/1/Nuclear-Power
%E2%80%94Energy-Creating-Jobs/ [Jiajia Huang]
When new reactors are built, 400 to 700 new workers will be needed to operate and maintain each reactor.2 Using the
projected total of 30 new reactors, 12,000 to 21,000 new jobs would be added to the U.S. market.
In addition to staffing new reactors, more job opportunities will be available due to retiring workers at nuclear facilities.
Just as the American economy must adjust to retiring baby boomers, so too must the nuclear industry. Thirty-five percent of the
current U.S. nuclear industry work force may be eligible to retire within five years. This means that between now and 2012,
the industry will have opportunities for approximately 19,600 workers to replace retirees and 6,300 to account for other
attrition.
As co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, I am working to inform people about the benefits of nuclear energy. As an
environmentalist, I want to make people aware of a form of energy that to date has been overly politicized, because it can
sustain future generations with clean power. As a scientist, I prefer to be on the side of clean, hard facts, as opposed to the
misinformation and fear being spread by those who remain opposed to this important technology.
It is vital that we learn more about where our energy comes from and how we can influence decisions that will result in a
cleaner and safer world for future generations. In my view there is simply no question that nuclear energy will play an
important role in delivering that future.

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Solvency–Foreign Relations
Increasing nuclear energy will improve the U.S.’s energy security and help its
foreign relations, particularly with Russia.

Lionel Beehner, former senior writer for the Council on Foreign Relations, 4-25-06, Council on Foreign
Relations, “Chernobyl, Nuclear Power, and Foreign Policy,”
http://www.cfr.org/publication/10534/chernobyl_nuclear_power_and_foreign_policy.html [Jiajia Huang]
Some experts say the revival of nuclear power may improve America's energy security and reduce its dependency on
countries like Saudi Arabia for its energy needs. But Ferguson says that any new nuclear plants built, while reducing the
United States' use of coal, would constitute "a drop in the bucket" in terms of affecting its overall supply, and would have little
effect on reducing its addiction to overseas oil. "Nuclear power is not going to lessen our need for oil unless we do something
to improve the efficiency of trucks and other automobiles," he says. The growing use of nuclear power abroad, however,
may affect U.S. foreign policy because of its role in alleviating global warming and curbing greenhouse gases. It may
also affect the U.S. relationship with Russia and other post-Soviet states like Ukraine, as countries in the region seek
sources of energy outside of the Kremlin's control, and increasingly look to Washington to help finance their nuclear
ambitions. Then, of course, there is the threat posed by civilian nuclear-power programs evolving into offensive nuclear-arms
programs, something U.S. policymakers say is happening in Iran and North Korea.

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Solvency–Global Warming
Only nuclear energy, the safest energy source, can solve for global warming.
There is not enough time for renewables like wind, tide, and water.

James Lovelock, creator of Gaia hypothesis (Earth is self-regulating organism) and member of EFN
(Association of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy), 5-24-04, The Independent, “Nuclear Power is the Only
Green Solution,” http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/james-lovelock-nuclear-power-is-the-
only-green-solution-564446.html [Jiajia Huang]
Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, was far-sighted to say that global warming is a more serious threat than
terrorism. He may even have underestimated, because, since he spoke, new evidence of climate change suggests it could be
even more serious, and the greatest danger that civilisation has faced so far.
Most of us are aware of some degree of warming; winters are warmer and spring comes earlier. But in the Arctic, warming is
more than twice as great as here in Europe and in summertime, torrents of melt water now plunge from Greenland's
kilometre-high glaciers. The complete dissolution of Greenland's icy mountains will take time, but by then the sea will have
risen seven metres, enough to make uninhabitable all of the low lying coastal cities of the world, including London,
Venice, Calcutta, New York and Tokyo. Even a two metre rise is enough to put most of southern Florida under water.
The floating ice of the Arctic Ocean is even more vulnerable to warming; in 30 years, its white reflecting ice, the area of the
US, may become dark sea that absorbs the warmth of summer sunlight, and further hastens the end of the Greenland ice. The
North Pole, goal of so many explorers, will then be no more than a point on the ocean surface.
Not only the Arctic is changing; climatologists warn a four-degree rise in temperature is enough to eliminate the vast
Amazon forests in a catastrophe for their people, their biodiversity, and for the world, which would lose one of its great
natural air conditioners.
The scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported in 2001 that global temperature would rise
between two and six degrees Celsius by 2100. Their grim forecast was made perceptible by last summer's excessive heat;
and according to Swiss meteorologists, the Europe-wide hot spell that killed over 20,000 was wholly different from any
previous heat wave. The odds against it being a mere deviation from the norm were 300,000 to one. It was a warning of
worse to come.
What makes global warming so serious and so urgent is that the great Earth system, Gaia, is trapped in a vicious circle of
positive feedback. Extra heat from any source, whether from greenhouse gases, the disappearance of Arctic ice or the
Amazon forest, is amplified, and its effects are more than additive. It is almost as if we had lit a fire to keep warm, and
failed to notice, as we piled on fuel, that the fire was out of control and the furniture had ignited. When that happens, little time
is left to put out the fire before it consumes the house. Global warming, like a fire, is accelerating and almost no time is left to
act.
So what should we do? We can just continue to enjoy a warmer 21st century while it lasts, and make cosmetic attempts, such
as the Kyoto Treaty, to hide the political embarrassment of global warming, and this is what I fear will happen in much of the
world. When, in the 18th century, only one billion people lived on Earth, their impact was small enough for it not to matter
what energy source they used.
But with six billion, and growing, few options remain; we can not continue drawing energy from fossil fuels and there is no
chance that the renewables, wind, tide and water power can provide enough energy and in time. If we had 50 years or
more we might make these our main sources. But we do not have 50 years; the Earth is already so disabled by the insidious
poison of greenhouse gases that even if we stop all fossil fuel burning immediately, the consequences of what we have already
done will last for 1,000 years. Every year that we continue burning carbon makes it worse for our descendants and for
civilisation.
Worse still, if we burn crops grown for fuel this could hasten our decline. Agriculture already uses too much of the land
needed by the Earth to regulate its climate and chemistry. A car consumes 10 to 30 times as much carbon as its driver;
imagine the extra farmland required to feed the appetite of cars.
By all means, let us use the small input from renewables sensibly, but only one immediately available source does not cause
global warming and that is nuclear energy. True, burning natural gas instead of coal or oil releases only half as much
carbon dioxide, but unburnt gas is 25 times as potent a greenhouse agent as is carbon dioxide. Even a small leakage
would neutralise the advantage of gas.
The prospects are grim, and even if we act successfully in amelioration, there will still be hard times, as in war, that will stretch
our grandchildren to the limit. We are tough and it would take more than the climate catastrophe to eliminate all breeding pairs
of humans; what is at risk is civilisation. As individual animals we are not so special, and in some ways are like a planetary
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disease, but through civilisation we redeem ourselves and become a precious asset for the Earth; not least because through our
eyes the Earth has seen herself in all her glory.
There is a chance we may be saved by an unexpected event such as a series of volcanic eruptions severe enough to block
out sunlight and so cool the Earth. But only losers would bet their lives on such poor odds. Whatever doubts there are
about future climates, there are no doubts that greenhouse gases and temperatures both are rising.
We have stayed in ignorance for many reasons; important among them is the denial of climate change in the US where
governments have failed to give their climate scientists the support they needed. The Green lobbies, which should have
given priority to global warming, seem more concerned about threats to people than with threats to the Earth, not noticing that
we are part of the Earth and wholly dependent upon its well being. It may take a disaster worse than last summer's European
deaths to wake us up.
Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the
media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy
sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third
of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen. If we
fail to concentrate our minds on the real danger, which is global warming, we may die even sooner, as did more than 20,000
unfortunates from overheating in Europe last summer.
I find it sad and ironic that the UK, which leads the world in the quality of its Earth and climate scientists, rejects their
warnings and advice, and prefers to listen to the Greens. But I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop
their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy.
Even if they were right about its dangers, and they are not, its worldwide use as our main source of energy would pose an
insignificant threat compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves and sea levels rising to drown every
coastal city of the world. We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent
danger and has to use nuclear - the one safe, available, energy source - now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our
outraged planet.

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Nuclear energy must be part of the global warming solution.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 12-3-07, “Dispelling Myths About Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2087.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
FACT: Nuclear power plants produce almost no atmospheric emissions. Given that nuclear fission does not produce atmo-
spheric emissions, NukeFree's carbon dioxide (CO2) witch-hunt focuses on other, emissions-producing activities surrounding
nuclear power, such as uranium mining and plant construction. Finding fault with nuclear energy on the basis of these
indirect emissions simply holds no merit. Whether the activists like it or not, the world runs on fossil fuel. Until the nation
changes its energy profile--which can be done with nuclear energy--almost any activity, even building windmills, will
result in CO2 emissions. The United States has not built a new commercial nuclear reactor in over 30 years, but the 104
plants operating today prevented the release of 681.9 million metric tons of CO2 in 2005, which is comparable to taking
96 percent of cars off the roads.[2] If CO2 is the problem, emissions-free nuclear power must be part of the solution.

Key environmentalists support nuclear energy; it’s necessary to solving global


climate problems.

Eliot Marshall, staff writer, 8-19-05, “Nuclear Power: Is the Friendly Atom Posed for a Comeback”, Science,
Vol. 309. no. 5738, pp. 1168 – 1169, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/ reprint/309/5738/1168.pdf, [Crystal Xia]
David King, science adviser to the U.K. government, has spoken publicly about the need to keep nuclear power as a
clean energy option. Britain, the world's most visible campaigner for action on global warming, faces a common dilemma, as
King explained to the Independent newspaper in May. He described a looming "gap" in clean energy production. About 27% of
U.K. electricity now comes from nuclear power, he noted, but without a "new build," only one reactor unit (Sizewell B) will
still be running in 2025, producing an estimated 4% of the needed electricity. King said he was "not a great fan of nuclear"
but was willing to consider it because "the climate change issue is so important." A recent U.K. government forecast lends
weight to King's analysis: Solar panels, windmills, and wave-driven generators cannot pick up the slack anytime soon.
An electricity strategy issued in May by the U.K. Council of Science and Technology, which reports to King, notes that "the
existing policy to reduce CO2 will not be sufficient ... since the nuclear stations are likely to be replaced by carbon-based
technology (e.g., gas) in the short term." And even the United Kingdom, which has championed the international effort to curb
CO2 emissions, is failing to meet its self-imposed CO2 reduction goals. Physicist David Wallace, vice president of the Royal
Society in London, warned in May that "our emissions are clearly going in the wrong direction," and that U.K. government
forecasts of achievable CO2 reductions have been "frankly unrealistic." Royal Society president Robert May has written that "it
is difficult to see how we can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels without the help of nuclear power." A few leaders in the
green movement have endorsed the idea of using nuclear power as a bridge to cleaner systems in the future--including U.K.
ecologist James Lovelock. Creator of the "Gaia" metaphor that describes Earth as a living organism, Lovelock published a
broad appeal last year. "Only one immediately available source [of energy] does not cause global warming, and that is
nuclear energy," he wrote. "I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded opposition [to it]." A few others,
such as Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, have made similar statements.

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Nuclear energy is the ONLY option to reduce carbon emissions.

Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, 11-8-07, Nuclear
Power in Response to Climate Change, http://www.cfr.org/publication/10534/chernobyl _nuclear_power_
and_foreign_policy.html, [Crystal Xia]
It's increasingly clear that Michael prefers to debate how NOT to respond to climate change. Nuclear energy is a proven
technology. It is by far the largest U.S. source of electricity that doesn’t emit greenhouse gases, and it provides more
than 45 percent of emission-free electricity worldwide, second only to hydroelectric plants. Yet Michael insists on erecting
the straw man of a ten-year U.S. construction window (even as thirty-one new reactors are being built internationally), as
though this problem could be solved in that time frame.
Let me refute you with the same construct, Michael: 1. No matter how many billions of dollars we throw at your preferred
sources of emission-free electricity, they won’t begin to approach in the next ten years the amount of electricity already
generated by nuclear power plants—at which point we’ll start to bring additional emission-free, 1,000-megawatt-plus
reactors on line. 2. Your preferred sources of electricity cannot build the number of facilities needed to make a
meaningful reduction (by themselves) in carbon emissions.

Critics are wrong – nuclear energy is the only way to solve the climate
problem.

Steve Kerekes, senior director of media relations at the Nuclear Energy Institute, 11-6-07, “Nuclear Power in
Response to the Climate Change” http://www.cfr.org/publication
14718/nuclear_power_in_response_to_climate_change.html, [Crystal Xia]
The silly premise that Michael and many other critics employ with regard to nuclear energy’s clean-air benefits is to
suggest that, simply because a substantial number of new nuclear plants is needed to accommodate our sector’s “wedge”
of carbon prevention, then construction shouldn’t be undertaken at all. That line of thinking used to be called throwing out
the baby with the bath water. The reality is that all carbon-free energy technologies, working hand in hand with improved
energy efficiency and conservation measures, are needed to meet this threat. If Michael short-sightedly wants to oppose nuclear
energy, he’s free to do so. But he shouldn’t do it with bogus arguments about which technologies are ready for prime time and
which aren’t. Nuclear energy is our country’s only large-scale energy source capable of producing electricity around the
clock while emitting no air pollutants or greenhouse gases during production. Nuclear energy is also the lowest-cost
large-scale producer of electricity in this country. And nuclear’s production costs are stable and not subject to
fluctuations in the natural gas or oil market. As a domestic energy technology with fuel from the United States and reliable
trading partners, nuclear energy is essential to our nation’s energy security.

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Nuclear power is the most efficient alternative energy in terms of CO2


emissions

NuclearInfo.net, “The Benefits of Nuclear Power”,


http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/TheBenefitsOfNuclearPower, 2008
There is world-wide concern over the prospect of Global Warming primarily caused by the emission of Carbon Dioxide gas
(CO2) from the burning of fossil fuels. Although the processes of running a Nuclear Power plant generates no CO2, some
CO2 emissions arise from the construction of the plant, the mining of the Uranium, the enrichment of the Uranium, its
conversion into Nuclear Fuel, its final disposal and the final plant decommissioning. The amount of CO2 generated by these
secondary processes primarily depends on the method used to enrich the Uranium (the gaseous diffusion enrichment
process uses about 50 times more electricity than the gaseous centrifuge method) and the source of electricity used for the
enrichment process. It has been the subject of some controversy. To estimate the total CO2 emissions from Nuclear Power we
take the work of the Swedish Energy Utility, Vattenfall, which produces electricity via Nuclear, Hydro, Coal, Gas, Solar Cell,
Peat and Wind energy sources and has produced credited Environment Product Declarations for all these processes. Vattenfall
finds that averaged over the entire lifecycle of their Nuclear Plant including Uranium mining, milling, enrichment, plant
construction, operating, decommissioning and waste disposal, the total amount CO2 emitted per KW-Hr of electricity
produced is 3.3 grams per KW-Hr of produced power. Vattenfall measures its CO2 output from Natural Gas to be 400
grams per KW-Hr and from coal to be 700 grams per KW-Hr. Thus nuclear power generated by Vattenfall, which may
constitute World's best practice, emits less than one hundredth the CO2 of Fossil-Fuel based generation. In fact
Vattenfall finds its Nuclear Plants to emit less CO2 than any of its other energy production mechanisms including
Hydro, Wind, Solar and Biomass although all of these processes emit much less than fossil fuel generation of electricity.

Because nuclear power plants have no carbon emissions, they effectively


combat global warming.

C.T. Carley, Commercial Appeal, “Nuclear power benefits outweigh past fears”,
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/apr/29/guest-column-nuclear-power-benefits-outweigh, April
29th, 2008
In his recent book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," Greenspan writes that nuclear energy is an "obvious
alternative" to coal in electric power generation. Coal-fired power plants in the United States load the atmosphere each
year with more than 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas linked to global warming. By contrast,
nuclear plants emit no carbon dioxide and account for about 70 percent of the clean power generation in the United
States." Given the steps that have been taken over the years to make nuclear energy safer and the obvious environmental
advantages it offers in reducing carbon dioxide emissions," Greenspan writes in his book, "there is no longer a persuasive case
against increasing nuclear power generation at the expense of coal. "Nuclear power is a major means to combat global
warming, " Greenspan writes. "Its use should be avoided only if it constitutes a threat to life expectancy that outweighs the gains it
can give us. By that criterion, I believe we significantly under-use nuclear power."

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Nuclear energy is the safest and cleanest alternative to fossil fuels, providing the most promising method
to combat global warming.

Bruno Comby, “The Benefits of Nuclear Energy”,


http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/BENEFITS-of-NUCLEAR.pdf, 2008
Nuclear energy is a clean, safe, reliable and competitive energy source. It is the only source of energy that can replace a
significant part of the fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) which massively pollute the atmosphere and contribute to the
greenhouse effect. If we want to be serious about climate change and the end of oil, we must promote the more efficient use of
energy, we must use renewable energies – wind and solar – wherever possible, and adopt a more sustainable life style. But this will
not be nearly enough to slow the accumulation of atmospheric CO2, and satisfy the needs of our industrial civilization and the
aspirations of the developing nations. Nuclear power should be deployed rapidly to replace coal, oil and gas in the industrial
countries, and eventually in developing countries An intelligent combination of energy conservation, and renewable
energies for local low-intensity applications, and nuclear energy for base-load electricity production, is the only viable way
for the future.

Global Energy R&D key to solving Global Warming

JJ Dooley and PJ Runci, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Operated for DOE by Battelle Memorial
Institute. 02/99. “ADOPTING A LONG VIEW TO ENERGY R&D AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE.”
[Takumi Murayama]
A more favorable, alternative approach to climate change would consider that continued advances in the state of the art
of energy technology, which are in large part a function of energy R&D investment levels, will expand the problem’s
solution set. Thus, the state of energy R&D will also determine to a large extent the cost of attaining any stabilized “safe”
atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases over the coming century.4 Based on this logic, sustained energy R&D
investment must be viewed as a vital component of a century scale strategy designed both to address the problem
effectively and to minimize associated costs. Considering also that the majority of growth in world energy consumption
expected in the next century will occur in the developing world, an effective strategy must include provisions ensuring the
participation of key developing states. Countries such as China, India, and Brazil should be encouraged and assisted to
become future producers of energy R&D and energy technologies and ought not be expected to remain contented consumers
of Western expertise and hardware throughout the next century.
Moreover, the motivation for major developing countries to develop indigenous energy R&D infrastructures extends beyond
climate change. Local environmental conditions, particularly air quality, is already a severe problem in many industrializing
areas. The impetus for the deployment of newer and cleaner energy technologies will also grow as the levels of industrial
activity and energy demand rise in developing countries.

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Increased Nuclear Energy Capacity is the only way to solve Global Warming

Jennifer Weeks, CQ Researcher. 03/10/06. CQ Researcher “Nuclear Energy.” [Takumi Murayama]


Now that scientific consensus affirms that greenhouse-gas emissions from human activities are warming Earth's climate, the
nuclear industry contends that nuclear power is the best option for meeting rising energy demand without exacerbating
climate problems. Nuclear reactors generate electricity without emitting carbon dioxide and other pollutants — called
greenhouse gases — that hold heat in the atmosphere. Power plants burning coal, oil and natural gas produced 39 percent of
U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in 2003. [12]
But nuclear-power capacity would have to expand dramatically to eliminate enough greenhouse emissions to make a
difference. Nuclear plants generated 789 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2004 — or about 22 percent of the nation's electrical
power. By 2030 the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that nuclear plants will generate only about 871
terawatt-hours — and that's if six new 1,000-megawatt reactors are built and 2,000 megawatts of uprates (capacity increases)
are made at existing plants. But demand will have risen so sharply by then, says the EIA, that nuclear power will end up
providing only about 16 percent of total U.S. power generation — a smaller share than it provides today. [13]
To significantly reduce climate change, according to a 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study, world nuclear
capacity would have to roughly triple by 2050, with the United States adding 200 or more new reactors. [14]Industry
representatives admit that growth on anything approaching this scale would be a serious challenge.
Even so, some prominent environmentalists have called recently for rethinking the issue of nuclear power in view of the
potential threat from climate change. “Renewable energies, such as wind, geothermal and hydro are part of the solution,” wrote
Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore in early 2005. “Nuclear energy is the only non-greenhouse-gas-emitting power
source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand.” [15]

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Solvency–Nuclear Capacity
US policy must promote the growth of nuclear power or fall behind in nuclear
capability.

Jack Spencer, Research Fellow @ The Heritage Foundation's Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, 10-9-
07, "The Nuclear Renaissance: Ten Principles to Guide U.S. Policy,"
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1640.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Because of the integrated nature of the nuclear industry, government programs work symbiotically with the private sector. The
United States should not fund programs simply to support the nuclear industry; legitimate programs, however, will assure
that the United States maintains critical capabilities that nuclear technology uniquely provides and serve as vital
investment in essential intellectual capital. For example, growing the Navy's fleet of nuclear submarines and surface ships
will help meet critical national security requirements and strengthen the domestic commercial industrial base. Rationalizing,
streamlining, and modernizing the nation's nuclear weapons complex and the Department of Energy laboratory system would
not only save taxpayers money but would also strengthen domestic nuclear capability. These programs not only make
financial sense and provide significant operational upgrades but also demonstrate U.S. commitment to nuclear energy.
These are the most important activities that the government can undertake to stimulate the nuclear industry, and undertaking
them bolsters private-sector investor confidence. Ultimately, these steps would lead to a robust nuclear industrial base and the
development of the skilled personnel base required to support an expansion of nuclear power in the United States. Conclusion
The United States risks cementing its status in the second tier of commercial nuclear power states unless it takes action.
While European and Asian companies aggressively work to meet the emerging demands of a growing commercial nuclear
market, America's industry has lost its capacity, intellectual expertise, and competitive edge. For economic and national
security reasons, U.S. policy must change to better promote and manage the growth of nuclear power.

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The United States is behind on nuclear energy. Other countries use it now.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 7-2-08, “Nuclear Energy: What We Can Learn From Other Nations”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1977.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Nuclear power is gaining momentum in the United States as the nation seeks environmentally friendly and affordable
sources of energy that can meet growing demand. As the U.S. deliberates the possibility of building new nuclear power plants,
other nations have already begun the process. A Domestic Source of Energy
France is an example of a country that developed nuclear energy to reduce foreign energy dependence after the oil shock
of the 1970s. It now receives nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power and is a net exporter of electricity.[1]
Germany, alternatively, decided to phase out nuclear energy for political reasons and now imports some of this energy.[2]
Japan is another country that has looked to nuclear power as a clean, safe and reliable form of energy. Nuclear power
already provides 30 percent of the country's electricity; however, Japan is working to increase this to 37 percent by 2009 and
41 percent by 2017.[3] Finland, ranking fifth in the world for per capita electricity consumption, has a significant incentive to
secure long-term energy solutions. Embracing nuclear energy as part of an effort to decrease the nation's dependency on
foreign energy sources, Finland has begun constructing a modern 1,600-megawatt reactor, which will likely be a model
used throughout the United States. Finland already gets 28 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, and a possible sixth
reactor would increase that amount substantially. Presently, the U.K. has 19 reactors that provide about 18 percent of the
nation's electricity. Because the U.K. is already a net importer of energy and all but one of its coal-fired and nuclear plants are
scheduled to be decommissioned by 2023, building new reactors is a must for the U.K. if it is to avoid creating increased
energy dependencies. The British government, while providing long-term politically stable support for nuclear power, has
made it clear that it would not subsidize the industry. The U.S., on the other hand, continues to squabble politically about
nuclear power but has offered some subsidies to the industry. As a result, the British model should provide a sustainable
environment for nuclear power moving forward, while the U.S. model could create a politically tenuous dependency
relationship between government and industry.

The United States needs the follow the rest of the world’s example and
develop nuclear technology.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 7-2-08, “Nuclear Energy: What We Can Learn From Other Nations”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1977.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
China, India, and Russia are already building new nuclear plants. Even smaller countries, like Vietnam and countries in
the Middle East, have begun exploring nuclear power as they too are facing demand shortages and feeling pressure from the
industrialized world to reduce CO2 emissions. With the U.S. entertaining the idea of building new nuclear plants, the country
can learn a great deal from other nations further along in the process. Electricity demand is skyrocketing in many parts of
the world; purported human-induced climate change has the entire globe in a panic. Nuclear energy has become a focal point
for countries trying to meet these needs, and some believe that it can provide an economic boost at the same time. It creates
opportunities to electrify portions of the economy that today rely almost entirely on fossil-fuels, like transportation. Other
countries seem to understand the potential benefits of nuclear power and have either commenced constructing, or have
developed projections for, new nuclear plants. The time has come for the U.S. to stop squabbling, remove regulatory
impediments, and allow nuclear energy to continue helping this country to meet its growing energy demands.

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Solvency–Proliferation
Promoting nuclear growth makes it easier to limit nuclear weaponry in the
future.

Jack Spencer, Research Fellow @ The Heritage Foundation's Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, 10-9-
07, "The Nuclear Renaissance: Ten Principles to Guide U.S. Policy,"
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1640.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
The prevailing thrust of global nonproliferation policy has been to keep weapons out of the hands of non-weapons states. The
grand bargain of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was that its parties would have access to all nuclear technology so long as
it was not weaponized. This allowed countries like Iran and North Korea to operate within the letter of the treaty while
amassing technology to begin a weapons program. With the growth of nuclear power, the focus should be on the fuel cycle.
Rather than be based on five nuclear weapons states, the nonproliferation regime should be based on a limited number of
nuclear diverse fuel states. Some countries could still pursue nuclear weapons, but by focusing on fuel cycle activities, this
nonproliferation regime would make such nations much easier to identify, because they will have moved beyond the
bounds of international norms much earlier in the process.

Nuclear power is key to nonprolif and US leadership.

Jack Spencer, Research Fellow @ The Heritage Foundation's Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, 10-9-
07, “Congress Must Implement CSC Treaty to Reinvigorate U.S. Nuclear Industry”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1658.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Failure to engage in the commercial nuclear market risks undermining U.S. leadership on related issues, such as
nonproliferation. Other nations will simply work amongst themselves to achieve their nuclear objectives. Countries such
as Russia, France, and China will fill the policymaking void left by the United States. The United States once led the world in
commercial nuclear technology but has ceded that capability to countries such as France, Japan, Great Britain, and Russia over
the past three decades. A more competitive American industry would provide opportunities for the United States to re-
emerge as a leader in the global commercial nuclear market. Furthermore, CSC implementation will signal that the U.S.
government is committed to the expansion of nuclear power. This commitment by the federal government is essential to
attracting the massive private investment required to rebuild the domestic capabilities needed to support America's growing
commercial nuclear activities.

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Nuclear power is key to solve proliferation.

Jack Spencer, Research Fellow @ The Heritage Foundation's Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, 10-9-
07, "The Nuclear Renaissance: Ten Principles to Guide U.S. Policy,"
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1640.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Nuclear power has many advantages over other power sources, but a global expansion of peaceful nuclear technology could
present risks if not managed properly. While acting to mitigate these risks, U.S. policy should, as in other sectors, include
pro-market regulatory reforms, foster competition, and avoid unnecessary intervention. The government will, however,
have a more direct role in the nuclear sector than in most industries due to its history and the nature of the technology.
Following the government-induced stagnation of the industry in the 1970s and 1980s, the private sector remains leery of
making large investments without a clear sign that the government will not regulate the industry out of business again.
To reap the benefits of nuclear power, while minimizing the risks, the United States must commit to reestablishing itself
as a technology leader in commercial nuclear power, avoid unwanted foreign dependencies, modernize its approach to waste
disposal, promote marketplace freedom, and modify its approach to nonproliferation. The 10 straightforward principles laid
out in this paper should guide Congress and the Administration's actions.

The US must redouble nuclear energy development to stop proliferation

Jackie Sanders, Ambassador for Non-Proliferation, 4/29/04, “NPT Article IV,”


http://www.state.gov/t/isn/rls/rm/32292.htm. [Takumi Murayama]
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, the peaceful application of nuclear energy can bestow enormous benefits on humankind. The
United States will continue to contribute to the development of peaceful nuclear energy throughout the world. But we must
all redouble our efforts to ensure that the line between the peaceful use of nuclear technology and its use for weapons
purposes is sharply drawn and maintained. We must not let the actions of a few NPT parties bent on violating their
nonproliferation obligations call into question the many benefits that responsible NPT parties derive from peaceful nuclear
cooperation.

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The world is inevitable moving towards nuclear power – a US investment in nuclear energy would
encourage peaceful use of nuclear technology and combat proliferation.
Jim Dawson, “Nuclear Power Needs Government Incentives, says Task Force”,
http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_58/iss_5/28_1.shtml, 2005

Another critical aspect of encouraging a new generation of power plants is the concern over nuclear proliferation,
especially in the wake of September 11th. The task force's bottom-line conclusion is that the rest of the world is going to
move forward with energy generation from nuclear power regardless of what the US does, and the US would be better
off participating than sitting on the sidelines. An increase in the use of nuclear power in the US would actually "serve
our non-proliferation objectives," the report says, because "one of the most efficient and certainly the most thorough
ways of disposing of that nuclear material is to burn it as fuel in commercial nuclear reactors. "Robinson said task force
members "had several discussions with the folks over at the White House to understand what the traffic would bear" in terms of
government support for the nuclear industry. "We've been getting the right words to do at least one such [reactor construction
and startup]." That would shore up the confidence that all of the work that was done to speed up the regulatory process
has worked, he said. "The object is . . . to show that nuclear power is a good investment."

An international fuel bank could encourage nuclear reactors without causing


nuclear weapons proliferation.

Jeff Tollefson, 1-23-08, Nature News, p373 internal source edited. [Liz Lusk]
The premise behind an international fuel bank is that it will encourage countries who are building nuclear reactors to forgo
uranium-enrichment technology because such technologies also provide most of the means for developing nuclear weapons.

Dozens of countries are starting to express an interest in nuclear energy. And established nuclear powers that had all but
abandoned new plants are laying the groundwork for a new boom. Plans to expand enrichment are underway among the biggest
nuclear-energy suppliers — the United States, Russia, France, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.

“Any legislative attempts to impose limits on enrichment technology are going to fail”, warns Laura Holgate, a vice president
at the NTI [Nuclear Threat Initiative]. “The challenge is to create attractive alternatives to indigenous fuel cycles,” she says.
One such alternative is to make enriched fuel available without hindrance to any country that agrees not to make it itself.

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) helped to kick-start the discussions
for an international fuel bank in 2003. He proposed a system in which all uranium enrichment and fuel would be placed under
international control. Since then, numerous countries and organizations have sent in proposals, all of which are still before the
IAEA board of governors for debate.

Tariq Rauf, who heads verification and security-policy coordination at the IAEA, explains that the fuel bank would be a
“reserve of last resort”, where countries could purchase two or three years of fuel if they had their supply cut off as a result of
some sort of diplomatic pressure. It would thus allow countries some assurance of continued access to fuel even if aspects of
their non-nuclear policies were unpopular. Their supply would be severed, though, if there were a fear that they would use the
fuel for proliferation purposes. “We wouldn't supply a country if we were investigating that country for safeguards issues,”
Rauf says.

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Without a global unified security effort, the world will be at risk from nuclear
weapons.

Mary Cooper, 2-4-2004, CQ Researcher, Nuclear Proliferation and Terrorism. [Liz Lusk]
IAEA Director General ElBaradei paints a grim picture of nuclear proliferation's future and calls for a revolutionary overhaul
of international systems and policies to prevent nuclear terrorism. “Eventually, inevitably, terrorists will gain access to such
materials and technology, if not actual weapons,” he wrote. “If the world does not change course, we risk self destruction.”

ElBaradei calls for globalization of worldwide security. “We must abandon the traditional approach of defining security in
terms of boundaries — city walls, border patrols, racial and religious groupings,” he wrote recently in The New York Times.
“The global community has become irreversibly interdependent, with the constant movement of people, ideas, goods and
resources.

“In such a world, we must combat terrorism with an infectious security culture that crosses borders — an inclusive approach to
security based on solidarity and the value of human life. In such a world, weapons of mass destruction will have no place.”

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Solvency–Public Health
Nuclear power would create an improvement in public health – only problem is
perception.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
The high-level waste is intensely radioactive, of course (the low-level waste can be less radioactive than coal ash, which is
used to make concrete and gypsum -- both of which are incorporated into building materials). But thanks to its small volume
and the fact that it is not released into the environment, this high-level waste can be meticulously sequestered behind
multiple barriers. Waste from coal, dispersed across the landscape in smoke or buried near the surface, remains toxic forever.
Radioactive nuclear waste decays steadily, losing 99 percent of its toxicity after 600 years -- well within the range of
human experience with custody and maintenance, as evidence by structures such as the Roman Pantheon and Notre Dame
Cathedral. Nuclear waste disposal is a political problem in the United States because of wide-spread fear
disproportionate to the reality of risk. But it is not an engineering problem, as advanced projects in France, Sweden,
and Japan demonstrate. The World Health Organization has estimated that indoor and outdoor air pollution cause some three
million deaths per year. Substituting small, properly contained volumes of nuclear waste for vast, dispersed amounts of
toxic wastes from fossil fuels would produce so obvious an improvement in public health that it is astonishing that
physicians have not already demanded such a conversion.

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Solvency–Public Perception
Public perception of nuclear energy relies on waste disposal

Paul P. Craig, University of California, Davis. 11/99. “HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE: The Status of
Yucca Mountain,” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, Vol. 24: 461-486.
[Takumi Murayama]
High-level nuclear waste can usefully be placed in the context of the evolution of the U.S. nuclear program. This evolution can
be divided into three periods: the weapons period before the first prototype commercial reactor at Shippingport (1957), the “go-
go days” of reactor orders starting in the 1960s and ending in the 1970s, and the present period dominated by shutdowns and
some license renewals. These eras of waxing and waning enthusiasm for nuclear power are related to U.S. policy for
dealing with high-level nuclear waste.
In the early days of reactor enthusiasm, the waste problem was largely ignored. Alvin Weinberg, one of the “grand old men” of
the nuclear era, expressed his regret about this failure (see 34, page 183): “…[D]uring my years at ORNL [Oak Ridge National
Laboratory] I paid too little attention to the waste problem. Designing and building reactors, not nuclear waste, was what
turned me on…[A]s I think about what I would do differently had I to do it over again, it would be to elevate waste disposal to
the very top of ORNL's agenda…I have no doubt that, if wastes had been viewed…as the highest priority on the research
agenda, we could by this time [1994] have demonstrated a working high-level depository that was perceived by the
public to be safe.” The failure of the nuclear industry to pay attention to “closing the fuel cycle” in the days before the
problem attracted widespread public attention may be costing the industry heavily today and could prove fatal to
nuclear technology. (During the go-go days, there was great interest in “closing the fuel cycle” through reprocessing, which
would have reduced high-level waste substantially. Ultimately, the United States decided to stop all work in this area. The
primary reason was the “weapons connection.” Economics was a secondary reason that became increasingly important as the
price of uranium dropped and as reactors lost their economic edge.) It is also possible, of course, that technical mistakes would
have been made or that even excellent efforts in the early days would not have succeeded.

Fuel management increases public confidence and incites new nuclear R&D

Clean and Safe Energy (CASEnergy) Coalition, grassroots coalition of more than 1,600 members that unites
people across business, environmental, academic, consumer and labor community to support nuclear energy. 07.
“Coalition Statement on Spent Fuel Management.” [Takumi Murayama]
The key elements of a U.S. used fuel management policy include flexible interim storage approaches, the licensing and
construction of an underground repository at Yucca Mountain, and facilities for recycling used nuclear fuel to take
advantage of the maximum energy from the fuel in a manner that includes effective safeguards against nuclear
proliferation.
The Clean and Safe Energy Coalition urges Congress to support and enact policies that recognize these used fuel
management approaches. A flexible, safe program to manage used nuclear fuel that includes advanced technologies is
an important element for building public confidence in nuclear energy and licensing new nuclear power plants to meet
our growing electricity needs.

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Solvency–Generic
Licensing Yucca, recycling fuel, assuring regulatory certainty, and protecting
operators would incite making new nuclear plants

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy, and Nicolas Loris, research assistant at Heritage. 02/07/08.
“Nuclear energy: Power play,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
Then there's nuclear power. It is emissions-free, affordable, proven and safe. It already provides the United States with 20
percent of its electricity. It can be used and recycled again and again, making it essentially limitless.
Nuclear power has the added benefit of solving many of the problems cited to justify faulty conservation plans and centrally
planned energy mandates. It's abundant, environmentally friendly, free of carbon dioxide (CO2) and domestically
produced. Yet officials continue to ignore its advantages.
If they're genuinely concerned about the threat of greenhouse gases or America's dependence on foreign energy, they should
seek ways to expand nuclear energy. A few simple policy changes would do it.
Licensing the Yucca Mountain repository, recycling spent fuel, assuring regulatory certainty, and protecting nuclear-
power operators from overzealous litigators would all facilitate near-term construction of nuclear power plants.
Yet there are too few politicians clamoring to advance such an agenda.
While nuclear energy is coming back, it is not quite back yet. The old days of anti-nuclear fear mongering may be over, but we
haven't fully recovered from 30 years of anti-nuclear propaganda. As a result, many continue to distance themselves from the
technology.

Funding, research, and government limitation of fossil fuels would promote


nuclear energy.

Eliot Marshall, staff writer, 8-19-05, “Nuclear Power: Is the Friendly Atom Posed for a Comeback”, Science,
Vol. 309. no. 5738, pp. 1168 – 1169, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/ reprint/309/5738/1168.pdf, [Crystal Xia]
Although a few Asian countries never got off the nuclear bandwagon, new ones are now climbing aboard to meet rapidly
growing electricity demand. India, with the most reactors under construction in the world, is planning a unique system that
relies mainly on thorium rather than uranium fuel (see p. 1174). Japan continues work on fast neutron reactors that can "breed"
plutonium (see p. 1177). And China announced in April that it will more than quadruple its nuclear electric capacity by 2020,
buying among other designs a new "pebble bed" reactor that shuts down if it overheats. Nuclear advocates in the West also
hope that advanced reactor designs can help overcome the lingering memories of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl (see
p. 1172). Does all of this amount to a nuclear renaissance? Skeptics point out that it would take a huge leap in the pace of plant
construction simply to maintain nuclear power's current global share of electric output--about 17%--let alone increase it. Many
aging U.S. and European reactors will have to be dismantled in the next couple of decades. Even new ones remain more
expensive than coal- or gas-fired systems. And governments are not imposing stiff taxes on carbon emissions, the one
strategy the MIT report said would tip investment decisions toward nuclear. Moreover, even if the economics were to favor
nuclear power, two issues will continue to dog the industry: fears of nuclear weapons proliferation and disputes about how to
dispose of high-level wastes (see p. 1179). Optimists still think that the problems can be fixed. Reiterating his view of 2 years
ago, Deutch says: "If nuclear power can get its costs down and address the important issues of waste management and
proliferation, its future will be very bright." The next few years may reveal just how bright.

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Government incentives are needed to overcome the stagnation in nuclear


innovation
Jim Dawson, “Nuclear Power Needs Government Incentives, says Task Force”,
http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_58/iss_5/28_1.shtml, 2005

Citing economics, climate change, and the projected growth in global energy demand, a US Department of Energy (DOE) task
force cochaired by former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) chairman Richard Meserve and former New Hampshire
Governor John H. Sununu has recommended that the federal government help revitalize the US nuclear power industry
by sharing the up-front costs of the first few of a new generation of nuclear power plants. After citing three decades of
increasing efficiency, decreasing operating costs, and solid safety records at the 103 existing US nuclear power plants, the task
force noted that "despite this . . . achievement, and the fact that nuclear power generation does not result in greenhouse gas
emissions, no new US nuclear power plants have been ordered and subsequently built since 1973." To restart the
nuclear industry, the authors of the report—the nuclear energy task force of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB)
—say "there should be government-supported demonstration programs and financial incentives to overcome the
uncertainties and economic hurdles that would otherwise prevent the first few new plants from being built." Their key
recommendation is a cost-sharing program for "first-of-a-kind engineering" (FOAKE) costs "inherent in building the first
facility of a new design."

Nuke energy not economically viable in the squo – federal incentives key
Jim Dawson, “Nuclear Power Needs Government Incentives, says Task Force”,
http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_58/iss_5/28_1.shtml, 2005

And it is economics, not safety, that killed nuclear power development in the US, Robinson said. "Nuclear power was
grossly overbuilt because of predictions that energy growth was going to double every seven or eight years," he said.
When that didn't happen, it became uneconomical, especially with the uncertain licensing procedures, to invest in
nuclear power, he said."So it's going to take a big infusion of courage for the next person in the finance community to
take the first step," he said. That courage will be easier to find if it is bolstered by a federal cost-sharing program, the
report concludes.

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While federal involvement will be minimized, it will continue regulation and


R&D

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
Defining the Federal Role in Waste Disposal. Although its involvement in used-fuel management should be minimized, the
federal government will continue to have a number of critical roles. During operations, the federal government would have
significant oversight responsibilities. As is currently the case, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would oversee
operations, and other federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, would continue to play a regulatory
role. The national laboratory system would also play a critical role in facilitating research and development.
The federal government would fulfill its final obligation by taking possession of the closed and decommissioned Yucca
Mountain whenever that may occur, along with any geologic repositories that may be built in the future. This is a critical role for
the federal government because it is the only institution that can maintain assured liability for the waste in perpetuity.

Nuclear Energy requires policy support to mitigate risks, make it cost


effective, scale down reactor sizes, regulatory improvements, and waste
disposal

Sharon Squassoni, senior associate with the Nonproliferation Program at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. 05/01/07. “Risks and realities: the "new nuclear energy revival",” Arms Control Today.
[Takumi Murayama]
Nonetheless, nuclear energy could grow faster to 519 gigawatts by 2030 given significant policy support. (30) This would
require not only that policymakers and regulators take steps to mitigate the inherent risks of nuclear power, which are
calculated differently by all states, but that nuclear energy is as cost effective as alternative sources of electricity. Factors
that may help improve the position of nuclear energy vis-a-vis alternatives include higher prices for other sources (natural
gas and coal through a carbon tax), scaling down of reactor sizes to mitigate initial capital investment, regulatory
improvements, and waste disposal solutions.

Congress should encourage development of market-based management for


used nuclear fuel

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
To begin the process of overhauling the nation's nuclear-waste management regime, Congress should amend the
Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 to encourage development of a market-based management system for used nuclear
fuel. Specifically, Congress should:
• Create the legal framework that allows the private sector to price geologic storage as a commodity;
• Empower the private sector to manage used fuel;
• Repeal the 70,000-ton limitation on the Yucca Mountain repository and instead let technology, science, and physical
capacity determine the appropriate limit;
• Create a private entity that is representative of but independent from nuclear operators to manage Yucca Mountain;
• Repeal the mil, abolish the Nuclear Waste Fund, and transfer the remaining funds to a private entity to cover the
expenses of constructing Yucca Mountain; and
• Limit the federal government's role to providing oversight, basic research, and development and taking title of spent fuel
upon repository decommissioning.

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Federal incentives are key to re-invigorating investment in nuclear energy.


Paul L. Joscow, MIT, “THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR POWER IN THE UNITED STATES:
ECONOMIC AND REGULATORY CHALLENGES”, Dec. 27th, 2006.

Federal government efforts to facilitate investment in new nuclear power plants, including streamlined licensing procedures
and financial incentive provided by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 are discussed. These regulatory changes and financial
incentives improve the economic competitiveness of nuclear power. First mover plants that can benefit from federal
financial incentives are most likely to be built in states that continue to regulate generating plants based on cost-of-service
principles, transferring construction cost and operating performance risks to consumers, and where there is room on
existing sites to build additional nuclear capacity. Once federal financial incentives come to an end lower and more stable
construction costs combined with carbon emissions charges are likely to be necessary to make investments in new nuclear
plants significantly more attractive than investments in pulverized coal plants.

Empirical solvency - France obtains 80 percent of their electricity from nuclear power plants, and has
developed efficient means for recycling nuclear waste.
C.T. Carley, Commercial Appeal, “Nuclear power benefits outweigh past fears”,
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/apr/29/guest-column-nuclear-power-benefits-outweigh,
April 29th, 2008
Greenspan's solution to breaking our nation's reliance on foreign oil includes market adoption of electric plug-in vehicles along
with the infrastructure to power them. He was asked how plug-in vehicles should be fueled. His answer: "No question about it --
nuclear power." Acknowledging that nuclear power has some political hurdles to clear, Greenspan said that our country must
continue to work toward a successful program for spent-fuel management, but he believes it is a "resolvable problem."
"The French seem have to taken care of it," he said, "... and we can too." France obtains 80 percent of its electricity from
nuclear power and is building more nuclear plants. But instead of storing spent fuel at nuclear plant sites, as we do in the
United States, France makes use of the spent fuel's valuable uranium and plutonium, recycling those nuclear materials into
new reactor fuel that's used to produce more electricity. Such recycling, which is also called reprocessing, extends uranium
supplies and greatly reduces the amount of high-level radioactive waste that needs to be permanently disposed of in an
underground repository

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Solvency Mechanism–Carbon tax


Only a Carbon Tax can help put nuclear back in contention

Pietro S. Nivola, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Brookings. 09-04. “The Political Economy of Nuclear
Energy in the United States.” [Takumi Murayama]
A plausible way to slow emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is to generate a larger share of electricity
through nuclear power stations. Thanks to the stations currently operating, carbon emissions by the OECD countries are
about one-third lower than they otherwise would be. Given that straightforward proposition, however, one might suppose that
by now the climate-change issue would have boosted nuclear projects more than it has. It would seem logical, in other
words, that nations formally committed to cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases would be the most pro-nuclear. Conversely,
America, with its apparent high tolerance for fossil-fuel effluents, renders its nuclear industry uncompetitive.
In practice, matters are not so simple. Many of the countries that officially accepted the Kyoto Protocol's mandatory
greenhouse-gas reductions have nonetheless declined to install more nuclear capacity as a means of meeting emissions targets.
True, the European Union, unlike the United States, is on track to create a tradable permits market for carbon emissions. Also
true is the fact that most European countries have long restrained the consumption of (certain) fossil fuels in ways that America
has never tried. For example, the minimal U.S. tax rates on oil products, particularly gasoline, contrast sharply with the much
higher rates throughout Europe. However, while this difference can help explain the comparatively high American level of
carbon dioxide emissions per capita, it has little bearing on the question at hand—the relative promise of nuclear power.
Heavily taxing motor fuel, or any of oil's other refined products, is not the kind of carbon-curbing policy that might
enhance the competitive position of nuclear power producers. The reason is plain: petroleum is no longer used to propel
many electric generators in the industrial world. This, by the way, also means that soaring oil prices scarcely alter the nuclear
equation.
Only taxes that cover the main competitors to nuclear-generated electricity—coal and, to a lesser extent, natural gas—
would help put the nukes back in contention. To do so decisively, moreover, a broad-based carbon tax would have to be
steep—indeed, much steeper than any OECD member has come close to levying. The same goes for emissions trading.
Allowances per ton of carbon emitted would have to fetch a very high price in order for a trading system to substitute for the
kind of hefty carbon tax that would be needed to put builders of nuclear plants back in business. (If, when the EU's system
takes effect, its allowances trade at only, say, seven or eight Euros per ton of carbon emitted, it will represent, at best, a very
distant substitute.)

Pressure on coal plants incites new nuclear plants

Stratfor, world’s leading online publisher of geopolitical intelligence. 04/16/07. [Takumi Murayama]
In the U.S., Stratfor cited TXU's plan to scrap the majority of its planned coal plants and, instead, build two to five new
nuclear plants in Texas. "The highly publicized private equity takeover of the energy utility company and its deal with
national environmental groups, which dropped their lawsuits against the TXU's proposals to build 11 coal plants, was a
major symbolic turning point," Stratfor said. "It bolstered environmentalists' belief that attacking coal expansion is an
effective way to force companies to pursue cleaner energies. As coal plants continue to come under attack, nuclear
energy will only grow more attractive."

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Nuclear energy cannot succeed without government tax on fossil fuels.

William C. Sailor, Center for International Security and Cooperation in Stanford University, 5/19/2K, Science,
Vol. 288 Issue 5469, p1177, 2p, “A Nuclear Solution to Climate Change”, EBSCO, [Crystal Xia]
The competitive posture of nuclear power needs to be improved by reducing both construction time and capital cost. The
existence of competitive electricity markets requires each new plant to make economic sense on a relatively short time scale. In
these circumstances, no carbon-free energy source can compete in the United States with the combined-cycle gas-fired
plants, given the low cost of natural gas, the short lead times for the construction of these plants, and their high thermal-to-
electric conversion efficiency. This competitive situation is likely to change only if natural gas prices rise significantly or
if the government intervenes, for example, with a carbon tax placed on fossil fuels or with subsidies provided for "clean"
fuel. Our estimates indicate that new nuclear plants could compete in the market if there were a tax of is similar to $100
per ton of carbon placed on fossil fuels ( 9). We do not advocate such a high tax now; rather the tax should start at a low level
and be phased in gradually so as to reach its full value over several decades. In the meantime, the U.S. Department of Energy
and other agencies worldwide should increase reactor research efforts aimed at simplified designs and economies of
scale in construction. Governments need to make institutional and regulatory reforms to reduce lead times for plant
deployment.

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Solvency Mechanism–Cap & Trade


Cap-and-trade could help create a nuclear program.

Paul L. Joskow, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics and Management at MIT, 12-06, “The
Future of Nuclear Power in the United States: Economic and Regulatory Challenges”, http://econ-
www.mit.edu/files/1192.
All things considered, I believe that investment in new nuclear plants is likely to proceed more slowly than may be implied by
the recent euphoria in the industry. I believe that projects are most likely to proceed (a) on existing sites, (b) in states that have
not adopted competitive market models, and (c) where there is support from local authorities. Among the competitive states,
Texas is the most likely candidate for investment in new nuclear plants for both economic and political reasons. A nuclear
investment program will be larger and proceed more quickly if the nuclear equipment vendors and the construction firms are
willing to take on more of the construction cost and operating performance risk than they did during the 1980s, at least until
the first dozen of so plants are completed and credible information about construction costs, construction time, and regulatory
costs and delays have been confirmed by actual experience rather than hypothetical spreadsheet calculations. Finally, if the
U.S. adopts a cap and trade program for CO2 emissions that yield prices in the range of $25 to $50/ton of CO2, it will
make investment in new nuclear power plants much more attractive financially than it is today, especially after the 2005
Act's subsidies are exhausted.

A mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions would force the market to adopt nuclear energy as an
alternative.

Larry Parker and Mark Holt Specialists in Energy Policy Resources, Science, and Industry Division,
“Nuclear Power: Outlook for New U.S. Reactors”, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33442.pdf, 2007
Any substantial mandatory greenhouse gas control program would probably affect the cost of new coal-fired and natural gas-
fired generation. In all current proposals before the Congress, nuclear power is assumed to have no greenhouse gas emissions.
This “green” nuclear power argument has gotten some traction in think tanks and academia. As stated by MIT in its major study The
Future of Nuclear Power: “Our position is that the prospect of global climate change from greenhouse gas emissions and the
adverse consequences that flow from these emissions is the principal justification for government support of the nuclear
energy option.”34 The industry also has been attempting to promote nuclear power as one solution to rising greenhouse gas
emissions.35 A few well-known environmentalists have expressed public support for nuclear power as part of the response to
global climate change, although no major environmental group as yet has publically adopted that position

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Solvency Mechanism–Deregulation
Deregulation is empirically proven to boost nuclear productivity

EnergyBiz, bimonthly business magazine for leaders in the new power industry. 02/06/08. “Running Smarter -
Upgrading Nuclear Operations.” [Takumi Murayama]
Talk about a turnaround. The average capacity factor of nuclear plants around 1990 was a dismal 70 percent, according to
statistics collected by the Nuclear Energy Institute. When the 1992 energy act ushered in the era of deregulation, the only
future for nuclear that Wall Street and the industry could see was decommissioning and sunken costs. Today, the average for
all 104 plants is about 90 percent, with some plants running closer to 95 percent.
Adrian Heymer, NEI's senior director for new plant development, points to similarly impressive improvements in
unplanned outages and productivity, with the number of workers-per-megawatt falling from 1.2 at the end of the 1980s to
around 0.7 today. Even in a highly competitive energy environment, nuclear is, at least on an operational basis, not only price
competitive but in some instances the cheapest of all available alternatives. In fact, operating costs per kilowatt-hour in 2006
were 1.68 cents for nuclear versus 2.2 cents for coal, according to NEI.
The real agent of change has been structural. Many nuclear operators have put in place a management structure with
specific lines of responsibility, clearly articulated goals, a standardization of best practices, and a commitment to continuous
improvement. Add the economies of scale and deep pool of skilled and experienced personnel that come from sheer size
and you have the formula for success that's transformed even poorly performing plants into profitable sites.

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Solvency Mechanism–GNEP
GNEP will increase international nuclear power cooperation, and the
reprocessing technology from it helps to solve fuel storage

Sharon Squassoni, senior associate with the Nonproliferation Program at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. 05/01/07. “Risks and realities: the "new nuclear energy revival",” Arms Control Today.
[Takumi Murayama]
A key question is what impact the U.S. Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) will have on global nuclear
expansion. Will it make nuclear power "safe" for all states, as its proponents claim? The domestic portion of GNEP
involves the development of "advanced recycling" of spent fuel, which overturns the 1970s-era U.S. policy of not
encouraging the use of plutonium in the civil nuclear fuel cycle. The international component of GNEP envisions a
consortium of nations with advanced nuclear technology that would provide fuel services and reactors to countries that
"agree to refrain from fuel-cycle activities" such as enrichment and reprocessing. It is essentially a fuel leasing approach,
wherein the supplier takes responsibility for the final disposition of the spent fuel. It is not clear if or how states would agree to
refrain from fuel cycle activities, but the two components of GNEP together send a mixed message that recycling is valuable
for some states but not for others.
South Korea, for one, seems to view GNEP as a green light to proceed with its pyroprocessing technique. (26) Until now, the
United States has not permitted South Korea to reprocess U.S.-origin spent fuel because of proliferation concerns. Other states
may be more interested in having someone else solve the problem either of spent fuel storage or high-level waste storage.
Greater reprocessing capacity might help solve spent fuel storage but not necessarily high-level waste storage because no
commercial reprocessing service will store high-level waste. (27) There also is no commitment yet to take back spent fuel, and
delays in opening the Yucca Mountain repository, the first of its kind, provide little confidence that will happen. A further
complication is the uncertainty of U.S. intentions. Although the Department of Energy has stated that, under GNEP, the
supplier would take responsibility for the final disposition of spent fuel, it also has stated that the supplier "would retain the
responsibility to ensure that the material is secured, safeguarded, and disposed of in a manner that meets shared
nonproliferation policies." As ever, the devil is in the details.

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Solvency Mechanism–Market pricing of storage


Market pricing of fuel storage space incites reprocessing

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
Nuclear power operators could then decide, given the price to place waste in Yucca, how to man age their used fuel. As the
price to access Yucca goes up, so will the incentive for nuclear operators to do something else with their used fuel. This
should give rise to a market-based industry that manages used fuel in the U.S.
The market would dictate the options available. Some operators may choose to keep their used fuel on site to allow its heat
load to dissipate, thus reducing the cost of placing that waste into Yucca. Companies may emerge to provide interim storage
services that would achieve a similar purpose. The operators could choose options based on their par ticular circumstances.
As prices change and business models emerge, firms that recycle used fuel would likely be established. Multiple factors
would feed into the economics of recycling nuclear fuel. Operators would make decisions based not only on the cost of placing
waste in Yucca, but also on the price of fuel.
If a global nuclear renaissance does unfold, the prices for uranium and fuel services will likely rise. This would place
greater value on the fuel resources that could be recovered from used fuel, thus affecting the overall economics of
recycling. Instead of the federal government deciding what to build, when to build it, and which technology should emerge, the
private sector would make those determinations.
Some nuclear operators may determine that one type of recycling works for them, while others may decide that a
different method is more appropriate. This would create competition and encourage the development of the most
appropriate technologies for the American market.

Market pricing of fuel storage space incites more storage facilities

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
Such a market for repository space could give rise to a broader market for geologic storage. As waste production causes
Yucca storage costs to rise, companies could emerge that provide additional geologic storage at a lower price. This
additional space would in turn reduce the value of the space available in Yucca.
Alternatively, as Yucca fills, nuclear operators may decide to develop additional geologic storage facilities in a joint venture.
While this may seem unlikely, given the problems associated with opening Yucca Mountain, other communities may be
more receptive to hosting a repository once a reliable safety record is established and the economic benefits of hosting a
repository are demonstrated. The federal government would still take title to any waste placed in future repositories once
they are decommissioned.

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Market pricing of fuel storage space incites new technologies and services

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
Predicting how a market might evolve is impossible, but unlike the government-run process that led to the Yucca Mountain
site--a process mired in politics--private entities would establish the path forward by working with government
regulators. Private entities would also be able to pursue their plans without having to contend with as much of the
bureaucratic inertia that accompanies government-run operations.
Most important, this system would encourage the introduction of new technologies and services into the market as they
are needed, as opposed to relying on the federal government. New technologies would not be hamstrung by red tape or
overregulation. This system would also allow for the possibility of no expansion of nuclear power. If the U.S. does not expand
nuclear power broadly, there is probably no reason to build recycling or interim storage facilities.

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Solvency Mechanism–Money
Around $200 million in financial support solves

Jim Dawson, “Nuclear Power Needs Government Incentives, says Task Force”,
http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_58/iss_5/28_1.shtml, 2005
The task force recommended fifty-fifty cost sharing up to a maximum of $200 million in government money "for each
of three major competing design types, with the secretary of energy being given discretion to select the types to be
supported." While the report does not call the cost-sharing program a government loan to industry, it does say that much of the
money could be repaid from the profits of future nuclear power plants built using the designs.Although the report is
essentially a document making an economic case for government subsidies to restart the US civilian nuclear power industry,
task force member C. Paul Robinson, the former director of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said
the economic arguments "are just becoming very timely in terms of electrical needs. We have looked at all the alternatives and
certainly if you believe in the threats of greenhouse gases, then it is important to have something that can produce electricity
with good efficiency and cost, and be emission free."

The main obstacle to building nuclear power plants is the cost of construction – government subsidizing
of construction costs solves
Jim Dawson, “Nuclear Power Needs Government Incentives, says Task Force”,
http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_58/iss_5/28_1.shtml, 2005

Early site permit and combined construction and operating license demonstration programs jointly funded by DOE
and industry. In the past, one of the more significant barriers to new nuclear power plant construction was the two-step
licensing process. The NRC issued a construction permit, and only after construction was substantially completed was an
operating permit issued. Outside parties had numerous opportunities to intervene and delay or halt a project, which made the
process of building a nuclear power plant a risky, high-stakes affair. The NRC has established a streamlined combined
licensing procedure that significantly cuts the financial risk of building a nuclear plant, but the procedure has never
been tested. The report recommends that DOE share the licensing costs with early applicants so that a real-world model
can be developed.

Deregulation fails – federal involvement key to spark investment in nuclear


energy.

Paul L. Joscow, MIT, “THE FUTURE OF NUCLEAR POWER IN THE UNITED STATES: ECONOMIC AND
REGULATORY CHALLENGES”, Dec. 27th, 2006.

It is worth noting that two actual and potential institutional changes have taken place since the existing nuclear fleet was built
that will effect the economic evaluations of potential private investors in new nuclear plants. First, in many regions of the
country the electric power sector has been restructured and the generating segment deregulated (Joskow 2006a). In
these regions, investments in new nuclear plants would be on a merchant basis and face standard market risks and
rewards associated with uncertain construction costs, operating performance, and changes in market conditions. Even
in states where generation investments are still regulated, long-term commitments for new generating capacity must often
be put out for competitive bids and both long-term power supply contracts and generating plants built by vertically
integrated utilities will be subject to performance incentives that will shift more cost and performance risk to investors
than in the past. These changes work against capital intensive generating technologies like nuclear power because they
increase financing costs.

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A $200 million federal incentive program solves, and all expenses can be reimbursed when the plants
become profitable.
The Public Citizen, Nuclear Power 2010 Unveiled,
http://www.tradewatch.org/documents/nuke2010analysis.pdf, 2004

The report recommends the establishment of a federal equity facility to fund or partially fund “first-of-a-kind
engineering costs” for new reactors as one of the most powerful options for government intervention. Nuclear vendors
balk at the sky-high capital costs associated with designing proposed new reactors, especially given the significant
uncertainty about demand for the finished product. It just doesn’t make good business sense. But the report assumes that the
federal government would not have the same prudent qualms. Specifically, the report proposes a generous taxpayer-backed
facility (“sized to address up to worst-case development cost overrun scenarios”)xv to provide up to $200 million in
government preferred equity. Interest rates would be set at the Treasury’s borrowing rate – typically a bargain compared to
commercial lending rates – and with repayment delayed until the company’s cash flows were sufficient and stretched
over the expected lifetime of the plant. To further sweeten the deal for other lenders, the company’s obligation to this
government fund would be senior to common equity returns but subordinate to debt repayment. This means that in the
event of bankruptcy, taxpayers would likely be left footing the bill.

Financial infeasibility is the primary reason that no new nuclear power plants
are being built.

Larry Parker and Mark Holt Specialists in Energy Policy Resources, Science, and Industry Division, “Nuclear
Power: Outlook for New U.S. Reactors”, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33442.pdf, 2007
In announcing the new reactor license applications, however, utilities have made clear that they are not committed to
actually building the reactors, even if the licenses are approved. Large uncertainties about nuclear plant construction
costs still remain, along with doubts about progress on nuclear waste disposal and concerns about public opposition.
All those problems helped cause the long cessation of U.S. reactor orders and will need to be addressed before financing
for new multibillion-dollar nuclear power plants is likely to be obtained

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Solvency Mechanism–Private Waste Management


Only the private sector can solve, but will require a significant amendment of
the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and commitment by the USfg and the industry,
putting the US at the forefront of nuclear energy development.

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
The current approach to managing used nuclear fuel is systemically broken. It was developed to support a nuclear
industry that was largely believed to be in decline; that is no longer the case. The federal government promised to take title
of the used fuel and dispose of it; this removed any incentive for the private sector to develop better ways to manage the
fuel that could be more consistent with an emerging nuclear industry. And the federal government has proven incapable
of fulfilling its obligations to dispose of the fuel.
The current system is driven by government programs and politics. There is little connection between used-fuel
management programs and the needs of the nuclear industry. Any successful plan must grow out of the private sector.
The time has come for the federal government to step aside and allow utilities, nuclear technology companies, and
consumers to manage used nuclear fuel.
Overhauling the nation's nuclear-waste management regime will not be easy. It will require a significant amendment of
the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and a long-term commitment by Congress, the Administration, and industry. But
developing such a system would put the United States well on its way to re-establishing itself as a global leader in
nuclear energy.

Practical waste disposal key to ensure long-term plant operation

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
The success of a sustained rebirth of nuclear energy in the U.S. depends largely on disposing of nuclear waste safely.
New nuclear plants could last as long as 80 years, but to reap the benefits of such an investment, a plant must be able to operate
dur ing that time. Having a practical pathway for waste disposal is one way to ensure long-term plant oper ations.
Establishing such a pathway would also mit igate much of the risk associated with nuclear power, but as long as the
federal government is responsible for disposing of waste, it is the only entity with any incentive to introduce these technol
ogies and practices.

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A Private Entity is key to manage nuclear waste disposal

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
Establishing a Private Organization to Manage Yucca Mountain. As permanent geologic storage is commoditized, the problem
then becomes one of establishing responsibility for managing that scarce resource. Leaving that responsibility with the
government provides no benefits. No overarching need mandates that the government must manage Yucca Mountain or
used nuclear fuel. Furthermore, leaving this responsibility in the hands of government comes with all kinds of pitfalls,
including inflexibility, inefficiency, politics, and being subject to annual appropriations, to name a few. Similarly, a
public- private partnership is not necessary and has no inherent advantages.
Instead, a completely new organization--a private entity (PE)--should be established to manage Yucca Mountain. The
PE's purpose would be to ensure that Yucca is available to support the commercial nuclear industry's need for permanent geo
logic storage indefinitely and to set the fee for placing waste in Yucca. This fee would be the primary mechanism for managing
access to the repository. Its one operating mandate should be to remain open to receive waste either until a second repository is
opened or until the last commercial nuclear power plant ceases operations.
The federal government should not be part of the management team. The PE could be organized in any number of ways. It
could take the form of a nonprofit organization that is independent of but represents the nation's nuclear energy producers.
Such a structure would ensure that no operator receives preferential treatment and that the PE operates as a service to all
nuclear operators. It also would prevent a profit-seeking entity from holding a monopoly over a key asset on which an entire
industry depends. The federal government would provide oversight through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and
other appropriate agencies.
The PE should be created as soon as possible and immediately commence a three-year transition plan, which would coincide with
the NRC's review of the Department of Energy's application for a Yucca Mountain construction permit. During the transition
period, the PE would work with the Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Radioac tive Waste Management to move the
application for the Yucca construction permit through the NRC. After three years, when the license is granted, the PE would take
control of Yucca operations, which would include overseeing Yucca construction and preparing for long-term operations.

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The USfg needs to let the private sector manage nuclear waste

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
Introducing market forces into the process and empowering the private sector to manage nuclear waste can solve the
problem, but this will require major reform. The federal government will need to step aside and allow the private sector to
assume the responsibility for managing used fuel, and the pri vate sector should welcome that responsibility.
The primary goal of any strategy for used-fuel management should be to provide a disposition pathway for all of
America's nuclear waste. The basic problem with the current system is that every nuclear power plant needs a place to put its
waste, and Yucca Mountain is simply not big enough to hold it all under the current used-fuel management regime.
In other words, permanent geologic storage capacity is a finite resource on which the industry depends. If used-fuel
management were a market-based system, this storage capacity would carry a very high value. A new system should price
geologic storage as a finite resource and fold any costs into a fee for emplacing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain.

Only the Private sector can effectively manage and recycle fuel

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
The current U.S. policy is to dispose of all used fuel by moving it directly from the reactors into Yucca Mountain for
permanent storage without any additional processing. This is a monumental waste of resources. To generate power, reactor fuel
must contain 3 percent to 5 percent enriched fissionable uranium (uranium-235). Once the enriched ura nium falls below that
level, the fuel must be replaced. Yet this "used" fuel generally retains about 95 percent of its fissionable uranium, and that ura
nium, along with other byproducts in the used fuel, can be recovered and recycled. Regrettably, the current system's
structure provides no incentive for the private sector to pursue this option.
Many technologies exist to recover and recycle different parts of the used fuel. The French have been the most successful in
commercializing such a process. They remove the uranium and plutonium and fabricate new fuel. Using this method, Amer
ica's 58,000 tons of used fuel contain roughly enough energy to power every household in Amer ica for 12 years.[6]
Other technologies show even more promise. Indeed, most of them, including the process used in France, were developed
originally in the United States. Some recycling technologies would leave almost no waste at all and would lead to the recov
ery of an almost endless source of fuel, but none of these processes has been commercialized success fully in the United
States, and this will take time. Until the future of nuclear power in the U.S. becomes clearer, it will be impossible to know
which technologies will be most appropriate to pur sue in this market.
Ultimately, the private sector should make these decisions. Valuing used fuel against the costs of per manent burial is a
calculation best done by compa nies that provide fuel-management services.

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Solvency Mechanism–Repeal Mil


The USfg should repeal the mil to make management costs reflect the cost of
nuclear power

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
Repealing the Mil. The key to this new approach will be to transform how waste manage ment is financed. Once market-
based pricing is in place, the fee that nuclear energy consumers pay to the federal government for waste management
should be repealed. Under the current system, consumers pay for waste disposition through a flat fee, called the mil, that is
paid to the federal government at the rate of 0.1 cents per kilowatt-hour of nuclear-generated electricity. This fee as currently
assessed has no market rationale. It is simply a flat fee that rate payers pay to the federal government. It has never been
changed, not even for inflation.
In a market-based system, instead of paying a pre-set fee to the federal government to manage used fuel, nuclear power
operators would fold waste-management costs into the operating cost, which would be reflected in the price of power. This
cost might be higher or lower than the current fee; more important, it would reflect the true costs of nuclear power.

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Solvency Mechanism–Reprocessing
Recycling nuclear waste would extend uranium resources indefinitely and
prevent prolif.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
Ironically, burying spent fuel without extracting its plutonium through reprocessing would actually increase the long-
term risk of nuclear proliferation, since the decay of less-fissile and more-radioactive isotopes in spent fuel after one to three
centuries improves the explosive qualities of the plutonium it contains, making it more attractive for weapons use. Besides
extending the world's uranium resources almost indefinitely, recycling would make it possible to convert plutonium to
useful energy while breaking it down into shorter-lived, nonfissionable, nonthreatening nuclear waste. Hundreds of tons
of weapons-grade plutonium, which cost the nuclear superpowers billions of dollars to produce, have become military surplus
in the past decade. Rather than burying some of this strategically worrisome but energetically valuable material -- as
Washington has proposed -- it should be recycled into nuclear fuel. An international system to recycle and manage such
fuel would prevent covert proliferation. As envisioned by Edward Arthur, Paul Cunningham, and Richard Wagner of the Los
Alamos National Laboratory, such a system would combine internationally monitored retrievable storage, the processing of all
separated plutonium into MOX fuel for power reactors, and, in the longer term, advanced integrated materials-processing
reactors that would receive, control, and process all fuel discharged from reactors throughout the world, generating electricity
and reducing spent fuel to short-lived nuclear waste ready for permanent geological storage.

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Solvency Mechanism–Subsidies
Federal subsidies will lead to an influx of nuclear power plants

Thomas Cochran, director of NRDC's nuclear program, April 15, 2004, “The Future Role of Nuclear Power in
the United States”, http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/pnucpwr.asp [Jiajia Huang]
There are 103 operational commercial nuclear power plants in the United States today, and a 104th is expected to resume
operations in a few years.1 With only a few notable exceptions they are typically operating very efficiently, that is, at high
capacity factors, in an increasingly competitive environment.2 These plants, by in large, compete favorably with fossil-
fueled (coal and natural gas) plants in terms of their respective forward costs (operating and maintenance and fuel costs).
For 2002, the average nuclear production costs of 1.71 cents per kilowatt-hour (c/kWh) were just slightly less than those of
coal plants which were 1.85 cents/kWh.3
On the other hand, the last unit to enter commercial operation was TVA's Watts Bar Unit 1 in June 1996, and the last
successful order for a U.S. commercial nuclear power plant was in 1973. No energy generation company in the Unites States
has been willing to order and construct a new nuclear plant in more than thirty years, and none have taken anything
more than preliminary steps towards purchasing and constructing a new nuclear plant today in the absence of a
promise of huge Federal subsidies. This is not because of public opposition; not for want of a licensed geologic repository for
the disposal of spent fuel; and not because of the proliferation risks associated with commercial nuclear power. Rather, it is
because new commercial nuclear power plants are uneconomical in the United States.

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Solvency Mechanism–Thorium Reactors


Thorium reactors are much cheaper and safer than uranium reactors and solve proliferation, meltdowns,
and terrorist empowerment

Liz Williams, Author of “Green Nuclear Power Coming to Norway” , 5/24,/2007. <
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1341>)

Thorium (Th-232), has been hailed as a 'greener' alternative to traditional nuclear fuels, such as uranium and plutonium,
because thorium is incapable of producing the runaway chain reaction which in a uranium-fuelled reactor can cause a
catastrophic meltdown. Thorium reactors also produce only a tiny fraction of the hazardous waste created by uranium-
fuelled reactors. Besides their inability to go critical and their low generation of waste, thorium-fuelled reactors don't
suffer from the same proliferation risks as uranium reactors. This is because the thorium by-products cannot be re-
processed into weapons-grade material. Thorium also doesn't require enrichment before use as a nuclear fuel, and thorium
is an abundant natural resource, with vast deposits in Australia, the United States, India and Norway.Another advantage of
thorium-powered reactors is they can be used to 'burn' highly radioactive waste by-products from conventional uranium-
fuelled power plants. Over the past eight months, there has been a substantial rise in public support for thorium reactors in
Norway. In June 2006, polls showed 80 per cent of the population were completely opposed to any form of nuclear technology.
Then in February 2007, the same percentage were in favour of investigating thorium reactors as a potential energy source. "It is
an absolutely incredible surprise that it has been possible to turn around the population in a country, just by quietly
campaigning and explaining the benefits of the technology," said Egil Lillestøl, a nuclear physicist at the University of Bergen,
Norway. Lillestøl is a keen supporter of the ADS (Accelerated Driven System) technology used in thorium-fuelled reactors.
Because thorium is incapable of achieving a self-sustaining chain reaction – unlike uranium or plutonium – it needs energy to
be injected into the reactor to keep it running. This energy comes in the form of neutrons from a particle accelerator. For this
reason, a thorium-fuelled reactor is also sometimes called a sub-critical reactor. Statkraft is the third Norwegian company to
express interest in thorium reactors this year; Thor Energi and Bergen Energi, have both applied for government licenses to
build plants. The announcement by Statkraft coincides with the first meeting of the Thorium Report Committee – an initiative
commissioned by Norway's Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, in association with the Norwegian Research Council, to
investigate the benefits and risks of thorium reactors. The committee will submit its report at the end of 2007. Norwegian
legislation currently bans the use of nuclear power, so the report is critical for gaining Government consent to build thorium
plants in Norway. "Norway has taken the lead on this. We are an energy nation; we have large supplies of thorium – not as
much as Australia of course – but we have a very advanced energy industry, and we have a responsibility to the world," said
Lillestøl. "Without nuclear energy we will destroy the world, we will spend all the coal, oil and gas, and we will be left
with an energy desert." Reza Hashemi-Nezad, a nuclear scientist at the University of Sydney in Australia agrees that thorium
is a promising alternative energy source. However, while the European Union, India, the US, Japan and Russia are all
working on thorium technologies, Australia is lagging behind. "Australian industry is very interested in investing in this
type of clean, safe and cheap nuclear energy," says Hashemi-Nezhad. "But I am afraid that if Australian scientists and
industry do not get adequate support from the government and research institutes in Australia, they may move offshore."

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Solvency Mechanism–Yucca Mountain


Federal deregulation on Yucca Mountain will act as an incentive to new plants

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982[1] attempted to establish a comprehensive disposal strategy for high-level nuclear
waste. This strategy has failed. The gov ernment has spent billions of dollars without opening a repository, has yet to receive
any waste, and is amassing billions of dollars of liability. Furthermore, the strategy has removed any incentive to find more
workable alter natives. For those that actually produce waste and would benefit most from its efficient disposal, this strat egy
has created a disincentive for developing sustain able, market-based waste-management strategies.
The strategy codified in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act seemed straightforward and economically sound when it was developed
in the early 1980s. It charged the fed eral government with disposing of used nuclear fuel and created a structure through which
users of nuclear energy would pay a set fee for the service--a fee that has never been adjusted, even for inflation. These
payments would go to the Nuclear Waste Fund, which the federal government could access through congressional appro-
priations to pay for disposal activities.
The federal government has accumulated approx imately $27 billion (fees plus interest) in the Nuclear Waste Fund and has
spent about $8 billion to prepare the repository for operations, leaving a balance of around $19 billion. Utility payments into
the fund total about $750 million annually. Yet the repository has never opened, despite the expenditure of billions of dollars.
The taxpayers have fared no better. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act set January 31, 1998, as the deadline for the federal
government to begin receiving used fuel. The government's refusal to take possession of the used fuel has made both the
federal government and the taxpayers liable to the nuclear power plant operators for an increasingly enormous amount that is
projected to reach $7 billion by 2017.[2]
The federal government's inability to fulfill its legal obligations under the 1982 act has often been cited as a significant
obstacle to building additional nuclear power plants. Given nuclear power's poten tial to help solve many of the nation's
energy prob lems, now is the time to break the impasse over managing the nation's used nuclear fuel.
The United States has 58,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste stored at more than 100 sites in 39 states,[3] and its 104
commercial nuclear reactors produce approximately 2,000 tons of used fuel every year. The Yucca Mountain repository's
capac ity is statutorily limited to 70,000 tons of waste (not to mention the problems associated with even opening the
repository). Of this, 63,000 tons will be allocated to commercial waste, and 7,000 tons will be allocated to the Department of
Energy (DOE).
These are arbitrary limitations that Congress set without regard to Yucca's actual capacity. As cur rently defined by the
Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Yucca would reach capacity in about three years unless the law is changed. Thus, even if Yucca
becomes operational, it will not be a permanent solution, and the nation would soon be back at the drawing board.
The repository's actual capacity, however, is much larger than the current limit. Congress should repeal the 70,000-ton
limitation immediately and instead let technology, science, and physical capac ity determine the limit. Recent studies have
found that the Yucca repository could safely hold 120,000 tons of waste. According to the DOE, that should be enough to hold
all of the used fuel produced by cur rently operating reactors.[4] Some believe the capac ity is even greater.

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Opening Yucca Mountain is key to creating more nuclear plants.

Jack Spencer and Garrett Murch, research fellow @ Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies and
Deputy Director of House Relations, “Road to Clean Air Runs Through Yucca Mountain”,
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Comment ary/ed060908c.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Delaying Yucca has unintended consequences for Nevada and the nation. Opposition to Yucca has made building nuclear
plants much more difficult. By hamstringing America's energy options, obstructionist politicians are forcing fossil fuel
plant construction when utilities might have chosen to build emissions-free nuclear. But the past is past. Opening Yucca now
would lead to a cleaner future. Nuclear power, which provides about 20 percent of the nation's electricity, has off-set millions
of tons of CO2 and pollutants that would have been fossil-fuel power plants. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, had
America's reactors not been operating, approximately 48 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 19 million tons of nitrogen oxides and
8.7 trillion tons of carbon dioxide would have been emitted since 1995. In other words, by obstructing Yucca and, thus,
nuclear power, these politicians, well-intentioned though they may be, are causing the very pollution they claim to deplore.
This should outrage America. Yet the Yucca opposition continues to succeed in blurring the contradictory aims of its energy
and environmental agendas.

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Nuclear Power Better than FF


Studies prove that nuclear energy is cleaner and less radioactive than coal.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
AMONG SOURCES of electric-power generation, coal is the worst environmental offender. (Petroleum, today's dominant
source of energy, sustains transportation, putting it in a separate category.) Recent studies by the Harvard School of Public
Health indicate that pollutants from coal-burning cause about 15,000 premature deaths annually in the United States alone.
Used to generate about a quarter of the world's primary energy, coal-burning releases amounts of toxic waste too immense to
contain safely. Such waste is either dispersed directly into the air or is solidified and dumped. Some is even mixed into
construction materials. Besides emitting noxious chemicals in the form of gases or toxic particles -- sulfur and nitrogen
oxides (components of acid rain and smog), arsenic, mercury, cadmium, selenium, lead, boron, chromium, copper, fluorine,
molybdenum, nickel, vanadium, zinc, carbon monoxide and dioxide, and other greenhouse gases -- coal-fired power plants
are also the world's major source of radioactive releases into the environment. Uranium and thorium, mildly radioactive
elements ubiquitous in the earth's crust, are both released when coal is burned. Radioactive radon gas, produced when uranium
in the earth's crust decays and normally confined underground, is released when coal is mined. A 1,000-megawatt-electric
(MWe) coal-fired power plant releases about 100 times as much radioactivity into the environment as a comparable nuclear
plant. Worldwide releases of uranium and thorium from coal-burning total about 37,300 tonnes (metric tons) annually, with
about 7,300 tonnes coming from the United States. Since uranium and thorium are potent nuclear fuels, burning coal also
wastes more potential energy than it produces. Nuclear proliferation is another overlooked potential consequence of
coal-burning. The uranium released by a single 1,000-MWe coal plant in a year includes about 74 pounds of uranium-235
-- enough for at least two atomic bombs. This uranium would have to be enriched before it could be used, which would be
complicated and expensive. But plutonium could also be bred from coal-derived uranium. Moreover, "because electric
utilities are not high-profile facilities," writes physicist Alex Gabbard of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, "collection and
processing of coal ash for recovery of minerals . . . can proceed without attracting outside attention, concern or intervention.
Any country with coal-fired plants could collect combustion byproducts and amass sufficient nuclear weapons materials
to build up a very powerful arsenal." In the early 1950s, when richer ores were believed to be in short supply, the U.S.
Atomic Energy Commission actually investigated using coal as a source of uranium production for nuclear weapons; burning
the coal, the AEC concluded, would concentrate the mineral, which could then be extracted from the ash.Such a scenario may
seem far-fetched. But it emphasizes the political disadvantages under which nuclear power labors.

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Nuclear energy is cleaner and cheaper than natural gas.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
NATURAL GAS has many virtues as a fuel compared to coal or oil, and its share of the world's energy will assuredly grow in
the first half of the 21st century. But its supply is limited and unevenly distributed, it is expensive as a power source
compared to coal or uranium, and it pollutes the air. A 1,000-MWe natural gas plant releases 5.5 tonnes of sulfur oxides per
day, 21 tonnes of nitrogen oxides, 1.6 tonnes of carbon monoxide, and 0.9 tonnes of particulates. In the United States, energy
production from natural gas released about 5.5 billion tonnes of waste in 1994. Natural gas fires and explosions are also
significant risks. A single mile of gas pipeline three feet in diameter at a pressure of 1,000 pounds per square inch (psi)
contains the equivalent of two-thirds of a kiloton of explosive energy; a million miles of such large pipelines lace the earth.
The great advantage of nuclear power is its ability to wrest enormous energy from a small volume of fuel. Nuclear
fission, transforming matter directly into energy, is several million times as energetic as chemical burning, which merely
breaks chemical bonds. One tonne of nuclear fuel produces energy equivalent to 2 to 3 million tonnes of fossil fuel.
Burning 1 kilogram of firewood can generate 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity; 1 kg of coal, 3 kWh; 1 kg of oil, 4 kWh. But 1 kg
of uranium fuel in a modern light-water reactor generates 400,000 kWh of electricity, and if that uranium is recycled, 1 kg can
generate more than 7,000,000 kWh. These spectacular differences in volume help explain the vast difference in the
environmental impacts of nuclear versus fossil fuels.

Nuclear power is safer than coal

World Nuclear Association, 6/20/08, “Safety of Nuclear Power,” http://www.world-


nuclear.org/info/inf06.html [Jiajia Huang]
Many occupational accident statistics have been generated over the last 40 years of nuclear reactor operations in the US
and UK. These can be compared with those from coal-fired power generation. All show that nuclear is a distinctly safer
way to produce electricity. Two simple sets of figures are quoted in the Table below and that in the appendix A major reason
for coal's unfavourable showing is the huge amount which must be mined and transported to supply even a single large
power station. Mining and multiple handling of so much material of any kind involves hazards, and these are reflected
in the statistics.
It has long been asserted that nuclear reactor accidents are the epitome of low-probability but high-consequence risks.
Understandably, with this in mind, some people were disinclined to accept the risk, however low the probability. However, the
physics and chemistry of a reactor core, coupled with but not wholly depending on the engineering, mean that the
consequences of an accident are likely in fact be much less severe than those from other industrial and energy sources.
Experience bears this out.
At Chernobyl the kind of reactor and its burning graphite which dispersed radionuclides far and wide tragically meant that the
results were severe. This once and for all vindicated the desirability of designing with inherent safety supplemented by robust
secondary safety provisions and avoiding that kind of reactor design.
Mention should be made of the accident to the US Fermi-1 prototype fast breeder reactor near Detroit in 1966. Due to a
blockage in coolant flow, some of the fuel melted. However no radiation was released offsite and no-one was injured. The
reactor was repaired and restarted but closed down in 1972.
The use of nuclear energy for electricity generation can be considered extremely safe. Every year several thousand
people die in coal mines to provide this widely used fuel for electricity. There are also significant health and
environmental effects arising from fossil fuel use.

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Statistics prove that nuclear power is safer than using coal

World Nuclear Association, 6/20/08, “Safety of Nuclear Power,” http://www.world-


nuclear.org/info/inf06.html [Jiajia Huang]
Many occupational accident statistics have been generated over the last 40 years of nuclear reactor operations in the US
and UK. These can be compared with those from coal-fired power generation. All show that nuclear is a distinctly safer
way to produce electricity. Two simple sets of figures are quoted in the Table below and that in the appendix. A major reason
for coal's unfavourable showing is the huge amount which must be mined and transported to supply even a single large
power station. Mining and multiple handling of so much material of any kind involves hazards, and these are reflected
in the statistics.

U.S. Nuclear power plants have outstanding safety record and is better than
coal, natural gas and wind

Nolan E. Hertel, professor of nuclear and radiological engineering at Georgia Tech, 03/06/08, Journal
Constitution, “Nuclear power is safer than ever,”
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2008/03/06/herteled0306.html [Jiajia Huang]
One of the best hopes for nuclear power's revival is also the least appreciated: the outstanding safety record of U.S.
nuclear power plants.
Safety improvements have been spectaular. While there were 26 shutdowns of more than a year for safety reasons from
1987 to 1997 and 21 in the decade before, there has only been one over the past decade. With the improvement in safety,
insurance premium costs for nuclear plants have gone down.
Nuclear plants today are up and running more than 90 percent of the time, up from 50 percent in the 1970s.
Today nuclear power offers large quantities of electricity that is cleaner than coal, cheaper than natural gas and more
reliable than wind.
Despite continuing efforts by anti-nuclear organizations to stop its growth, the tide is turning in nuclear power's favor. Electric
utilities are gearing up to build a new generation of nuclear power plants, employing advanced versions of the same light water
reactor technology used in today's plants, but with a difference. They are using simpler, standardized designs so they can order
critical components, such as customized steel casings for the reactor core, for more than one project at a time, and thereby hold
down construction costs. Utilities will be able to operate the plants more efficiently. Handling nuclear waste will be
easier. Between four and eight units, mainly in the Southeast, are expected to begin operating by 2015.
Safety begins with plant design. Redundant safety systems provide "defense in depth." Also, reactor operators receive
rigorous training. There also is an exhaustive inspection program. In addition to inspections by each plant operator, the
Atlanta-based Institute of Nuclear Power Operations conducts detailed plant inspections that run two weeks each. And the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has at least two resident inspectors and as many as four at each nuclear site. Increasingly,
policymakers are advocating full use of nuclear power as an effective way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and
dependence on foreign oil. Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said at a recent energy conference in
Houston that nuclear power is part of a clean-energy strategy that he would recommend to the next president.
Regarding nuclear waste, Greenspan acknowledged that the United States must continue to work toward a successful program
for spent-fuel management. But it is a "resolvable problem," he said. "The French seem to have taken care of it . . . and we can,
too."

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Nuclear power is far safer than coal, oil, gas, and water power.

Dan O'Neill, Mayor of Buchanan, September 18, 2005, New York Times, “Nuclear Power: Safer than you
think,” http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00E6D91F31F93BA2575AC0A9639C8B63
[Jiajia Huang]
I agree that the Indian Point nuclear plant warning sirens should work (''Siren Songs,'' editorial, Aug. 28). The major problem
with the warning system is that it concerns potential problems only at Indian Point!
Nuclear power has been far safer and more environmentally beneficial than most alternatives. The most serious
problem at an American nuclear power plant occurred 26 years ago -- at Three Mile Island -- and resulted in zero
fatalities and zero injuries. Compare that record to carcinogenic emissions, global warning and acid rain, as well as
explosions from coal-, oil- and gas-powered electric plants.
Few Westchester residents know that two fossil-fuel-burning plants are located directly across the Hudson, and both have a
history of problems. A 2001 explosion at the Lovett Generating Station, in Stony Point, injured a worker and required an
asbestos cleanup. Both the Lovett plant and the Bowline plant in Haverstraw, directly across from Croton-on-Hudson, may be
shut down because their emissions exceed environmental standards.
Other potential dangers in the Hudson Valley that pose far greater safety threats than Indian Point include more fossil-fuel-
burning plants, chemical plants and the Croton and Kensico Dams. Yet there is no systemic warning system for these
potential dangers.
Residents of Westchester County now receive a high level of protection from the remote possibility of a problem at Indian
Point because of intense oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other government agencies, yet are
shortchanged when it comes to more serious dangers.

Nuclear Power is competitive with coal, and key to pollution, econ, energy, and
competitiveness

Jim Dawson, Science Editor, American Institute of Physics. 05/05. “Nuclear Power Needs Government
Incentives, Says Task Force,” Physics Today, p.28. http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-
ft/vol_58/iss_5/28_1.shtml [Takumi Murayama]
Although the report is essentially a document making an economic case for government subsidies to restart the US civilian
nuclear power industry, task force member C. Paul Robinson, the former director of Sandia National Laboratories in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, said the economic arguments "are just becoming very timely in terms of electrical needs. We
have looked at all the alternatives and certainly if you believe in the threats of greenhouse gases, then it is important to have
something that can produce electricity with good efficiency and cost, and be emission free."
Another task force member, physicist Burton Richter, former director of SLAC, said that the FOAKE recommendation for cost
sharing came because it "looks very much as if, once you get past the extra costs of a first-of-a-kind plant, then the costs of
nuclear power are competitive with coal. That's a surprise to most people. If you can replace coal, you do good for air
pollution, the economy, energy supply, and competitiveness."
Richter noted that the US, along with the rest of the globe, is "due for a big expansion in electricity demand, and we're
better off for environmental and other reasons if we do it with nuclear power instead of coal. Government should lead
industry to do the right thing rather than the wrong thing."

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Nuclear power doesn’t lead the numerous environmental and health problems
and safety dangers that coal and oil do

Bernard L. Cohen, Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, 1990, Plenum Press, The Nuclear Energy
Option, Nuclear Power-Act II, http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter1.html [Jiajia Huang]
In the mid-1980s, nuclear power seemed to be an idea whose time had come and passed. The public seemed to have rejected it
because of fear of radiation. The Three Mile Island accident was still fresh in their minds, with annual reminders from the news
media on each anniversary. The Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union in April 1986 reinforced the fears, and gave them an
international dimension. Newspapers and television, on several occasions, reported stories about substandard equipment and
personnel performance at nuclear power plants.
Newly completed plants were found to have been very costly, making nuclear power more expensive than electricity from
coal-burning plants for the first time in 20 years. Who needed them anyhow? We already had an excess of electricity-
generating capacity.
As we enter the 1990s, however, many things have changed. Environmental concerns have shifted dramatically into other
areas like global warming due to the greenhouse effect, ecological destruction by acid rain, air pollution of all types but
particularly from coal burning, and chemicals of various sorts, from insecticides to food additives. A succession of
record-breaking warm years in the 1980s convinced many that the greenhouse effect was not just a scientific theory but
might already be responsible for droughts and other agricultural disasters. Some scientists are predicting that these
problems will get worse at an increasingly rapid rate in the years ahead. The president, Congress, and other politicians seem to
be battling for positions of leadership in programs designed to stem the tide of the greenhouse effect. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency is giving the matter a high priority. Nuclear plants produce no greenhouse gases, while the coal- and oil-
burning plants they replace are the most important contributors.
The acid rain problem is getting increasing attention and is generating strong anti-U.S. resentment in Canada. It is also stirring
up trouble in Scandinavia and Germany. Coal-burning power plants are among the worst offenders in causing acid rain,
while nuclear plants avoid that problem completely.
After a decade of relative quiescence, air pollution is being reborn as a top-ranked environmental issue. The Bush
Administration's Clean Air Act would require that sulfur dioxide emissions from coal burning plants be cut in half by the end
of the century, but that just scratches the surface of the problem. Nuclear plants, of course, emit no sulfur dioxide or other
chemical pollutants.
The public's greatest phobias seem to have shifted away from radiation to chemicals. We have had highly publicized
scares about Alar in apples and cyanide in Chilean grapes. Dioxin, PCB, EDB, and chemicals with longer names have become
household words, while we hardly ever hear about plutonium anymore. The media have been carrying fewer stories about
radiation and even these get little attention. In a continuing series of national polls by Cambridge Reports, the percentages of
those questioned who had recently heard news about nuclear energy and who interpreted it as unfavorable shifted from about
62% and 42%, respectively in 1983-1985 to 50% and 25% in 1989. A 1988 Roper poll found that the U.S. public considered
it no more dangerous to live near a nuclear plant than a chemical manufacturing plant.
In the late 1980s, the American public learned that the radioactive gas radon was invading their homes, exposing them to many
hundreds of times more radiation than they could ever expect to get from nuclear power. In fact, in some homes it was
thousands or even tens of thousands of times more. But still only about 2% of the American public bothered even to test for it
(at a cost of about $12), although their exposure can easily be drastically reduced. The public has perhaps grown tired of being
frightened about radiation. Maybe they have caught on to the fact that after all the scare stories, there have been no dead
bodies, and not even any injuries to the public. There must be a limit to how often the cry "wolf" will be heeded.
The dramatic oil spill by an Exxon tanker near Valdez, Alaska, and the ensuing long and expensive clean-up drew
constant attention to one of the environmental problems associated with a major competitor of nuclear power — oil
burning. The use of oil to generate electricity is rising rapidly, and there is every reason to believe its rise will accelerate in the
1990s. A single nuclear plant can replace the oil carried by that Exxon tanker every 6 weeks.
Of course, oil spills are not the biggest problem resulting from our heavy dependence on oil. Growing concern is arising
about the imbalance between our imports and exports that is gravely threatening our national economy. Imported oil is
the principal villain in this matter, and the public recognizes that fact.
Lots of publicity surrounded the activities of U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf to protect oil supplies during the latter
stages of the Iran-Iraq war. American lives were threatened, which set up a situation that could have led to grave
consequences. Such perils are part of the price we were paying for our heavy reliance on imported oil.
Last, but far from least, of the new developments is a growing need for more electricity-generating capacity. Our expanding
population and production output requires ever increasing amounts of energy, and during the decade of the 1980s, electricity's

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share of our total energy supply increased dramatically. There is every reason to expect this increase to continue. Serious
shortages are sure to develop.
In some sections of the country, the pinch is already hurting. Brownouts (reductions in voltage which cause lights to dim,
motors to turn slower, etc.) have already occurred in New England, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, North and
South Carolina, and Chicago. Utilities in New York State have had to appeal to the public to reduce use of lighting and air
conditioning, and to postpone use of dishwashers, clothes driers, and ovens. The Bonneville Power Administration in the
Pacific Northwest has restricted its sales of power to Southern California. A lead story in Fortune Magazine (June 1989) was
titled "Get Ready for Power Brownouts." A Standard and Poor publication stated "Electricity is becoming a scarce resource . . .
Power shortages in the Northeast threaten to derail the region's strong economic growth." Wall Street brokers are
recommending stocks of electrical equipment suppliers because they predict a big surge in new power plant construction.
Clearly, our days of excess electricity-generating capacity are at an end.
There was a prime-time TV special report on how well nuclear power is serving France, where 70% of the electricity is
nuclear. The rest of the world has continued to expand its nuclear power capacity, while we have been standing still. The
United States, which pioneered the development of nuclear power and provided it to the world, now ranks behind more
than a dozen other nations in percentage of electricity derived from that technology. Our strongest competitor, Japan, was
heavily burdened by memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and hence got a very late start in nuclear power, but has now far
surpassed us and continues to accelerate its development.
We have well over a hundred nuclear power plants operating in the United States, and they have been steadily improving. The
frequency of reactor shutdowns by safety systems has been substantially reduced. There has been little bad publicity about
events relevant to nuclear safety for the past few years.
The nuclear industry has been developing a new generation of reactors that are cheaper and safer than those currently
in use. They should make the concept of a reactor meltdown obsolete and make nuclear power substantially cheaper than
electricity from any other source. US News and World Report featured an article on these reactors entitled "Nuclear Power, Act
II." Other newspapers and magazines have carried similar stories.
All of these developments have not been lost on the American public. Attitudes toward nuclear power have been changing. A
variety of public opinion polls has shown that the public is now ready to accept a resurgence of nuclear power, and indeed
expects it. The stage truly seems to be set for "Nuclear Power: Act II."

Nuclear Energy and Fossil Fuels are zero-sum

Larry Parker and Mark Holt Specialists in Energy Policy Resources, Science, and Industry Division, “Nuclear
Power: Outlook for New U.S. Reactors”, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33442.pdf, 2007
Other factors will also be important in the commercial decision to invest in new nuclear plants, such as fossil fuel prices
and the regulatory environment for both nuclear power and future fossil fuel-fired generation. If natural gas prices remain at
historically high levels, future nuclear plants will be more likely to be competitive without federal tax credits. However,
natural gas prices have been highly cyclical in the past, raising the possibility that nuclear costs could be undercut in the
future.

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Nuclear power is way safer than coal, and radiation issues are empirically
denied

David Lonsdale, group editorial manager of Australian Provincial Newspapers. 07/19/08. “Nuclear power
pluses must be weighed with the risks,” A, p. B08. Lexis. [Takumi Murayama]
Ulrich Beck tells us nuclear power is just too risky ("Wrong to compare risk with disaster", July 18, p15). But he is
constrained in doing so by the fact that 442 facilities have now proven, in practice, that it is the safest and greenest source
of base-load electricity.
Coal mining averages about 10,000 deaths every year, not counting those from lung diseases. The exhaustive UN inquiry
into Chernobyl, our only nuclear disaster, found fewer than 40 died.
Further, how does Beck account for Canada's naturally-occurring, highly radioactive uranium deposits sitting shallow,
in unexceptional wet rock, for eons with no discernible deleterious surface effects?
Any chance he likes exaggerating the risks to frighten the kiddies?

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Do Now
Nuclear Power is prime for development now

Sharon Squassoni, senior associate with the Nonproliferation Program at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. 05/01/07. “Risks and realities: the "new nuclear energy revival",” Arms Control Today.
[Takumi Murayama]
Sharp increases in oil and natural gas prices have made nuclear energy more attractive in the last few years. Whereas
oil was priced at below $10 per barrel in 1999, it rose above $60 per barrel in March 2007. (12) Natural gas prices are often
pegged to oil prices, and these too have increased dramatically. In the United States and Europe, new electricity generation in
the 1990s was fired by natural gas rather than coal, but this is now changing.
Prices of alternative energy sources are just one factor in national energy policies. Improved safety and efficiency, at least in
U.S. reactors, also has contributed to more attention to nuclear energy, as well as to regulatory streamlining and
incentives for new nuclear power plants. Nuclear energy also is increasingly being viewed as part of the solution to
climate change and energy security. (13)

The government must act now to save public perception.

Ferenc L. Toth and Hans-Holger Rogner. Department of Nuclear Energy @ International Atomic Energy
Agency. 9-8-05, “Oil and nuclear power: Past, present and future”. Science Direct. [Crystal Xia]
In an environmentally conscious future, nuclear power fares best against coal and, depending on the degree of
environmental regulation, also against gas. Policies protecting global climate will certainly affect oil production and use as
well but primarily with regard to oil substitutes in end-use markets, and, depending on the future techno-economic performance
of renewables, also in the non-grid electricity markets. Nuclear generated electricity may indirectly challenge some oil use
in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. However, electricity–no matter how generated–is expected to
expand its market share because of its intrinsic features to improve productivity, cleanliness, and convenience. Policies
enforcing an internalization of the externalities associated with the production and use of energy services will eventually
improve the competitiveness of clean technologies such as nuclear power. In the global warming context, the key questions
are how fast the world society decides to reduce CO2 emissions, how high will be the costs of other mitigation options,
and how the public acceptance of nuclear energy will change in some countries. Depending on the resolution of these
questions and the concerns summarized above, the outcome could entail a new boost to nuclear energy or could lead
towards the beginning of the end for this energy source.

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US Key–Global Policy
The US is key to spur international negotiations for greenhouse gas reduction

John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office and co-chair of the scientific
assessment working group of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, 07/23/03, Guardian,
"Comment & Analysis: Global warming is now a weapon of mass destruction: It kills more people than
terrorism, yet Blair and Bush do nothing" [Takumi Murayama]
Any successful international negotiation for reducing emissions must be based on four principles: the precautionary principle,
the principle of sustainable development, the polluter-pays principle and the principle of equity. The strength of "contraction
and convergence" is that it satisfies all these principles. But it also means facing up to some difficult questions. First, world
leaders have to agree on a target for the stabilisation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a sufficiently low level to
stave off dangerous climate change. Second, this target, and the global greenhouse gas budget it implies, has to form the
framework for an equitable global distribution of emissions permits, assigned to different countries on a per-capita basis.
Countries with the largest populations will therefore get the most permits, but for the sake of efficiency and to achieve
economic convergence these permits will need to be internationally tradable. This is the only solution likely to be acceptable to
most of the developing world, which unlike us has not had the benefit of over a century of fossil fuel-driven economic
prosperity. And it also meets one of the key demands of the United States, that developing countries should not be excluded
from emissions targets, as they currently are under the Kyoto protocol.
`Nowadays everyone knows that the US is the world's biggest polluter, and that with only one 20th of the world's
population it produces a quarter of its greenhouse gas emissions. But the US government, in an abdication of leadership of
epic proportions, is refusing to take the problem seriously - and Britain, presumably because Blair wishes not to offend
George Bush - is beginning to fall behind too. Emissions from the US are up 14% on those in 1990 and are projected to rise by
a further 12% over the next decade.

The US is important to shaping nuclear policies globally.

Charles D. Ferguson, Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology @ Council on Foreign
Relations, 4-07, “Nuclear Energy: Balancing Benefits and Risks”,
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/NuclearEnergyCSR28.pdf, [Crystal Xia]
To better inform the debate that is under way in the United States about nuclear energy use, this Council Special Report
provides a clear examination of the benefits and risks and then lays out a set of recommendations for U.S. nuclear energy
policy, distinguishing between domestic and international use. The United States has considerably more leverage influencing
domestic nuclear energy production than international use; however, the United States can help shape nuclear policies
abroad through leading by example and through making use of existing bilateral partnerships and multilateral
institutions, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Energy Agency, and the Nuclear Suppliers
Group. An effective policy needs to address climate change, energy security, safety and security of nuclear power
plants and radioactive waste storage, and proliferation of nuclear technologies that can produce nuclear bombs

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US environmental leadership key due to economic strength, even if this


strength has not been used

Robert Falkner, Department of International Relations, London School of Economics, 07-05 International
Studies Review, "American Hegemony and the Global Environment"
[Takumi Murayama]
The United States is a good example of this conclusion. For much of the early phase of international environmental politics,
the United States provided inter- national leadership in one form or the other. It was one of the first leading in-
dustrialized nations to develop comprehensive environmental legislation and reg- ulatory institutions. The US
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which was set up in 1970 to integrate the widely scattered programs and institutions
dealing with environmental matters, instantly became a model for similar regulatory agencies that were created in other
industrialized countries during the 1970s. Much of this state activity was underpinned by the world’s most dynamic
environmental move- ment, which came into existence in the mid-1960s. US environmental groups ranging from the more
traditional bodies (Sierra Club, National Audubon Society) to modern environmental nongovernmental organizations
(Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace) worked to create broadly based domestic
support for a more ambitious environmental policy at home and abroad. US scientists and activists came to play a leading role
in the global envi- ronmental movement that began to emerge in the 1970s (Kraft 2004). At the international level, the United
States began to claim the mantle of en- vironmental leader, first at the UN Conference on the Human Environment in
Stockholm in 1972 (Hopgood 1998:96), and later in the context of the multilateral efforts to agree on environmental treaties.
Having declared eight whale species endangered based on the Endangered Species Act of 1969, the United States took up the
issue of whale preservation internationally and initiated a transformation of the international whaling regime to emphasize
species protection rather than nat- ural resource usage. US diplomatic pressure and threat of sanctions were instru- mental in
getting the International Whaling Commission to place a ban on commercial whaling in 1984 (Porter and Brown 1996:77–81;
Fletcher 2001). Also in the 1970s, the United States began to support international efforts to take action against ozone layer
depletion and in the 1980s became a key advocate of international restrictions on the use of ozone-depleting chemicals. During
the ne- gotiations on the Montreal Protocol, the US government provided important lead- ership and exerted pressure on
skeptical states, especially the European producers of ozone-depleting substances, that objected to strong international
measures (Benedick 1991). Whereas the ozone negotiations provided the United States with an opportunity to display
leadership in a multilateral context, US policy on the conservation of species took on a more unilateral character. More than
any other country, the United States has used the threat of sanctions to change other nations’ behavior in areas that endanger
threatened species. Using import restrictions on products made in an environmentally damaging way, the US government
forced foreign fishing fleets to comply with American standards of protection of, for ex- ample, dolphins and sea turtles
(DeSombre 2001). In these cases and others, the United States benefitted from its superior position as the world’s largest
economy and import market for internationally traded goods. The nodal position that the US economy occupies in
international economic flows affords it a unique opportunity to use economic pressure in the pursuit of envi- ronmental
objectives. This is not to say that other nations are devoid of similar economic power; depending on the nature of the
environmental issue, economic power can be more dispersed than concentrated in the international economy. In biodiversity
protection, for example, none of the industrialized countries appear to have such decisive economic clout that it can force
support of the global biodiversity regime; all they can do is provide financial side payments. Furthermore, the Eu- ropean
Union has emerged as a potential contender to US environmental lead- ership not the least because it has assumed a coequal
position in key areas of international policymaking, such as in international trade (Smith 2004). But the fact remains that on
many environmental issues, the United States has unrivaled op- portunities for exercising leadership. That it has not
always acted on these oppor- tunities does not alter the reality of America’s superior power.

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The US should help create an international system with suppliers, countries


that supply flesh fuel, and users, countries with spent fuel, in order to
alleviate proliferation dangers.

John M. Deutch and Ernest J. Moniz, Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 2006,
Scientific American, “The Nuclear Option,” Vol. 295 Issue 3, p76-83,
http://web.mit.edu/chemistry/deutch/policy/80TheNuclearOption2006.pdf [Jiajia Huang]
In conjunction with the domestic program of waste management just outlined, the president should continue the diplomatic
effort to create an international system of fuel supplier countries and user countries. Supplier countries such as the
U.S., Russia, France and the U.K. would sell flesh fuel to user countries with smaller nuclear programs and commit to
removing the spent fuel from them. In return, the user countries would forgo the construction of fuel-producing facilities.
This arrangement would greatly alleviate the danger of nuclear weapons proliferation because the chief risks for
proliferation involve not the nuclear power plants themselves but the fuel enrichment and reprocessing plants. The
current situation with Iran's uranium enrichment program is a prime example. A scheme in which fuel is leased to users is
a necessity in a world where nuclear power is to expand threefold, because such an expansion will inevitably involve the
spread of nuclear power plants to some countries of proliferation concern.
A key to making the approach work is that producing fuel does not make economic sense for small nuclear power
programs. This fact underlies the marketplace reality that the world is already divided into supplier and user countries.
Instituting the supplier/user model is largely a matter, albeit not a simple one, of formalizing the current situation more
permanently through new agreements that reinforce commercial realities.
Although the proposed regime is inherently attractive to user nations--they get an assured supply of cheap fuel and are
relieved of the problem of dealing with waste materials—other incentives should also be put in place because the user
states would be agreeing to go beyond the requirements of the treaty on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. For
example, if a global system of tradable carbon credits were instituted, user nations adhering to the fuel-leasing rules could be
granted credits for their new nuclear power plants.
Iran is the most obvious example today of a nation that the global community would rather see as a "user state" than as
a producer of enriched uranium. But it is not the only difficult case. Another nation whose program must be addressed
promptly is Brazil, where an enrichment facility is under construction supposedly to provide fuel for the country's two nuclear
reactors. A consistent approach to countries such as Iran and Brazil will be needed if nuclear power is to be expanded
globally without exacerbating proliferation concerns.

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The U.S. is coordinating and leading other nations to improve nuclear reactors,
which will make creating nuclear power more efficient

Burton Richter, Nobel Prize in Physics 1976, part of the Nuclear Energy Task Force, director of Emeritus at the
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, 9-06, “Nuclear Power: A Status Report”, http://64.233.179.104/scholar?
hl=en&lr=&q=cache:pBV0xNhrnlMJ:iis-
db.stanford.edu/pubs/21251/Ricther_NucPow.pdf+Nuclear+safer+than+coal [Jiajia Huang]
In the year 2000 the United States proposed that a group of nations, all of which had nuclear reactors and were
interested in nuclear power for the long term, get together to examine options for the reactor of the future. Initial
members of the GIF were Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, South Korea, South Africa, Switzerland, United Kingdom,
and the United States. China, the European Union, and Russia joined in the year 2006.
The consortium examined options and selected six as the most promising for further development (appendix B). In 2005 five of
the GIF members, Canada, France, Japan, U.K., and U.S.A., agreed to a coordinated program of R&D on these six.
Three of the designs have a fast neutron spectrum which allows a closed fuel cycle where all of the very long lived
components in the spent fuel can be continuously recycled in the reactor. In this way, only components that need isolation
for hundreds of years need go to a waste repository, considerably simplifying the design of repositories. All three operate at
moderately high temperature with improved electrical efficiency and with low pressure simplifying reactor vessel design.
The liquid sodium-cooled version is the one where there is the most experience. These kinds of reactors are currently
running in France, Japan, and Russia, and one has been running in the United States until recently.
A second is cooled with a mixture of lead and bismuth. Experience here is with reactors in Russian submarines of the Alpha
class. Two of these submarines have been lost at sea and there is concern that there may be an un-understood problem of some
type.
The third variant uses a molten-salt mixture in which the fuel is dissolved. The salt continuously circulates and fuel is
added and spent fuel is taken out continuously. It has operational attractiveness, but the molten salt is quite corrosive making
for a difficult materials problem.
Two of the Gen IV types are cooled with helium gas. Both are “passively safe” in that a loss of gas flow does not raise fuel
temperatures high enough to release radioactive materials. Pressures in these reactors are high and so are temperatures. One is
designed to have a fast neutron spectrum and to operate above 800.C giving high electrical efficiency. The other has a thermal
neutron spectrum and runs at about 1000.C. The very high temperature is supposed to allow efficient production of hydrogen.
However the very high temperature does generate difficult materials problems.
Finally, there is super-critical water-cooled reactor that can be designed with either a fast or a thermal neutron energy
spectrum. Operational pressures are very high but temperature is also considerably above ordinary water-cooled reactors
improving electrical efficiency

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US Key–International CP
Britain nuclear power plants are unsuccessful, costing twice the budget and
are built too slowly.

Hannah Goff, BBC News education reporter, 5-16-05, BBC News, “Is Britain’s Future Really Nuclear?”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4549313.stm [Jiajia Huang]
Britain's 14 nuclear power stations are coming to the end of their lifetimes, with half due to be decommissioned between
now and 2010. By 2023 all but one will have shut.
This means nuclear power's contribution to Britain's electricity supply will be cut by two-thirds from its present 21% level to
7% by 2020.
Green group Friends of the Earth says that, even if you solved the problem of what to do with radioactive nuclear waste and
could guarantee against Chernobyl-type accidents, there simply isn't enough time for a revival.
It points to the fact that the last nuclear power station to be built in the UK, Sizewell B, took 15 years to go from proposal
to electricity production and cost more than twice its original budget.
"These facts swiftly brought to an end plans to build nine reactors of the same design," FOE climate campaigner Bryony
Worthington says.
"In fact, we have never built a nuclear power reactor in this country on time or to budget or that has succeeded in
achieving the levels of performance that were expected."
The group also claims the doubling of Britain's nuclear capacity - which ultimately means something like 28 new power
stations - would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8%.
And it provides no solution to the global warming gases produced by cars, lorries and domestic heating.

French nuclear plants are unsafe, unhealthy, and bad for the environment.

Greg Keller, AP Business Writer. 07/19/08. “Repeated incidents raise questions about French nuclear safety,”
Energy Central. http://pro.energycentral.com/professional/news/power/ news_article.cfm?id=10708479
[Takumi Murayama]
First, an overflowing tub at a French nuclear plant spilled uranium into the groundwater. Then a burst pipe leaked
uranium at another nuclear site, raising an alert on Friday.
The two accidents within two weeks, both at sites run by French nuclear giant Areva, have raised questions about safety
and control measures in one of the world's most nuclear-dependent nations, and given fodder to anti-nuclear activists.
Environmentalists said the incidents are a wake-up call, raising doubts about an industry in which France has staked out
a leading role internationally.
France has 59 reactors churning out nearly 80 percent of its electricity, and the French state owns Areva, which exports its
nuclear technologies around the world.
French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo insisted that the incidents were minor, but he nonetheless ordered an overhaul
of the country's nuclear supervision and information processes, as well as checks of the groundwater around all nuclear plants
in France.
Areva Chief Executive Anne Lauvergeon traveled to one of the plants Friday to meet with employees and local officials.
Former French Environment Minister Corinne Lepage, who opposes nuclear energy, said the "repeated incidents ... shine a
light on the nuclear industry's failures, mainly due to under-investment in safety, the protection of human health and
the environment."

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US Key–Prolif
The US is key to solving prolif and safety concerns.

Charles D. Ferguson, Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology @ Council on Foreign Relations, 4-07, “Nuclear
Energy: Balancing Benefits and Risks”, http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/NuclearEnergyCSR28.pdf, [Crystal Xia]

The United States has been a leader in improving the safety of nuclear plant operations. For instance, U.S. nuclear
engineers, working with their counterparts in other countries, created the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO)
after the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Headquartered in Atlanta, WANO serves as a nongovernmental organization that conducts
confidential peer reviews of nuclear power plant safety around the world. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of
International Programs has provided regulatory assistance to several countries. Also, the U.S. Department of Energy and the
State Department have drawn on their technical talent to assist reactor safety programs in Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet Union. The International Atomic Energy Agency also has programs to improve the safety and security of nuclear
facilities, but it lacks adequate resources to educate regulatory officials and nuclear plant operators in the numerous
countries that may develop nuclear power programs. The United States has taken steps to improve the security of
nuclear power plants against terrorist attack or sabotage. Soon after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission launched a top-to-bottom review of security procedures and requirements. Despite
these updated security requirements, some independent groups continue to express concern about security vulnerabilities at
U.S. nuclear power plants

Nuclear power poses a threat without a major global force guiding expansion.

William C. Sailor, Center for International Security and Cooperation in Stanford University, 5/19/2K, Science,
Vol. 288 Issue 5469, p1177, 2p, “A Nuclear Solution to Climate Change”, EBSCO, [Crystal Xia]
There must be international confidence that nuclear power can be used throughout the world without increasing weapon
proliferation. To date, commercial nuclear power has played little, if any, role as a bridge to national entry into the nuclear
arms race, nor are there any known cases in which individuals or subnational groups have stolen materials from nuclear power
facilities for use in weapons. However, development of nuclear weapons has been aided in at least three countries (India,
Iraq, and Israel) by use of research reactors obtained under the cover of peaceful research programs. In the absence of
effective safeguards, nuclear power could provide a similar cover to future weapons efforts. Additional fears are raised by
the possibility that with a major nuclear expansion, plutonium-fueled breeder reactors will be widely used to stretch
uranium resources, creating risks of plutonium diversion for weapons purpose. However, the recovery of uranium from
seawater, which has been performed on a laboratory scale in Japan, may be possible on a commercial scale at a cost that
postpones indefinitely the need for a breeder program. Another possibility is the use of thorium and uranium blends to stretch
reserves ( 13). Pending a fuller understanding of the resource prospects, both closed and open fuel cycles (that is, with and
without reprocessing) should be kept as options for the future if an expansion of nuclear power is needed. However, all fuel
cycles pose some proliferation risk, and even the elimination of nuclear power would not eliminate the possibility of a country
embarking on a nuclear weapons program. Thus, improved institutions for international safeguards are needed, with
strength and responsibility at an entirely new level of capability, even in the absence of a major expansion of nuclear
power.

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Now is a key time for the government to use nuclear power to stop
proliferation.

Charles D. Ferguson, Adjunct Assistant Professor @ School of Foreign Science @ Georgetown University, 4-
26-06, Christian Science Monitor, http://www.cfr.org/publication/10543/nuclear_ lessons_for_today.html,
[Crystal Xia]
The increasing menace of proliferation also threatens regeneration of nuclear power. Iran exemplifies a country that is
exploiting a loophole in the nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty to acquire “peaceful” nuclear technologies to build up a latent
capacity for making nuclear bombs. Some in industry are waking up to the notion that nuclear proliferation is bad for business.
Industry should position itself at the forefront of advocating for greater use of proliferation-resistant technologies.
These technologies should be integrated into future nuclear facilities in order to raise the barriers to diversion of
nuclear materials into weapons programs. Iran, for example, could serve as a test bed for development of proliferation-
resistant technologies. An industry-sponsored peer review group should also critically examine claims made by the US
government about the purported proliferation-resistant benefits of new nuclear initiatives. In particular, earlier this year, the
Bush administration launched the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which intends to recycle plutonium, a bomb-usable
material, from spent commercial nuclear fuel. While the administration contends that its proposed recycling method is
proliferation resistant, independent scientists have raised serious concerns that the recycled plutonium could be vulnerable to
theft by criminals or terrorists. In working to improve security of nuclear facilities and safeguards against proliferation,
industry should leverage the assets of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In addition to being the world’s
nuclear proliferation watchdog, the IAEA has programs to evaluate the physical security of nuclear facilities and to provide
training to security personnel. However, the IAEA is understaffed and underfunded. Presently, 650 IAEA inspectors guard
against illicit activities in 900 nuclear facilities around the world. In comparison, Walt Disney World employs more than 1,000
security personnel to protect its amusement park. The IAEA’s total annual budget is only about $120 million, and for the next
few years, the IAEA has annually budgeted a much smaller amount, $15.5 million, to pay for nuclear security assistance work
in dozens of countries. The US and other countries should increase this budget to ensure that the IAEA has adequate funds to
prevent nuclear proliferation and improve security. The legacy of Chernobyl should teach industry and government that
they should seize the opportunity now to take proactive steps to enhance security and prevent proliferation to pave the
way for the next generation of nuclear power.

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The US should use nuclear power to lead the effort to stop prolif.

John McCain, republican presidential candidate and US Senator, 5-27-08, “McCain’s Speech on Nuclear
Security”, http://www.cfr.org/publication/16349/, [Crystal Xia]
As we improve the national and multilateral tools to catch and reverse illicit nuclear programs, I am convinced civilian nuclear
energy can be a critical part of our fight against global warming. Civilian nuclear power provides a way for the United
States and other responsible nations to achieve energy independence and reduce our dependence on foreign oil and gas. But
in order to take advantage of civilian nuclear energy, we must do a better job of ensuring it remains civilian. Some nations use
the pretense of civilian nuclear programs as cover for nuclear weapons programs. We need to build an international
consensus that exposes this deception, and holds nations accountable for it. We cannot continue allowing nations to enrich and
reprocess uranium, ostensibly for civilian purposes, and stand by impotently as they develop weapons programs. The most
effective way to prevent this deception is to limit the further spread of enrichment and reprocessing. To persuade countries
to forego enrichment and reprocessing, I would support international guarantees of nuclear fuel supply to countries
that renounce enrichment and reprocessing, as well as the establishment of multinational nuclear enrichment centers in
which they can participate. Nations that seek nuclear fuel for legitimate civilian purposes will be able to acquire what they
need under international supervision. This is one suggestion Russia and others have made to Iran. Unfortunately, the Iranian
government has so far rejected this idea. Perhaps with enough outside pressure and encouragement, they can be persuaded to
change their minds before it is too late. I would seek to establish an international repository for spent nuclear fuel that could
collect and safely store materials overseas that might otherwise be reprocessed to acquire bomb-grade materials. It is even
possible that such an international center could make it unnecessary to open the proposed spent nuclear fuel storage facility at
Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

America can catalyze a successful effort to end nuclear proliferation.

Graham Allison, 2004, Foreign Affairs, How to Stop Nuclear Terror [Liz Lusk].
As the preceding discussion suggests, the United States cannot undertake or sustain its war on nuclear terrorism unilaterally.
Fortunately, it need not try. All of today's great powers share an interest in the proposed campaign. Each has sufficient reasons to
fear nuclear weapons in terrorists' hands, whether they are al Qaeda, Chechens, or Chinese separatists. All great powers can
therefore be mobilized in a new global alliance against nuclear terrorism, aimed at minimizing this risk by taking every action that
is physically, technically, and diplomatically possible to prevent nuclear weapons or materials from being acquired by terrorists.

Construction of this alliance should begin with Russia, where the close personal relationship between Presidents Bush and Putin
will be a major asset. Russia will be flattered by the prospect of standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States -- especially
on the one issue on which it can still claim to be a superpower. Americans and Russians should also recognize that they have a
special obligation to address this problem, since they created it -- and since they still own 95 percent of all nuclear weapons and
material. If they demonstrate a new seriousness about reducing this threat, the United States and Russia will also be able to
credibly demand that China likewise secure its weapons and materials. China could sign up Pakistan. And the rest of the nuclear
club would quickly follow.
Objections will surely be raised about the unfairness of a world in which some states are allowed to possess nuclear weapons while
others are not. But that distinction is already embedded in the NPT, to which all non-nuclear weapons states except North Korea
are signatories. Although the treaty also nominally commits nuclear weapons states to eventually eliminate their own weapons, it
never set a timetable, and no one realistically expects that to happen in the foreseeable future.

The United States and its allies already have the power to define and enforce new global constraints on nuclear weapons. To
make this order acceptable, however, they should undertake a concerted effort to eliminate nuclear weapons and nuclear threats
from international affairs. The United States and Russia should accelerate current programs to reduce their arsenals. Moreover,
the Bush administration should drop its current plans to conduct research for the production of new "mini-nukes."

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USfg Key
USfg key because they supply Uranium and dispose waste

Jerry Taylor, director of natural resource studies at CATO, and Peter Van Doren, expert in regulation of
housing, land, energy, the environment, transportation, and labor. 05-18-01. “Nuclear Power Play,” Washington
Post, from CATO website. [Takumi Murayama]
Proponents counter that nuclear power would be far less expensive were it not for needlessly burdensome safety and
maintenance regulations. While you can certainly make a strong case for that, it's unclear whether government has really
harmed nuclear power more than it has helped.
The administration should recall that the Atomic Energy Commission, beginning in 1957, directly subsidized the construction
of reactors by private utilities. A year later, the "Euroatom" program was adopted, which gave federal subsidies to NATO allies
to purchase American light-water reactor technology.
Here at home, the federal government took responsibility for the supply and enrichment of uranium but failed to charge
nuclear power plants anything for the capital or inventory costs of the program. And just since the establishment of the
Department of Energy in 1978, more than $20 billion of taxpayer money has been spent on nuclear power research and
development.
Then there's the granddaddy of all subsidies, the federal assumption of high-level radioactive waste-disposal
responsibilities. If the feds had stayed out of this and simply required the industry to secure its own waste disposal through private
arrangements, who doubts that the construction costs for such facilities and, more important, the liability costs would greatly
exceed the fees the industry currently pays the federal government? In fact, it's extremely doubtful that the industry could
insure itself against the possibility of accidents in waste disposal facilities, which could remain highly radioactive for thousands of
years.

Only the USFG can solve; states don’t like nuclear energy because of the
public perception.

William C. Sailor, Center for International Security and Cooperation in Stanford University, 5/19/2K, Science,
Vol. 288 Issue 5469, p1177, 2p, “A Nuclear Solution to Climate Change”, EBSCO, [Crystal Xia]
Any nuclear waste project will have to fight legal challenges. Politics will certainly be a significant component. For
instance, the state of Nevada has already spent considerable effort fighting the Yucca Mountain Project, which the state
claims has been forced upon it. Public support for these claims could decrease if nuclear energy were seen as a
necessary part of a solution for climatic problems and, overall, as environmentally beneficial. Nevadans might then be
more willing to accept the miniscule risks resulting from having a repository in their state.

The United States should step in to make nuclear energy a cheaper and safer
alternative.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
Current laws force nuclear utilities, unlike coal plants, to invest in expensive systems that limit the release of
radioactivity. Nuclear fuel is not efficiently recycled in the United States because of proliferation fears.
These factors have warped the economics of nuclear power development and created a politically difficult waste-disposal
problem. If coal utilities were forced to assume similar costs, coal electricity would no longer be cheaper than nuclear.

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States don’t have the jurisdiction to regulate nuclear safety, causing state-run plants to be unsafe due to
unsafe storage of nuclear waste.

Larry Parker and Mark Holt Specialists in Energy Policy Resources, Science, and Industry Division, “Nuclear
Power: Outlook for New U.S. Reactors”, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33442.pdf, 2007
The extent to which the nuclear waste issue could inhibit nuclear power expansion is difficult to assess. NRC has
determined that onsite storage of spent fuel would be safe for at least 30 years after expiration of a reactor’s operating license,
which was estimated to be as long as 70 years. As a result, the Commission concluded that “adequate regulatory authority is
available to require any measures necessary to assure safe storage of the spent fuel until a repository is available.”49
Therefore, NRC does not consider the lack of a permanent repository for spent fuel to be an obstacle to nuclear plant licensing.
However, the Administration was concerned enough about repository delays to include a provision in its recent nuclear
waste bill to require NRC, when considering nuclear power plant license applications, to assume that sufficient waste
disposal capacity will be available in a timely manner.50 Six states — California, Connecticut, Kentucky, New Jersey, West
Virginia, and Wisconsin — have specific laws that link approval for new nuclear power plants to adequate waste disposal
capacity. Kansas forbids cost recovery for “excess” nuclear power capacity if no “technology or means for disposal of high-
level nuclear waste” is available.51 The U.S. Supreme Court has held that state authority over nuclear power plant
construction is limited to economic considerations rather than safety, which is solely under NRC jurisdiction.52 No
nuclear plants have been ordered since the various state restrictions were enacted, so their ability to meet the Supreme
Court’s criteria has yet to be tested.

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Reprocessing Good–Key for Kyoto


Reprocessing Key for Kyoto

Rodney C. Ewing, Department of Geological Sciences, Department of Materials Science & Engineering and
Department of Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences, The University of Michigan. 12-05. “The Nuclear
Fuel Cycle versus The Carbon Cycle,” The Canadian Mineralogist, v. 43, no. 6, p. 2099-2116.
[Takumi Murayama]
In 1997, the third Conference of the Parties (COP–3) produced the Kyoto Protocol. Although signed by then Vice-President Al
Gore, it has not been ratified by the Senate of the USA. To enter into force, the Protocol must be ratified by 55 parties
representing at least 55% of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) in 1990. The Kyoto Protocol entered into force
on February 16, 2005, after ratification by Russia. As part of the Protocol, the developed countries must commit themselves
to reducing their collective emissions of six GHG to at least 5% below 1990 levels. The most prominent of these GHG is
CO2, which accounts for nearly 65% of the warming effect (Houghton et al. 2001). The USA presently accounts for
approximately 25% of the global emissions of CO2 with 5% of the world’s population. The Kyoto Protocol would require the
USA to reduce emissions by 7% below 1990 levels, an annual reduction of 1.1 x 109 t CO2, equivalent to removing all the
gasoline-powered vehicles from U.S. roads (Loewen & León 2001). The USA produces nearly 20% of its electricity using
nuclear power, and this is equivalent to avoiding the release of 6 x 108 t CO2, if this electricity had been produced from
carbon-based fuels (Loewen & León 2001).
There is a pressing need to develop a timely strategy to reduce GHG emissions. Thus, a number of analyses are based on a goal
of limiting the increase in CO2 emissions to twice (550 ppm) the pre-industrial levels (275 ppm) by the year 2050 (Fetter 2000,
Sailor et al. 2000). Present levels of CO2 are just over 360 ppm, increasing at an average rate of 1.5 ppm/yr. This adds 3.3
GtC/yr to the atmospheric reservoir, which is 750 GtC (Houghton et al. 2001). Models of CO2 emissions suggest that strategies
for reduction must be initiated in developed countries by 2010 in order to meet the goal of only doubling of the CO2
concentration above the pre-industrial level (Wigley 1997). As previously discussed, of all of the technologies presently
capable of contributing to a major reduction in carbon emissions, nuclear power is one of the most promising, simply
because the technology is already operating on a substantial scale, and in principle, it could be deployed more rapidly on a
global scale. The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) maintains that the USA capacity for nuclear power generation can be
increased by 10 GW by 2012 (equivalent to a reduction of 0.022 GtC/yr). The NEI supports a goal of adding 50 GW capacity
(= approximately 50 new NPP) by 2020 (equivalent to a reduction of 0.1 GtC/yr).
Analyses of the prospects of nuclear power have been presented by many, but two of the most detailed are by Fetter (2000) and
Sailor et al.(2000). Authors of these analyses necessarily make many assumptions about future energy needs. Assuming a
stabilization of CO2 concentrations to approximately twice pre-industrial levels by 2050, and projecting a growth in world
population to 9 billion (a 50% increase) and an increase in per capita energy consumption of 50%, the global energy demand in
2050 will be approximately 900 exajoules (1018 joules) per year (EJ/yr) (Sailor et al. 2000). If nuclear power provides one-
third of the projected energy requirement (300 EJ/yr), and the balance is divided equally between conventional fossil fuels and
"decarbonized" fossil fuels, the 300 EJ from nuclear power are roughly equivalent to 3300 GW-years (one GWyr is the average
annual energy output from a single large power plant) of capacity per year (present capacities are about 260 GWyr/yr). With
this scenario, the projected 900 EJ/yr of global energy use would still result in CO2 emissions that would equal 5.5 GtC/yr
(present levels are ~7 GtC/yr) (Sailor et al. 2000). Still, this would mean more than a ten-fold increase in nuclear power
generation capacity, requiring the construction of over 3,000 NPP before 2050 (at present there are 439 operating nuclear
generating units). The impact of this expansion in nuclear-power-generation capacity is difficult to anticipate because it
depends critically on the types of reactors and fuel cycles that are used, as previously discussed. The figures previously cited
from the MIT study (Ansolabehere et al. 2003) and tabulated in Table 1 are based on an increase by a factor of three of
nuclear-power-generation capacity by 2050 (1,000 GW). Still, one must expect that the most immediate deployment of new
reactors will be of the Generation III+ type, not too different from the present water-reactor technology, but with higher burn-
up of the nuclear fuel. Thus, one may use the present technology as a basis for extrapolating the environmental impact and use
the factors of 3 to 10 as the range of what has been considered for the increase in nuclear power production. On this basis, the
annual increase in global spent-fuel production would be between 27,000 and 89,000 metric tonnes of heavy metal (tHM). The
higher number is greater than the presently planned capacity (70,000 tHM equivalent) for the proposed repository at Yucca
Mountain. One approach to reducing the impact of the increased production of nuclear waste is to use reprocessing to minimize
the volumes of waste produced and to utilize the fissile content of the SNF; however, this raises major issues related to the
proliferation of nuclear weapons. A one-GWyr light water reactor produces 200 kg/yr of Pu (enough for 20 nuclear weapons).
If the global nuclear-energy capacity is increased to 3,000 GW, then the annual production of Pu would be over 500,000 kg
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(Williams & Feiveson 1990). If one foresees a nuclear industry based on Pu-breeder reactors, the 3,000 GW nuclear system
would produce five million kilograms of plutonium per year (Williams & Feiveson 1990). Alvin Weinberg (2000) has related
the reduction (avoided increase) in CO2 content in the atmosphere to the amount of U consumed, that is the percentage of U
fissioned in nuclear power plants. A typical LWR without reprocessing has an efficiency (% of U fissioned) of only 0.5%,
whereas a perfect breeder-reactor cycle with reprocessing has an efficiency of 70%. Even if the presently estimated
reserves for uranium (30 x 106 t) are completely utilized (Weinberg 2000), the low-efficiency system now in use, LWR
followed by direct disposal, will lower the CO2 increase by only 38 ppm. Either there will have to be a shift to breeder
reactors and reprocessing, or alternative sources of U must be found. All of these figures are speculative, but they do
emphasize that an increase in the role of nuclear power in reducing carbon emissions must be substantial and go hand-in-hand
with the development of advanced fuel-cycles and waste-management technologies that do not presently exist on an industrial
scale.

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Reprocessing Good–Stops Proliferation


Not reprocessing is more prone to proliferation

Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun, and Denis Beller, nuclear engineer
and Technical Staff Member at Los Alamos National Laboratory. 01/02-00. “The need for nuclear power,”
Foreign Affairs. New York, Vol. 79, Iss. 1; pg. 30, 15 pgs. [Takumi Murayama]
Ironically, burying spent fuel without extracting its plutonium through reprocessing would actually increase the long-
term risk of nuclear proliferation, since the decay ofless-fissile and more-radioactive isotopes in spent fuel after one to
three centuries improves the explosive qualities of the plutonium it contains, making it more attractive for weapons use.
Besides extending the world's uranium resources almost indefinitely, recycling would make it possible to convert plutonium to
useful energy while breaking it down into shorter-lived, nonfissionable, nonthreatening nuclear waste.
Hundreds of tons of weapons-grade plutonium, which cost the nuclear superpowers billions of dollars to produce, have become
military surplus in the past decade. Rather than burying some of this strategically worrisome but energetically valuable
material-as Washington has proposed-it should be recycled into nuclear fuel. An international system to recycle and
manage such fuel would prevent covert proliferation. As envisioned by Edward Arthur, Paul Cunningham, and Richard
Wagner of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, such a system would combine internationally monitored retrievable storage,
the processing of all separated plutonium into mox fuel for power reactors, and, in the longer term, advanced integrated
materials processing reactors that would receive, control, and process all fuel discharged from reactors throughout the world,
generating electricity and reducing spent fuel to short-lived nuclear waste ready for permanent geological storage.

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2AC: Alternative Energy–Generic


A. Perm: Do both –

1. There’ll be more alternative energy to trade off with fossil fuels that
cause global warming, consequently, double solvency

2. Different forms of alternative energy will attract a wider variety of


consumers

3. More different forms of alternative energy will provide more solvency

International Energy Agency, 6-06-08, http://www.iea.org/Textbase/press/pressdetail.asp?


PRESS_REL_ID=263 [Jiajia Huang]

06 June 2008 Tokyo --- “The world faces the daunting combination of surging energy demand, rising greenhouse gas
emissions and tightening resources. A global energy technology revolution is both necessary and achievable; but it will be
a tough challenge”, said Nobuo Tanaka, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) today in Tokyo, at the
launch of the latest edition of Energy technology Perspectives (ETP).
The Agency’s leading biennial publication responds to the G8 call on the IEA for guidance on how to achieve a clean, clever
and competitive energy future. The book is built around three sets of global energy technology scenarios. These are a Baseline
(business-as-usual Scenario), a range of ACT Scenarios showing how CO2 emissions could be brought back to current levels
by 2050, and a set of BLUE Scenarios outlining how they could be reduced to 50% below current levels. ETP 2008 also
contains global roadmaps showing how each of 17 key advanced energy technologies would need to be developed and
deployed to deliver the ACT or the BLUE outcomes.
Our current path is not sustainable if governments around the world continue with policies in place to date – the underlying
premise in the ETP Baseline scenario to 2050 – CO2 emissions will rise by 130% and oil demand will rise by 70%. This
expansion in oil equals five times today’s production of Saudi Arabia. “Such growth of oil demand raises major concerns
regarding energy supply access and investment needs”, said Mr. Tanaka. In the Baseline scenario, the power generation sector
accounts for 44% of total global emissions in 2050, followed by industry, transport, the fuel transformation sector and
buildings.
“We are very far from sustainable development, despite the widespread recognition of the long-term problem. In fact, CO2
emissions growth has accelerated considerably in recent years”, Mr. Tanaka said. “Higher oil and gas prices result in a rapid
switch to coal. Moreover rapid growth in China and India, both coal-based economies, has also contributed to this deteriorating
outlook.”
Step one into a brave new world
“ETP 2008 demonstrates the extent of the challenge to reverse these trends. To bring CO2 emissions back to current levels in
2050, all options are needed at a cost of up to USD 50/t CO2”, Mr. Tanaka said. No single form of energy or technology can
provide the full solution. Improving energy efficiency is the first step and is very attractive as it results in immediate
cost savings. Significantly reducing emissions from power generation is also a key component of emissions stabilisation.
But even this is not enough.
Government policymakers have been warned today that there is no single solution to the UK’s looming energy crisis.
Andrew Furlong, Director of Policy at IChemE says that a new report published by the UK’s Innovation, Universities, Science
and Skills (IUSS) committee into renewable electricity reaches similar conclusions to those reached by IChemE two years ago:
“There is no single-source solution to our future energy needs and a range of options including nuclear, renewables and fossil
fuels must be deployed,” said Furlong.
With latest estimates suggesting that UK energy bills could rise by £400 this winter, Furlong also advised that a shortage of
properly qualified scientists and engineers could restrict further implementation of new technologies: “The design, operation
and management of these facilities won’t ‘happen by magic’. We need more skilled scientists and engineers. Consequently, the
looming skills shortage is of critical concern.”
Although chemical engineering courses in the UK are enjoying record student intake, many university departments are now at
full capacity. Last year, the CBI said that the UK needs an extra 2.4 million science and technology graduates by 2014 to meet
demand.

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(card continued on next page)

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“Government and industry investmbent is essential to support the expansion of existing science and engineering faculties and
new ones being created,” said Furlong.
“Investment in the scientists and engineers of tomorrow is of equal importance as investment in the technologies of the future,”
he added.
The critical IUSS report suggested the committee was “disappointed by the lack of urgency expressed by the government – and
at times by the electricity industry – in relation to the challenge ahead”.
It also warned that “the finite period of time available to make the necessary changes is fast running out”.
“The problems we’re facing are by no means unique to the UK. Similar challenges are facing society throughout the developed
world and it’s vital the planet is equipped with sufficient high quality scientists and engineers to tackle the problems,” Furlong
concluded.

4. Nuclear energy and other renewables will be more effective together in


solving energy problems

Matt Stalker, External relations at IChemE, 6-19-08, IChemE, “Chemical Engineers warn: No single-
source solution to looming energy shortages,” http://cms.icheme.org/mainwebsite/general-
barafc3d75d.aspx?map=24e5b79a7e504e830fabf5924e6f94f6 [Jiajia Huang]
Government policymakers have been warned today that there is no single solution to the UK’s looming energy crisis.
Andrew Furlong, Director of Policy at IChemE says that a new report published by the UK’s Innovation, Universities, Science
and Skills (IUSS) committee into renewable electricity reaches similar conclusions to those reached by IChemE two years ago:
“There is no single-source solution to our future energy needs and a range of options including nuclear, renewables and
fossil fuels must be deployed,” said Furlong.
With latest estimates suggesting that UK energy bills could rise by £400 this winter, Furlong also advised that a shortage of
properly qualified scientists and engineers could restrict further implementation of new technologies: “The design, operation
and management of these facilities won’t ‘happen by magic’. We need more skilled scientists and engineers. Consequently, the
looming skills shortage is of critical concern.”
Although chemical engineering courses in the UK are enjoying record student intake, many university departments are now at
full capacity. Last year, the CBI said that the UK needs an extra 2.4 million science and technology graduates by 2014 to meet
demand.
“Government and industry investment is essential to support the expansion of existing science and engineering faculties
and new ones being created,” said Furlong.
“Investment in the scientists and engineers of tomorrow is of equal importance as investment in the technologies of the future,”
he added.
The critical IUSS report suggested the committee was “disappointed by the lack of urgency expressed by the government – and
at times by the electricity industry – in relation to the challenge ahead”.
It also warned that “the finite period of time available to make the necessary changes is fast running out”.
“The problems we’re facing are by no means unique to the UK. Similar challenges are facing society throughout the developed
world and it’s vital the planet is equipped with sufficient high quality scientists and engineers to tackle the problems,” Furlong
concluded.

B. Our plan uses deregulating as incentives. For other alternatives, they will
need some type of monetary incentive, which will take a lot of government
spending.

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C. Nuclear energy is key

1. The negative doesn’t access our proliferation advantage at all.


Hagengruber 08 says that through the plan, nuclear energy will be
safer, with US engaged. They don’t access this extinction scenario.

2. Also, nuke energy solves for global warming more than all alternative
energies. Weeks 06 says that only a nuke energy capacity increase will
solve global warming. Warrants say that it’s the only alternative source
that can replace fossil fuels and solve. Neg doesn’t access our
advantage from Sydney Morning Herald 03 of mass extinction.

3. Only nuke energy accesses our economy advantage. CASEnergy


Coalition 07 says this. PR Newswire 08 has warrants saying nuke energy
will provide tens of thousands of jobs and that only nuke energy will
revive U.S. leadership. This is another extinction scenario.

4. Nuclear energy is the most clean, practical alternative energy, and


could even help reduce CO2 emissions from transportation

NCPA Scholar, Member of E-Team, 7-27-06, A National Center for Policy Analysis Project, Nuclear
Power May Be Answer To Global Warming, http://eteam.ncpa.org/news/nuclear-power-may-be-answer-
to-global-warming [Jiajia Huang]
DALLAS (July 27, 2006) - As former Vice President Al Gore's global warming movie nears the end of its run in theaters, a
new report from the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) suggests combating climate change requires creative thinking
about the world's energy needs. According to the report, nuclear power holds the most promise as a clean, practical
alternative to fossil fuels that could help satisfy the world economy's growing demand for energy.
"If we buy the theory that human use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) is causing global warming, we must reassess how
we are going to fuel economic growth in the future," said Pete Geddes, executive vice president of the Foundation for Research
on Economics and the Environment (FREE) and co-author of the report. "Nuclear power very well could be the best choice
to reduce the threat arguably posed by fossil fuels."
Sustaining economic growth in developed countries and accelerating growth in the developing world means that energy
demand will increase dramatically in the coming century. The International Energy Agency projects world energy demand will
grow 65 percent by 2020. According to the report, reducing the amount of CO2 humans put into the atmosphere, while still
meeting the energy demands of an expected population of more than 9 billion people by 2050, requires reconsidering nuclear
power - a safe, practical alternative.
Despite opposition, nuclear power currently produces much of the electric power in developed countries.
Nuclear power provides about 75 percent of the electricity in France and 20 percent in the United States.
With 434 operating reactors worldwide, nuclear power meets the electrical needs of more than a billion people.
China alone is planning to build 30 nuclear reactors over the next five years.
Nuclear power has advantages over fossil fuels. A single, quarter-ounce pellet of uranium generates as much energy as
3.5 barrels of oil, 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, or 1,780 pounds of coal, with none of the CO2 emissions. However,
conventional reactors only utilize approximately 3 percent of the energy contained in nuclear fuel. If the United States joined
France and Japan in recycling used fuel, and recycled the more than 15,000 plutonium pits removed from dismantled U.S.
nuclear weapons, existing and recycled supplies would provide an almost unlimited amount of nuclear fuel.
"Nuclear power could also help reduce CO2 emissions from transportation," noted NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling
Burnett, co-author of the report. "For instance, running new light rail and subway systems on electricity generated by
nuclear plants - rather than coal or gas-fired power plants - would prevent new emissions."

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5. Other alternative renewable energy sources are failing – nuclear energy


is the most clean.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford
University, Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear
Power”, Foreign Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
Like the dream of controlled thermonuclear fusion, then, the reality of a world run on pristine energy generated from
renewables continues to recede, despite expensive, highly subsidized research and development. The 1997 U.S. federal
R&D investment per thousand kWh was only 5 cents for nuclear and coal, 58 cents for oil, and 41 cents for gas, but was $
4,769 for wind and $ 17,006 for photovoltaics. This massive public investment in renewables would have been better spent
making coal plants and automobiles cleaner. According to Robert Bradley of Houston's Institute for Energy Research, U.S.
conservation efforts and nonhydroelectric renewables have benefited from a cumulative 20-year taxpayer investment of some $
30 -- $ 40 billion -- "the largest governmental peacetime energy expenditure in U.S. history." And Bradley estimates that "the
$ 5.8 billion spent by the Department of Energy on wind and solar subsidies" alone could have paid for "replacing
between 5,000 and 10,000 MWe of the nation's dirtiest coal capacity with gas-fired combined-cycle units, which would
have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by between one-third and two-thirds." Replacing coal with nuclear generation
would have reduced overall emissions even more.

6. Renewables can’t solve alone – nuclear technology is needed to solve.

Steve Kerekes, senior director of media relations at the Nuclear Energy Institute, 11-9-07, “Nuclear
Power in Response to the Climate Change” http://www.cfr.org/publication
14718/nuclear_power_in_response_to_climate_change.html, [Crystal Xia]
I love it! Now Michael’s knock on nuclear energy is that it’s a “mature” technology—meaning not so much that it’s been
around for a while but that it’s actually generated huge amounts of emission-free electricity. Setting aside the fact that the sun
and the wind have been around since, say, the dawn of time, here’s what the Cato Institute—no friend of government
investment in nuclear energy—revealed in a January 2002 “Policy Analysis”: “R&D dollars have not handicapped renewable
energy technologies. Over the past 20 years, those technologies have received (in inflation-adjusted 1996 dollars) $24.2 billion
in federal R&D subsidies, while nuclear energy has received $20.1 billion and fossil fuels only $15.5 billion.” So it’s a
complete myth that Michael’s preferred technologies haven’t gotten the money. They have. In fact, nuclear and renewables
make a nice, emission-free combination. Of course, renewables cannot meet baseload, 24-hour a day, seven-day a week
electricity demand. Nuclear power can. Our industry average capacity factor—which measures actual electricity production
relative to theoretical production non-stop for a full year—has been right around 90 percent for the past seven years. By
comparison, the Department of Energy pegs the average capacity for state-of-the-art wind projects at 36 percent, with older
projects lagging at 30 percent or lower. I agree that it’s prudent to use limited resources wisely. Yet the investment resources
for energy technologies aren’t as limited as Michael thinks. Morgan Stanley Vice Chairman Jeffrey Holzschuh has a
presentation in which he notes that the U.S. utility industry investment needs for the next thirteen years total about $1 trillion.
Of that total infrastructure need, $350 billion, or $23 billion per year, is needed for electric-generating facilities. Of that sum,
the capital required to build an additional 15,000-20,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity over the next fifteen years is
about $3.5 billion per year. Meanwhile, over the past five years, the investment capital raised by the U.S. power industry has
ranged between $50 billion and $79 billion annually. In other words, new nuclear plant construction will barely make a
dent in the ability of U.S. capital markets to finance new energy projects. This is not an “either-or” scenario. We need
all these emission-free energy technologies. The fact that nuclear energy has proven its value as a reliable, affordable
source of clean energy is cause for hope.

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2AC: Alternative Energy–Biofuel


The environmental problems can’t be cured by Green supported energy, like
biofuels. Nuclear energy is the only sensible source.

James Lovelock, creator of Gaia hypothesis (Earth is self-regulating organism) and member of EFN
(Association of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy), 3-21-05, Speech by James Lovelock to the International
Conference in Paris, Nuclear Energy for the 21st Century, http://www.jameslovelock.org/page12.html [Jiajia
Huang]
It seems probable that we face huge environmental disturbances as this century evolves. Of course, there are no certainties
about the future, only probabilities; there might be a series of large volcanoes interrupting that sequence, or the United States
might act by putting up space mounted sunshades in heliocentric orbits. Either way by now the almost irreversible temperature
rise might be averted. But to continue with business as usual and expect that something or other will save us is as unwise as it
would be for a heavy smoker to assume that good genes or good luck would save him from its consequences.
I speak to you today as a scientist and as the originator of Gaia Theory, the earth's system science which describes a self
regulating planet which keeps its temperature and its chemical composition always favourable for life. I care deeply about the
natural world, but as a scientist I consider that the earth has now reached a state profoundly dangerous to all of us and to
our civilisation. And this view is shared by scientists around the world. Unfortunately, governments, especially in Europe,
appear to listen less to scientists than they do to Green political parties and to Green lobbies. Now, I am a green myself, so
I know that these greens are well intentioned, but they understand people a lot better than they understand the earth, and
consequently they recommend inappropriate remedies and action.
The outcome is almost as bad as if the medieval plague returned in deadly form and we were earnestly being advised to stop it
with alternative not scientific medicine. Alternative medicine has its place, and when we are healthy it is good to avoid strong
drugs for minor ailments, and many find relief in acupuncture or homeopathy. But, when we are seriously ill, we need
something stronger.
Now that we've made the earth sick it won't be cured by alternative Green remedies like wind turbines or biofuels, and this
is why I recommend the appropriate medicine of nuclear energy as a part of a sensible portfolio of energy sources.

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Biomass energy sources are inefficient, dangerous to the environment, and


costly.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia] (not much about biomass, but also solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal)
RENEWABLE SOURCES of energy -- hydroelectric, solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass -- have high capital-
investment costs and significant, if usually unacknowledged, environmental consequences. Hydropower is not even a true
renewable, since dams eventually silt in. Most renewables collect extremely diluted energy, requiring large areas of land
and masses of collectors to concentrate. Manufacturing solar collectors, pouring concrete for fields of windmills, and
drowning many square miles of land behind dams cause damage and pollution. Photovoltaic cells used for solar collection are
large semiconductors; their manufacture produces highly toxic waste metals and solvents that require special technology for
disposal. A 1,000-MWe solar electric plant would generate 6,850 tonnes of hazardous waste from metals-processing alone over
a 30-year lifetime. A comparable solar thermal plant (using mirrors focused on a central tower) would require metals for
construction that would generate 435,000 tonnes of manufacturing waste, of which 16,300 tonnes would be contaminated with
lead and chromium and be considered hazardous. A global solar-energy system would consume at least 20 percent of the
world's known iron resources. It would require a century to build and a substantial fraction of annual world iron production to
maintain. The energy necessary to manufacture sufficient solar collectors to cover a half-million square miles of the earth's
surface and to deliver the electricity through long-distance transmission systems would itself add grievously to the global
burden of pollution and greenhouse gas. A global solar-energy system without fossil or nuclear backup would also be
dangerously vulnerable to drops in solar radiation from volcanic events such as the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, which caused
widespread crop failure during the "year without a summer" that followed. Wind farms, besides requiring millions of pounds of
concrete and steel to build (and thus creating huge amounts of waste materials), are inefficient, with low (because intermittent)
capacity. They also cause visual and noise pollution and are mighty slayers of birds. Several hundred birds of prey, including
dozens of golden eagles, are killed every year by a single California wind farm; more eagles have been killed by wind turbines
than were lost in the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill. The National Audubon Society has launched a campaign to save the
California condor from a proposed wind farm to be built north of Los Angeles. A wind farm equivalent in output and capacity
to a 1,000-MWe fossil-fuel or nuclear plant would occupy 2,000 square miles of land and, even with substantial subsidies and
ignoring hidden pollution costs, would produce electricity at double or triple the cost of fossil fuels. Although at least one-
quarter of the world's potential for hydropower has already been developed, hydroelectric power -- produced by dams that
submerge large areas of land, displace rural populations, change river ecology, kill fish, and risk catastrophic collapse -- has
understandably lost the backing of environmentalists in recent years. The U.S. Export-Import Bank was responding in part to
environmental lobbying when it denied funding to China's 18,000-MWe Three Gorges project. Meanwhile, geothermal sources
-- which exploit the internal heat of the earth emerging in geyser areas or under volcanoes -- are inherently limited and often
coincide with scenic sites (such as Yellowstone National Park) that conservationists understandably want to preserve.

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2AC: Alternative Energy–Geothermal


Geothermal energy sources are inefficient, dangerous to the environment, and
costly.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia] (also solar, wind, hydroelectric)
RENEWABLE SOURCES of energy -- hydroelectric, solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass -- have high capital-
investment costs and significant, if usually unacknowledged, environmental consequences. Hydropower is not even a true
renewable, since dams eventually silt in. Most renewables collect extremely diluted energy, requiring large areas of land and
masses of collectors to concentrate. Manufacturing solar collectors, pouring concrete for fields of windmills, and drowning
many square miles of land behind dams cause damage and pollution. Photovoltaic cells used for solar collection are large
semiconductors; their manufacture produces highly toxic waste metals and solvents that require special technology for
disposal. A 1,000-MWe solar electric plant would generate 6,850 tonnes of hazardous waste from metals-processing alone over
a 30-year lifetime. A comparable solar thermal plant (using mirrors focused on a central tower) would require metals for
construction that would generate 435,000 tonnes of manufacturing waste, of which 16,300 tonnes would be contaminated with
lead and chromium and be considered hazardous. A global solar-energy system would consume at least 20 percent of the
world's known iron resources. It would require a century to build and a substantial fraction of annual world iron production
to maintain. The energy necessary to manufacture sufficient solar collectors to cover a half-million square miles of the earth's
surface and to deliver the electricity through long-distance transmission systems would itself add grievously to the global
burden of pollution and greenhouse gas. A global solar-energy system without fossil or nuclear backup would also be
dangerously vulnerable to drops in solar radiation from volcanic events such as the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, which
caused widespread crop failure during the "year without a summer" that followed. Wind farms, besides requiring millions of
pounds of concrete and steel to build (and thus creating huge amounts of waste materials), are inefficient, with low (because
intermittent) capacity. They also cause visual and noise pollution and are mighty slayers of birds. Several hundred birds of
prey, including dozens of golden eagles, are killed every year by a single California wind farm; more eagles have been killed
by wind turbines than were lost in the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill. The National Audubon Society has launched a
campaign to save the California condor from a proposed wind farm to be built north of Los Angeles. A wind farm equivalent
in output and capacity to a 1,000-MWe fossil-fuel or nuclear plant would occupy 2,000 square miles of land and, even
with substantial subsidies and ignoring hidden pollution costs, would produce electricity at double or triple the cost of fossil
fuels. Although at least one-quarter of the world's potential for hydropower has already been developed, hydroelectric power
-- produced by dams that submerge large areas of land, displace rural populations, change river ecology, kill fish, and risk
catastrophic collapse -- has understandably lost the backing of environmentalists in recent years. The U.S. Export-Import
Bank was responding in part to environmental lobbying when it denied funding to China's 18,000-MWe Three Gorges project.
Meanwhile, geothermal sources -- which exploit the internal heat of the earth emerging in geyser areas or under volcanoes --
are inherently limited and often coincide with scenic sites (such as Yellowstone National Park) that conservationists
understandably want to preserve.

98
Nuclear Energy AFF
DDI 2008 Kernoff-Olney

2AC: Alternative Energy–Hydroelectric


Hydroelectric sources of energy are inefficient, dangerous to the environment,
and costly.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
RENEWABLE SOURCES of energy -- hydroelectric, solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass -- have high capital-investment
costs and significant, if usually unacknowledged, environmental consequences. Hydropower is not even a true renewable,
since dams eventually silt in. Most renewables collect extremely diluted energy, requiring large areas of land and masses of
collectors to concentrate. Manufacturing solar collectors, pouring concrete for fields of windmills, and drowning many square
miles of land behind dams cause damage and pollution. Photovoltaic cells used for solar collection are large semiconductors;
their manufacture produces highly toxic waste metals and solvents that require special technology for disposal. A 1,000-MWe
solar electric plant would generate 6,850 tonnes of hazardous waste from metals-processing alone over a 30-year lifetime. A
comparable solar thermal plant (using mirrors focused on a central tower) would require metals for construction that would
generate 435,000 tonnes of manufacturing waste, of which 16,300 tonnes would be contaminated with lead and chromium and
be considered hazardous. A global solar-energy system would consume at least 20 percent of the world's known iron
resources. It would require a century to build and a substantial fraction of annual world iron production to maintain. The
energy necessary to manufacture sufficient solar collectors to cover a half-million square miles of the earth's surface and to
deliver the electricity through long-distance transmission systems would itself add grievously to the global burden of pollution
and greenhouse gas. A global solar-energy system without fossil or nuclear backup would also be dangerously vulnerable
to drops in solar radiation from volcanic events such as the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, which caused widespread crop failure
during the "year without a summer" that followed. Wind farms, besides requiring millions of pounds of concrete and steel
to build (and thus creating huge amounts of waste materials), are inefficient, with low (because intermittent) capacity. They
also cause visual and noise pollution and are mighty slayers of birds. Several hundred birds of prey, including dozens of
golden eagles, are killed every year by a single California wind farm; more eagles have been killed by wind turbines than were
lost in the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill. The National Audubon Society has launched a campaign to save the California
condor from a proposed wind farm to be built north of Los Angeles. A wind farm equivalent in output and capacity to a
1,000-MWe fossil-fuel or nuclear plant would occupy 2,000 square miles of land and, even with substantial subsidies and
ignoring hidden pollution costs, would produce electricity at double or triple the cost of fossil fuels. Although at least one-
quarter of the world's potential for hydropower has already been developed, hydroelectric power -- produced by dams that
submerge large areas of land, displace rural populations, change river ecology, kill fish, and risk catastrophic collapse -- has
understandably lost the backing of environmentalists in recent years. The U.S. Export-Import Bank was responding in part
to environmental lobbying when it denied funding to China's 18,000-MWe Three Gorges project. Meanwhile, geothermal
sources -- which exploit the internal heat of the earth emerging in geyser areas or under volcanoes -- are inherently limited
and often coincide with scenic sites (such as Yellowstone National Park) that conservationists understandably want to
preserve.

99
Nuclear Energy AFF
DDI 2008 Kernoff-Olney

2AC: Alternative Energy–Solar


Nuclear technology is safer and cleaner than all others – solar energy is worse
than nuclear.

Jack Spencer, research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, 10-29-07, “Nuclear
energy deceivers”, Washington Post, http://www.heritage.org/Press/ Commentary/ed103007a.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
They don't seem to realize that things have changed since the old No-Nuke movement packed up its placards. Today, the
nuclear industry's safety, environmental and economic record ranks among the best in the energy (or any other)
industry. In an effort to devalue nuclear power's environmental advantages, Mr. Browne's warriors include the pollutants and
CO2 released during the construction and fueling process in their evaluation, without fully acknowledging that other energy
sources have similar impacts. No apples-to-apples comparisons for this crowd. For example, 2 million tons of concrete, about
double what a nuclear plant requires, must be produced and delivered to anchor enough windmills to match one nuclear plant's
energy production. Just producing this concrete emits the CO2 equivalent of flying a Boeing 747 from New York to London
450 times. Carbon-free fairies do not magically drop windmills onto mountaintops. Every windmill or solar panel started as
a raw material that was mined, transported and manufactured using fossil fuel. We live in a fossil-fuel based society.
CO2 is released by almost any activity, whether building a windmill or a nuclear power plant. Ultimately, however, nuclear
technology provides the world an opportunity to make its energy profile less fossil-fuel-centric.

100
Nuclear Energy AFF
DDI 2008 Kernoff-Olney

Nuclear energy is safe and reduces CO2 emissions, and is more efficient than
solar power.

C.T. Carley, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at Mississippi State University, 4-29-08,
Commercial Appeal, “Nuclear power benefits outweigh past fears,”
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/apr/29/guest-column-nuclear-power-benefits-outweigh/
[Jiajia Huang]
If you need someone smart on your policy-making team, who better than Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal
Reserve Bank? On both economics and grand strategy, Greenspan has few equals.
Greenspan was recently asked to speak at an energy conference in Houston attended by oil company executives from around
the world. One of the points he made was that nuclear energy is part of a strategy aimed at reducing our dependence on
imported oil that he would recommend to the next president.
Greenspan's solution to breaking our nation's reliance on foreign oil includes market adoption of electric plug-in vehicles along
with the infrastructure to power them. He was asked how plug-in vehicles should be fueled. His answer: "No question about
it -- nuclear power."
Acknowledging that nuclear power has some political hurdles to clear, Greenspan said that our country must continue to work
toward a successful program for spent-fuel management, but he believes it is a "resolvable problem."
"The French seem have to taken care of it," he said, "... and we can too."
France obtains 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power and is building more nuclear plants. But instead of storing spent
fuel at nuclear plant sites, as we do in the United States, France makes use of the spent fuel's valuable uranium and plutonium,
recycling those nuclear materials into new reactor fuel that's used to produce more electricity.
Such recycling, which is also called reprocessing, extends uranium supplies and greatly reduces the amount of high-level
radioactive waste that needs to be permanently disposed of in an underground repository.
The United States once recycled spent fuel but President Carter banned the practice in 1977 on the grounds that plutonium
from recycling could be diverted and used to make nuclear weapons. But recycling can be done safely and securely, as
France and Great Britain have demonstrated. There's no good reason not to revive it in the United States.
In his recent book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," Greenspan writes that nuclear energy is an
"obvious alternative" to coal in electric power generation. Coal-fired power plants in the United States load the
atmosphere each year with more than 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas linked to global
warming. By contrast, nuclear plants emit no carbon dioxide and account for about 70 percent of the clean power
generation in the United States.
"Given the steps that have been taken over the years to make nuclear energy safer and the obvious environmental
advantages it offers in reducing carbon dioxide emissions," Greenspan writes in his book, "there is no longer a persuasive
case against increasing nuclear power generation at the expense of coal."
"Nuclear power is a major means to combat global warming, " Greenspan writes. "Its use should be avoided only if it
constitutes a threat to life expectancy that outweighs the gains it can give us. By that criterion, I believe we significantly
under-use nuclear power."
No one disputes that, especially here in the Southeast, we need more base-load electricity to replace aging power plants and
meet the growing demand for power. Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power are relatively benign
environmentally, but they can't provide the large amount of electricity required for our daily needs. This is a reality that
those seeking passage of a climate bill are going to have to wake up to. The new administration should heed Alan Greenspan's
advice on nuclear power.

101
Nuclear Energy AFF
DDI 2008 Kernoff-Olney

Nuclear energy is the safest source of energy, and is better than solar power,
and is even less radioactive than coal ash.

Peter Geddes, Executive Vice President of FREE, 3-02-05, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, “Nuclear Power: The
Green Alternative,” http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=440 [Jiajia Huang]
The International Energy Agency projects 65 percent growth in world energy demand by 2020. Two questions pop up: How
will we meet this energy demand and what are the environmental consequences of our choices?
When we consider these issues we confront three vexing realities. First, fossil fuels (i.e., oil and coal) are our cheapest, most
available sources of energy. The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with 25 percent of the world’s reserves, double those of the
next largest source, China.
Second, billions of the earth's poorest are just climbing out of desperate poverty. Affordable energy is essential to their
successful escape… and they know it.
Third, burning fossil fuels causes air pollution and contributes to climate change.
Can we provide affordable and reliable energy for the world’s least fortunate, while simultaneously combating global
warming?
What about renewable energy, like solar? A Bozeman friend grins whenever the energy from his residential solar array causes
his electric meter to spin backward. For him, electricity prices can’t go too high.
Solar has great potential, especially for remote, off-the-grid applications. And passive solar construction ought to be a
standard design feature in the Northern Rockies, where winters are long, cold, and sunny. But high initial costs and long
payback times will limit solar’s widespread adoption for power generation. Wind and tidal power have similarly limited
applications. I’m afraid we confuse hopes with realistic expectations if we believe that wind, solar, or tidal power will
soon meet our base load energy demands.
In contrast, coal is cheap and abundant. In the U.S. it generates 52 percent of our electricity. Its share of our energy portfolio
will surely increase. Changing this future is especially difficult. In addition to its abundance and low price, coal has a powerful
political constituency.
China consumes almost half the world’s coal production, using it to supply 75 percent of its annual energy demand. In
addition to emitting CO2, coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. Coal ash is radioactive. A typical coal-fired power plant
releases about l00 times as much radioactivity as a comparable nuclear plant. Toxic heavy metals such as mercury are
particularly nasty byproducts.
Mercury falls downwind on land and into the oceans. It becomes toxic as methylmercury. It moves up the food chain,
eventually accumulating in the fat cells of fish. As a result, pregnant and nursing mothers who eat large amounts of salmon and
tuna can expose their children to mercury poisoning.
Because of our stack scrubbers, the U.S. produces only 1 percent of non-natural global mercury emissions. China accounts for
25 percent. No serious person believes the Chinese will place the world’s environmental and health concerns above their own
economic interests.
All energy production has environmental impacts. For example, wind farms cause visual and noise pollution and kill
birds. Our choices involve trading off among imperfect alternatives.
Is it time we rethink opposition to nuclear power? James Lovelock, promoter of the Gaia hypothesis, believes so. He
writes: “Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and
the media.… [N]uclear energy… has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute
statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. I entreat my friends… to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear
energy.”
France generates 79 percent of its electricity from nuclear power; Belgium, 60 percent; Sweden, 42 percent; Switzerland, 39
percent; Spain, 37 percent; Japan, 34 percent; the United Kingdom, 21 percent; and the United States, 20 percent. With 434
operating reactors worldwide, nuclear power meets the annual electrical needs of more than a billion people.
If we move forward with nuclear power we’ll need to address many challenges. They include safely disposing of radioactive
waste (a political more than a technical problem), the high cost of nuclear power (currently it can’t compete with coal), and
security. As we see with Pakistan and North Korea, proliferation is real.
Of course, nuclear power is not 100 percent safe. Nothing is. But the relevant fact is that nuclear power is safer, and
more environmentally friendly, than any feasible alternative.

102
Nuclear Energy AFF
DDI 2008 Kernoff-Olney

Nuclear power has the best safety, environmental, and economic record,
outcompeting solar, and fossil fuel powers.

Jack Spencer, 10-29-07, research fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies. October
29, 2007, Heritage Foundation, “Nuclear energy deceivers,”
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed103007a.cfm [Jiajia Huang]
On Oct. 23, a group led by singers Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and Bonnie Raitt delivered a petition to the Senate
denouncing nuclear energy. Their spurious arguments are off-key to say the least. They confuse nuclear weapons with
nuclear energy, claim non-existent dangers, and misrepresent nuclear power's economics. Otherwise, it was quite a show.
Mr. Browne and Co. masquerade as environmentalists, pushing what they describe as environmental justice. But their agenda
would deny Americans, especially the poorest Americans, access to one of the cleanest, most secure and economically stable
sources of energy available today.
They don't seem to realize that things have changed since the old No-Nuke movement packed up its placards. Today, the
nuclear industry's safety, environmental and economic record ranks among the best in the energy (or any other)
industry.
In an effort to devalue nuclear power's environmental advantages, Mr. Browne's warriors include the pollutants and CO2
released during the construction and fueling process in their evaluation, without fully acknowledging that other energy sources
have similar impacts. No apples-to-apples comparisons for this crowd.
For example, 2 million tons of concrete, about double what a nuclear plant requires, must be produced and delivered to
anchor enough windmills to match one nuclear plant's energy production. Just producing this concrete emits the CO2
equivalent of flying a Boeing 747 from New York to London 450 times.
Carbon-free fairies do not magically drop windmills onto mountaintops. Every windmill or solar panel started as a raw
material that was mined, transported and manufactured using fossil fuel.
We live in a fossil-fuel based society. CO2 is released by almost any activity, whether building a windmill or a nuclear
power plant. Ultimately, however, nuclear technology provides the world an opportunity to make its energy profile less
fossil-fuel-centric.
The new No-Nuke crowd then warns of the ripe targets that nuclear plants provide terrorists. Really? Now Jackson Browne is a
terrorism expert? But his credibility is, we must say, "Running on Empty." Nuclear plants were among the nation's most
protected assets before September 11, 2001, and have had numerous security upgrades since. But none of the world's
443 nuclear power plants have been attacked. Why?
Simply put, they're not easy targets. Nuclear plants are built to withstand airplane impacts, are heavily guarded and are
under constant review. If risks are discovered, the answer is to fix the problem, not shut down the industry.
But what about the disposal of nuclear waste, the No-Nukers ask? Actually, industry solved that problem decades ago.
Spent fuel is removed from the reactor. The reusable portion is recycled by separating it and re-using it; the remainder is
placed in either interim or long-term storage, in remote locations such as Yucca Mountain. Other countries, including France,
safely do this every day. Politicians and bad public policy prevent it from occurring in the U.S.
Waste transportation is another favorite target. The truth is that nuclear waste has been transported on roads and railways
worldwide for years without incident. Indeed, more than 20 million waste packages are transported globally each year, and
more than 20,000 shipments have traveled some 18 million miles since 1971. It's just not a problem.
The No-Nukers argue that nuclear power is bad economics. Back in the 1970s, they successfully drove the costs of
nuclear power up by forcing delays and instigating superfluous regulation. Though affordable, nuclear power is as
expensive as it is today because of that success, not because the technology is uncompetitive.
The situation is much different today. Streamlined regulation, better designs and greater efficiency make the economics of
today's nuclear plants much more predictable. Nuclear energy is among the least expensive energy sources today. Indeed,
numerous studies have shown that new nuclear power is very competitive in a carbon-constrained economy.
The anti-nuke crowd already nearly killed the nuclear industry once, and America is paying for it today with higher
energy prices. This time the stakes are higher and consequences are greater. Sadly, the environment and the poorest
Americans will be hardest hit if they succeed. Nuclear energy is the only realistic and affordable option if we hope to cap
CO2.

2AC: Alternative Energy–Waves


Nuclear energy is the safest source of energy, and is better than and tidal
power, and even less radioactive than coal ash.
103
Nuclear Energy AFF
DDI 2008 Kernoff-Olney

Peter Geddes, Executive Vice President of FREE, 3-02-05, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, “Nuclear Power: The
Green Alternative,” http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=440 [Jiajia Huang]
The International Energy Agency projects 65 percent growth in world energy demand by 2020. Two questions pop up: How
will we meet this energy demand and what are the environmental consequences of our choices?
When we consider these issues we confront three vexing realities. First, fossil fuels (i.e., oil and coal) are our cheapest, most
available sources of energy. The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with 25 percent of the world’s reserves, double those of the
next largest source, China.
Second, billions of the earth's poorest are just climbing out of desperate poverty. Affordable energy is essential to their
successful escape… and they know it.
Third, burning fossil fuels causes air pollution and contributes to climate change.
Can we provide affordable and reliable energy for the world’s least fortunate, while simultaneously combating global
warming?
What about renewable energy, like solar? A Bozeman friend grins whenever the energy from his residential solar array causes
his electric meter to spin backward. For him, electricity prices can’t go too high.
Solar has great potential, especially for remote, off-the-grid applications. And passive solar construction ought to be a
standard design feature in the Northern Rockies, where winters are long, cold, and sunny. But high initial costs and long
payback times will limit solar’s widespread adoption for power generation. Wind and tidal power have similarly limited
applications. I’m afraid we confuse hopes with realistic expectations if we believe that wind, solar, or tidal power will
soon meet our base load energy demands.
In contrast, coal is cheap and abundant. In the U.S. it generates 52 percent of our electricity. Its share of our energy portfolio
will surely increase. Changing this future is especially difficult. In addition to its abundance and low price, coal has a powerful
political constituency.
China consumes almost half the world’s coal production, using it to supply 75 percent of its annual energy demand. In
addition to emitting CO2, coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. Coal ash is radioactive. A typical coal-fired power plant
releases about l00 times as much radioactivity as a comparable nuclear plant. Toxic heavy metals such as mercury are
particularly nasty byproducts.
Mercury falls downwind on land and into the oceans. It becomes toxic as methylmercury. It moves up the food chain,
eventually accumulating in the fat cells of fish. As a result, pregnant and nursing mothers who eat large amounts of salmon and
tuna can expose their children to mercury poisoning.
Because of our stack scrubbers, the U.S. produces only 1 percent of non-natural global mercury emissions. China accounts for
25 percent. No serious person believes the Chinese will place the world’s environmental and health concerns above their own
economic interests.
All energy production has environmental impacts. For example, wind farms cause visual and noise pollution and kill
birds. Our choices involve trading off among imperfect alternatives.
Is it time we rethink opposition to nuclear power? James Lovelock, promoter of the Gaia hypothesis, believes so. He
writes: “Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and
the media.… [N]uclear energy… has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute
statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. I entreat my friends… to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear
energy.”
France generates 79 percent of its electricity from nuclear power; Belgium, 60 percent; Sweden, 42 percent; Switzerland, 39
percent; Spain, 37 percent; Japan, 34 percent; the United Kingdom, 21 percent; and the United States, 20 percent. With 434
operating reactors worldwide, nuclear power meets the annual electrical needs of more than a billion people.
If we move forward with nuclear power we’ll need to address many challenges. They include safely disposing of radioactive
waste (a political more than a technical problem), the high cost of nuclear power (currently it can’t compete with coal), and
security. As we see with Pakistan and North Korea, proliferation is real.
Of course, nuclear power is not 100 percent safe. Nothing is. But the relevant fact is that nuclear power is safer, and
more environmentally friendly, than any feasible alternative.

104
Nuclear Energy AFF
DDI 2008 Kernoff-Olney

2AC: Alternative Energy–Wind


Nuclear technology is safer and cleaner than all others –wind power is worse
than nuclear.

Jack Spencer, research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, 10-29-07, “Nuclear
energy deceivers”, Washington Post, http://www.heritage.org/Press/ Commentary/ed103007a.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
They don't seem to realize that things have changed since the old No-Nuke movement packed up its placards. Today, the
nuclear industry's safety, environmental and economic record ranks among the best in the energy (or any other)
industry. In an effort to devalue nuclear power's environmental advantages, Mr. Browne's warriors include the pollutants and
CO2 released during the construction and fueling process in their evaluation, without fully acknowledging that other energy
sources have similar impacts. No apples-to-apples comparisons for this crowd. For example, 2 million tons of concrete, about
double what a nuclear plant requires, must be produced and delivered to anchor enough windmills to match one nuclear plant's
energy production. Just producing this concrete emits the CO2 equivalent of flying a Boeing 747 from New York to London
450 times. Carbon-free fairies do not magically drop windmills onto mountaintops. Every windmill or solar panel started as
a raw material that was mined, transported and manufactured using fossil fuel. We live in a fossil-fuel based society.
CO2 is released by almost any activity, whether building a windmill or a nuclear power plant. Ultimately, however, nuclear
technology provides the world an opportunity to make its energy profile less fossil-fuel-centric.

105
Nuclear Energy AFF
DDI 2008 Kernoff-Olney

Wind energy is inefficient, dangerous to the environment, and costly.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
RENEWABLE SOURCES of energy -- hydroelectric, solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass -- have high capital-investment
costs and significant, if usually unacknowledged, environmental consequences. Hydropower is not even a true renewable,
since dams eventually silt in. Most renewables collect extremely diluted energy, requiring large areas of land and masses of
collectors to concentrate. Manufacturing solar collectors, pouring concrete for fields of windmills, and drowning many square
miles of land behind dams cause damage and pollution. Photovoltaic cells used for solar collection are large semiconductors;
their manufacture produces highly toxic waste metals and solvents that require special technology for disposal. A 1,000-MWe
solar electric plant would generate 6,850 tonnes of hazardous waste from metals-processing alone over a 30-year lifetime. A
comparable solar thermal plant (using mirrors focused on a central tower) would require metals for construction that would
generate 435,000 tonnes of manufacturing waste, of which 16,300 tonnes would be contaminated with lead and chromium and
be considered hazardous. A global solar-energy system would consume at least 20 percent of the world's known iron
resources. It would require a century to build and a substantial fraction of annual world iron production to maintain. The
energy necessary to manufacture sufficient solar collectors to cover a half-million square miles of the earth's surface and to
deliver the electricity through long-distance transmission systems would itself add grievously to the global burden of pollution
and greenhouse gas. A global solar-energy system without fossil or nuclear backup would also be dangerously vulnerable
to drops in solar radiation from volcanic events such as the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, which caused widespread crop failure
during the "year without a summer" that followed. Wind farms, besides requiring millions of pounds of concrete and steel
to build (and thus creating huge amounts of waste materials), are inefficient, with low (because intermittent) capacity. They
also cause visual and noise pollution and are mighty slayers of birds. Several hundred birds of prey, including dozens of
golden eagles, are killed every year by a single California wind farm; more eagles have been killed by wind turbines than were
lost in the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill. The National Audubon Society has launched a campaign to save the California
condor from a proposed wind farm to be built north of Los Angeles. A wind farm equivalent in output and capacity to a
1,000-MWe fossil-fuel or nuclear plant would occupy 2,000 square miles of land and, even with substantial subsidies and
ignoring hidden pollution costs, would produce electricity at double or triple the cost of fossil fuels. Although at least one-
quarter of the world's potential for hydropower has already been developed, hydroelectric power -- produced by dams that
submerge large areas of land, displace rural populations, change river ecology, kill fish, and risk catastrophic collapse -- has
understandably lost the backing of environmentalists in recent years. The U.S. Export-Import Bank was responding in part
to environmental lobbying when it denied funding to China's 18,000-MWe Three Gorges project. Meanwhile, geothermal
sources -- which exploit the internal heat of the earth emerging in geyser areas or under volcanoes -- are inherently limited
and often coincide with scenic sites (such as Yellowstone National Park) that conservationists understandably want to
preserve.

106
Nuclear Energy AFF
DDI 2008 Kernoff-Olney

Nuclear energy is safe and reduces CO2 emissions, and is more efficient than
wind power.

C.T. Carley, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at Mississippi State University, 4-29-08,
Commercial Appeal, “Nuclear power benefits outweigh past fears,”
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/apr/29/guest-column-nuclear-power-benefits-outweigh/
[Jiajia Huang]
If you need someone smart on your policy-making team, who better than Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal
Reserve Bank? On both economics and grand strategy, Greenspan has few equals.
Greenspan was recently asked to speak at an energy conference in Houston attended by oil company executives from around
the world. One of the points he made was that nuclear energy is part of a strategy aimed at reducing our dependence on
imported oil that he would recommend to the next president.
Greenspan's solution to breaking our nation's reliance on foreign oil includes market adoption of electric plug-in vehicles along
with the infrastructure to power them. He was asked how plug-in vehicles should be fueled. His answer: "No question about
it -- nuclear power."
Acknowledging that nuclear power has some political hurdles to clear, Greenspan said that our country must continue to work
toward a successful program for spent-fuel management, but he believes it is a "resolvable problem."
"The French seem have to taken care of it," he said, "... and we can too."
France obtains 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power and is building more nuclear plants. But instead of storing spent
fuel at nuclear plant sites, as we do in the United States, France makes use of the spent fuel's valuable uranium and plutonium,
recycling those nuclear materials into new reactor fuel that's used to produce more electricity.
Such recycling, which is also called reprocessing, extends uranium supplies and greatly reduces the amount of high-level
radioactive waste that needs to be permanently disposed of in an underground repository.
The United States once recycled spent fuel but President Carter banned the practice in 1977 on the grounds that plutonium
from recycling could be diverted and used to make nuclear weapons. But recycling can be done safely and securely, as
France and Great Britain have demonstrated. There's no good reason not to revive it in the United States.
In his recent book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," Greenspan writes that nuclear energy is an
"obvious alternative" to coal in electric power generation. Coal-fired power plants in the United States load the
atmosphere each year with more than 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas linked to global
warming. By contrast, nuclear plants emit no carbon dioxide and account for about 70 percent of the clean power
generation in the United States.
"Given the steps that have been taken over the years to make nuclear energy safer and the obvious environmental
advantages it offers in reducing carbon dioxide emissions," Greenspan writes in his book, "there is no longer a persuasive
case against increasing nuclear power generation at the expense of coal."
"Nuclear power is a major means to combat global warming, " Greenspan writes. "Its use should be avoided only if it
constitutes a threat to life expectancy that outweighs the gains it can give us. By that criterion, I believe we significantly
under-use nuclear power."
No one disputes that, especially here in the Southeast, we need more base-load electricity to replace aging power plants and
meet the growing demand for power. Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power are relatively benign
environmentally, but they can't provide the large amount of electricity required for our daily needs. This is a reality that
those seeking passage of a climate bill are going to have to wake up to. The new administration should heed Alan Greenspan's
advice on nuclear power.

107
Nuclear Energy AFF
DDI 2008 Kernoff-Olney

Nuclear energy is the safest source of energy, and is better than wind power
and even less radioactive than coal ash.

Peter Geddes, Executive Vice President of FREE, 3-02-05, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, “Nuclear Power: The
Green Alternative,” http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=440 [Jiajia Huang]
The International Energy Agency projects 65 percent growth in world energy demand by 2020. Two questions pop up: How
will we meet this energy demand and what are the environmental consequences of our choices?
When we consider these issues we confront three vexing realities. First, fossil fuels (i.e., oil and coal) are our cheapest, most
available sources of energy. The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with 25 percent of the world’s reserves, double those of the
next largest source, China.
Second, billions of the earth's poorest are just climbing out of desperate poverty. Affordable energy is essential to their
successful escape… and they know it.
Third, burning fossil fuels causes air pollution and contributes to climate change.
Can we provide affordable and reliable energy for the world’s least fortunate, while simultaneously combating global
warming?
What about renewable energy, like solar? A Bozeman friend grins whenever the energy from his residential solar array causes
his electric meter to spin backward. For him, electricity prices can’t go too high.
Solar has great potential, especially for remote, off-the-grid applications. And passive solar construction ought to be a
standard design feature in the Northern Rockies, where winters are long, cold, and sunny. But high initial costs and long
payback times will limit solar’s widespread adoption for power generation. Wind and tidal power have similarly limited
applications. I’m afraid we confuse hopes with realistic expectations if we believe that wind, solar, or tidal power will
soon meet our base load energy demands.
In contrast, coal is cheap and abundant. In the U.S. it generates 52 percent of our electricity. Its share of our energy portfolio
will surely increase. Changing this future is especially difficult. In addition to its abundance and low price, coal has a powerful
political constituency.
China consumes almost half the world’s coal production, using it to supply 75 percent of its annual energy demand. In
addition to emitting CO2, coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. Coal ash is radioactive. A typical coal-fired power plant
releases about l00 times as much radioactivity as a comparable nuclear plant. Toxic heavy metals such as mercury are
particularly nasty byproducts.
Mercury falls downwind on land and into the oceans. It becomes toxic as methylmercury. It moves up the food chain,
eventually accumulating in the fat cells of fish. As a result, pregnant and nursing mothers who eat large amounts of salmon and
tuna can expose their children to mercury poisoning.
Because of our stack scrubbers, the U.S. produces only 1 percent of non-natural global mercury emissions. China accounts for
25 percent. No serious person believes the Chinese will place the world’s environmental and health concerns above their own
economic interests.
All energy production has environmental impacts. For example, wind farms cause visual and noise pollution and kill
birds. Our choices involve trading off among imperfect alternatives.
Is it time we rethink opposition to nuclear power? James Lovelock, promoter of the Gaia hypothesis, believes so. He
writes: “Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and
the media.… [N]uclear energy… has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute
statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. I entreat my friends… to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear
energy.”
France generates 79 percent of its electricity from nuclear power; Belgium, 60 percent; Sweden, 42 percent; Switzerland, 39
percent; Spain, 37 percent; Japan, 34 percent; the United Kingdom, 21 percent; and the United States, 20 percent. With 434
operating reactors worldwide, nuclear power meets the annual electrical needs of more than a billion people.
If we move forward with nuclear power we’ll need to address many challenges. They include safely disposing of radioactive
waste (a political more than a technical problem), the high cost of nuclear power (currently it can’t compete with coal), and
security. As we see with Pakistan and North Korea, proliferation is real.
Of course, nuclear power is not 100 percent safe. Nothing is. But the relevant fact is that nuclear power is safer, and
more environmentally friendly, than any feasible alternative.

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Nuclear power has the best safety, environmental, and economic record,
outcompeting wind power.

Jack Spencer, 10-29-07, research fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies. October
29, 2007, Heritage Foundation, “Nuclear energy deceivers,”
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed103007a.cfm [Jiajia Huang]
On Oct. 23, a group led by singers Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and Bonnie Raitt delivered a petition to the Senate
denouncing nuclear energy. Their spurious arguments are off-key to say the least. They confuse nuclear weapons with
nuclear energy, claim non-existent dangers, and misrepresent nuclear power's economics. Otherwise, it was quite a show.
Mr. Browne and Co. masquerade as environmentalists, pushing what they describe as environmental justice. But their agenda
would deny Americans, especially the poorest Americans, access to one of the cleanest, most secure and economically stable
sources of energy available today.
They don't seem to realize that things have changed since the old No-Nuke movement packed up its placards. Today, the
nuclear industry's safety, environmental and economic record ranks among the best in the energy (or any other)
industry.
In an effort to devalue nuclear power's environmental advantages, Mr. Browne's warriors include the pollutants and CO2
released during the construction and fueling process in their evaluation, without fully acknowledging that other energy sources
have similar impacts. No apples-to-apples comparisons for this crowd.
For example, 2 million tons of concrete, about double what a nuclear plant requires, must be produced and delivered to
anchor enough windmills to match one nuclear plant's energy production. Just producing this concrete emits the CO2
equivalent of flying a Boeing 747 from New York to London 450 times.
Carbon-free fairies do not magically drop windmills onto mountaintops. Every windmill or solar panel started as a raw
material that was mined, transported and manufactured using fossil fuel.
We live in a fossil-fuel based society. CO2 is released by almost any activity, whether building a windmill or a nuclear
power plant. Ultimately, however, nuclear technology provides the world an opportunity to make its energy profile less
fossil-fuel-centric.
The new No-Nuke crowd then warns of the ripe targets that nuclear plants provide terrorists. Really? Now Jackson Browne is a
terrorism expert? But his credibility is, we must say, "Running on Empty." Nuclear plants were among the nation's most
protected assets before September 11, 2001, and have had numerous security upgrades since. But none of the world's
443 nuclear power plants have been attacked. Why?
Simply put, they're not easy targets. Nuclear plants are built to withstand airplane impacts, are heavily guarded and are
under constant review. If risks are discovered, the answer is to fix the problem, not shut down the industry.
But what about the disposal of nuclear waste, the No-Nukers ask? Actually, industry solved that problem decades ago.
Spent fuel is removed from the reactor. The reusable portion is recycled by separating it and re-using it; the remainder is
placed in either interim or long-term storage, in remote locations such as Yucca Mountain. Other countries, including France,
safely do this every day. Politicians and bad public policy prevent it from occurring in the U.S.
Waste transportation is another favorite target. The truth is that nuclear waste has been transported on roads and railways
worldwide for years without incident. Indeed, more than 20 million waste packages are transported globally each year, and
more than 20,000 shipments have traveled some 18 million miles since 1971. It's just not a problem.
The No-Nukers argue that nuclear power is bad economics. Back in the 1970s, they successfully drove the costs of
nuclear power up by forcing delays and instigating superfluous regulation. Though affordable, nuclear power is as
expensive as it is today because of that success, not because the technology is uncompetitive.
The situation is much different today. Streamlined regulation, better designs and greater efficiency make the economics of
today's nuclear plants much more predictable. Nuclear energy is among the least expensive energy sources today. Indeed,
numerous studies have shown that new nuclear power is very competitive in a carbon-constrained economy.
The anti-nuke crowd already nearly killed the nuclear industry once, and America is paying for it today with higher
energy prices. This time the stakes are higher and consequences are greater. Sadly, the environment and the poorest
Americans will be hardest hit if they succeed. Nuclear energy is the only realistic and affordable option if we hope to cap
CO2.
The environmental problems can’t be cured by Green supported powers, like
wind. Nuclear energy is the only sensible energy source.

James Lovelock, creator of Gaia hypothesis (Earth is self-regulating organism) and member of EFN
(Association of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy), 3-21-05, Speech by James Lovelock to the International
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Conference in Paris, Nuclear Energy for the 21st Century, http://www.jameslovelock.org/page12.html [Jiajia
Huang]
It seems probable that we face huge environmental disturbances as this century evolves. Of course, there are no certainties
about the future, only probabilities; there might be a series of large volcanoes interrupting that sequence, or the United States
might act by putting up space mounted sunshades in heliocentric orbits. Either way by now the almost irreversible temperature
rise might be averted. But to continue with business as usual and expect that something or other will save us is as unwise as it
would be for a heavy smoker to assume that good genes or good luck would save him from its consequences.
I speak to you today as a scientist and as the originator of Gaia Theory, the earth's system science which describes a self
regulating planet which keeps its temperature and its chemical composition always favourable for life. I care deeply about the
natural world, but as a scientist I consider that the earth has now reached a state profoundly dangerous to all of us and to
our civilisation. And this view is shared by scientists around the world. Unfortunately, governments, especially in
Europe, appear to listen less to scientists than they do to Green political parties and to Green lobbies. Now, I am a green
myself, so I know that these greens are well intentioned, but they understand people a lot better than they understand the
earth, and consequently they recommend inappropriate remedies and action.
The outcome is almost as bad as if the medieval plague returned in deadly form and we were earnestly being advised to stop it
with alternative not scientific medicine. Alternative medicine has its place, and when we are healthy it is good to avoid strong
drugs for minor ailments, and many find relief in acupuncture or homeopathy. But, when we are seriously ill, we need
something stronger.
Now that we've made the earth sick it won't be cured by alternative Green remedies like wind turbines or biofuels, and
this is why I recommend the appropriate medicine of nuclear energy as a part of a sensible portfolio of energy sources.

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2AC: Coal DA–Uniqueness


1. The coal industry is already declining.

Seth Dunn and Michael Renner, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2K, Sectoral Economic Costs
and Benefits of GHG Mitigation, http://arch.rivm.nl/env/int/ipcc/images/Sect_Proc_complete.pdf#page=80 [Liz
Lusk]
One obstacle to implementing climate policy has been the opposition of labor unions concerned about potential
membership losses. The AFL-CIO Executive Council, for example, issued a statement in February 1999 reaffirming its
position to the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that it “could have a devastating impact on the U.S. economy and American workers.”
But even in the absence of climate policy, the number of jobs in many of these industries is already declining, often even
as output continues to rise. Avoiding or postponing an environmental policy will do little to save these jobs; workers may be
better served by participating constructively in climate mitigation debates.
The coal sector is a case in point, although similar stories could be told about oil refining, utilities, and energy-intensive
industries such as primary metals and steel. Around the world, the coal industry’s shrinking profits and growing deficits are
leading to cost-cutting practices that translate into lower prices but also fewer jobs. This trend could well continue:
world coal consumption has fallen 5.3 percent since 1997, and is now at its lowest point since 1987. (See Figure 3.)
Like other sunset industries, the coal sector is increasingly characterized by bigger and fewer companies, larger
equipment, and less labor-intensive operations. Worldwide, it is estimated that only about 10 million jobs remain,
accounting for just one third of 1 percent of the global work force. In the United States, coal production increased 35 percent
between 1980 and 1998, but coal mining employment declined 63 percent, from 242,000 to 90,000 workers. (See Figure 4.)

2. New coal plants are being denied by environmentally conscious state


governments.

Jerald Schnoor, Editor of Environmental Science & Technology, 1-1-08, No New Coal [Liz Lusk]
The tide of opinion seems to be turning at the state level. Texas, Florida, and Minnesota have all denied permits for new
coal-fired power plants in recent months. Most surprisingly, the conservative state of Kansas and the Kansas Department
of Health and Environment rejected plans to build two 700 MW coal-fired power plants on the basis of the threat to
public health and the environment. Inspired by the 2007 Supreme Court verdict that CO2 is a pollutant that can be
regulated under the Clean Air Act, Kansas is now the vanguard of coal deniers. Amazingly, the Supreme Court’s decision
is having a large impact even before the U.S. EPA promulgates its rules on how to regulate CO2.

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2AC: Coal DA–Impact Turn


1. Coal contributes greatly to the dangerous acceleration of global warming.

Brett Clark, doctorate student at University of Oregon, 04, Organization Environment [Liz Lusk]
Historically, the burning of coal decreased the vulnerabilities of human beings to the forces of nature and freed industry from
geographic constraints. At the same time, the ecological consequences associated with several hundred years of burning
coal are immense. The burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming. In the United States, petroleum
contributes 43% of energy-related CO2, and coal is the source of 36%. The increasing concentration of CO2 and of other
minor greenhouse gases has warmed the earth 0.6 °C during the last 100 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change now expects an increase in temperature of 1.5 to 6.0 °C during this century (Athanasiou & Baer, 2002; Foster,
2002b, p. 21). An increase of “4° C would create an earth that was warmer than at any time in the last 40 million years,”
potentially threatening the survival of human civilization (Foster, 2002b, p. 64). Researchers primarily focus, justifiably, on
petroleum’s contribution to global warming, but it should not be at the expense of understanding the role coal plays in this
emerging history.

2. The environmental effects of mining and burning coal are terrible.

David Hawkings, Director, Climate Center, Natural Resources Defense Council, 9-5-07, Testimony before
House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment [Liz Lusk]

Coal is a carbon-intensive fuel, containing double the amount of carbon per unit of energy compared to natural gas and
about 50 percent more than petroleum. When coal is converted to liquid fuels, two streams of CO2 are produced: one at the
liquid-coal production plant and the second from the exhausts of the vehicles that burn the fuel. . . . [E]ven if the CO2 from the
synfuel production plant is captured, there is no prospect that liquid fuel made with coal as the sole feedstock can achieve the
significant reductions in fossil carbon content that we need to protect the climate. . . .
EPA's analysis finds that without carbon capture life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-to-liquid fuels would be more
than twice as high as from conventional diesel fuel (118 percent higher). Assuming carbon capture and storage, EPA finds that
life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-to-liquid fuels would be 3.7 percent higher than from conventional diesel
fuel. . . .
In the West, as in the East, surface-mining activities cause severe environmental damage as huge machines strip, rip
apart and scrape aside vegetation, soils [and] wildlife habitat and drastically reshape existing land forms and the
affected area's ecology to reach the subsurface coal. Strip mining results in industrialization of once quiet open space
along with displacement of wildlife, increased soil erosion, loss of recreational opportunities, degradation of wilderness
values and destruction of scenic beauty. . . .
According to the Department of Energy's Idaho National Lab, approximately 12-14 barrels of water are used for every barrel of
liquid coal. Therefore the water requirement necessary to meet the needs of an 80,000 BPD [barrels per day] liquid-coal plant
could require sourcing about 40 million gallons of water per day (14 billion gallons per year). The 40 million gallons of water
per day needed for an 80,000 BPD liquid coal facility is enough water to meet the domestic needs of more than 200,000
people. . . . There are already serious water-supply problems in Western states such as Montana and Wyoming, where most of
our cheap coal supplies are located. . . .
The impacts that a large liquid-coal program could have on global warming pollution, conventional air pollution and damage
from expanded coal production are substantial — so substantial that using coal to make liquid fuel would likely create far
worse problems than it attempts to solve.

3. Extend Sydney Morning Herald 03; Global Warming leads to MASS


EXTINCTION, which outweighs any negative impacts.

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4. And, Global Warming is the greatest threat to civilization, and it’s


happening now. Evaluate systemic impacts first.

James Lovelock, creator of Gaia hypothesis (Earth is self-regulating organism) and member of EFN
(Association of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy), 5-24-04, The Independent, “Nuclear Power is the Only
Green Solution,” http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/james-lovelock-nuclear-power-is-the-
only-green-solution-564446.html [Jiajia Huang]
Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, was far-sighted to say that global warming is a more serious threat than
terrorism. He may even have underestimated, because, since he spoke, new evidence of climate change suggests it could be
even more serious, and the greatest danger that civilisation has faced so far. Most of us are aware of some degree of
warming; winters are warmer and spring comes earlier. But in the Arctic, warming is more than twice as great as here in
Europe and in summertime, torrents of melt water now plunge from Greenland's kilometre-high glaciers. The complete
dissolution of Greenland's icy mountains will take time, but by then the sea will have risen seven metres, enough to make
uninhabitable all of the low lying coastal cities of the world, including London, Venice, Calcutta, New York and Tokyo.
Even a two metre rise is enough to put most of southern Florida under water. The floating ice of the Arctic Ocean is even
more vulnerable to warming; in 30 years, its white reflecting ice, the area of the US, may become dark sea that absorbs the
warmth of summer sunlight, and further hastens the end of the Greenland ice. The North Pole, goal of so many explorers, will
then be no more than a point on the ocean surface. Not only the Arctic is changing; climatologists warn a four-degree rise in
temperature is enough to eliminate the vast Amazon forests in a catastrophe for their people, their biodiversity, and for the
world, which would lose one of its great natural air conditioners. The scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change reported in 2001 that global temperature would rise between two and six degrees Celsius by 2100. Their
grim forecast was made perceptible by last summer's excessive heat; and according to Swiss meteorologists, the Europe-wide
hot spell that killed over 20,000 was wholly different from any previous heat wave. The odds against it being a mere
deviation from the norm were 300,000 to one. It was a warning of worse to come.

5. Also, our plan solves the MOTIVATIONS for Global Nuclear War

Canberra Times. 07/19/08. “Nuclear power pluses must be weighed with the risks,” A, p. B08. Lexis.
[Takumi Murayama]
But perhaps the greatest flaw in the anti-nuclear platform is the assumption that the peaceful use of nuclear power
automatically leads to weapons proliferation, which in turn leads automatically to nuclear Armageddon.
Serious war requires the initiator to have not only the weapons but also the motivation. Many already have the weapons.
Amongst the most likely causes of motivation are resentment caused by being dispossessed of land (terrorism) or by
serious national shortages of food or energy.
Desperate circumstances breed desperate actions. Excluding nuclear power could actually increase the risk of
catastrophic conflict.

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6. Coal is actually more prone to proliferation than nuclear power

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
AMONG SOURCES of electric-power generation, coal is the worst environmental offender. (Petroleum, today's dominant
source of energy, sustains transportation, putting it in a separate category.) Recent studies by the Harvard School of Public
Health indicate that pollutants from coal-burning cause about 15,000 premature deaths annually in the United States alone.
Used to generate about a quarter of the world's primary energy, coal-burning releases amounts of toxic waste too immense to
contain safely. Such waste is either dispersed directly into the air or is solidified and dumped. Some is even mixed into
construction materials. Besides emitting noxious chemicals in the form of gases or toxic particles -- sulfur and nitrogen
oxides (components of acid rain and smog), arsenic, mercury, cadmium, selenium, lead, boron, chromium, copper, fluorine,
molybdenum, nickel, vanadium, zinc, carbon monoxide and dioxide, and other greenhouse gases -- coal-fired power plants
are also the world's major source of radioactive releases into the environment. Uranium and thorium, mildly radioactive
elements ubiquitous in the earth's crust, are both released when coal is burned. Radioactive radon gas, produced when uranium
in the earth's crust decays and normally confined underground, is released when coal is mined. A 1,000-megawatt-electric
(MWe) coal-fired power plant releases about 100 times as much radioactivity into the environment as a comparable nuclear
plant. Worldwide releases of uranium and thorium from coal-burning total about 37,300 tonnes (metric tons) annually, with
about 7,300 tonnes coming from the United States. Since uranium and thorium are potent nuclear fuels, burning coal also
wastes more potential energy than it produces. Nuclear proliferation is another overlooked potential consequence of
coal-burning. The uranium released by a single 1,000-MWe coal plant in a year includes about 74 pounds of uranium-235
-- enough for at least two atomic bombs. This uranium would have to be enriched before it could be used, which would be
complicated and expensive. But plutonium could also be bred from coal-derived uranium. Moreover, "because electric
utilities are not high-profile facilities," writes physicist Alex Gabbard of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, "collection and
processing of coal ash for recovery of minerals . . . can proceed without attracting outside attention, concern or intervention.
Any country with coal-fired plants could collect combustion byproducts and amass sufficient nuclear weapons materials
to build up a very powerful arsenal." In the early 1950s, when richer ores were believed to be in short supply, the U.S.
Atomic Energy Commission actually investigated using coal as a source of uranium production for nuclear weapons; burning
the coal, the AEC concluded, would concentrate the mineral, which could then be extracted from the ash.Such a scenario may
seem far-fetched. But it emphasizes the political disadvantages under which nuclear power labors.

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1AR: Coal DA
Global Warming –

1. Extend Clark 04 and Hawkings 07 – Getting rid of coal is a good thing


because it helps stop global warming and other environmental effects.

2. Extend Lovelock 04 – Global warming is happening now. We win


probability.

3. Extend Sydney Morning Herald 03 – Global warming causes mass


extinction. We win magnitude.

Economy –

1. Extend CASEnergy Coalition 07 and PR Newswire 08 – nuclear power key


to economy.

2. Extend Dunn & Renner 00 – their economy impact is inevitable.

Nuclear War –

1. Extend Spencer 07 – nuclear energy key to non prolif.

2. Extend Canberra Times 7/19 – nuclear energy solves for the MOTIVATIONS
behind nuke war, turning the DA.

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2AC: International CP
1. Extend Hagengruber 08, Spencer 07, Dawson 05 – US nuclear development
key to non-proliferation. We have to lead the global movement towards
nuclear if we want to stop proliferation from it.

2. Extend PR Newswire 08, Loris & Spencer 08 – US nuclear development key


to global economies. Nuclear energy plants create many jobs in and out of the
country, not to mention exports, which help international economies.

3. Extend two Spencer 08 cards, Craig 99 – our specific plan is the only way we
can spur nuclear R&D. International agents have NO jurisdiction over the US’s
Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, which is what is needed to start more R&D
on nuclear to solve Global Warming.

4. Britain nuclear power plants are unsuccessful, costing twice the budget and
are built too slowly.

Hannah Goff, BBC News education reporter, 5-16-05, BBC News, “Is Britain’s Future Really Nuclear?”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4549313.stm [Jiajia Huang]
Britain's 14 nuclear power stations are coming to the end of their lifetimes, with half due to be decommissioned between
now and 2010. By 2023 all but one will have shut.
This means nuclear power's contribution to Britain's electricity supply will be cut by two-thirds from its present 21% level to
7% by 2020.
Green group Friends of the Earth says that, even if you solved the problem of what to do with radioactive nuclear waste and
could guarantee against Chernobyl-type accidents, there simply isn't enough time for a revival.
It points to the fact that the last nuclear power station to be built in the UK, Sizewell B, took 15 years to go from proposal
to electricity production and cost more than twice its original budget.
"These facts swiftly brought to an end plans to build nine reactors of the same design," FOE climate campaigner Bryony
Worthington says.
"In fact, we have never built a nuclear power reactor in this country on time or to budget or that has succeeded in
achieving the levels of performance that were expected."
The group also claims the doubling of Britain's nuclear capacity - which ultimately means something like 28 new power
stations - would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8%.
And it provides no solution to the global warming gases produced by cars, lorries and domestic heating.

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5. French nuclear plants are unsafe, unhealthy, and bad for the environment.

Greg Keller, AP Business Writer. 07/19/08. “Repeated incidents raise questions about French nuclear safety,”
Energy Central. http://pro.energycentral.com/professional/news/power/ news_article.cfm?id=10708479
[Takumi Murayama]
First, an overflowing tub at a French nuclear plant spilled uranium into the groundwater. Then a burst pipe leaked
uranium at another nuclear site, raising an alert on Friday.
The two accidents within two weeks, both at sites run by French nuclear giant Areva, have raised questions about safety
and control measures in one of the world's most nuclear-dependent nations, and given fodder to anti-nuclear activists.
Environmentalists said the incidents are a wake-up call, raising doubts about an industry in which France has staked out
a leading role internationally.
France has 59 reactors churning out nearly 80 percent of its electricity, and the French state owns Areva, which exports its
nuclear technologies around the world.
French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo insisted that the incidents were minor, but he nonetheless ordered an overhaul
of the country's nuclear supervision and information processes, as well as checks of the groundwater around all nuclear plants
in France.
Areva Chief Executive Anne Lauvergeon traveled to one of the plants Friday to meet with employees and local officials.
Former French Environment Minister Corinne Lepage, who opposes nuclear energy, said the "repeated incidents ... shine a
light on the nuclear industry's failures, mainly due to under-investment in safety, the protection of human health and
the environment."

6. Extend Stratfor 07 – US key to global nuclear development. If the US doesn’t


deregulate Yucca and thereby increase nuclear R&D, many other countries will
never commit to “unsafe” nuclear power. While foreign nuclear energy is
unsafe now, our plan spurs international nuclear R&D, making nuclear energy
the safest and cleanest energy option available to solve Global Warming.

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7. And, any risk of solving the systemic impacts of Global Warming should be
evaluated first over the negative’s impacts.

James Lovelock, creator of Gaia hypothesis (Earth is self-regulating organism) and member of EFN
(Association of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy), 5-24-04, The Independent, “Nuclear Power is the Only
Green Solution,” http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/james-lovelock-nuclear-power-is-the-
only-green-solution-564446.html
Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, was far-sighted to say that global warming is a more serious threat than
terrorism. He may even have underestimated, because, since he spoke, new evidence of climate change suggests it could be
even more serious, and the greatest danger that civilisation has faced so far. Most of us are aware of some degree of
warming; winters are warmer and spring comes earlier. But in the Arctic, warming is more than twice as great as here in
Europe and in summertime, torrents of melt water now plunge from Greenland's kilometre-high glaciers. The complete
dissolution of Greenland's icy mountains will take time, but by then the sea will have risen seven metres, enough to make
uninhabitable all of the low lying coastal cities of the world, including London, Venice, Calcutta, New York and Tokyo.
Even a two metre rise is enough to put most of southern Florida under water. The floating ice of the Arctic Ocean is even
more vulnerable to warming; in 30 years, its white reflecting ice, the area of the US, may become dark sea that absorbs the
warmth of summer sunlight, and further hastens the end of the Greenland ice. The North Pole, goal of so many explorers, will
then be no more than a point on the ocean surface. Not only the Arctic is changing; climatologists warn a four-degree rise in
temperature is enough to eliminate the vast Amazon forests in a catastrophe for their people, their biodiversity, and for the
world, which would lose one of its great natural air conditioners. The scientists who form the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change reported in 2001 that global temperature would rise between two and six degrees Celsius by 2100. Their
grim forecast was made perceptible by last summer's excessive heat; and according to Swiss meteorologists, the Europe-wide
hot spell that killed over 20,000 was wholly different from any previous heat wave. The odds against it being a mere
deviation from the norm were 300,000 to one. It was a warning of worse to come.

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2AC: Nuclear Energy Safety


1. Extend Loris & Spencer 07 – fear is driven by flawed logic and
representations.

2. Extend Lovelock 04 – we have no time, and nuclear is the only option. Fear
is irrational.

3. Anti-nuclear activists spread propaganda to instill fear of nuclear power.

Ed Hiserodt, engineer and expert in power generation technology, 4-30-07, “Myths about Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/3481, [CXia]
The great nightmare associated with nuclear energy is the “meltdown.” Anti-nuclear activists love to point to a scenario
in which a reactor would lose its coolant allowing the fuel rods to melt through the reactor vessel, through several feet of high-
strength concrete, and through hundreds of feet of earth till reaching an aquifer whereupon a steam explosion would ensue.
Consequently, they eagerly seized upon the accident at Three Mile Island as the embodiment of all their fears — or at
least of the fears they wanted the public to have. The problem was that Three Mile Island was a demonstration of the
safety of nuclear plants. Beginning at 4:00 a.m. on March 28, 1979, a series of mishaps resulted in the partial meltdown of the
reactor core. By 7:45 a.m. that morning, according to the Smithsonian Institute, “a molten mass of metal and fuel — some
twenty tons in all — is spilling into the bottom of the reactor vessel.” Yet that reactor containment vessel worked as designed
and by 9:00 a.m. the danger was past: “The reactor vessel holds firm, and the molten uranium, immersed in water, now
gradually begins to cool,” the Smithsonian Institute says in its timeline of events at the damaged reactor. Perhaps the final word
on Three Mile Island comes from Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore. In October 2006, Moore wrote in Popular
Mechanics: “At the time, no one noticed Three Mile Island was a success story; the concrete containment structure
prevented radiation from escaping into the environment. There was no injury or death among the public or nuclear
workers.”
It is common to mention Chernobyl and Three Mile Island at the same time in debate over nuclear safety, but the two events
are substantially different. Chernobyl was the feared “worst case scenario” envisioned by critics of nuclear energy. Whereas at
Three Mile Island the nuclear chain reaction was stopped in the first 10 seconds of the event, at Chernobyl the chain reaction
continued well into the accident. Although there is almost nothing flammable in a U.S. power reactor, Chernobyl’s was
constructed from graphite, a form of carbon that is difficult to ignite, but burns with a very hot flame once ignited. Not only
that, but Chernobyl did not even have a containment structure for the reactor, unlike American plants that are built
with containment buildings designed to withstand the impact of a jumbo jet. Because there was no containment vessel
enclosing Chernobyl’s poorly designed RBMK-type reactors, when the plant exploded, chunks of radioactive material were
ejected from the annihilated plant and exposed to the environment.

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4. Critics hide behind the guise of “environmentalism” in order to promote big


government.

Ed Hiserodt, engineer and expert in power generation technology, 4-30-07, “Myths about Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/3481, [CXia]
But leading critics, those who often have set the terms of the debate, have, unfortunately, been wrong in their assessments of
the risks. Three Mile Island proved the effectiveness of the safety measures designed into every Western power plant — and
technological advances make modern designs safer than Three Mile Island. This has been known to leading critics of nuclear
energy. But they oppose nuclear power not because it is unsafe, but because it is too useful. Cloaked in the garb of
“environmentalism,” they use the anti-nuke movement to promote big government and harass productive capitalistic
enterprises. Among these is Paul Ehrlich, who is known for his outrageous (and wrong) doomsday predictions. In the May-
June 1975 issue of the Federation of American Scientists’ Public Interest Report, Ehrlich wrote: “Giving society cheap,
abundant energy … would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” Amory Lovins, another critic and
one-time British representative of Friends of the Earth, agrees. “If you ask me,” Lovins said in an interview with Playboy
magazine in 1977, “It’d be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of
what we would do with it.” Ehrlich, Lovins, and almost all of the “green” leadership rightly recognize that nuclear energy
would lead to prosperity. From their standpoint, that is the problem. Again quoting Ehrlich: “We’ve already had too much
economic growth in the U.S. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure.”

5. And, According to a Greenpeace co-founder, nuclear power is safe and


practical

Dr. Patrick Moore, Co-Chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, co-founder and former leader of
Greenpeace, 6-08, Nuclear Power International, “Nuclear Power—Energy Creating Jobs,”
http://pepei.pennnet.com/display_article/332480/140/ARTCL/none/none/1/Nuclear-Power
%E2%80%94Energy-Creating-Jobs/ [Jiajia Huang]
As one of the founders of Greenpeace, I was once opposed to nuclear energy. In the early years, we were so focused on the
threat of nuclear war; we made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons as if all things nuclear
were evil. We were wrong.
The possible consequences of climate change and certainty of high energy prices don’t allow us the luxury of emotion. We
must be practical. If we truly want to provide safe and affordable energy that doesn’t emit greenhouse gases (GHG) and
still helps us meet a rising demand, it would be irresponsible not to consider nuclear energy for our global energy mix.
In the United States, electricity demand is forecast to increase 25 percent by 2030. Demand in other nations is growing at
an even faster rate and some two billion people in the world still lack access to electricity for essential services.
Consumption may increase five-fold. Conservation and efficiency may make it possible to reduce demand growth with
technologies like smart metering and energy efficient appliances, but they won’t eliminate overall demand growth. If we
want to satisfy this growing demand without increasing air pollution and GHGs, nuclear energy is the only baseload, “always
on” technology available.
As a lifelong activist, I am particularly concerned about the impact that our actions have on our planet and our health. I came
around to nuclear power because it generates electricity we can rely on, while preventing the emission of pollutants like
sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter that lead to the formation of acid rain, smog and severe health effects.
As the International Panel on Climate Change points outs, nuclear energy’s clean air benefits are also capable of reducing
greenhouse gases.
The nuclear industry grew rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s as France, Japan and the United States built scores of reactors.
France now has 59 nuclear reactors and derives more than 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy. But in the United
States, lagging electricity demand, challenging politics, public misperception and project mismanagement have stalled new
plants for nearly 30 years.
Today, safe and efficient industry performance and growing concern over climate change has brought nuclear energy back into
public favor. Nuclear plants are generating electricity at record levels. In 2007, U.S. reactors produced 807 billion
kilowatt hours of electricity1 or 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, while operating at nearly 92 percent capacity.

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2AC: Public Perception


1. Extend Loris & Spencer 07 – public fear of nuclear power caused by media
propaganda.

2. We solve–Public perception of nuclear energy relies on waste disposal

Paul P. Craig, University of California, Davis. 11/99. “HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE: The Status of
Yucca Mountain,” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, Vol. 24: 461-486.
[Takumi Murayama]
High-level nuclear waste can usefully be placed in the context of the evolution of the U.S. nuclear program. This evolution can
be divided into three periods: the weapons period before the first prototype commercial reactor at Shippingport (1957), the “go-
go days” of reactor orders starting in the 1960s and ending in the 1970s, and the present period dominated by shutdowns and
some license renewals. These eras of waxing and waning enthusiasm for nuclear power are related to U.S. policy for
dealing with high-level nuclear waste.
In the early days of reactor enthusiasm, the waste problem was largely ignored. Alvin Weinberg, one of the “grand old men” of
the nuclear era, expressed his regret about this failure (see 34, page 183): “…[D]uring my years at ORNL [Oak Ridge National
Laboratory] I paid too little attention to the waste problem. Designing and building reactors, not nuclear waste, was what
turned me on…[A]s I think about what I would do differently had I to do it over again, it would be to elevate waste disposal to
the very top of ORNL's agenda…I have no doubt that, if wastes had been viewed…as the highest priority on the research
agenda, we could by this time [1994] have demonstrated a working high-level depository that was perceived by the
public to be safe.” The failure of the nuclear industry to pay attention to “closing the fuel cycle” in the days before the
problem attracted widespread public attention may be costing the industry heavily today and could prove fatal to
nuclear technology. (During the go-go days, there was great interest in “closing the fuel cycle” through reprocessing, which
would have reduced high-level waste substantially. Ultimately, the United States decided to stop all work in this area. The
primary reason was the “weapons connection.” Economics was a secondary reason that became increasingly important as the
price of uranium dropped and as reactors lost their economic edge.) It is also possible, of course, that technical mistakes would
have been made or that even excellent efforts in the early days would not have succeeded.

3. The government must act NOW to save public perception.

Ferenc L. Toth and Hans-Holger Rogner. Department of Nuclear Energy @ International Atomic Energy
Agency. 9-8-05, “Oil and nuclear power: Past, present and future”. Science Direct. [Crystal Xia]
In an environmentally conscious future, nuclear power fares best against coal and, depending on the degree of
environmental regulation, also against gas. Policies protecting global climate will certainly affect oil production and use as
well but primarily with regard to oil substitutes in end-use markets, and, depending on the future techno-economic performance
of renewables, also in the non-grid electricity markets. Nuclear generated electricity may indirectly challenge some oil use
in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. However, electricity–no matter how generated–is expected to
expand its market share because of its intrinsic features to improve productivity, cleanliness, and convenience. Policies
enforcing an internalization of the externalities associated with the production and use of energy services will eventually
improve the competitiveness of clean technologies such as nuclear power. In the global warming context, the key questions
are how fast the world society decides to reduce CO2 emissions, how high will be the costs of other mitigation options,
and how the public acceptance of nuclear energy will change in some countries. Depending on the resolution of these
questions and the concerns summarized above, the outcome could entail a new boost to nuclear energy or could lead
towards the beginning of the end for this energy source.

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2AC: States CP
1. States have no jurisdiction over federal laws, specifically the Nuclear Waste
Policy Act of 1982.

2. Extend Craig 99 and Spencer 07. Waste management key. The US must
deregulate so the private sector can manage waste.

3. States don’t have the jurisdiction to regulate nuclear safety, causing state-
run plants to be unsafe due to unsafe storage of nuclear waste.

Larry Parker and Mark Holt Specialists in Energy Policy Resources, Science, and Industry Division, “Nuclear
Power: Outlook for New U.S. Reactors”, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33442.pdf, 2007
The extent to which the nuclear waste issue could inhibit nuclear power expansion is difficult to assess. NRC has
determined that onsite storage of spent fuel would be safe for at least 30 years after expiration of a reactor’s operating license,
which was estimated to be as long as 70 years. As a result, the Commission concluded that “adequate regulatory authority is
available to require any measures necessary to assure safe storage of the spent fuel until a repository is available.”49
Therefore, NRC does not consider the lack of a permanent repository for spent fuel to be an obstacle to nuclear plant licensing.
However, the Administration was concerned enough about repository delays to include a provision in its recent nuclear
waste bill to require NRC, when considering nuclear power plant license applications, to assume that sufficient waste
disposal capacity will be available in a timely manner.50 Six states — California, Connecticut, Kentucky, New Jersey, West
Virginia, and Wisconsin — have specific laws that link approval for new nuclear power plants to adequate waste disposal
capacity. Kansas forbids cost recovery for “excess” nuclear power capacity if no “technology or means for disposal of high-
level nuclear waste” is available.51 The U.S. Supreme Court has held that state authority over nuclear power plant
construction is limited to economic considerations rather than safety, which is solely under NRC jurisdiction.52 No
nuclear plants have been ordered since the various state restrictions were enacted, so their ability to meet the Supreme
Court’s criteria has yet to be tested.

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2AC: Terrorism
1. Extend Loris & Spencer 07. Nuclear power risks are propaganda created by
anti-nuclear activists.

2. Terrorists are unlikely to attack or succeed at nuclear plants.

Lionel Beehner, senior writer at the Council for Foreign Relations, 4-25-06, “Chernobyl, Nuclear Power, and
Foreign Policy”, http://www.cfr.org/publication/10534/chernobyl _nuclear_power_ and_foreign_policy.html,
[Crystal Xia]
After 9/11, concerns arose over the security of the United States' 103 nuclear plants, particularly Indian Point, located
thirty miles north of New York City. According to a 2004 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an attack on the plant
could kill up to 44,000 people. But some nuclear experts say the threat posed by terrorists may be exaggerated. "Even if a
jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode," wrote Greenpeace's
Moore, referring to nuclear plants' six-feet-thick exteriors. Ferguson does not see nuclear plants as likely targets. "We
don't see a lot of serious interest on the part of most terrorist groups to attack nuclear targets," he says. "They tend to
favor softer targets," like office buildings or embassies.

3. Terrorism unlikely – nuclear power plants are among the most secure.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 12-3-07, “Dispelling Myths About Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2087.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
The United States has 104 commercial nuclear power plants, and there are 446 worldwide. Not one has fallen victim to
a successful terrorist attack. Certainly, history should not beget complacency, especially when the stakes are so high.
However, the NRC has heightened security and increased safeguards on site to deal with the threat of terrorism. A
deliberate or accidental airplane crash into a reactor is often cited as a threat, but nuclear reactors are structurally designed
to withstand high-impact airborne threats, such as the impact of a large passenger airplane. Furthermore, the Federal
Aviation Administration has instructed pilots to avoid circling or loitering over nuclear or electrical power plants, warning
them that such actions will make them subject to interrogation by law enforcement personnel.[8] The right response to
terrorist threats to nuclear plants--like threats to anything else--is not to shut them down, but to secure them, defend them,
and prepare to manage the consequences in the unlikely event that an incident occurs. Allowing the fear of terrorism to
obstruct the significant economic and societal gains from nuclear power is both irrational and unwise.

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4. Our impact outweighs–Global Warming is systemic AND more dangerous


than Terrorism

John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office and co-chair of the scientific
assessment working group of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, 07/23/03, Guardian,
"Comment & Analysis: Global warming is now a weapon of mass destruction: It kills more people than
terrorism, yet Blair and Bush do nothing" [Takumi Murayama]
If political leaders have one duty above all others, it is to protect the security of their people. Thus it was, according to the
prime minister, to protect Britain's security against Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction that this country went to
war in Iraq. And yet our long-term security is threatened by a problem at least as dangerous as chemical, nuclear or
biological weapons, or indeed international terrorism: human-induced climate change.
As a climate scientist who has worked on this issue for several decades, first as head of the Met Office, and then as co-chair of
scientific assessment for the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change, the impacts of global warming are such that I
have no hesitation in describing it as a "weapon of mass destruction".
Like terrorism, this weapon knows no boundaries. It can strike anywhere, in any form - a heatwave in one place, a drought
or a flood or a storm surge in another. Nor is this just a problem for the future. The 1990s were probably the warmest decade in
the last 1,000 years, and 1998 the warmest year. Global warming is already upon us.

5. Prefer our evidence. It postdates theirs and is written by people who have
dedicated their lives to nuclear power research.

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2AC: Yucca Mountain


1. Yucca support is low only because of incomprehensible analyses

Paul P. Craig, University of California, Davis. 11/99. “HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE: The Status of
Yucca Mountain,” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, Vol. 24: 461-486.
[Takumi Murayama]
DOE's use of performance assessment (PA) methodology in the TSPA-VA is in keeping with the state of the art. PA allows
integration of an enormous amount of data within a framework that is relatively easily understood. The complexity of Yucca
Mountain combined with the unprecedented times over which the system must perform makes the analytical issues
unprecedented as well.
One result of the DOE applying a full-blown PA approach is that the TSPA-VA analysis is difficult to comprehend. The
models and submodels require large numbers of methodological assumptions and parameters. The price DOE has paid for a
complex model is loss of transparency. The many assumptions include some that are conservative and some that are not. The
approach also makes use of experts (via “expert elicitations”) to provide parameters where needed data are not available. The
end result is that even technically expert readers of TSPA-VA may have difficulty developing enough understanding to
decide whether they are confident in the results.
In recognition of the complexity of TSPA-VA and of the importance of establishing credibility, DOE assembled the TSPA
Peer Review Panel (17). This independent panel provided detailed commentary with a mixed message. The panel wrote that
“…it is unlikely that the TSPA-VA, taken as a whole, describes the long-term probable behavior of the proposed repository. In
recognition of its limitations, decisions based on the TSPA-VA should be made cautiously.” It noted the complexity of
analyzing the hot repository and concluded that “…at the present time, an assessment of the future probable behavior of the
proposed repository may be beyond the analytical capabilities of any scientific and engineering team” (17).
Their message was by no means entirely negative. The panel recommended that future work focus on approaches that make use
of “bounding analyses” to constrain behavior as the best approach to achieving licensability. The key idea is that it may be
possible to establish confidence in the performance of systems that cannot be analyzed completely. (An example is that the
post-thermal pulse infiltration cannot exceed the undisturbed infiltration in any given climate regime.) Bounding analyses are
designed to be conservative, and, consequently, they run the risk of pushing designs to the point where they are not feasible.
There is a trade-off between conservatism and practicability.
Defense-in-depth offers another approach to establishing confidence. Defense-in-depth arguments seek to decouple systems
into distinguishable technically defensible components. For a sufficiently tightly coupled system, this may not be possible.
Lower temperature designs offer one approach to analyzability and to defense-in-depth. The NWTRB has suggested “…that a
repository design based on lower waste package surface temperatures could significantly reduce uncertainty, enhance
licensability, and simplify the analytical bases required for site recommendation.” Such a design might also simplify preclosure
performance confirmation. The present design relies heavily on engineered barriers and especially the passivated alloy C-22.
Discussion as to the degree that defense-in-depth exists with the present design is ongoing.
For Yucca Mountain to obtain societal approval will require establishing confidence with independent scientists,
regulators, the public, and Congress. This suggests the use of multiple methodologies designed for multiple audiences.

2. Extend Loris & Spencer 07 – Fear of nuclear power is illogical.

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3. Opening Yucca Mountain is key to creating more nuclear plants.

Jack Spencer and Garrett Murch, research fellow @ Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies and
Deputy Director of House Relations, “Road to Clean Air Runs Through Yucca Mountain”,
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Comment ary/ed060908c.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Delaying Yucca has unintended consequences for Nevada and the nation. Opposition to Yucca has made building nuclear
plants much more difficult. By hamstringing America's energy options, obstructionist politicians are forcing fossil fuel
plant construction when utilities might have chosen to build emissions-free nuclear. But the past is past. Opening Yucca now
would lead to a cleaner future. Nuclear power, which provides about 20 percent of the nation's electricity, has off-set millions
of tons of CO2 and pollutants that would have been fossil-fuel power plants. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, had
America's reactors not been operating, approximately 48 million tons of sulfur dioxide, 19 million tons of nitrogen oxides and
8.7 trillion tons of carbon dioxide would have been emitted since 1995. In other words, by obstructing Yucca and, thus,
nuclear power, these politicians, well-intentioned though they may be, are causing the very pollution they claim to deplore.
This should outrage America. Yet the Yucca opposition continues to succeed in blurring the contradictory aims of its energy
and environmental agendas.

4. Extend Spencer 08 – Yucca deregulation is key.

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2AC: Impact Calculus


The negative’s scenario for nuke war is wrong–nuclear energy solves

Canberra Times. 07/19/08. “Nuclear power pluses must be weighed with the risks,” A, p. B08. Lexis.
[Takumi Murayama]
But perhaps the greatest flaw in the anti-nuclear platform is the assumption that the peaceful use of nuclear power
automatically leads to weapons proliferation, which in turn leads automatically to nuclear Armageddon.
Serious war requires the initiator to have not only the weapons but also the motivation. Many already have the weapons.
Amongst the most likely causes of motivation are resentment caused by being dispossessed of land (terrorism) or by
serious national shortages of food or energy.
Desperate circumstances breed desperate actions. Excluding nuclear power could actually increase the risk of
catastrophic conflict.

Global Nuclear War exacerbates Global Warming

Canberra Times. 07/19/08. “Nuclear power pluses must be weighed with the risks,” A, p. B08. Lexis.
[Takumi Murayama]
In the ongoing blather whereby nuclear power is being sold to us as the answer to global warming, Lesley Kemeny gives us
another earbashing (July 18).
He regularly fails to mention the safety issues our descendants will have to deal with or the massive amounts of power required
to build the behemoths he wants us to lovingly adopt.
As the debate "hots up" can we expect the nuclear power spruikers to come up with one darker aspect so far
unmentioned that nuclear radiation leaks and nuclear wars have the potential to reduce the global population so rapidly
that global warming will no longer be an issue.
Perhaps he is afraid that we will see the major flaw in that argument all that radiation emitted and all those bombs going off
might make things a lot warmer a lot quicker than any of our previous efforts to warm this otherwise "cool" planet.

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AT: Chernobyl–Offense
The Chernobyl meltdown has surprising positive results – land purified by
meltdown, nature flourishing.

Steve Connor, Science Editor, 4-05-06, The Independent World, “20 years after meltdown, life returns to
Chernobyl,” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/20-years-after-meltdown-life-returns-to-
chernobyl-472842.html [Jiajia Huang]
Sergey Franchuk, a guide and local expert who has been associated with the area since 1982, says he believes the
radiation has purified the soil in an inexplicable way. "We think that the land has been cleansed," he says, pointing up a
long, straight road flanked with pine forests that later give way to silver birch forests straight from the pages of Boris
Pasternak's Dr Zhivago.
"Nature is flourishing here, even more so than it was before the accident. When Viktor Yushchenko [the Ukrainian
President] came here last year, he even suggested turning the area into a nature reserve. That gives you an idea of what is
happening here." What Sergey doesn't mention is that Mr Yushchenko simultaneously floated the idea of turning the exclusion
zone into a dump for foreign nuclear waste.

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AT: Chernobyl–Defense
Nuclear power is safe – Chernobyl would have never happened if it United
States requirements.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, Research Professor
at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]

No technological system is immune to accident. Recent dam overflows and failures in Italy and India each resulted in
several thousand fatalities. Coal-mine accidents, oil- and gas-plant fires, and pipeline explosions typically kill hundreds
per incident. The 1984 Bhopal chemical plant disaster caused some 3,000 immediate deaths and poisoned several hundred
thousand people. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, between 1987 and 1996 more than 600,000
accidental releases of toxic chemicals in the United States killed a total of 2,565 people and injured 22,949. By comparison,
nuclear accidents have been few and minimal. The recent, much-reported accident in Japan occurred not at a power plant but
at a facility processing fuel for a research reactor. It caused no deaths or injuries to the public. As for the Chernobyl
explosion, it resulted from human error in operating a fundamentally faulty reactor design that could not have been
licensed in the West. It caused severe human and environmental damage locally, including 31 deaths, most from radiation
exposure. Thyroid cancer, which could have been prevented with prompt iodine prophylaxis, has increased in Ukrainian
children exposed to fallout. More than 800 cases have been diagnosed and several thousand more are projected; although the
disease is treatable, three children have died. LNT-based calculations project 3,420 cancer deaths in Chernobyl-area residents
and cleanup crews. The Chernobyl reactor lacked a containment structure, a fundamental safety system that is required
on Western reactors. Postaccident calculations indicate that such a structure would have confined the explosion and thus
the radioactivity, in which case no injuries or deaths would have occurred.
These numbers, for the worst ever nuclear power accident, are remarkably low compared to major accidents in other industries.
More than 40 years of commercial nuclear power operations demonstrate that nuclear power is much safer than fossil-
fuel systems in terms of industrial accidents, environmental damage, health effects, and long-term risk.

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Health Consequences of Chernobyl are exaggerated – few deaths from cancer.

Dillwyn Williams, Joint Director of Thyroid Carcinogenesis Group, Strangeways Research Laboratory, 9-22-
01, http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1121220 [Jiajia Huang]

About 2000 cases of thyroid cancer have occurred in those exposed as children or adolescents to high levels of fallout from
Chernobyl.7–9 Fortunately there have so far been few deaths in these cases (E Demidchik, personal communication). Despite
the dominant role of radioiodine in the initial fallout, it should not be assumed that there will be only thyroid effects. There are
claims of increases in immune related diseases, birth defects, and a variety of cancers in the exposed population, but
adequate studies are lacking. There is evidence of increased microsatellite instability in children born to exposed parents.10
We do not know the long term effects of living in an environment contaminated with caesium-137, and there could be late
radioiodine related effects, for example in the breast.
An international study of all long term health effects of exposure to Chernobyl fallout is needed, including confirmation of the
original diagnoses, the role of ascertainment, and correlation of incidence with dosimetry. Such a study would cost only a
fraction of the money the West is providing to allow Ukraine to close the last of the four Chernobyl reactors. Without adequate
study there will be no authoritative assessment of all the consequences, allowing some groups to accept uncritically the highest
claims made, while others can say there are no proved long term effects other than thyroid cancer.
The response to global warming provides another example of the correlation between degree of proof demanded and interest in
the outcome. The appropriate question is not whether there is proof of cause and effect but whether there is a sufficient
chance that human activity contributes to global warming to justify altering that activity. The answer is clearly yes, and a
serious debate on the contribution that nuclear power can make to reducing global warming is needed which takes into
account a comparison of all the health effects of nuclear and conventional power generation. It is made difficult both by
exaggerated claims of the health consequences of Chernobyl and by the errors and cover ups of the nuclear industry
itself.

Chernobyl impacts not as dire as predicted

Steve Connor, Science Editor, 4-05-06, The Independent World, “20 years after meltdown, life returns to
Chernobyl,” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/20-years-after-meltdown-life-returns-to-
chernobyl-472842.html [Jiajia Huang]
Less than a mile from what is left of Chernobyl's ill-fated fourth reactor, a pair of elks is grazing nonchalantly on land
irradiated by the world's worst nuclear accident. In nearby Pripyat, an eerie husk of a town where 50,000 people used to live
before they were forced to flee on a terrifying afternoon in 1986, a Soviet urban landscape is rapidly giving way to wild
European woodland.
Radiation levels remain far too high for human habitation but the abandoned town is filled with birdsong and the gurgling of
streams forged by melting snow. Nobody thought it possible at the time but 20 years after the reactor exploded on 26 April
1986, during an ill-conceived "routine" Soviet experiment, Chernobyl's radiation-soaked "dead zone" is not looking so
dead after all.
The zone - an area with a radius of 18 miles in modern-day Ukraine - lives on in the popular imagination as a post-
apocalyptic wasteland irreparably poisoned with strontium and caesium that would make a perfect setting for the next
Mad Max movie. It is a corner of Europe associated with death and alarming yet nebulous stories of genetic mutation, a
post-nuclear badland that shows what happens when mankind gets atomic energy wrong.
The reality, at least on the surface, is starkly different from the mythology, however. The almost complete absence of
human activity in large swaths of the zone during the past two decades has given the area's flora and fauna a chance to first
recover and then - against all the odds - to flourish. It is a paradox that has disturbed opponents of nuclear power who
point to the appalling, still unknown, human cost of the tragedy and the terrifying invisible pollution that looks likely to blight
the area for centuries.

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Chernobyl is flourishing more than ever, despite exaggerated past predictions.

Steve Connor, Science Editor, 4-05-06, The Independent World, “20 years after meltdown, life returns to
Chernobyl,” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/20-years-after-meltdown-life-returns-to-
chernobyl-472842.html [Jiajia Huang]
In the dead zone's so-called Red Forest, a pine forest that took the brunt of the radioactive explosion, radiation levels today
can be as high as one roentgen, more than 50,000 times normal background levels.
Elsewhere, however, levels are much lower - to the point where large animals such as elks, wild horses and wild boars
appear to be enjoying normal life spans. It is an unlikely scenario that has begotten another improbable development - the
arrival of a trickle of intrepid eco-tourists who come to marvel at an area that some, controversially, claim is one of Europe's
most promising wildlife havens.
Astonishingly, most of the animals, with the exception of the herds of wild Przewalski's horses brought in to gnaw on
radioactive grass to guard against forest fires, appear to have returned to the zone of their own accord. The most recent
count by the authorities showed that the zone (including a larger contaminated area in neighbouring Belarus) is home to 66
different species of mammals, including 7,000 wild boar, 600 wolves, 3,000 deer, 1,500 beavers, 1,200 foxes, 15 lynx and
several thousand elks.
The area was also estimated to be home to 280 species of birds, many of them rare and endangered. Breeding birds
include the rare green crane, black stork, white-tailed sea eagle and fish hawk. Wild dogs are also in evidence, though they are
prime targets for wolves, a detail that prompted the American thriller writer Martin Cruz Smith to call his latest novel, which is
partly set in the zone, Wolves Eat Dogs.
The only animal that appears not to have made a comeback is the bear. But ecologists say the return of large predators such
as wolves is a sure sign that things are moving in the right direction.

Biological and health effects proved not to be connected to Chernobyl


radiation exposure.

World Nuclear Association, 5-08, “Chernobyl Accident”, http://www.world-


nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/inf07.html [Jiajia Huang]
Several organisations have reported on the impacts of the Chernobyl accident, but all have had problems assessing the
significance of their observations because of the lack of reliable public health information before 1986. In 1989 the
World Health Organisation (WHO) first raised concerns that local medical scientists had incorrectly attributed various
biological and health effects to radiation exposure.
An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) study involving more than 200 experts from 22 countries published in
1991 was more substantial. In the absence of pre-1986 data it compared a control population with those exposed to
radiation. Significant health disorders were evident in both control and exposed groups, but, at that stage, none was
radiation related.
Subsequent studies in the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus were based on national registers of over one million people possibly
affected by radiation. By 2000 about 4000 cases of thyroid cancer had been diagnosed in exposed children. Among these, nine
deaths are attributed to radiation. However, the rapid increase in thyroid cancers detected suggests that some of it at least is an
artifact of the screening process. Thyroid cancer is usually not fatal if diagnosed and treated early.
The average radiation doses for the general population of the contaminated areas over 1986-2005 is estimated to be between 10
and 20 mSv, and the vast majority receive under 1 mSv/yr. These are lower than many natural levels. Some people have
moved back into the exclusion zone, which remains contaminated, and this is allowed as long as annual dose rate (mainly from
diet) is projected to be below 15 mSv/yr - a bit less than the internationally-accepted maximum occupational dose rate.
An increased risk of leukaemia due to radiation exposure from Chernobyl may become evident in future among the higher-
exposed liquidators. There is some evidence already of this and possibly solid cancers among Russian liquidators exposed to
more than 150 mSv. No effect is expected in populations of contaminated areas. There is no evidence nor any likelihood of
an increase attributable to Chernobyl in birth defects, adverse pregnancy outcomes, decreased fertility or any other
radiation-induced disease in the general population either in the contaminated areas or further afield.

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The Chernobyl accident’s impact is exaggerated. Health problems are not


accounted by the radiation, but by the second world government.

Bronwen Maddox, Chief Foreign Commentator of The Times, 9-07-05, The Times, Chernobyl Fallout Not as
Bad as First Feared,” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article563521.ece
[Jiajia Huang]
ONLY 56 people have so far died directly as a result of the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986, including 9 children with
thyroid cancer. In the end, perhaps up to 4,000 people will die from radiation-caused illness.
Those figures are much lower than many would guess, if they were asked. After the accident, some predicted that tens
of thousands would die. But the new United Nations report this week, discussed at a Vienna conference ending today, blows
what you might call a breath of fresh air on to nearly two decades of fears about the world’s worst nuclear accident.
The report comes as Britain and the US are considering a revival of nuclear power, driven by a new sense of urgency in
combating global warming.
For those prepared to hear reassurance about the risks of nuclear power, this report offers plenty. Its most sober warning is
about the threat to health from the mere fact of living within the former Soviet Union. For that misfortune, it offers no comfort
at all. It is compiled from the work of 100 scientists on behalf of the Chernobyl Forum: a collaboration of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, the UN watchdog, the World Health Organisation, six other UN agencies, and the governments of
Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
It does the best job so far of sifting out the real impact of Chernobyl from the cloud of claims — a task that was difficult,
controversial, and highly political from the start.
In 1993, I went with a group of European Union scientists to Chernobyl and the most contaminated areas near by, on one of the
first missions to try to judge the impact on health.
In the Belarus hospitals to the north, the rooms were full of thin, white-skinned children with pale brown hair, many suffering
from thyroid problems from contaminated milk. But the senior EU doctors, while deeply sympathetic to the patients, said that
blaming all manifest illness on radiation would be wrong. The underlying level of health and nutrition was abominable;
there was every interest in exaggerating the impact to get aid money; the Soviet culture had never been shy of using
science for political ends.
One doctor also noted that people in Western countries also often underestimated the normal level of abnormalities and illness
in newborn children, because they were so quickly and privately “fixed”.
The UN report notes these difficulties. But it has finally concluded this:
Total eventual deaths due to radiation could reach 4,000, including those of evacuees, a statistical prediction based on
estimated doses they received. But, “as about a quarter of people die from spontaneous cancer not caused by Chernobyl
radiation, the radiation-induced increase of only about 3 per cent will be difficult to observe”.
Kalman Mizsei, a UN Development Programme director, said “the impact was much smaller than anybody could have
predicted”, adding: “The danger of radiation has largely passed.”
Environmental groups have condemned the report, saying that it whitewashes the impact and will encourage people to move
back into dangerous areas. But the report is not insensitive: quite the opposite. Mental health has suffered most, it
concludes — largely because people have been too fearful of the contamination.
It says that people in the afflicted areas have suffered paralysing fatalism, attributing all illness to radiation and
convinced that their lives will end soon. It also says that a culture of dependency on aid has grown up, and that this is
holding back their development.
The most serious threats to health in the region remain smoking, drinking and lack of basic healthcare, it notes.
The report argues that “it is crucial to note that adult mortality has been rising alarmingly across the former Soviet Union
for several decades. Life expectancy has declined precipitously, particularly for men.”
It adds that “the main causes of death in the Chernobyl-affected region are the same as those nationwide —
cardiovascular diseases, injuries and poisoning — rather than radiation-related illnesses”.
Those deaths, like the poor safety standards and ageing equipement at Chernobyl itself, are a symptom of a greater
problem: a second-world government, and its secrecy, incompetence and lack of accountability. The proper conclusion
is less of that kind of government — not necessarily less nuclear power.

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Chernobyl isn’t as bad as anti-nuclear activists make it out to be.

Ed Hiserodt, engineer and expert in power generation technology, 4-30-07, “Myths about Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/3481, [CXia]
And yet, the aftermath of Chernobyl was not as bad as many expected it to be. According to the United Nations Scientific
Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), “The accident caused the deaths within a few days or weeks of
30 power plant employees and firemen (including 28 deaths that were due to radiation exposure).” No one wants to see loss of
life, but as large industrial incidents go, this was relatively unexceptional. The 1984 gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in
Bhopal, India, killed at least 3,000 people and, according to some estimates, may have caused the death of 15,000. At
Chernobyl, by contrast, fears of mass casualties from the effects of radiation have not been realized. According to the UN,
“There have been eleven deaths between 1987 and 1998 among confirmed acute radiation sickness survivors.... There were
three cases of coronary heart disease, two cases of myelodysplastic syndrome, two cases of liver cirrhosis, and one death each
of lung gangrene, lung tuberculosis and fat embolism. One patient who had been classified with Grade II acute radiation
sickness died in 1998 from acute myeloid leukaemia.” Though tragic, these deaths do not amount to the devastation of much of
Russia and Western Europe that was predicted. Among the broader population, even under the microscope of a media that
seeks out disasters, the only detectable heath effect was an increase in childhood thyroid cancer. But some have pointed
out that this might be an anomaly caused by extra screening after the accident. If you screen more children every year,
you will detect more cases of thyroid cancer, Chernobyl notwithstanding. It’s noteworthy that Russia’s childhood thyroid
cancers did not go off the scale. In Finland, 2.4 percent of children had thyroid cancer — 90 times that of all persons in
the Bryansk area of Russia who were less than 18 in 1986 — at the time of the accident. The most detrimental effect of
Chernobyl was the forced relocation of residents. Ironically, the fallout from the accident emitted less radioactivity than
the local soil.

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AT: Meltdown
The Chernobyl accident was a unique event and not likely to occur again

World Nuclear Association, 6/20/08, “Safety of Nuclear Power,” http://www.world-


nuclear.org/info/inf06.html [Jiajia Huang]
The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine was the result of major design deficiencies
in the RBMK type of reactor, the violation of operating procedures and the absence of a safety culture. One peculiar
feature of the RBMK design was that coolant failure could lead to a strong increase in power output from the fission
process ( positive void coefficient). However, this was not the prime cause of the Chernobyl accident.
The accident destroyed the reactor and killed 56 people, 28 of whom died within weeks from radiation exposure. It also caused
radiation sickness in a further 200-300 staff and firefighters, and contaminated large areas of Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and
beyond. It is estimated that at least 5% of the total radioactive material in the Chernobyl-4 reactor core was released from the
plant, due to the lack of any containment structure. Most of this was deposited as dust close by. Some was carried by wind over
a wide area.
About 130,000 people received significant radiation doses (i.e. above internationally accepted ICRP limits) and are being
closely monitored. About 4000 cases of thyroid cancer in children have been linked to the accident. Most of these were
curable, though about nine have been fatal. No increase in leukaemia or other cancers have yet shown up, but some is
expected. The World Health Organisation is closely monitoring most of those affected.
The Chernobyl accident was a unique event and the only time in the history of commercial nuclear power that radiation-
related fatalities occurred.

Chernobyl accident grossly exaggerated and unlikely to occur in the U.S

Gerald E. Marsh and George S. Stanford, physicist with U.S. Start delegation and consultant to Office of
Chief of Naval Operations on strategic nuclear policy; and nuclear reactor physicist, 11/01, The National Center
for Public Policy Research, http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA374.html [Jiajia Huang]
At Chernobyl there was a steam explosion, but it took a persistent graphite fire to inject the radioactivity into the
atmosphere. The health consequences of that accident have been grossly exaggerated in the popular press [see endnote ].
Even so, the Chernobyl consequences were much worse than what reasonably could happen in the United States. One
reason is that current Western power reactors do not use graphite - there can be no fire, and without a fire there is no
plausible way to put such a large amount of radioactivity into the atmosphere, even with a steam explosion that
somehow breaches the containment.

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The Chernobyl accident is irrelevant to the safety of U.S. nuclear power, which
is also cheaper and safer than coil and oil.

Brendan Nicholson, Political Correspondent for The Age, 6-05-06, The Age, “Nuclear power ‘cheaper, safer’
than coal and gas,” http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/nuclear-power-cheaper-safer-than-coal-and-
gas/2006/06/04/1149359609052.html [Jiajia Huang]
NUCLEAR power could be cheaper than electricity produced by coal and gas, says a report commissioned by the
Australian nuclear research and development body.
Nuclear power will also do less environmental damage and will be much safer, it says.
The report, by a British nuclear power specialist, John Gittus, was released in full yesterday by Science Minister Julie Bishop,
who said it demonstrated that nuclear energy was a very safe alternative to traditional forms of power.
The report calculates that if Australia waits for about a decade — until nine modern power stations have been built overseas —
the cost will drop to the point where nuclear power is competitive with gas and coal.
Building a power station immediately would cost about $3.5 billion, but that would gradually come down to about $2.5 billion
as more were built around the world.
If Australia pushed ahead sooner, a nuclear power station would need significant taxpayer subsidy, the report says. But there
would be an enormous saving in production of greenhouse-inducing carbon dioxide, it argues, and says nuclear power is much
safer than traditional forms of generation.
The report, prepared for the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, says there have been accidents
involving coal, oil and gas power stations, and hydro-electric stations that dwarf even the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
But it does not say when or where they were.
It says the Chernobyl power station was irrelevant to the safety of Western designs because the reactors it used were
intrinsically unstable and could not reach acceptable safety standards.
The Chernobyl reactors were not designed to generate electricity but to provide military-grade plutonium for nuclear
weapons. They had been hurriedly designed for that purpose, the report said.
It said that in proportion to the amount of power produced, power stations fuelled by coal and oil or driven by hydro
power had caused 1000 times as many deaths as nuclear stations, and gas-fired stations had caused 15 times as many
casualties as nuclear ones.
Substituting one nuclear reactor for a coal-fired power station would save 7 million to 9 million tonnes of greenhouse-
inducing carbon dioxide gas.
Deputy Opposition Leader Jenny Macklin said the emergence of a 1997 cabinet document showing that the Government had
considered 14 possible sites for a research reactor reflected the secrecy with which the Government considered nuclear issues.
"They kept it secret then and they're keeping it secret now," she said.
Ms Macklin said the ANSTO report indicated that Australia would need three nuclear power stations.
Greenpeace Australia's chief executive, Steve Shallhorn, said the whole report was "ludicrous" and it would be at least two
decades before enough nuclear power plants had been built across the world to make Australia's feasible under the ANSTO
model.

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AT: Nuclear Energy  Proliferation


Nuclear energy will not be used for weaponry.

Jack Spencer, Research Fellow @ The Heritage Foundation's Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, 10-9-
07, "The Nuclear Renaissance: Ten Principles to Guide U.S. Policy,"
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1640.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Nuclear energy critics often argue that the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation outweighs any potential benefits of nuclear
power. While civilian nuclear power has been used to clandestinely pursue nuclear weapons programs in the past, there
is no causal link between the two. As has been demonstrated consistently throughout history, states act in their interests and
generally behave according to agreed norms only to the extent that doing so advances their national objectives. Therefore,
limiting the technology development of peaceful nations will not serve to limit the threatening behavior of other nations.
With very few exceptions, law-abiding countries do not divert their energy programs for weaponry.

Nuclear power will not result in proliferation.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 12-3-07, “Dispelling Myths About Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2087.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
This myth relies on creating an illusion of cause and effect. This is why so much anti-nuclear propaganda focuses on trying
to equate nuclear weapons with civilian nuclear power. Once such a spurious relationship is established, anti-nuclear
activists can mix and match causes and effects without regard for the facts.
Furthermore, this "argument" is clearly irrelevant inside the United States. As a matter of policy, the United States already has
too many nuclear weapons and is disassembling them at a historic pace, so arguing that expanding commercial nuclear activity
in the United States would somehow lead to weapons proliferation is disingenuous. The same would hold true for any other
state with nuclear weapons.
As for states without nuclear weapons, the problem is more complex than simply arguing that access to peaceful nuclear power
will lead to nuclear weapons proliferation. Nuclear weapons require highly enriched uranium or plutonium, and pro-
ducing either material requires a sophisticated infrastructure. While most countries could certainly develop the
capabilities needed to produce these materials, the vast majority clearly have no intention of doing so. For start-up nuclear
powers, the preferred method of acquiring weapons-grade material domestically is to enrich uranium, not to separate plutonium
from spent nuclear fuel. Uranium enrichment is completely separate from nuclear power production. Furthermore, nothing
stops countries from developing a nuclear weapons capability, as demonstrated by North Korea and Iran. If proliferation is
the concern, then proper oversight is the answer, not stifling a distantly related industry.

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Nuclear energy doesn’t increase the ability for any country to get the bomb –
determined nations will find their own ways.

Scott D. Sagan, Professor of political science and Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Harvard, 9-
06, “How the Keep the Bomb From Iran”, Foreign Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
A U.S. official in the executive branch anonymously told The New York Times in March 2006, "The reality is that most of us
think the Iranians are probably going to get a weapon, or the technology to make one, sooner or later." Such proliferation
fatalists argue that over the long term, it may be impossible to stop Iran -- or other states for that matter -- from getting
the bomb. Given the spread of nuclear technology and know-how, and the right of parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty (NPT) to enrich uranium and separate plutonium, the argument goes, any foreign government determined to acquire
nuclear weapons will eventually do so. Moreover, the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq may have
delayed Iraq's progress, but similar air strikes are unlikely to disable Iran's capacities, since its uranium-enrichment facilities
can be hidden underground or widely dispersed. Imposing economic sanctions through the un Security Council is clearly a
preferable option. But as Washington learned with India and Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s, sanctions only increase the
costs of going nuclear; they do not reduce the ability of a determined government to get the bomb.

Civilian power plants don’t lead to nuclear weapons.

Marsha Freeman, Science and Technology writer at the Executive Intelligence Review Magazine, 2-7-07,
“Debunking Myths about Nuclear Energy”
No nation has ever developed a nuclear weapon from a civilian nuclear power plant. If a nation has the intention to
develop nuclear weapons, it must obtain the specific technology to do so. Israel is an example of a nation that has no
civilian nuclear power plants, but has developed nuclear weapons.
The nonproliferation argument—that controlling technology will reduce the risk of weapons proliferation—is an historically
demonstrable false one. Nations make decisions based on their security and military requirements, not on which
technologies are available.

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Spent fuel would not contribute to terrorism or proliferation and would


improve nuclear energy.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, Research Professor
at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]

MOST OF THE URANIUM used in nuclear reactors is inert, a nonfissile product unavailable for use in weapons. Operating
reactors, however, breed fissile plutonium that could be used in bombs, and therefore the commercialization of nuclear power
has raised concerns about the spread of weapons. In 1977, President Carter deferred indefinitely the recycling of "spent"
nuclear fuel, citing proliferation risks. This decision effectively ended nuclear recycling in the United States, even
though such recycling reduces the volume and radiotoxicity of nuclear waste and could extend nuclear fuel supplies for
thousands of years. Other nations assessed the risks differently and the majority did not follow the U.S. example. France
and the United Kingdom currently reprocess spent fuel; Russia is stockpiling fuel and separated plutonium for jump-
starting future fast-reactor fuel cycles; Japan has begun using recycled uranium and plutonium mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel in its
reactors and recently approved the construction of a new nuclear power plant to use 100-percent MOX fuel by 2007. Although
power-reactor plutonium theoretically can be used to make nuclear explosives, spent fuel is refractory, highly
radioactive, and beyond the capacity of terrorists to process. Weapons made from reactor-grade plutonium would be hot,
unstable, and of uncertain yield. India has extracted weapons plutonium from a Canadian heavy-water reactor and bars
inspection of some dual-purpose reactors it has built. But no plutonium has ever been diverted from British or French
reprocessing facilities or fuel shipments for weapons production; IAEA inspections are effective in preventing such
diversions. The risk of proliferation, the IAEA has concluded, "is not zero and would not become zero even if nuclear
power ceased to exist. It is a continually strengthened nonproliferation regime that will remain the cornerstone of efforts to
prevent the spread of nuclear weapons."

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Coal plants create more risk for proliferation than nuclear

Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun, and Denis Beller, nuclear engineer
and Technical Staff Member at Los Alamos National Laboratory. 01/02-00. “The need for nuclear power,”
Foreign Affairs. New York, Vol. 79, Iss. 1; pg. 30, 15 pgs. [Takumi Murayama]
AMONG SOURCES of electric-power generation, coal is the worst environmental offender. (Petroleum, today's dominant
source of energy, sustains transportation, putting it in a separate category.) Recent studies by the Harvard School of Public
Health indicate that pollutants from coal-burning cause about 15,ooo premature deaths annually in the United States alone.
Used to generate about a quarter of the world's primary energy, coal-burning releases amounts of toxic waste too immense to
contain safely. Such waste is either dispersed directly into the air or is solidified and dumped. Some is even mixed into
construction materials. Besides emitting noxious chemicals in the form of gases or toxic particles-sulfur and nitrogen oxides
(components of acid rain and smog), arsenic, mercury, cadmium, selenium, lead, boron, chromium, copper, fluorine,
molybdenum, nickel, vanadium, zinc, carbon monoxide and dioxide, and other greenhouse gases-coal-fired power plants are
also the world's major source of radioactive releases into the environment. Uranium and thorium, mildly radioactive
elements ubiquitous in the earth's crust, are both released when coal is burned. Radioactive radon gas, produced when
uranium in the earth's crust decays and normally confined underground, is released when coal is mined. A i,ooo-megawatt-
electric (MWe) coal-fired power plant releases about loo times as much radioactivity into the environment as a
comparable nuclear plant. Worldwide releases of uranium and thorium from coal-burning total about 37,300 tonnes (metric
tons) annually, with about 7,300 tonnes coming from the United States. Since uranium and thorium are potent nuclear fuels,
burning coal also wastes more potential energy than it produces.
Nuclear proliferation is another overlooked potential consequence of coal-buming. The uranium released by a single i,ooo-
MWe coal plant in a year includes about 74 pounds of uranium- 235-enough for at least two atomic bombs. This
uranium would have to be enriched before it could be used, which would be complicated and expensive. But plutonium could
also be bred from coal-derived uranium. Moreover, "because electric utilities are not high-profile facilities," writes physicist
Alex Gabbard of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, "collection and processing of coal ash for recovery of minerals ... can
proceed without attracting outside attention, concern or intervention. Any country with coal-fired plants could collect
combustion byproducts and amass sufficient nuclear weapons materials to build up a very powerful arsenal." In the early
1950s, when richer ores were believed to be in short supply, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission actually investigated using
coal as a source of uranium production for nuclear weapons; burning the coal, the AEC concluded, would concentrate the
mineral, which could then be extracted from the ash.
Such a scenario may seem far-fetched. But it emphasizes the political disadvantages under which nuclear power labors. Current
laws force nuclear utilities, unlike coal plants, to invest in expensive systems that limit the release of radioactivity. Nuclear fuel
is not efficiently recycled in the United States because of proliferation fears. These factors have warped the economics of
nuclear power development and created a politically difficult waste-disposal problem. If coal utilities were forced to assume
similar costs, coal electricity would no longer be cheaper than nuclear.

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AT: Nuclear Energy  Terrorism


Nuclear energy will not become targets of terrorism – too secure.

Jack Spencer, research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, 10-29-07, “Nuclear
energy deceivers”, Washington Post, http://www.heritage.org/Press/ Commentary/ed103007a.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
The new No-Nuke crowd then warns of the ripe targets that nuclear plants provide terrorists. Really? Now Jackson
Browne is a terrorism expert? But his credibility is, we must say, "Running on Empty." Nuclear plants were among the
nation's most protected assets before September 11, 2001, and have had numerous security upgrades since. But none of
the world's 443 nuclear power plants have been attacked. Why? Simply put, they're not easy targets. Nuclear plants are
built to withstand airplane impacts, are heavily guarded and are under constant review. If risks are discovered, the answer is
to fix the problem, not shut down the industry.

Terrorism unlikely – nuclear power plants are among the most secure.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 12-3-07, “Dispelling Myths About Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2087.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
The United States has 104 commercial nuclear power plants, and there are 446 worldwide. Not one has fallen victim to
a successful terrorist attack. Certainly, history should not beget complacency, especially when the stakes are so high.
However, the NRC has heightened security and increased safeguards on site to deal with the threat of terrorism. A
deliberate or accidental airplane crash into a reactor is often cited as a threat, but nuclear reactors are structurally designed
to withstand high-impact airborne threats, such as the impact of a large passenger airplane. Furthermore, the Federal
Aviation Administration has instructed pilots to avoid circling or loitering over nuclear or electrical power plants, warning
them that such actions will make them subject to interrogation by law enforcement personnel.[8] The right response to
terrorist threats to nuclear plants--like threats to anything else--is not to shut them down, but to secure them, defend them,
and prepare to manage the consequences in the unlikely event that an incident occurs. Allowing the fear of terrorism to
obstruct the significant economic and societal gains from nuclear power is both irrational and unwise.

Nuclear facilities in the United States are guarded and safe from terrorists.

Council on Foreign Relations, 1-06, “Targets for Terrorism: Nuclear Facilities”, http://www.cfr.
org/publication/10213/targets_for_terrorism.html, [Crystal Xia]
Not very, most experts say. Nuclear weapons production and storage sites are guarded by security forces supervised by
the Department of Energy. John Gordon, the administrator of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security
Administration, has called such sites “one of the last places a terrorist would think about attacking and having hopes of
success; the security basically bristles.” But a watchdog organization, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), charged
that security at U.S. nuclear weapons complexes was inadequate and that hundreds of tons of weapons-grade plutonium and
highly enriched uranium could be stolen, sabotaged, or even detonated. The Department of Energy dismisses such criticism,
adding that security has been stepped up since September 11. Experts note that a terrorist looking to steal nuclear weapons
or weapons-grade material would have a much easier time in Russia or Pakistan than in the United States.

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Terrorists are unlikely to attack or succeed at nuclear plants.

Lionel Beehner, senior writer at the Council for Foreign Relations, 4-25-06, “Chernobyl, Nuclear Power, and
Foreign Policy”, http://www.cfr.org/publication/10534/chernobyl _nuclear_power_ and_foreign_policy.html,
[Crystal Xia]

After 9/11, concerns arose over the security of the United States' 103 nuclear plants, particularly Indian Point, located
thirty miles north of New York City. According to a 2004 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an attack on the plant
could kill up to 44,000 people. But some nuclear experts say the threat posed by terrorists may be exaggerated. "Even if a
jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode," wrote Greenpeace's
Moore, referring to nuclear plants' six-feet-thick exteriors. Ferguson does not see nuclear plants as likely targets. "We
don't see a lot of serious interest on the part of most terrorist groups to attack nuclear targets," he says. "They tend to
favor softer targets," like office buildings or embassies.

Dirty Bombs made from reactors are not dangerous

Dr. Charles D. Ferguson, physicist, Scientist-in-Residence, Monterey Institute’s Center for Nonproliferation
Studies. Tahseen Kazi graduate student, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Judith Perera, writer and
consultant on nuclear energy. 03. “Commercial radioactive sources: surveying the security risks,” Nuclear
Terrorism, Disarmament Forum (UN) no. 2. [Takumi Murayama]
A major finding of this study is that only a small fraction of the millions of commercial radioactive sources used globally,
perhaps several tens of thousands, pose inherently high security risks because of their portability, dispersibility and higher
levels of radioactivity. As a rule, these more dangerous commercial sources are those containing relatively large amounts of
radioactivity (typically more than a few curies—greater than a hundred gigabecquerel—worth of radioactivity) of seven
reactor-produced radioisotopes: americium-241, californium-252, cesium-137, cobalt-60, iridium-192, plutonium-238 and
strontium-90. Some of these isotopes (americium-241, californium-252 and plutonium-238) would only pose internal health
hazards by means of ingestion or inhalation, while the others would present both internal and external health hazards because
the emitted ionizing radiation could penetrate the dead outer layer of human skin.2
To maximize harm to the targeted population, radiological terrorists would tend to seek very highly radioactive sources
(containing tens of thousands or more curies) that pose external and internal health hazards. However, even suicidal terrorists
might not live long enough to deliver an RDD because they might receive lethal acute doses of ionizing radiation from
these sources in the absence of adequate shielding surrounding the radioactive material. But adding heavy protective shielding
could substantially increase the difficulty in transporting an RDD and could dissuade terrorists from employing these types of
sources. In contrast, sources that only present an internal health hazard and that contain very high amounts of radioactivity
could be handled safely without heavy shielding as long as precautions are taken to minimize internal exposure.
While terrorist misuse of radioactive sources with low levels of radioactivity might cause a degree of panic for a brief period,
the high-security risk sources are those that present genuine dangers to the public, in terms of long-term health effects
and major financial loss. For this reason, this study concludes that properly regulating and securing this smaller subset of
sources could contribute significantly to reducing the overall dangers posed by commercial radioactive sources. Public
education, however, is also needed to familiarize the public with the RDD threat and, in particular, to provide, insofar as is
possible, reassurance that some RDDs will have so little radioactivity as to pose little, if any, actual danger to the public.

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US nuclear power plants safe from terrorist attacks

AFP, Washington Report, 3/14/05 US nuclear power safer than ever from terror attack: US nuke regulator,
http://www.mywire.com/pubs/AFP/2005/03/14/769518?&pbl=222 [Jiajia Huang]
WASHINGTON (AFP) — US nuclear power plants have "hardened" their defenses against potential terrorist attacks
and do not face a significant risk from suicide aircraft attacks, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission's chairman said.
NRC chairman Nils Diaz said the nation's nuclear industry is safer than ever nearly four years after the September 11,
2001, hijacked airplane strikes on New York and Washington.
"Both nuclear security and safety are better than they have ever been and both are getting better," Diaz said at a news
conference here.

Terrorist attack unlikely because rate of success too low

Gerald E. Marsh and George S. Stanford, physicist with U.S. Start delegation and consultant to Office of
Chief of Naval Operations on strategic nuclear policy; and nuclear reactor physicist, 11/01, The National Center
for Public Policy Research, http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA374.html [Jiajia Huang]
Without question, sophisticated and well-organized terrorists could do damage to nuclear power plants, and such attempts
cannot be ruled out. However, to be appealing to a suicidal terrorist cell, a potential mission must offer the prospect of
appreciable havoc with a high probability of success. We show below that nuclear power plants do not offer that
combination: scenarios that are likely to succeed will do minimal damage, and those where serious damage could
theoretically result have a very small chance of success.
There are two classes of reactor accident that have the potential of leading to serious off-site consequences: supercriticality
(Chernobyl) and loss of coolant (Three Mile Island). This does not mean that serious consequences are inevitable: at Three
Mile Island, where coolant was not completely lost, the off-site release of radioactivity was negligible and there were no
casualties, although the utility suffered a significant financial loss and there was some panic due to the lack of credible and
timely information on the potential consequences of the accident.

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AT: Nuclear Energy is Dirty/Unsafe–Propaganda


Fears of nuclear power are irrational and guided by propaganda spread by
anti-nuclear activists.

Ed Hiserodt, engineer and expert in power generation technology, 4-30-07, “Myths about Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/3481, [CXia]
The great nightmare associated with nuclear energy is the “meltdown.” Anti-nuclear activists love to point to a scenario
in which a reactor would lose its coolant allowing the fuel rods to melt through the reactor vessel, through several feet of high-
strength concrete, and through hundreds of feet of earth till reaching an aquifer whereupon a steam explosion would ensue.
Consequently, they eagerly seized upon the accident at Three Mile Island as the embodiment of all their fears — or at
least of the fears they wanted the public to have. The problem was that Three Mile Island was a demonstration of the
safety of nuclear plants. Beginning at 4:00 a.m. on March 28, 1979, a series of mishaps resulted in the partial meltdown of the
reactor core. By 7:45 a.m. that morning, according to the Smithsonian Institute, “a molten mass of metal and fuel — some
twenty tons in all — is spilling into the bottom of the reactor vessel.” Yet that reactor containment vessel worked as designed
and by 9:00 a.m. the danger was past: “The reactor vessel holds firm, and the molten uranium, immersed in water, now
gradually begins to cool,” the Smithsonian Institute says in its timeline of events at the damaged reactor. Perhaps the final word
on Three Mile Island comes from Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore. In October 2006, Moore wrote in Popular
Mechanics: “At the time, no one noticed Three Mile Island was a success story; the concrete containment structure
prevented radiation from escaping into the environment. There was no injury or death among the public or nuclear
workers.”
It is common to mention Chernobyl and Three Mile Island at the same time in debate over nuclear safety, but the two events
are substantially different. Chernobyl was the feared “worst case scenario” envisioned by critics of nuclear energy. Whereas at
Three Mile Island the nuclear chain reaction was stopped in the first 10 seconds of the event, at Chernobyl the chain reaction
continued well into the accident. Although there is almost nothing flammable in a U.S. power reactor, Chernobyl’s was
constructed from graphite, a form of carbon that is difficult to ignite, but burns with a very hot flame once ignited. Not only
that, but Chernobyl did not even have a containment structure for the reactor, unlike American plants that are built
with containment buildings designed to withstand the impact of a jumbo jet. Because there was no containment vessel
enclosing Chernobyl’s poorly designed RBMK-type reactors, when the plant exploded, chunks of radioactive material were
ejected from the annihilated plant and exposed to the environment.

Critics hide behind the guise of “environmentalism” in order to promote big


government.

Ed Hiserodt, engineer and expert in power generation technology, 4-30-07, “Myths about Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/3481, [CXia]
But leading critics, those who often have set the terms of the debate, have, unfortunately, been wrong in their assessments of
the risks. Three Mile Island proved the effectiveness of the safety measures designed into every Western power plant — and
technological advances make modern designs safer than Three Mile Island. This has been known to leading critics of nuclear
energy. But they oppose nuclear power not because it is unsafe, but because it is too useful. Cloaked in the garb of
“environmentalism,” they use the anti-nuke movement to promote big government and harass productive capitalistic
enterprises. Among these is Paul Ehrlich, who is known for his outrageous (and wrong) doomsday predictions. In the May-
June 1975 issue of the Federation of American Scientists’ Public Interest Report, Ehrlich wrote: “Giving society cheap,
abundant energy … would be the moral equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” Amory Lovins, another critic and
one-time British representative of Friends of the Earth, agrees. “If you ask me,” Lovins said in an interview with Playboy
magazine in 1977, “It’d be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of
what we would do with it.” Ehrlich, Lovins, and almost all of the “green” leadership rightly recognize that nuclear energy
would lead to prosperity. From their standpoint, that is the problem. Again quoting Ehrlich: “We’ve already had too much
economic growth in the U.S. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure.”

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Fear of nuclear energy is the creation of flawed logic and misrepresentations.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 12-3-07, “Dispelling Myths About Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2087.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Perhaps the greatest myths surrounding nuclear power concern the consequences of past accidents and their association
with current risks. All of these myths depend on a basic construct of flawed logic and misrepresentations that is riddled
with logical and factual errors. First, the consequences of Chernobyl are overblown to invoke general fear of nuclear
power. Next, the Three Mile Island accident is falsely equated with Chernobyl to create the illusion of danger at home.
Finally, any accident, no matter how minor, is portrayed as being ever so close to another nuclear catastrophe to
demonstrate the dangers of new nuclear power. This myth can be dispelled outright simply by revisiting the real consequences
of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island in terms of actual fatalities. Although any loss of life is a tragedy, a more realistic
presentation of the facts would use these accidents to demonstrate the inherent safety of nuclear power. Chernobyl was the
result of human error and poor design. Of the fewer than 50 fatalities,[12] most were rescue workers who unknowingly
entered contaminated areas without being informed of the danger. The World Heath Organization says that up to 4,000
fatalities could ultimately result from Chernobyl-related cancers, but this has not yet happened. The primary health effect was a
spike in thyroid cancer among children, with 4,000-5,000 children diagnosed with the cancer between 1992 and 2002. Of these,
15 children died, but 99 percent of cases were resolved favorably. No clear evidence indicates any increase in other cancers
among the most heavily affected populations. Of course, this does not mean that cancers could not increase at some future date.
Interestingly, the World Health Organization has also identified a condition called "paralyzing fatalism," which is caused by
"persistent myths and misperceptions about the threat of radiation."[13] In other words, the propagation of ignorance by anti-
nuclear activists has caused more harm to the affected populations than has the radioactive fallout from the actual
accident. The most serious accident in U.S. history involved the partial meltdown of a reactor core at Three Mile Island,
but no deaths or injuries resulted. The local population of 2 million people received an average estimated dose of about 1
millirem--insignificant compared to the 100-125 millirems that each person receives annually from naturally occurring
background radiation in the area.[14] Other incidents have occurred since then, and all have been resolved safely. For
example, safety inspections revealed a hole forming in a vessel-head at the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio. Although only an inch
of steel cladding prevented the hole from opening, the NRC found that the plant could have operated another 13 months and
that the steel cladding could have withstood pressures 125 percent above normal operations.[15]

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AT: Nuclear Energy is Dirty/Unsafe


The coal plants used in the squo releases 100 times more radioactive material
than an equivalent nuclear reactor, are the cause of global warming, and
cause 15,000 premature deaths annually in the US alone.
Peter Schwartz, “Nuclear Now!”, Wired Magazine, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/nuclear.html,
2005

The consequences aren't pretty. Burning coal and other fossil fuels is driving climate change, which is blamed for
everything from western forest fires and Florida hurricanes to melting polar ice sheets and flooded Himalayan hamlets.
On top of that, coal-burning electric power plants have fouled the air with enough heavy metals and other noxious
pollutants to cause 15,000 premature deaths annually in the US alone, according to a Harvard School of Public Health
study. Believe it or not, a coal-fired plant releases 100 times more radioactive material than an equivalent nuclear
reactor - right into the air, too, not into some carefully guarded storage site. (And, by the way, more than 5,200 Chinese
coal miners perished in accidents last year.)

Nuclear energy safe – radiation escape, health risks, and terrorist assaults
risks small

Richard Walker, Staff writer for NCPA, 4/6/05, Nuclear Power Today, “NCPA Says Nuclear Power Safer than
Commonly Thought, http://www.allbusiness.com/utilities/electric-power-generation/382476-1.html [Jiajia
Huang]
The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) recently announced that an analysis conducted by scholars from its E-
Team project suggests that nuclear energy is safer than commonly thought.
According to NCPA, the public is primarily concerned that radiation will escape due to equipment failure or human
error, that spent nuclear fuel poses a threat to human health and that nuclear material could be used in a terrorist
assault.
NCPA said the researchers concluded in their analysis that the risk from each of these concerns is "quite small."
"The benefits of nuclear energy are real, while the risks are mostly hypothetical," said NCPA E-Team adjunct scholar
Larry Foulke.

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Media reports are misleading about the safety of nuclear power.

Jack Spencer, Research fellow in nuclear energy @ The Heritage Foundation, 2-1-08, “Nuclear Safety
Paranoia”, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/020108a.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
The media's continued fixation on this story suggests alarmism, at best, and bias against nuclear power at worst. At the very
least, such reporting misleads the public about the safety of nuclear power. Let's be clear. Some guards were sleeping on
the job. They should not have been sleeping. When the company that runs the plant found out, it promptly fired the contractors
in charge of security. In short: A problem arose; it was identified, and it was solved. That should have been the end of the story.
But it wasn't. In the months since the sleeping-guards story first aired, numerous articles have been printed -- and not just by
The Post. USA Today ran the story in September, editorialized on it in October, and revisited it again in December. Each
article included independent, third-party analysis giving credibility and legitimacy to alarmist views. The problem is that the
analysis always comes from the same anti-nuke crowd that's been "crying wolf" about nuclear power since the 1960s. So
why have they been more vocal lately? Well, with rising energy prices and growing concerns over carbon dioxide emissions,
nuclear power is enjoying a comeback. Awkwardly, for the people who railed against nuclear energy in the past under the
auspices of environmentalism, the best way to reduce CO2 is to produce more emissions-free nuclear energy. The obvious
contradiction has forced even ardent activists to make some accommodation for nuclear power in their anti-CO2 rhetoric. One
of the least expensive forms of energy production, nuclear power has proven extraordinarily safe over the past four
decades. The worst commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history, the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, caused no
fatalities or casualties.

Safety concerns are propaganda created by the anti-nuclear movement that


destroys a clean, safe energy.

Jack Spencer, Research fellow in nuclear energy @ The Heritage Foundation, 2-1-08, “Nuclear Safety
Paranoia”, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/020108a.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Although nuclear power's safety record means that activists can no longer play on "China Syndrome" fears, three decades of
anti-nuclear propaganda have left their mark. Many Americans remain concerned about nuclear safety, and the anti-
nuclear movement's updated message is calculated to play upon that anxiety. Increasingly, the anti-nukers preach acceptance
-- but with a catch. Their conditions generally hinge on safety concerns. What seems reasonable, however, quickly
becomes ridiculous. Their formula includes overstating the safety concerns, misstating the information used to support their
positions, and then demanding an unattainable set of stipulations to meet their conditions. This allows them to avoid being
overtly anti-nuclear while advancing an anti-nuclear agenda. Their arguments are then fed to major media outlets that use
them to frame nuclear-related articles. The result: stories that often portray nuclear power as inherently unsafe. Some recent
examples include incidents at the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio and the Vermont Yankee plant in Vermont. At the Davis-Besse
plant, safety inspections revealed a hole forming in a vessel-head. An inch of steel cladding prevented the hole from opening.
Although the problem was fixed and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined that the plant could have operated
another 13 months without incident, and that the steel cladding could have withstood pressures 125 percent above normal
operations, the incident was portrayed as a safety failure. A partial cooling tower collapse at the Vermont Yankee plant was far
less serious than the Davis-Besse incident. Non-radioactive water was spilled in the collapse, but no radiation was released.
Nonetheless, activists cite it as example of the risks posed by power reactors. Safety should remain a priority at nuclear
power plants, but exploiting fears about safety to advance an anti-nuclear agenda helps no one. The unfortunate thing is that
there are great, newsworthy stories to be written about nuclear power: No one has ever died as a result of commercial
nuclear power in the U.S.; terrorists have never attacked a nuclear power plant; nuclear power is clean, affordable and
emits nothing into the atmosphere. The list goes on. A handful of guards taking a 15-minute nap on company time does not
fairly reflect the industry's level of safety. For a news story, it's pretty thin gruel. Yet that's what leading media are feeding the
public. Repeatedly.

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Nuclear power is clean and almost limitless.

Jack Spencer, Research Fellow @ The Heritage Foundation's Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, 10-9-
07, "The Nuclear Renaissance: Ten Principles to Guide U.S. Policy,"
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1640.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
It is not good that the federal government is working to pick winners and losers in the energy market. The results will surely be
increased costs and limited choices for U.S. consumers. Instead, once a set of goals and priorities are set following adequate
public debate, the government should remain technology-neutral. In the current political climate, however, this may be
unrealistic. If the government is not able to be neutral, it should at least do as little harm as possible. Federal laws, programs,
and regulations should recognize nuclear power as an emissions-free, domestic energy source just like wind, solar, and
other favorites of the environmental community. Furthermore, nuclear energy is abundant. Whether or not it fits the strict
definition of “renewable,” the fact is that known uranium stocks will last for a very long time—perhaps centuries or even
millennia, with certain fuel recycling technologies.

Changing regulations ensures that safe and clean nuclear energy is used.

Michael A. Levi, Science and Technology Fellow @ the Brookings Institute, 11-24-03, “The Wrong Way to
Promote Nuclear Power”. http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2003/1124nuclearweapons_levi.aspx [Crystal
Xia]
U.S. lawmakers have been right not to be cowed by the environmentalist scare-mongering that has doomed the German
nuclear industry. Such opposition has always been strange: Evaluated strictly on environmental grounds, nuclear energy beats
every other mature energy technology—one of its best selling points is that it emits few airborne pollutants and no
greenhouse gasses. On top of that, with robust government regulation in place, the likelihood of a major meltdown in a
Western-designed nuclear reactor is negligible. To be sure, nuclear power is generally not cost-competitive with coal or
natural gas. But when future global-warming-driven regulatory regimes charge polluters for their carbon emissions, that
economic balance may change.

Other countries are already looking to nuclear energy because it is clean.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 7-2-08, “Nuclear Energy: What We Can Learn From Other Nations”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1977.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Nuclear energy is attractive to many countries because of its impeccable environmental record. Burning fossil fuels
releases an abundance of elements into the atmosphere. Nuclear energy, to the contrary, fully contains all of its byproduct in
the form of used nuclear fuel. Such waste is safely managed throughout the world in countries like France, Finland, and
Japan. Nations across the world that are struggling to reconcile mandates to reduce carbon dioxide emissions with the
need to maintain economic competitiveness are looking to nuclear technology. Under the new European Union energy
plan, by 2020 Finland will be forced to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent, increase renewable energy by 20
percent, and increase efficiency by 20 percent by 2020. It has turned to nuclear energy to meet these goals.

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Nuclear energy is safe – the industry has a vested interest. The US government
should help.

Charles D. Ferguson, Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology @ Council on Foreign
Relations, 4-07, “Nuclear Energy: Balancing Benefits and Risks”,
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/NuclearEnergyCSR28.pdf, [Crystal Xia]
The nuclear industry has a vested interest in ensuring the safe and secure operation of nuclear power plants. It should
devote a commensurate amount of safety and security resources to meet the projected growing demands for nuclear energy
and should fund efforts to develop the best regulatory practices throughout the world. This proposed initiative for industry
would draw on the precedent established by WANO in improving safety. The nuclear industry should factor these safety
and security costs into the total operational costs of nuclear power plants. Because the electrical distribution grid
connects a variety of electricity production sources, including nuclear, the U.S. government should invest adequate
resources to ensure an effective grid similar to government’s role in investing in the development of the superhighway
system and the Internet

Nuclear power is cheap and becoming more and more safe.

Ferenc L. Toth and Hans-Holger Rogner. Department of Nuclear Energy @ International Atomic Energy
Agency. 9-8-05, “Oil and nuclear power: Past, present and future”. Science Direct. [Crystal Xia]
Nevertheless, despite slow but continuing capacity growth worldwide, growth in nuclear electricity generation has been
greater than growth in capacity, as better management enforced by the pressure of competition has steadily increased the
average availability of nuclear plants to the equivalent of 30 GWe additional nuclear capacity without any construction. Today,
the bulk of the existing nuclear power fleet is among the lowest cost electricity generators. Despite the excellent safety
records over the past 18 years, operational safety remains a widespread public concern in many countries. Shutting down
reactors occasionally due to security concerns demonstrates the implementation of high and ever-increasing safety standards:
operators shut down and check the plant whenever the slightest suspicion of a malfunction arises. There has been no credible
documentation of health effects associated with routine operation of commercial nuclear facilities anywhere in the world.
Widely accepted studies demonstrate no correlation between cancer deaths and plant operations. Yet attribution of certain
morbidity anomalies remains widely debated. Guizard et al. (2001) and Dickinson and Parker (2002) investigate childhood
leukaemia in two regions and find statistically discernable relationships between location and ancestry and leukaemia
occurrence, although it is difficult to control for historical heritage of radioactive material, like the residues of phosphate
production at Sellafield during World War II. Other studies report lower probabilities of death from cancer or non-cancer
diseases for the USA nuclear power workers than the general population (Howe et al., 2004). Nonetheless, safety remains a key
issue. What the public is not aware of are the permanent improvements of operational safety standards and solutions for
power plants currently in service. The Three Mile Island accident in 1979, even though it did not spread any radioactivity
into the environment, triggered extensive safety reviews, thus strengthening nuclear safety in the Western world. The
Chernobyl accident in 1986, instigated by peculiar causes under peculiar circumstances, similarly led to reviews and new
safety measures and upgrades in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The results of these measures are demonstrated
by the improved production figures of nuclear power plants around the world. These indicators show lower doses to their
personnel and fewer unplanned stoppages in currently operating nuclear plants. Nonetheless, those disastrous events still
overcast the fact that by now the world has the experience of some 11,000 reactor-years of operation without any other
major incidents. With time, however, objections to the use of nuclear power on the grounds of operating safety may gradually
be answered by positive experience. Especially because safety is a dynamic concept. The new reactor designs feature
drastically improved safety characteristics, including inherently safe technologies (see Williams, 2000). These advanced
reactors have new security features and can be expected to have even better records on reliability and safety than the
current dominant reactor types.

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Nuclear technology has improved in safety.

William C. Sailor, Center for International Security and Cooperation in Stanford University, 5/19/2K, Science,
Vol. 288 Issue 5469, p1177, 2p, “A Nuclear Solution to Climate Change”, EBSCO, [Crystal Xia]
The present generation of nuclear reactors has had a good safety record, with the major exception of the Chernobyl-
type reactors. Outside the former Soviet Union, about 8500 reactor-years of commercial nuclear power-plant operation have
been realized until now, with no accident involving a large external release of radioactivity and only one accident with fuel
melting: the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island (TMI). These numbers suggest that the risk of an accident with fuel damage
has averaged approximately 10-4 per reactor-year, corresponding under common assumptions to a large external release of
radioactivity at a rate of 10-5 per reactor-year. But this performance would not suffice for a world with is similar to 4000
reactors, because the expectation would then be for a TMI-scale nuclear accident every several years. However, changes in
equipment and operating procedures since TMI suggest considerably improved safety. The likelihood of an accident that
proceeds all the way to core damage can be estimated by analyzing data on the occurrence of individual system malfunctions
(precursor events). Such analyses of actual U.S. reactor performance show a drop of roughly a factor of 100 in the inferred core
damage probability, when comparing the 1994-1998 record with that for the pre-TMI period of 1974-1978 ( 5, 6). There are
also well-developed designs for a next generation of reactors, which promise still greater safety. Of these, the advanced
boiling water reactor (WR) is the first to have been ordered, with two now operating in Japan. The probability of core damage
is estimated by the WR designers to be 2 x 10-7 per reactor-year and by the staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to
be "on the order of 10-6 or less" if the plant is built and operated as specified ( 7, 8). Research is under way to design a
further generation of advanced reactors that differ from previous generations in that they make greater use of passive
safety systems, based on simple physical laws. Because they will require no immediate operator intervention in the case of
malfunction, they are expected to operate with extremely low levels of risk to the public.

Anti-nuclear activism is wrong – nuclear energy is safe, cheap, and clean.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 12-3-07, “Dispelling Myths About Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2087.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
Anti-nuclear activists are reviving their fight against nuclear energy. On their Web site, NukeFree.org, the 2007 version of the
old No Nukes movement warns of the catastrophic potential of nuclear reactors while advocating what they call safer, cleaner,
renewable fuels, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and biofuels.[1]
However, they ignore the reality that nuclear technology is a proven, safe, affordable, and environmentally friendly
energy source that can generate massive quantities of electricity with almost no atmospheric emissions and can offset
America's growing dependence on foreign energy sources. The arguments that they used three decades ago in their attempt
to kill the nuclear industry were wrong then, and they are even more wrong today. A look at the facts shows that their
information is either incorrect or irrelevant.

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According to a Greenpeace co-founder, nuclear power is safe and practical

Dr. Patrick Moore, Co-Chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, co-founder and former leader of
Greenpeace, 6-08, Nuclear Power International, “Nuclear Power—Energy Creating Jobs,”
http://pepei.pennnet.com/display_article/332480/140/ARTCL/none/none/1/Nuclear-Power
%E2%80%94Energy-Creating-Jobs/ [Jiajia Huang]
As one of the founders of Greenpeace, I was once opposed to nuclear energy. In the early years, we were so focused on the
threat of nuclear war; we made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons as if all things nuclear
were evil. We were wrong.
The possible consequences of climate change and certainty of high energy prices don’t allow us the luxury of emotion. We
must be practical. If we truly want to provide safe and affordable energy that doesn’t emit greenhouse gases (GHG) and
still helps us meet a rising demand, it would be irresponsible not to consider nuclear energy for our global energy mix.
In the United States, electricity demand is forecast to increase 25 percent by 2030. Demand in other nations is growing at
an even faster rate and some two billion people in the world still lack access to electricity for essential services.
Consumption may increase five-fold. Conservation and efficiency may make it possible to reduce demand growth with
technologies like smart metering and energy efficient appliances, but they won’t eliminate overall demand growth. If we
want to satisfy this growing demand without increasing air pollution and GHGs, nuclear energy is the only baseload, “always
on” technology available.
As a lifelong activist, I am particularly concerned about the impact that our actions have on our planet and our health. I came
around to nuclear power because it generates electricity we can rely on, while preventing the emission of pollutants like
sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter that lead to the formation of acid rain, smog and severe health effects.
As the International Panel on Climate Change points outs, nuclear energy’s clean air benefits are also capable of reducing
greenhouse gases.
The nuclear industry grew rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s as France, Japan and the United States built scores of reactors.
France now has 59 nuclear reactors and derives more than 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy. But in the United
States, lagging electricity demand, challenging politics, public misperception and project mismanagement have stalled new
plants for nearly 30 years.
Today, safe and efficient industry performance and growing concern over climate change has brought nuclear energy back into
public favor. Nuclear plants are generating electricity at record levels. In 2007, U.S. reactors produced 807 billion
kilowatt hours of electricity1 or 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, while operating at nearly 92 percent capacity.

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AT: Nuclear Energy is expensive


Nuclear fuel is efficient and can help meet global demands for energy.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 7-2-08, “Nuclear Energy: What We Can Learn From Other Nations”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm1977.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
U.S. electricity demand is projected to increase up to 40 percent by 2030, and other countries are projecting similar
increases.[4] The rapid industrial development of both China and India is already placing great pressure on global energy
supplies. And because energy sources, especially fossil fuels, are global commodities, growing demand in one part of the
world affects the global economy. As a result, higher prices and tightened supply have some nations, such as China,
experiencing power shortages.[5] While the U.S. has, for the most part, been able to keep the lights on, with the price of gas
breaking the $4 barrier and natural gas prices increasing, every American knows full well the pain of increasing global
energy demand. Nuclear energy can help meet this growing demand. Most directly, nuclear energy can be used to generate
electricity. If that demand were not met by nuclear power, then it would likely be met with natural gas. This would put
additional pressure on natural gas reserves, driving up the price for electricity as well as all the other goods that use natural gas
in their production. Although natural uranium is a finite resource like gas, oil, or coal, it can be recycled and reused. The
French, Japanese, and British all recycle their used nuclear fuel. The French, for example, remove the uranium and plutonium
and fabricate new fuel. Using that method, America can recycle its 58,000 tons of used fuel stored across the nation to power
every U.S. household for 12 years.

Nuclear energy is safer, more efficient, and cheaper.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, Research Professor
at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]

In America and around the globe, nuclear safety and efficiency have improved significantly since 1990. In 1998, unit
capacity factor (the fraction of a power plant's capacity that it actually generates) for operating reactors reached record
levels. The average U.S. capacity factor in 1998 was 80 percent for about 100 reactors, compared to 58 percent in 1980 and 66
percent in 1990. Despite a reduction in the number of power plants, the U.S. nuclear industry generated nine percent more
nuclear electricity in 1999 than in 1998. Average production costs for nuclear energy are now just 1.9 cents per kilowatt-
hour (kWh), while electricity produced from gas costs 3.4 cents per kWh. Meanwhile, radiation exposure to workers and
waste produced per unit of energy have hit new lows. Because major, complex technologies take more than half a century to
spread around the world, natural gas will share the lead in power generation with nuclear power over the next hundred years.
Which of the two will command the greater share remains to be determined. But both are cleaner and more secure than the
fuels they have begun to replace, and their ascendance should be endorsed. Even environmentalists should welcome the
transition and reconsider their infatuation with renewable energy sources.

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Nuclear power plants are initially more expensive because of safety


requirements – are actually 10 times cheaper in the long run.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
The production cost of nuclear electricity generated from existing U.S. plants is already fully competitive with electricity from
fossil fuels, although new nuclear power is somewhat more expensive. But this higher price tag is deceptive. Large
nuclear power plants require larger capital investments than comparable coal or gas plants only because nuclear
utilities are required to build and maintain costly systems to keep their radioactivity from the environment. If fossil-fuel
plants were similarly required to sequester the pollutants they generate, they would cost significantly more than nuclear power
plants do. The European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have determined that "for equivalent
amounts of energy generation, coal and oil plants, . . . owing to their large emissions and huge fuel and transport requirements,
have the highest externality costs as well as equivalent lives lost. The external costs are some ten times higher than for a
nuclear power plant and can be a significant fraction of generation costs." In equivalent lives lost per gigawatt generated (that
is, loss of life expectancy from exposure to pollutants), coal kills 37 people annually; oil, 32; gas, 2; nuclear, 1. Compared to
nuclear power, in other words, fossil fuels (and renewables) have enjoyed a free ride with respect to protection of the
environment and public health and safety.

Despite high capital and start-up costs, nuclear energy is becoming cheaper
and more efficient.

Lionel Beehner, senior writer at the Council for Foreign Relations, 4-25-06, “Chernobyl, Nuclear Power, and
Foreign Policy”, http://www.cfr.org/publication/10534/chernobyl _nuclear_power_ and_foreign_policy.html,
[Crystal Xia]
Nuclear power has enormously high capital and start-up costs, in addition to the added costs of decommissioning plants
and disposing of nuclear waste, say economists. They often point to the British government's repeated bailout of British
Energy. Also, nuclear power's cost competitiveness depends on the global price of oil and gas, which fluctuates
unpredictably. And for countries with ample supplies of coal, including the United States and China, it is far cheaper—but
less environmentally friendly—to run coal-run plants than nuclear-power stations, experts say. But some nuclear
advocates say advances in technology will make the cost of nuclear power, already down to less than two cents per kilowatt
hour, more competitive with coal in the future. Carbon taxes, emissions-trading schemes, and government subsidies—
which in America could reach $6 billion, if Bush's latest energy bill passes—may also enhance nuclear energy's
competitiveness.

Future power plants will be cheaper than their predecessors

Jack Spencer and Nicolas Loris, Research Fellow in Nuclear Energy at The Heritage Foundation's Roe Institute for Economic Policy
Studies, 6-18-08, Critics of Nuclear Power’s Cost Miss the Point
Furthermore, assiging all of the costs of the first few nuclear plants to future plants is inaccurate. As more orders are placed,
economies of scale will be achieved. Today, it is very expensive to produce nuclear-qualified components and materials because steep
overhead costs are carried by only a few products. Additional production will allow these costs to be spread, thus lowering costs
overall. Further savings should be achieved by applying lessons learned from initial construction projects. Because nuclear plants
could have an operating life of 80 years, the benefit could be well worth the cost.
To argue that nuclear power is not viable based on cost alone while ignoring the many problems, including costs, that are associated
with wind, solar, and efficiency measures is to present an inaccurate picture

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Anti-nuclear power environmentalists are wrong and damage an important


energy source.

Jack Spencer, research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, 10-29-07, “Nuclear
energy deceivers”, Washington Post, http://www.heritage.org/Press/ Commentary/ed103007a.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
The No-Nukers argue that nuclear power is bad economics. Back in the 1970s, they successfully drove the costs of
nuclear power up by forcing delays and instigating superfluous regulation. Though affordable, nuclear power is as expensive
as it is today because of that success, not because the technology is uncompetitive. The situation is much different today.
Streamlined regulation, better designs and greater efficiency make the economics of today's nuclear plants much more
predictable. Nuclear energy is among the least expensive energy sources today. Indeed, numerous studies have shown that
new nuclear power is very competitive in a carbon-constrained economy. The anti-nuke crowd already nearly killed the
nuclear industry once, and America is paying for it today with higher energy prices. This time the stakes are higher and
consequences are greater. Sadly, the environment and the poorest Americans will be hardest hit if they succeed. Nuclear
energy is the only realistic and affordable option if we hope to cap CO2. The old rock stars of the world may be able to
afford higher electricity prices. But the single mothers of the world cannot. It's time for a Browne-out.

Nuclear Power costs less in terms of deaths AND money

Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun, and Denis Beller, nuclear engineer
and Technical Staff Member at Los Alamos National Laboratory. 01/02-00. “The need for nuclear power,”
Foreign Affairs. New York, Vol. 79, Iss. 1; pg. 30, 15 pgs. [Takumi Murayama]
The production cost of nuclear electricity generated from existing U.S. plants is already fully competitive with electricity from
fossil fuels, although new nuclear power is somewhat more expensive. But this higher price tag is deceptive. Large nuclear
power plants require larger capital investments than comparable coal or gas plants only because nuclear utilities are required to
build and maintain costly systems to keep their radioactivity from the environment. If fossil fuel plants were similarly required
to sequester the pollutants they generate, they would cost significantly more than nuclear power plants do. The European Union
and the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) have determined that "for equivalent amounts of energy generation,
coal and oil plants, ... owing to their large emissions and huge fuel and transport requirements, have the highest
externality costs as well as equivalent lives lost. The external costs are some ten times higher than for a nuclear power
plant and can be a significant fraction of generation costs." In equivalent lives lost per gigawatt generated (that is, loss
of life expectancy from exposure to pollutants), coal kills 37 people annually; oil, 32; gas, 2; nuclear, 1. Compared to
nuclear power, in other words, fossils (and renewables) have enjoyed a free ride with respect to protection of the environment
and public health and safety Even the estimate of one life lost to nuclear power is questionable. Such an estimate depends on
whether or not, as the long-standing "linear no-threshold" theory (LNT)maintains, exposure to amounts of radiation
considerably less than preexisting natural levels increases the risk of cancer. Although LNT dictates elaborate and expensive
confinement regimes for nuclear power operations and waste disposal, there is no evidence that low-level radiation exposure
increases cancer risk. In fact, there is good evidence that it does not. There is even good evidence that exposure to low doses of
radioactivity improves health and lengthens life, probably by stimulating the immune system much as vaccines do (the best
study, of background radon levels in hundreds of thousands of homes in more than go percent of U.S. counties, found lung
cancer rates decreasing significantly with increasing radon levels among both smokers and nonsmokers). So low-level
radioactivity from nuclear power generation presents at worst a negligible risk. Authorities on coal geology and
engineering make the same argument about low-level radioactivity from coal-burning; a U.S. Geological Survey fact sheet, for
example, concludes that "radioactive elements in coal and fly ash should not be sources of alarm." Yet nuclear power
development has been hobbled, and nuclear waste disposal unnecessarily delayed, by limits not visited upon the coal
industry.

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AT: Nuclear Energy Kills


Nuclear Power is WAY less dangerous than fossil fuels

Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun, and Denis Beller, nuclear engineer
and Technical Staff Member at Los Alamos National Laboratory. 01/02-00. “The need for nuclear power,”
Foreign Affairs. New York, Vol. 79, Iss. 1; pg. 30, 15 pgs. [Takumi Murayama]
No technological system is immune to accident. Recent dam overflows and failures in Italy and India each resulted in
several thousand fatalities. Coal-mine accidents, oil- and gas-plant fires, and pipeline explosions typically kill hundreds
per incident. The 1984 Bhopal chemical plant disaster caused some 3,000 immediate deaths and poisoned several hundred
thousand people. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, between 1987 and 1996 more than 6oo,ooo
accidental releases of toxic chemicals in the United States killed a total Of Z,565 people and injured 22,949.
By comparison, nuclear accidents have been few and minimal. The recent, much-reported accident in Japan occurred not at
a power plant but at a facility processing fuel for a research reactor. It caused no deaths or injuries to the public. As for the
Chernobyl explosion, it resulted from human error in operating a fundamentally faulty reactor design that could not
have been licensed in the West. It caused severe human and environmental damage locally, including 31 deaths, most from
radiation exposure. Thyroid cancer, which could have been prevented with prompt iodine prophylaxis, has increased in
Ukrainian children exposed to fallout. More than 8oo cases have been diagnosed and several thousand more are projected;
although the disease is treatable, three children have died. LNT-based calculations project 3,420 cancer deaths in Chernobyl-
area residents and cleanup crews. The Chernobyl reactor lacked a containment structure, a fundamental safety system that is
required on Western reactors. Postaccident calculations indicate that such a structure would have confined the explosion
and thus the radioactivity, in which case no injuries or deaths would have occurred.
These numbers, for the worst ever nuclear power accident, are remarkably low compared to major accidents in other
industries. More than 40 years of commercial nuclear power operations demonstrate that nuclear power is much safer than
fossil-fuel systems in terms of industrial accidents, environmental damage, health effects, and long-term risk.

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AT: Nuclear Energy Radiation


Nuclear power plants do not release a sufficient amount of radiation to make a
difference.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 12-3-07, “Dispelling Myths About Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2087.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
FACT: Nuclear power plants do emit some radiation, but the amounts are environmentally insignificant and pose no
threat. This myth relies on taking facts completely out of context. By exploiting public fears of anything radioactive and not
educating the public about the true nature of radiation and radiation exposure, anti-nuclear activists can easily portray any
radioactive emissions as a reason to stop nuclear power. However, when radiation is put into the proper context, the safety of
nuclear power plants is clear. Nuclear power plants do emit some radiation, but the amounts are environmentally
insignificant and pose no threat. These emissions fall well below the legal safety limit sanctioned by the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC). Indeed, less than 1 percent of the public's exposure to radiation comes from nuclear power plants.
The average American is exposed to 360 millirem of radiation a year.[4] About 83 percent (300 millirem) of this annual
radiation dose comes from natural sources, such as cosmic rays, uranium in the Earth's crust, and radon gas in the atmosphere.
Most of the rest comes from medical procedures such as X-rays, and about 3 percent (11 millirem) comes from consumer
products.[5] The Department of Energy reports that living near a nuclear power plant exposes a person to 1 millirem of
radiation a year.[6] By comparison, an airline passenger who flies from New York to Los Angeles receives 2.5 millirem.
[7] As Chart 1 illustrates, radiation exposure is an unavoidable reality of everyday life, and radiation exposure from
living near a nuclear power plant is insignificant.

Nuclear power is way safer than coal, and radiation issues are empirically
denied

David Lonsdale, group editorial manager of Australian Provincial Newspapers. 07/19/08. “Nuclear power
pluses must be weighed with the risks,” A, p. B08. Lexis. [Takumi Murayama]
Ulrich Beck tells us nuclear power is just too risky ("Wrong to compare risk with disaster", July 18, p15). But he is
constrained in doing so by the fact that 442 facilities have now proven, in practice, that it is the safest and greenest source
of base-load electricity.
Coal mining averages about 10,000 deaths every year, not counting those from lung diseases. The exhaustive UN inquiry
into Chernobyl, our only nuclear disaster, found fewer than 40 died.
Further, how does Beck account for Canada's naturally-occurring, highly radioactive uranium deposits sitting shallow,
in unexceptional wet rock, for eons with no discernible deleterious surface effects?
Any chance he likes exaggerating the risks to frighten the kiddies?

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The amount of nuclear radiation emitted from nuclear plants is negligible.

Ed Hiserodt, engineer and expert in power generation technology, 4-30-07, “Myths about Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/3481, [CXia]
The fact is, nuclear power plants emit less radiation during normal operation than do coal-fired power plants. In an
article published in 1993 in Oak Ridge National Laboratory Review, ORNL physicist Alex Gabbard pointed out “that coal-
fired power plants throughout the world are the major sources of radioactive materials released to the environment.” According
to Gabbard, radiation from coal combustion “is 100 times that from nuclear plants.” Yet even at that level, radiation
from coal is completely negligible. Nuclear reactors emit much less radiation than coal-fired power plants. The Nuclear
Regulatory Commission limits radiation at the plant boundary to 5 millirems per year. (It seldom gets anywhere near that.) If
you were to stand unclothed at the boundary for 120 years, you would receive as much radiation as a person living on the
Colorado plateau does in one year from natural background radiation. Moreover, the U.S. capitol building has long been
known to emit too much radiation to be licensed as a nuclear power plant. Consider too that unlike coal- or oil-fired
plants, nuclear power plants do not have smokestacks spewing pollutants into the atmosphere. In the case of nuclear plants,
the wastes are contained within the plant itself. Often mistaken for smokestacks, some nuclear power plants, like some coal-
or oil-fired plants, have cooling towers that emit water vapor. Finally, it is important to keep in mind that radiation is all
around us every day. According to the Department of Energy, the average American receives 300 millirems of radiation each
year from natural sources, but that amount is higher in some places. For instance, in Denver, Colorado, because of the
proximity of the Rocky Mountains and because there is less atmosphere overhead to protect from cosmic rays, residents
receive almost double the national average background radiation. I wonder, does the EPA know about this? Perhaps
Coloradans should be evacuated!

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AT: Oil
Nuclear, wind, and solar power plants do not affect the oil industry.

Jerry Taylor, senior fellow @ the Cato Institute, 6-14-07, “Alternative Energy in the Dock”,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/articles/taylor-poweringamerica.pdf, [Crystal Xia]
It’s important to note, however, that these alleged “national security externalities” are exclusively related to oil – not to coal,
natural gas, or any other sort of fossil fuel because we don’t import those energy sources by any appreciable amount.
Accordingly, subsidizing wind, solar, and nuclear power will do little to improve national security because those energy
sources do not compete with crude oil and would not displace crude oil. Until plug-in cars are both available and
economically attractive to consumers, building 100 new wind, solar, and nuclear power plants won’t reduce oil
consumption by very much at all.

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AT: Nuclear Waste Problematic


Nuclear waste is not a problem – solved years ago.

Nicolas Loris and Jack Spencer, Research assistant and research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, 12-3-07, “Dispelling Myths About Nuclear Energy”,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2087.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
FACT: The nuclear industry solved the nuclear waste problem decades ago. Spent nuclear fuel can be removed from the
reactor, reprocessed to separate unused fuel, and then used again. The remaining waste could then be placed in either
interim or long-term storage, such as in the Yucca Mountain repository. France and other countries carry out some version of
this process safely every day. Furthermore, technology advances could yield greater efficiencies and improve the process.
The argument that there is no solution to the waste problem is simply wrong. "Closing the fuel cycle" by reprocessing or
recycling spent fuel would enable the U.S. to move away, finally, from relying so heavily on the proposed Yucca
Mountain repository for the success of its nuclear program. This would allow for a more reasonable mixed approach to nuclear
waste, which would likely include some combination of Yucca Mountain, interim storage, recycling, and new technologies.
Regrettably, the federal government banned the recycling of spent fuel from commercial U.S. reactors in 1977, and the nation
has practiced a virtual moratorium on the process ever since.[3]

The quantity of waste is NOT vast

Canberra Times. 07/19/08. “Nuclear power pluses must be weighed with the risks,” A, p. B08. Lexis.
[Takumi Murayama]
The anti-nuclear tirade by Dr Sue Wareham (Letters, July 15) is the usual cocktail of emotive and irrational
scaremongering that has characterised the anti-nuclear lobby for decades. Her letter must contain at least as many wrong
statements as she accuses Leslie Kemeny of making.
The "vast quantities of high level waste" to which she refers amount to something like one semi-trailer load per power
station per year! Whilst she dismisses nuclear power stations because they will be "at least a decade in the making" (and that
may be somewhere near the truth), the need to have a reliable base load non-carbon energy source extends long beyond that.

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AT: other renewable energies better


Nuclear technology is safer and cleaner than all others – solar and wind power
are worse than nuclear.

Jack Spencer, research fellow @ the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, 10-29-07, “Nuclear
energy deceivers”, Washington Post, http://www.heritage.org/Press/ Commentary/ed103007a.cfm, [Crystal Xia]
They don't seem to realize that things have changed since the old No-Nuke movement packed up its placards. Today, the
nuclear industry's safety, environmental and economic record ranks among the best in the energy (or any other)
industry. In an effort to devalue nuclear power's environmental advantages, Mr. Browne's warriors include the pollutants and
CO2 released during the construction and fueling process in their evaluation, without fully acknowledging that other energy
sources have similar impacts. No apples-to-apples comparisons for this crowd. For example, 2 million tons of concrete, about
double what a nuclear plant requires, must be produced and delivered to anchor enough windmills to match one nuclear plant's
energy production. Just producing this concrete emits the CO2 equivalent of flying a Boeing 747 from New York to London
450 times. Carbon-free fairies do not magically drop windmills onto mountaintops. Every windmill or solar panel started as
a raw material that was mined, transported and manufactured using fossil fuel. We live in a fossil-fuel based society.
CO2 is released by almost any activity, whether building a windmill or a nuclear power plant. Ultimately, however, nuclear
technology provides the world an opportunity to make its energy profile less fossil-fuel-centric.

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Solar, wind, hydroelectric and geothermal sources of energy are inefficient,


dangerous to the environment, and costly.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
RENEWABLE SOURCES of energy -- hydroelectric, solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass -- have high capital-investment
costs and significant, if usually unacknowledged, environmental consequences. Hydropower is not even a true renewable,
since dams eventually silt in. Most renewables collect extremely diluted energy, requiring large areas of land and masses of
collectors to concentrate. Manufacturing solar collectors, pouring concrete for fields of windmills, and drowning many square
miles of land behind dams cause damage and pollution. Photovoltaic cells used for solar collection are large semiconductors;
their manufacture produces highly toxic waste metals and solvents that require special technology for disposal. A 1,000-MWe
solar electric plant would generate 6,850 tonnes of hazardous waste from metals-processing alone over a 30-year lifetime. A
comparable solar thermal plant (using mirrors focused on a central tower) would require metals for construction that would
generate 435,000 tonnes of manufacturing waste, of which 16,300 tonnes would be contaminated with lead and chromium and
be considered hazardous. A global solar-energy system would consume at least 20 percent of the world's known iron
resources. It would require a century to build and a substantial fraction of annual world iron production to maintain. The
energy necessary to manufacture sufficient solar collectors to cover a half-million square miles of the earth's surface and to
deliver the electricity through long-distance transmission systems would itself add grievously to the global burden of pollution
and greenhouse gas. A global solar-energy system without fossil or nuclear backup would also be dangerously vulnerable
to drops in solar radiation from volcanic events such as the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, which caused widespread crop failure
during the "year without a summer" that followed. Wind farms, besides requiring millions of pounds of concrete and steel
to build (and thus creating huge amounts of waste materials), are inefficient, with low (because intermittent) capacity. They
also cause visual and noise pollution and are mighty slayers of birds. Several hundred birds of prey, including dozens of
golden eagles, are killed every year by a single California wind farm; more eagles have been killed by wind turbines than were
lost in the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil spill. The National Audubon Society has launched a campaign to save the California
condor from a proposed wind farm to be built north of Los Angeles. A wind farm equivalent in output and capacity to a
1,000-MWe fossil-fuel or nuclear plant would occupy 2,000 square miles of land and, even with substantial subsidies and
ignoring hidden pollution costs, would produce electricity at double or triple the cost of fossil fuels. Although at least one-
quarter of the world's potential for hydropower has already been developed, hydroelectric power -- produced by dams that
submerge large areas of land, displace rural populations, change river ecology, kill fish, and risk catastrophic collapse -- has
understandably lost the backing of environmentalists in recent years. The U.S. Export-Import Bank was responding in part
to environmental lobbying when it denied funding to China's 18,000-MWe Three Gorges project. Meanwhile, geothermal
sources -- which exploit the internal heat of the earth emerging in geyser areas or under volcanoes -- are inherently limited
and often coincide with scenic sites (such as Yellowstone National Park) that conservationists understandably want to
preserve.

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Alt renewable energy sources are failing – nuclear energy is the most clean.

Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University,
Research Professor at University of Nevada in Las Vegas, 1/2K, “The Need for Nuclear Power”, Foreign
Affairs, Lexis-Nexis, [Crystal Xia]
Like the dream of controlled thermonuclear fusion, then, the reality of a world run on pristine energy generated from
renewables continues to recede, despite expensive, highly subsidized research and development. The 1997 U.S. federal
R&D investment per thousand kWh was only 5 cents for nuclear and coal, 58 cents for oil, and 41 cents for gas, but was $
4,769 for wind and $ 17,006 for photovoltaics. This massive public investment in renewables would have been better spent
making coal plants and automobiles cleaner. According to Robert Bradley of Houston's Institute for Energy Research, U.S.
conservation efforts and nonhydroelectric renewables have benefited from a cumulative 20-year taxpayer investment of some $
30 -- $ 40 billion -- "the largest governmental peacetime energy expenditure in U.S. history." And Bradley estimates that "the
$ 5.8 billion spent by the Department of Energy on wind and solar subsidies" alone could have paid for "replacing
between 5,000 and 10,000 MWe of the nation's dirtiest coal capacity with gas-fired combined-cycle units, which would
have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by between one-third and two-thirds." Replacing coal with nuclear generation
would have reduced overall emissions even more.

Renewables can’t solve alone – nuclear technology is needed to solve.

Steve Kerekes, senior director of media relations at the Nuclear Energy Institute, 11-9-07, “Nuclear Power in
Response to the Climate Change” http://www.cfr.org/publication
14718/nuclear_power_in_response_to_climate_change.html, [Crystal Xia]
I love it! Now Michael’s knock on nuclear energy is that it’s a “mature” technology—meaning not so much that it’s been
around for a while but that it’s actually generated huge amounts of emission-free electricity. Setting aside the fact that the sun
and the wind have been around since, say, the dawn of time, here’s what the Cato Institute—no friend of government
investment in nuclear energy—revealed in a January 2002 “Policy Analysis”: “R&D dollars have not handicapped renewable
energy technologies. Over the past 20 years, those technologies have received (in inflation-adjusted 1996 dollars) $24.2 billion
in federal R&D subsidies, while nuclear energy has received $20.1 billion and fossil fuels only $15.5 billion.” So it’s a
complete myth that Michael’s preferred technologies haven’t gotten the money. They have. In fact, nuclear and renewables
make a nice, emission-free combination. Of course, renewables cannot meet baseload, 24-hour a day, seven-day a week
electricity demand. Nuclear power can. Our industry average capacity factor—which measures actual electricity production
relative to theoretical production non-stop for a full year—has been right around 90 percent for the past seven years. By
comparison, the Department of Energy pegs the average capacity for state-of-the-art wind projects at 36 percent, with older
projects lagging at 30 percent or lower. I agree that it’s prudent to use limited resources wisely. Yet the investment resources
for energy technologies aren’t as limited as Michael thinks. Morgan Stanley Vice Chairman Jeffrey Holzschuh has a
presentation in which he notes that the U.S. utility industry investment needs for the next thirteen years total about $1 trillion.
Of that total infrastructure need, $350 billion, or $23 billion per year, is needed for electric-generating facilities. Of that sum,
the capital required to build an additional 15,000-20,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity over the next fifteen years is
about $3.5 billion per year. Meanwhile, over the past five years, the investment capital raised by the U.S. power industry has
ranged between $50 billion and $79 billion annually. In other words, new nuclear plant construction will barely make a
dent in the ability of U.S. capital markets to finance new energy projects. This is not an “either-or” scenario. We need
all these emission-free energy technologies. The fact that nuclear energy has proven its value as a reliable, affordable
source of clean energy is cause for hope.

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Nuclear energy is safe and reduces CO2 emissions, and is more efficient than
solar and wind power.

C.T. Carley, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering at Mississippi State University, 4-29-08,
Commercial Appeal, “Nuclear power benefits outweigh past fears,”
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/apr/29/guest-column-nuclear-power-benefits-outweigh/
[Jiajia Huang]
If you need someone smart on your policy-making team, who better than Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal
Reserve Bank? On both economics and grand strategy, Greenspan has few equals.
Greenspan was recently asked to speak at an energy conference in Houston attended by oil company executives from around
the world. One of the points he made was that nuclear energy is part of a strategy aimed at reducing our dependence on
imported oil that he would recommend to the next president.
Greenspan's solution to breaking our nation's reliance on foreign oil includes market adoption of electric plug-in vehicles along
with the infrastructure to power them. He was asked how plug-in vehicles should be fueled. His answer: "No question about
it -- nuclear power."
Acknowledging that nuclear power has some political hurdles to clear, Greenspan said that our country must continue to work
toward a successful program for spent-fuel management, but he believes it is a "resolvable problem."
"The French seem have to taken care of it," he said, "... and we can too."
France obtains 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power and is building more nuclear plants. But instead of storing spent
fuel at nuclear plant sites, as we do in the United States, France makes use of the spent fuel's valuable uranium and plutonium,
recycling those nuclear materials into new reactor fuel that's used to produce more electricity.
Such recycling, which is also called reprocessing, extends uranium supplies and greatly reduces the amount of high-level
radioactive waste that needs to be permanently disposed of in an underground repository.
The United States once recycled spent fuel but President Carter banned the practice in 1977 on the grounds that plutonium
from recycling could be diverted and used to make nuclear weapons. But recycling can be done safely and securely, as
France and Great Britain have demonstrated. There's no good reason not to revive it in the United States.
In his recent book, "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," Greenspan writes that nuclear energy is an
"obvious alternative" to coal in electric power generation. Coal-fired power plants in the United States load the
atmosphere each year with more than 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas linked to global
warming. By contrast, nuclear plants emit no carbon dioxide and account for about 70 percent of the clean power
generation in the United States.
"Given the steps that have been taken over the years to make nuclear energy safer and the obvious environmental
advantages it offers in reducing carbon dioxide emissions," Greenspan writes in his book, "there is no longer a persuasive
case against increasing nuclear power generation at the expense of coal."
"Nuclear power is a major means to combat global warming, " Greenspan writes. "Its use should be avoided only if it
constitutes a threat to life expectancy that outweighs the gains it can give us. By that criterion, I believe we significantly
under-use nuclear power."
No one disputes that, especially here in the Southeast, we need more base-load electricity to replace aging power plants and
meet the growing demand for power. Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power are relatively benign
environmentally, but they can't provide the large amount of electricity required for our daily needs. This is a reality that
those seeking passage of a climate bill are going to have to wake up to. The new administration should heed Alan Greenspan's
advice on nuclear power.

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Nuclear energy is the most clean, practical alternative energy, and could even
help reduce CO2 emissions from transportation

NCPA Scholar, Member of E-Team, 7-27-06, A National Center for Policy Analysis Project, Nuclear Power
May Be Answer To Global Warming, http://eteam.ncpa.org/news/nuclear-power-may-be-answer-to-global-
warming [Jiajia Huang]
DALLAS (July 27, 2006) - As former Vice President Al Gore's global warming movie nears the end of its run in theaters, a
new report from the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) suggests combating climate change requires creative thinking
about the world's energy needs. According to the report, nuclear power holds the most promise as a clean, practical
alternative to fossil fuels that could help satisfy the world economy's growing demand for energy.
"If we buy the theory that human use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) is causing global warming, we must reassess how
we are going to fuel economic growth in the future," said Pete Geddes, executive vice president of the Foundation for Research
on Economics and the Environment (FREE) and co-author of the report. "Nuclear power very well could be the best choice
to reduce the threat arguably posed by fossil fuels."
Sustaining economic growth in developed countries and accelerating growth in the developing world means that energy
demand will increase dramatically in the coming century. The International Energy Agency projects world energy demand will
grow 65 percent by 2020. According to the report, reducing the amount of CO2 humans put into the atmosphere, while still
meeting the energy demands of an expected population of more than 9 billion people by 2050, requires reconsidering nuclear
power - a safe, practical alternative.
Despite opposition, nuclear power currently produces much of the electric power in developed countries.
Nuclear power provides about 75 percent of the electricity in France and 20 percent in the United States.
With 434 operating reactors worldwide, nuclear power meets the electrical needs of more than a billion people.
China alone is planning to build 30 nuclear reactors over the next five years.
Nuclear power has advantages over fossil fuels. A single, quarter-ounce pellet of uranium generates as much energy as
3.5 barrels of oil, 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, or 1,780 pounds of coal, with none of the CO2 emissions. However,
conventional reactors only utilize approximately 3 percent of the energy contained in nuclear fuel. If the United States joined
France and Japan in recycling used fuel, and recycled the more than 15,000 plutonium pits removed from dismantled U.S.
nuclear weapons, existing and recycled supplies would provide an almost unlimited amount of nuclear fuel.
"Nuclear power could also help reduce CO2 emissions from transportation," noted NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling
Burnett, co-author of the report. "For instance, running new light rail and subway systems on electricity generated by
nuclear plants - rather than coal or gas-fired power plants - would prevent new emissions."

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Nuclear energy is the safest source of energy, and is better than solar, wind,
and tidal power, and even less radioactive than coal ash.

Peter Geddes, Executive Vice President of FREE, 3-02-05, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, “Nuclear Power: The
Green Alternative,” http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=440 [Jiajia Huang]
The International Energy Agency projects 65 percent growth in world energy demand by 2020. Two questions pop up: How
will we meet this energy demand and what are the environmental consequences of our choices?
When we consider these issues we confront three vexing realities. First, fossil fuels (i.e., oil and coal) are our cheapest, most
available sources of energy. The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with 25 percent of the world’s reserves, double those of the
next largest source, China.
Second, billions of the earth's poorest are just climbing out of desperate poverty. Affordable energy is essential to their
successful escape… and they know it.
Third, burning fossil fuels causes air pollution and contributes to climate change.
Can we provide affordable and reliable energy for the world’s least fortunate, while simultaneously combating global
warming?
What about renewable energy, like solar? A Bozeman friend grins whenever the energy from his residential solar array causes
his electric meter to spin backward. For him, electricity prices can’t go too high.
Solar has great potential, especially for remote, off-the-grid applications. And passive solar construction ought to be a
standard design feature in the Northern Rockies, where winters are long, cold, and sunny. But high initial costs and long
payback times will limit solar’s widespread adoption for power generation. Wind and tidal power have similarly limited
applications. I’m afraid we confuse hopes with realistic expectations if we believe that wind, solar, or tidal power will
soon meet our base load energy demands.
In contrast, coal is cheap and abundant. In the U.S. it generates 52 percent of our electricity. Its share of our energy portfolio
will surely increase. Changing this future is especially difficult. In addition to its abundance and low price, coal has a powerful
political constituency.
China consumes almost half the world’s coal production, using it to supply 75 percent of its annual energy demand. In
addition to emitting CO2, coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. Coal ash is radioactive. A typical coal-fired power plant
releases about l00 times as much radioactivity as a comparable nuclear plant. Toxic heavy metals such as mercury are
particularly nasty byproducts.
Mercury falls downwind on land and into the oceans. It becomes toxic as methylmercury. It moves up the food chain,
eventually accumulating in the fat cells of fish. As a result, pregnant and nursing mothers who eat large amounts of salmon and
tuna can expose their children to mercury poisoning.
Because of our stack scrubbers, the U.S. produces only 1 percent of non-natural global mercury emissions. China accounts for
25 percent. No serious person believes the Chinese will place the world’s environmental and health concerns above their own
economic interests.
All energy production has environmental impacts. For example, wind farms cause visual and noise pollution and kill
birds. Our choices involve trading off among imperfect alternatives.
Is it time we rethink opposition to nuclear power? James Lovelock, promoter of the Gaia hypothesis, believes so. He
writes: “Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and
the media.… [N]uclear energy… has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute
statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. I entreat my friends… to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear
energy.”
France generates 79 percent of its electricity from nuclear power; Belgium, 60 percent; Sweden, 42 percent; Switzerland, 39
percent; Spain, 37 percent; Japan, 34 percent; the United Kingdom, 21 percent; and the United States, 20 percent. With 434
operating reactors worldwide, nuclear power meets the annual electrical needs of more than a billion people.
If we move forward with nuclear power we’ll need to address many challenges. They include safely disposing of radioactive
waste (a political more than a technical problem), the high cost of nuclear power (currently it can’t compete with coal), and
security. As we see with Pakistan and North Korea, proliferation is real.
Of course, nuclear power is not 100 percent safe. Nothing is. But the relevant fact is that nuclear power is safer, and
more environmentally friendly, than any feasible alternative.

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Nuclear power has the best safety, environmental, and economic record,
outcompeting wind, solar, and fossil fuel powers.

Jack Spencer, 10-29-07, research fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies. October
29, 2007, Heritage Foundation, “Nuclear energy deceivers,”
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed103007a.cfm [Jiajia Huang]
On Oct. 23, a group led by singers Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and Bonnie Raitt delivered a petition to the Senate
denouncing nuclear energy. Their spurious arguments are off-key to say the least. They confuse nuclear weapons with
nuclear energy, claim non-existent dangers, and misrepresent nuclear power's economics. Otherwise, it was quite a show.
Mr. Browne and Co. masquerade as environmentalists, pushing what they describe as environmental justice. But their agenda
would deny Americans, especially the poorest Americans, access to one of the cleanest, most secure and economically stable
sources of energy available today.
They don't seem to realize that things have changed since the old No-Nuke movement packed up its placards. Today, the
nuclear industry's safety, environmental and economic record ranks among the best in the energy (or any other)
industry.
In an effort to devalue nuclear power's environmental advantages, Mr. Browne's warriors include the pollutants and CO2
released during the construction and fueling process in their evaluation, without fully acknowledging that other energy sources
have similar impacts. No apples-to-apples comparisons for this crowd.
For example, 2 million tons of concrete, about double what a nuclear plant requires, must be produced and delivered to
anchor enough windmills to match one nuclear plant's energy production. Just producing this concrete emits the CO2
equivalent of flying a Boeing 747 from New York to London 450 times.
Carbon-free fairies do not magically drop windmills onto mountaintops. Every windmill or solar panel started as a raw
material that was mined, transported and manufactured using fossil fuel.
We live in a fossil-fuel based society. CO2 is released by almost any activity, whether building a windmill or a nuclear
power plant. Ultimately, however, nuclear technology provides the world an opportunity to make its energy profile less
fossil-fuel-centric.
The new No-Nuke crowd then warns of the ripe targets that nuclear plants provide terrorists. Really? Now Jackson Browne is a
terrorism expert? But his credibility is, we must say, "Running on Empty." Nuclear plants were among the nation's most
protected assets before September 11, 2001, and have had numerous security upgrades since. But none of the world's
443 nuclear power plants have been attacked. Why?
Simply put, they're not easy targets. Nuclear plants are built to withstand airplane impacts, are heavily guarded and are
under constant review. If risks are discovered, the answer is to fix the problem, not shut down the industry.
But what about the disposal of nuclear waste, the No-Nukers ask? Actually, industry solved that problem decades ago.
Spent fuel is removed from the reactor. The reusable portion is recycled by separating it and re-using it; the remainder is
placed in either interim or long-term storage, in remote locations such as Yucca Mountain. Other countries, including France,
safely do this every day. Politicians and bad public policy prevent it from occurring in the U.S.
Waste transportation is another favorite target. The truth is that nuclear waste has been transported on roads and railways
worldwide for years without incident. Indeed, more than 20 million waste packages are transported globally each year, and
more than 20,000 shipments have traveled some 18 million miles since 1971. It's just not a problem.
The No-Nukers argue that nuclear power is bad economics. Back in the 1970s, they successfully drove the costs of
nuclear power up by forcing delays and instigating superfluous regulation. Though affordable, nuclear power is as
expensive as it is today because of that success, not because the technology is uncompetitive.
The situation is much different today. Streamlined regulation, better designs and greater efficiency make the economics of
today's nuclear plants much more predictable. Nuclear energy is among the least expensive energy sources today. Indeed,
numerous studies have shown that new nuclear power is very competitive in a carbon-constrained economy.
The anti-nuke crowd already nearly killed the nuclear industry once, and America is paying for it today with higher
energy prices. This time the stakes are higher and consequences are greater. Sadly, the environment and the poorest
Americans will be hardest hit if they succeed. Nuclear energy is the only realistic and affordable option if we hope to cap
CO2.

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The environmental problems can’t be cured by Green supported powers, like


wind or biofuels. Nuclear energy is the only sensible energy source.

James Lovelock, creator of Gaia hypothesis (Earth is self-regulating organism) and member of EFN
(Association of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy), 3-21-05, Speech by James Lovelock to the International
Conference in Paris, Nuclear Energy for the 21st Century, http://www.jameslovelock.org/page12.html [Jiajia
Huang]
It seems probable that we face huge environmental disturbances as this century evolves. Of course, there are no certainties
about the future, only probabilities; there might be a series of large volcanoes interrupting that sequence, or the United States
might act by putting up space mounted sunshades in heliocentric orbits. Either way by now the almost irreversible temperature
rise might be averted. But to continue with business as usual and expect that something or other will save us is as unwise as it
would be for a heavy smoker to assume that good genes or good luck would save him from its consequences.
I speak to you today as a scientist and as the originator of Gaia Theory, the earth's system science which describes a self
regulating planet which keeps its temperature and its chemical composition always favourable for life. I care deeply about the
natural world, but as a scientist I consider that the earth has now reached a state profoundly dangerous to all of us and to
our civilisation. And this view is shared by scientists around the world. Unfortunately, governments, especially in
Europe, appear to listen less to scientists than they do to Green political parties and to Green lobbies. Now, I am a green
myself, so I know that these greens are well intentioned, but they understand people a lot better than they understand the
earth, and consequently they recommend inappropriate remedies and action.
The outcome is almost as bad as if the medieval plague returned in deadly form and we were earnestly being advised to stop it
with alternative not scientific medicine. Alternative medicine has its place, and when we are healthy it is good to avoid strong
drugs for minor ailments, and many find relief in acupuncture or homeopathy. But, when we are seriously ill, we need
something stronger.
Now that we've made the earth sick it won't be cured by alternative Green remedies like wind turbines or biofuels, and
this is why I recommend the appropriate medicine of nuclear energy as a part of a sensible portfolio of energy sources.

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AT: Plan-Specific PICs


Yucca Mountain only works in conjunction with recycling

Jack Spencer, research fellow in nuclear energy. 06/23/08. “A Free-Market Approach to Managing Used
Nuclear Fuel,” Heritage. [Takumi Murayama]
Yet even with an expanded capacity of 120,000 tons, Yucca Mountain could hold only a few more years of America's
nuclear waste if the U.S. signifi cantly increases its nuclear power production. According to one analysis, America's current
operat ing reactors would generate enough used fuel to fill a 70,000-ton Yucca right away and a 120,000-ton Yucca over
their lifetime. If nuclear power produc tion increased by 1.8 percent annually after 2010, a 120,000-ton Yucca would be
full by 2030. At that growth rate, without recycling any used fuel, the U.S. would need nine Yucca Mountains by the turn of
the century.[5]
Given the difficulty of opening one repository, rely ing on future repositories would be extremely risky. With the right mix of
technologies such as storage and recycling, Yucca could last almost indefinitely.

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AT: Yucca Mountain bad


Yucca support is low because of incomprehensible analyses

Paul P. Craig, University of California, Davis. 11/99. “HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE: The Status of
Yucca Mountain,” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, Vol. 24: 461-486.
[Takumi Murayama]
DOE's use of performance assessment (PA) methodology in the TSPA-VA is in keeping with the state of the art. PA allows
integration of an enormous amount of data within a framework that is relatively easily understood. The complexity of Yucca
Mountain combined with the unprecedented times over which the system must perform makes the analytical issues
unprecedented as well.
One result of the DOE applying a full-blown PA approach is that the TSPA-VA analysis is difficult to comprehend. The
models and submodels require large numbers of methodological assumptions and parameters. The price DOE has paid for a
complex model is loss of transparency. The many assumptions include some that are conservative and some that are not. The
approach also makes use of experts (via “expert elicitations”) to provide parameters where needed data are not available. The
end result is that even technically expert readers of TSPA-VA may have difficulty developing enough understanding to
decide whether they are confident in the results.
In recognition of the complexity of TSPA-VA and of the importance of establishing credibility, DOE assembled the TSPA
Peer Review Panel (17). This independent panel provided detailed commentary with a mixed message. The panel wrote that
“…it is unlikely that the TSPA-VA, taken as a whole, describes the long-term probable behavior of the proposed repository. In
recognition of its limitations, decisions based on the TSPA-VA should be made cautiously.” It noted the complexity of
analyzing the hot repository and concluded that “…at the present time, an assessment of the future probable behavior of the
proposed repository may be beyond the analytical capabilities of any scientific and engineering team” (17).
Their message was by no means entirely negative. The panel recommended that future work focus on approaches that make use
of “bounding analyses” to constrain behavior as the best approach to achieving licensability. The key idea is that it may be
possible to establish confidence in the performance of systems that cannot be analyzed completely. (An example is that the
post-thermal pulse infiltration cannot exceed the undisturbed infiltration in any given climate regime.) Bounding analyses are
designed to be conservative, and, consequently, they run the risk of pushing designs to the point where they are not feasible.
There is a trade-off between conservatism and practicability.
Defense-in-depth offers another approach to establishing confidence. Defense-in-depth arguments seek to decouple systems
into distinguishable technically defensible components. For a sufficiently tightly coupled system, this may not be possible.
Lower temperature designs offer one approach to analyzability and to defense-in-depth. The NWTRB has suggested “…that a
repository design based on lower waste package surface temperatures could significantly reduce uncertainty, enhance
licensability, and simplify the analytical bases required for site recommendation.” Such a design might also simplify preclosure
performance confirmation. The present design relies heavily on engineered barriers and especially the passivated alloy C-22.
Discussion as to the degree that defense-in-depth exists with the present design is ongoing.
For Yucca Mountain to obtain societal approval will require establishing confidence with independent scientists,
regulators, the public, and Congress. This suggests the use of multiple methodologies designed for multiple audiences.

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1NC: Terrorism Turn


1. Nuclear power plants are not secure against aerial terrorist attacks, which
Al Qaeda has empirically planned. Such an attack would spark a meltdown and
widespread radiation.

Mark Holt, “Nuclear Power Plants: Vulnerability to Terrorist Attack”,


http://interestingenergyfacts.blogspot.com/2008/06/nuclear-energy-safety-report-for.html , 2005
Protection of nuclear power plants from land-based assaults, deliberate aircraft crashes, and other terrorist acts has
been a heightened national priority since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has
strengthened its regulations on nuclear reactor security, but critics contend that implementation by the industry has been too
slow and that further measures are needed. Several bills to increase nuclear reactor security measures and requirements
were introduced after the 9/11 attacks, along with provisions in an omnibus energy bill considered in the 108th Congress (H.R.
6). None of those measures were enacted, but further action on omnibus energy legislation is anticipated in the 109th
Congress. This report will be updated as events warrant. Nuclear power plants have long been recognized as potential
targets of terrorist attacks, and critics have long questioned the adequacy of the measures required of nuclear plant
operators to defend against such attacks. Nuclear power plants were designed to withstand hurricanes, earthquakes, and
other extreme events, but attacks by large airliners loaded with fuel, such as those that crashed into the World Trade Center
and Pentagon, were not contemplated when design requirements were determined. A taped interview shown September 10,
2002, on Arab TV station al-Jazeera, which contains a statement that Al Qaeda initially planned to include a nuclear plant
in its 2001 attack sites, intensified concern about aircraft crashes. In light of the possibility that an air attack might
penetrate the containment building of a nuclear plant, some interest groups have suggested that such an event could be
followed by a meltdown and widespread radiation exposure.

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Terrorism causes extinction

Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, staff writer, 9-1-04, Al-Ahram, issue number 705, “Extinction!”,
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm
We have reached a point in human history where the phenomenon of terrorism has to be completely uprooted, not through
persecution and oppression, but by removing the reasons that make particular sections of the world population resort to
terrorism. This means that fundamental changes must be brought to the world system itself. The phenomenon of terrorism is
even more dangerous than is generally believed. We are in for surprises no less serious than 9/11 and with far more
devastating consequences. A nuclear attack by terrorists will be much more critical than Hiroshima and Nagazaki, even
if -- and this is far from certain -- the weapons used are less harmful than those used then, Japan, at the time, with no
knowledge of nuclear technology, had no choice but to capitulate. Today, the technology is a secret for nobody. So far, except
for the two bombs dropped on Japan, nuclear weapons have been used only to threaten. Now we are at a stage where they can
be detonated. This completely changes the rules of the game. We have reached a point where anticipatory measures can
determine the course of events. Allegations of a terrorist connection can be used to justify anticipatory measures, including
the invasion of a sovereign state like Iraq. As it turned out, these allegations, as well as the allegation that Saddam was
harboring WMD, proved to be unfounded. What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it
fails, it would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living.
Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between
civilizations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would also speed up the arms race and
develop the awareness that a different type of world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more
critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This could lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious.
Unlike a conventional war which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers.
When nuclear pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.

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Neg Answers: Inherency–States


States are already starting to provide monetary incentives for nuclear energy
companies to create many new, high-salaried jobs.

Triangle Business Journal, 4-30-08, “GE-Hitachi promises 900 new jobs for N.C.”,
http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2008/04/28/daily25.html?ana=from_rss [Jiajia Huang]
GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy could receive more than $25 million in state incentives to create 900 jobs at its campus near
Wilmington, Gov. Mike Easley's office says.
The company, a joint venture of General Electric (NYSE: GE) and Hitachi (NYSE: HIT), already employs more than 2,000
people in New Hanover County. The expansion would add manufacturing, training, simulation and testing facilities at
GE-Hitachi's 1,300-acre campus.
Part of the expansion could include a commercial uranium enrichment facility, says GE-Hitachi, which manufactures parts for
nuclear reactors and provides services to nuclear companies. The company is currently testing its enrichment process, which
uses lasers, at its coastal facility. It has non-binding letters of agreement with large nuclear operators Exelon (NYSE: EXC) and
Entergy (NYSE: ETR) for the enrichment.
Workers in the new jobs will be paid an average of $85,000 a year, plus benefits, Easley's office says. That's more than
double the New Hanover County average of $33,226.
If GE-Hitachi creates all the jobs called for under its agreement with the state and maintains them for 12 years, it could
receive a Job Development Investment Grant worth $25.7 million in tax benefits. The company also received a $900,000
grant from the One North Carolina economic development fund, and it's receiving more than $10 million in local incentives.

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Neg Answers: Inherency


Nuclear power is being implemented globally.

Environmental News Service, “Global Nuclear Concerns: Safety, Power, Proliferation”, http://www.ens-
newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-10-03.asp, 2004

In 2003, two new nuclear power plants were connected to the grid, in China and in South Korea, and Canada restarted
two units that had been shut down. Construction began on one new power plant, in India. Four units in the United
Kingdom were retired, as was one each in Germany and Japan. Asia continues to be the center for nuclear expansion and
growth, with 20 of the 31 reactors under construction located in this region. In fact, the IAEA said, 19 of the last 28
reactors to be connected to the grid are in the Far East and South Asia. In Western Europe, capacity has remained relatively
constant despite nuclear phase-outs in Germany and Sweden, and in Belgium which passed a phaseout law in January 2003).
The most advanced planning for new European nuclear capacity was in Finland, where in 2003 the utility Teollisuuden
Voima Oy selected Olkiluoto as the site for a fifth Finnish reactor, and signed a contract for a 1600 MW(e) European
pressurized water reactor. During 2003, the Russian Federation continued its program to extend licenses at 11 nuclear
power plants. The Russian nuclear regulatory body, Gosatomnadzor, issued a five year extension for the Kola-1 plant.

Bush already has a $1.1 billion Nuclear Power Initiative

Clean and Safe Energy (CASEnergy) Coalition, grassroots coalition of more than 1,600 members that unites
people across business, environmental, academic, consumer and labor community to support nuclear energy. 07.
“Economic Benefits.” [Takumi Murayama]
Most recently, the Bush Administration launched the Nuclear Power 2010 Initiative aimed at ensuring affordable,
reliable, and clean sources of nuclear energy for America. This $1.1 billion partnership between the government and
industry will facilitate the construction of new nuclear energy plants.

Nuclear energy is already projected to increase.

Lionel Beehner, senior writer at the Council for Foreign Relations, 4-25-06, “Chernobyl, Nuclear Power, and
Foreign Policy”, http://www.cfr.org/publication/10534/chernobyl _nuclear_power_ and_foreign_policy.html,
[Crystal Xia]
Twenty years after the explosion at Chernobyl in northern Ukraine, nuclear power is enjoying a revival in much of the
world. This is partly due to rising energy demands, renewed efforts to wean the world off fossil fuels, and a rethinking
by some green activists over nuclear power's relatively benign impact on climate change. These activists say atomic power
is a more environmentally friendly and economical alternative to coal-burning plants. Hence, sixty new plants are slated to go
online by 2020—a 65 percent increase in global output. European leaders are reconsidering nuclear phase-outs, while
new plants are in development across Asia to meet surging local energy demands, particularly in India and China.

Congress sees potential in nuclear, authorizing text credits, insurance, and


loan guarantees

Ken Silverstein, EnergyBiz Insider Editor-in-Chief. 10/02/06. “Public's Perception of Nuclear,” EnergyBiz
Insider. http://www.energycentral.com/centers/energybiz/ebi_detail.cfm?id=215
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[Takumi Murayama]
As a result of all that, utilities lost their appetite to build nuclear plants. But, energy shortages, high prices and
environmental concerns mean that policymakers, producers and consumers alike are searching for newer and cleaner
fuel sources. Congress sees potential in nuclear. It authorized in last year's energy bill $1 billion in tax credits as well as
$500 million in insurance to protect against delays in construction that are directly tied to regulatory logjams. And, finally,
the first six reactors to get built in the 21st Century are promised millions in loan guarantees.

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Neg Answers: No Solvency–Fossil Fuel Tax


Nuclear energy cannot succeed without government tax on fossil fuels.

William C. Sailor, Center for International Security and Cooperation in Stanford University, 5/19/2K, Science,
Vol. 288 Issue 5469, p1177, 2p, “A Nuclear Solution to Climate Change”, EBSCO, [Crystal Xia]
The competitive posture of nuclear power needs to be improved by reducing both construction time and capital cost. The
existence of competitive electricity markets requires each new plant to make economic sense on a relatively short time scale. In
these circumstances, no carbon-free energy source can compete in the United States with the combined-cycle gas-fired
plants, given the low cost of natural gas, the short lead times for the construction of these plants, and their high thermal-to-
electric conversion efficiency. This competitive situation is likely to change only if natural gas prices rise significantly or
if the government intervenes, for example, with a carbon tax placed on fossil fuels or with subsidies provided for "clean"
fuel. Our estimates indicate that new nuclear plants could compete in the market if there were a tax of is similar to $100
per ton of carbon placed on fossil fuels ( 9). We do not advocate such a high tax now; rather the tax should start at a low level
and be phased in gradually so as to reach its full value over several decades. In the meantime, the U.S. Department of Energy
and other agencies worldwide should increase reactor research efforts aimed at simplified designs and economies of
scale in construction. Governments need to make institutional and regulatory reforms to reduce lead times for plant
deployment.

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Neg Answers: No Solvency–Global Warming


US emissions are the highest, and the U.S. is largely responsible for increases
in emissions in developing countries, offsetting any domestic decrease in
emissions

Jane Spencer, Staff Reporter, 11/12/07. Wall Street Journal, "Why China Could Blame Its CO2 on West."
[Takumi Murayama]
"As China's emissions rise, everyone is pointing the finger of blame at China," says Andrew Simms, policy director of the
New Economics Foundation, a think tank and environmental-advocacy organization based in London. "The real
responsibility for rising emissions should lie with the final consumers in Europe, North America and the rest of the world."
The argument appeals to leaders in China, which by some tallies has already passed the U.S. as the world's largest emitter of
carbon dioxide. Earlier this year, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang reminded reporters from the Western media
that "a lot of the things you wear, you use, you eat are produced in China." On the one hand, Western companies are
manufacturing more in China, but "on the other hand, you criticize China on the emission-reduction issue," he added.
Roughly 23% of China's emissions come from the production of goods that are shipped elsewhere, according to a recent
report by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Britain.
Some economists dismiss the argument and note that China happily benefits from the arrangement. "China loves being an
exporter, so it's ironic they would blame the U.S. for their exports," says Robert Stavins, a professor of business and
government at Harvard University. "It's called having your cake and eating it too."
At this point, the blame-the-buyer approach is more a negotiating tactic than a serious proposal for redrafting the global-
emissions map. But as new studies and reams of data become available tallying embedded emissions, the research could
influence the debate over what kind of emissions cuts various nations should be called on to make.
Advocates of the consumption-based approach argue it solves one of the key problems associated with the Kyoto Protocol,
known as carbon leakage. This is the idea that countries can reduce their own emissions by sending dirty industries abroad. The
same countries may still import the finished goods from the developing world, creating a situation in which global carbon
emissions rise, even as individual nations meet their targets.
"If you have emissions constraints, it's become very attractive to relocate dirty production to developing countries, or import
products from developing countries," says Glen Peters, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
"You import the finished goods, and leave the pollution in China."
Technically, carbon emissions in the U.S. have declined in recent years, a fact noted by President Bush. U.S. carbon
emissions fell 1.3% in 2006. But a recent study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University suggests the U.S. may be
cutting its emissions by outsourcing more manufacturing.
As international trade has boomed over the past decade, the U.S. has begun importing dramatically more carbon-intensive
products from its trading partners, according to the researchers. The study found that so-called embedded emissions in U.S.
imports roughly doubled from 1997 to 2004. In 2004, the U.S. imported as much as 1.8 billion tons of CO2 embedded in
products, the equivalent of 30% of the nation's carbon output that year. Many of those goods are coming from China.
U.S. officials concede that dirty industries shift around the world to the place of least resistance in response to
environmental policy. That is one reason why developed nations like the U.S. and Australia have refused to participate in a
climate deal that doesn't include developing nations like China and India.

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Nuclear Energy Capacity has to triple by 2050 for any solvency

Jennifer Weeks, CQ Researcher. 03/10/06. CQ Researcher “Nuclear Energy.” [Takumi Murayama]


But nuclear-power capacity would have to expand dramatically to eliminate enough greenhouse emissions to make a
difference. Nuclear plants generated 789 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2004 — or about 22 percent of the nation's electrical
power. By 2030 the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that nuclear plants will generate only about 871
terawatt-hours — and that's if six new 1,000-megawatt reactors are built and 2,000 megawatts of uprates (capacity increases)
are made at existing plants. But demand will have risen so sharply by then, says the EIA, that nuclear power will end up
providing only about 16 percent of total U.S. power generation — a smaller share than it provides today. [13]
To significantly reduce climate change, according to a 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study, world
nuclear capacity would have to roughly triple by 2050, with the United States adding 200 or more new reactors.
[14]Industry representatives admit that growth on anything approaching this scale would be a serious challenge.
Even so, some prominent environmentalists have called recently for rethinking the issue of nuclear power in view of the
potential threat from climate change. “Renewable energies, such as wind, geothermal and hydro are part of the solution,” wrote
Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore in early 2005. “Nuclear energy is the only non-greenhouse-gas-emitting power
source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand.” [15]

Nuclear energy alone can’t solve – other policies are needed.

Charles D. Ferguson, Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology @ Council on Foreign
Relations, 4-07, “Nuclear Energy: Balancing Benefits and Risks”,
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/NuclearEnergyCSR28.pdf, [Crystal Xia]
To reduce the deleterious effects of climate change, the United States will need to increase use of all low- and no-carbon
emission energy sources as well as promote greater use of energy efficiency. But given the current U.S. energy sources and
patterns of use, nuclear energy alone does not provide a solution for at least the next few decades for significantly reducing the
U.S. contribution to global warming. However, setting a price on carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade system or a carbon
tax could make nuclear energy economically competitive with coal and natural gas, potentially stimulating some growth in
nuclear reactor construction

Can’t solve – nuclear plants can’t be created fast enough to solve warming.

Charles D. Ferguson, Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology @ Council on Foreign
Relations, 4-07, “Nuclear Energy: Balancing Benefits and Risks”,
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/NuclearEnergyCSR28.pdf, [Crystal Xia]

In the foreseeable future, nuclear energy is not a major part of the solution to further countering global warming or energy
insecurity. Expanding nuclear energy use to make a relatively modest contribution to combating climate change would require
constructing nuclear plants at a rate so rapid as to create shortages in building materials, trained personnel, and safety controls.
Furthermore, while the nuclear industry is only structured to produce electricity, the existing abundant and cheap fossil fuels
provide readily usable energy for electricity, heating, and transportation needs

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China is the biggest polluter, even if its impacts are cushioned, so Nuclear
Energy can’t solve

Science NOW Daily News. 2006. “China, Wetlands Driving Global Warming.” [Takumi
Murayama]
Some countries have been trying to reduce greenhouse gases emissions over the last decade, but a perfect storm of
methane emissions may undo all the good work. According to a new study, the environmental threat posed by China's
booming economy has been partially masked by a decline in natural methane emissions from wetlands. Soon, however,
the drought that has reduced wetland emissions will end, pumping additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as China's
own emissions continue to rise. Methane accounts for about 20% of the 20th century enhanced greenhouse effect. Carbon
dioxide makes up about 60%, and other gases account for the remainder. Whereas carbon dioxide emissions have marched
steadily upward, methane emissions have varied considerably over the last 25 years. Different explanations have been offered
for these fluxes, including emissions from fires, wetlands, melting permafrost, and plants (ScienceNOW, 28 August). The
team--led by climate scientist Philippe Bousquet of Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement in Gif-sur-
Yvette, France, and colleagues--used a technique known as inverse modeling to figure out why the methane flux has varied. It's
a bit like the game show Jeopardy, in which you have an answer but must find the question that best fits it. Methane from each
source--such as fires, wetlands, and so on--has a distinctive isotopic signature, which allows researchers to identify the source
of the methane with more precision. The team found that anthropogenic methane emissions began to increase in 1999,
especially in northern Asia, probably a result of the fierce pace of growth of China's economy. Meanwhile, natural
methane emissions from wetlands around the world declined by 5 to 20 teragrams between 1999 and 2003, somewhat
offsetting China's contribution. The results suggest that when the global drying trend is reversed, atmospheric methane
levels will increase again, exacerbating global warming. The biggest concern is what might happen in the Arctic, says co-
author Ed Dlugokencky, a research chemist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado. As
permafrost gets warmer, it could become wetlands. This would release large amounts of additional CO2 and methane
and further drive warming trends, the team reports tomorrow in Nature. "The comparison with model emissions from
wetlands driven by climate and biomass-burning models looks good," says David Archer, a geochemist at the University of
Chicago in Illinois. "The conclusions about a possible continued rise in atmospheric methane concentration seem sensible and
justified."

Nuclear energy can’t solve your immediate global warming goals.

Charles D. Ferguson, Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology @ Council on Foreign
Relations, 4-07, “Nuclear Energy: Balancing Benefits and Risks”,
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/NuclearEnergyCSR28.pdf, [Crystal Xia]
While nuclear energy will continue to play a role in meeting the world’s energy needs, it will not solve the immediate problems of
climate change. To effectively counter climate change, the United States and its partners must move quickly forward to advance
the use of all low- and no-carbon forms of energy, to use energy more efficiently, and to develop methods of capturing and
storing carbon emissions. Over the long term, an economically competitive nuclear industry could experience modest growth
domestically and internationally. The United States and its partners should welcome such growth provided they can successfully
manage nuclear energy’s risks: safety, security, waste disposal, and proliferation. What follows are major recommendations for
factoring in external costs and managing the risks

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It’s too late to solve the climate problem using nuclear technology.

Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, 11-6-07, Nuclear
Power in Response to Climate Change, http://www.cfr.org/publication/10534/chernobyl _nuclear_power_
and_foreign_policy.html, [Crystal Xia]
Environmental advocates considering “reconsidering” nuclear power in light of climate change are too late. The
accelerating pace of the climate crisis and the dawning realization that we no longer have the luxury of a few decades to
address the crisis already have made nuclear power an irrelevant technology in terms of climate. Even if the nuclear
industry had solved the safety, radioactive waste, proliferation, cost, and other issues that ended its first generation—and it
hasn’t solved any of those problems—it wouldn’t matter. What nuclear power can offer for climate is simply too little, too
late. The major studies that have looked at the issue—MIT, the National Commission on Energy Policy, etc.—generally agree
that for nuclear to make a meaningful contribution to carbon emissions reduction would require reactor construction
on a massive scale: 1,200 to 2,000 new reactors worldwide, 200 to 400 in the United States alone. And that would have to be
done over the next f40 to 50 years. Pity poor Japan Steel Works, the world’s major facility for forging reactor pressure vessels
(there is one other, small-capacity facility in Russia): working overtime it can produce twleve pressure vessels per year. Do the
math: That’s less than half of what is needed. Even if someone put in the billions of dollars and years necessary to build a new
forging facility, it’s still not enough, not fast enough. There are 104 operable reactors in the United States today. In
November 2017, no matter how much taxpayer money is thrown at the nuclear industry, there will be 104—or fewer.
Even with streamlined licensing procedures and certified reactor designs, it will take ten, twelve years or more to license, build
and bring a single new reactor online. And since most of the reactor designs being considered are first or second of a kind,
count on them taking even longer.

Federal intervention is necessary to stop the effects of global warming.

Larry Parker and Mark Holt Specialists in Energy Policy Resources, Science, and Industry Division,
“Nuclear Power: Outlook for New U.S. Reactors”, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33442.pdf, 2007
The resolution finds that (1) greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere, increasing average temperatures; (2)
there is a growing scientific consensus that human activity is a substantial cause of this accumulation; and (3) mandatory
steps will be required to slow or stop the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. Based on these findings, the resolution
states that it is the sense of the Senate that the Congress should enact a comprehensive and effective national program of
mandatory, market- based limits and incentives on greenhouse gases that slow, stop, and reverse the growth of such
emissions. This should be done in a manner that will not significantly harm the U.S. economy and will encourage
comparable action by other countries that are the nation’s major trading partners and contributors to global emissions.
The resolution passed by voice vote after a motion to table it failed on a 43-54 vote.

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Neg Answers: Advocates are Corrupt


Nuclear power is encouraged by the government to mask military use.

Alan Roberts, instructor of physics and environmental science @ Monash University, 10-13-05, “Unsafe,
unsound, and unattainable”, http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/unsafe-unsound-and-
unattainable/2005/10/12/1128796587593.html, [CXia]
These findings emerge from careful studies. Governments know that nuclear power is no magic bullet for the problem of
greenhouse gas emissions. So why have government leaders in the US, Britain, France and China advocated nuclear power
— sometimes quite forcefully? Because it is an industry essential to sustainability — of the military rather than the
environmental kind. Governments with a nuclear arsenal need the services of a nuclear industry. Quite aside from the
expanded risks of a nuclear accident — especially in poorly regulated areas such as the developing world or the US — there
would be the increased risk of plutonium theft, and the more rigorous security apparatus governments would need to create to
counter it. It should be obvious that if you're worried about "dirty bomb" terrorism, you shouldn't scatter nuclear
plants around as if they were coffee shop chains.

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Neg Answers: Fish


Nuclear energy kills millions of fish.

Vicki Wolf, Writer for Clean energy, “The Dirt on Nuclear Power”,
http://www.cleanhouston.org/energy/features/nuclear2008.htm, 2008
Nuclear energy is being promoted as clean energy. While it’s true that nuclear power plants don’t emit green house gases that
fuel global warming, the mining of uranium to fuel these plants is anything but clean. Water use is another issue.
Millions of gallons of water per minute are boiled in the process of making electricity. In that process millions of fish
are killed and all aquatic life is strained before the water is returned to its source. The yet unsolved nasty problem of
long-term disposal of dangerous radioactive spent fuel is perhaps the greatest deterrent of all to nuclear power as a
viable energy source.Fish larvae and other forms of aquatic life are strained from the water as it travels through
thousands of metal tubes to become steam that turns the turbines to make electricity, then back through the system to be
cooled and returned to its source. A 2005 study found that one coastal power plant in Southern California impinged nearly
3-and-a-half million fish in just one year.

Radiation from nuclear power plants kills many salmon.

Greenpeace, “Sellafield's radioactive salmon”,http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/nuclear/sellafields-


radioactive-salmon, May 2003
Radioactive waste from Sellafield has been found in Scottish farmed salmon sold in major British supermarkets. Tests
commissioned by Greenpeace revealed traces of radioactive waste in packets of fresh and smoked salmon. The tests,
conducted independently by Southampton University's oceanography centre, found low levels Technetium-99 (Tc-99) in
farmed Scottish salmon sold at Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda, Safeway, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer. Tc-99 is a byproduct of
Magnox fuel reprocessing. Dr David Santillo, a scientist at Greenpeace's research laboratories at Exeter University, said: "Tc-
99 should not be there at all. It is inexplicable yet significant. Scottish salmon is marketed as something that comes from a
pristine environment." Sellafield, the British Nuclear Fuels-owned reprocessing facility in Cumbria, is responsible for Tc-
99 found in lobsters, seaweed and cod off the coast. Tc-99 from the facility has been washed as far as Norway, which has
one of the largest salmon industries in the world. Scotland's west coast salmon farms feed their stock on pellets made from fish
caught off Chile or in the North Sea. All tests showed levels ranging from less than two becquerels (less than the levels of
detection) of Tc-99 per kilogramme to more than 20 becquerels of Tc-99 per kilogramme. The levels found are relatively
low and are not an immediate threat to human health but if the government does not act now levels of radioactive
pollution in salmon and other foods will increase.

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Neg Answers: Nuclear Energy is Expensive


Nuclear plants are expensive and their economic benefits are uncertain.

Jerry Taylor and Peter van Doren, senior fellows @ the Cato Institute, 11-26-07, “Hooked on Subsidies”,
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8792, [Crystal Xia]
A cold-blooded examination of the industry's numbers bears this out. Tufts economist Gilbert Metcalf concludes that the total
cost of juice from a new nuclear plant today is 4.31 cents per kilowatt-hour. That's far more than electricity from a
conventional coal-fired plant (3.53 cents) or "clean coal" plant (3.55 cents). When he takes away everyone's tax subsidies,
however, Metcalf finds that nuclear power is even less competitive (5.94 cents per kwh versus 3.79 cents and 4.37 cents,
respectively). Nuclear energy investments are riskier than investments in coal- or gas-fired electricity. High upfront costs
and long construction times mean investors have to wait years to get their money back. The problem here is not just the cost
per watt, several times that of a gas plant, but the fact that nuclear plants are big. Result: The upfront capital investment
can be 10 to 15 times as great as for a small gas-fired turbine. What, then, should government do to overcome nuclear's
economic problems? Absolutely nothing. A nuclear plant's costs are not only higher but more uncertain. Investors have to
worry that completion will take place late--or never (witness the abandonment of the reactor at Shoreham, N.Y.).
Accordingly, nuclear power would have to be substantially cheaper than coal- or gas-fired power to get orders in a free
market.

Nuclear energy is expensive.

Jerry Taylor and Peter van Doren, director of natural resources studies @ the Cato Institute, editor of
Regulation Magazine, 5-18-07, “Nuclear Power Play”, The Washington Post,
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4290, [Crystal Xia]
Investors have stayed away from nuclear power because nuclear-fired electricity is about twice as expensive as coal- or
gas-fired electricity. The marginal costs of nuclear are indeed lower, but the capital costs are much higher. For instance,
electricity costs skyrocketed by 60 percent between 1978 and 1982 largely because of a wave of nuclear power plants that
came online in the late 1970s. Another reason investors have stayed away is because of the shift to competitive generation
markets. In the old regulatory world, public utility commissions guaranteed quick returns on capital investments through the
rate base. The more capital you spent, the more you made, and a $1 billion nuclear power plant offered a far better return than a
$200 million coal-fired plant, regardless of total costs. In a deregulated market, investors think long and hard about
investing in plants that might take decades to pay off under ideal conditions.

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There are a lot of hidden fees to nuclear power plants.

Lionel Beehner, senior writer at the Council for Foreign Relations, 4-25-06, “Chernobyl, Nuclear Power, and
Foreign Policy”, http://www.cfr.org/publication/10534/chernobyl _nuclear_power_ and_foreign_policy.html,
[Crystal Xia]
The thirty-one reactors now said to be under construction (probably ten of those will never be completed) are being built with
governmental subsidies. In the United States, utilities and Wall Street have made clear that new reactors will be built only
with taxpayer loan guarantees and other assistance. Federal support for energy technologies is not necessarily bad, but
should be unnecessary for a mature technology like nuclear power—already the most subsidized energy source in the U.S.
over the past 50 years. That taxpayers are being asked to shoulder the burden of new reactors—in the United States and
across the globe—is an indication that nuclear power’s economics simply aren’t viable. And I haven’t yet addressed all
of the ancillary (and expensive) facilities and issues that would be required to support a nuclear power revival: new
radioactive waste dumps, when no country has yet been able to build even one permanent waste facility; new uranium
enrichment plants—a proliferation problem as is plainly evident over Iran’s program; a greater risk of accident, terrorism
and attack; a lack of qualified people to build, operate and regulate reactors; and, since uranium is a finite resource, a resort
to reprocessing and the subsequent treatment of plutonium as a commodity—which should frighten anyone concerned
about the spread of nuclear weapons.

Plant construction costs are astronomical - $10 billion each.

David Hughes, “Nuclear power - unsafe, dirty and expensive”, http://www.post-


gazette.com/forum/19990328edhughes7.asp, 1999

You may remember when we were told that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter." Well, it is not. In fact, nuclear is
one of the most expensive ways to produce electricity. When nuclear proponents provide their figure of what nuclear cost to
produce electricity they often leave out the cost of building the plant. Indeed, it was the high cost ($10 billion) to build the
Perry 1 and Beaver Valley 2 nuclear plants that now cause Duquesne Light customers to have to pay some of the
highest rates in the country. And, it is the high cost of nuclear plants that accounts for most of the "transition" charge on your
new electric bill, no matter who supplies your generation. A gas-fired plant can be built for $350 per kilowatt (kW); wind
turbines are being installed at less than $1,000/kw. A nuclear plant costs $3,000 to $4,000 per kw to build. Nuclear fuel is
relatively cheap compared to other fuels, but only if you ignore spent fuel permanent storage costs. When these and plant
decommissioning costs are included, nuclear power is prohibitively more expensive, on a total cost basis, than other
energy sources. Even nuclear power advocates are frightened by the prospect that these costs will be astronomical.

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Radiation from nuclear waste causes public health issues, and is extremely
expensive.

Susan Sargent, “Nuclear Power No Relief From Energy Woes”,


http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0519-04.htm, 2001

Nuclear reactors generate long-lived, highly radioactive wastes that need to be carefully isolated and stored. Some scientists
conclude that it is virtually impossible to assure that fission-reactor wastes would not pose unacceptable risks to current
and future generations. Utilities have not found one single safe site for storage, or a secure method to transport
radioactive waste. In the U.S., public acceptability considerations led Congress to choose the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada,
although it wasn't the optimal technical solution. Despite initial claims of "too cheap to meter," nuclear power in the
United States has become too expensive to afford. The nuclear industry has received over the years, 60 percent of all
federal energy research and development dollars. Yet customers of nuclear utilities still pay far higher prices than their
conventionally supplied counterparts. A 1993 Energy Information Agency study found the average bill from a nuclear utility
was more than two dollars per kilowatt hour higher and nearly $17 per month than from a conventional utility. Why the
disparity despite the huge government handout? Because utilities have been unable to control the costs of constructions,
retrofits, repairs, and maintenance, while storing waste pushed costs even higher. In France, the nation that made the
biggest investment in nuclear energy, the national utility, Electricite de France, is carrying a $30 billion debt, mostly because
of its nuclear investments.

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Neg Asnwers: Nuclear Energy  Proliferation


Nuclear power can provide a cover for weapons programs.

Joby Warrick, staff writer, 5-12-08, Washington Post, “Spread of Nuclear Capability is Feared”,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/11/AR2008051102212_pf.html
[Crystal Xia]
Nuclear weapons experts say commercial nuclear power plants, by themselves, pose relatively little proliferation risk,
although they are frequently mentioned as possible targets for terrorist attacks. But nuclear power can give a country the
technological expertise and infrastructure that could become the foundation for a clandestine weapons program. Such
covert programs can be successfully hidden for years, as was demonstrated in recent months by U.S. and Israeli allegations
that Syria was building a secret plutonium production reactor near the desert town of Al Kibar. Plutonium is an efficient fuel
for nuclear explosions, as well as for power generation. Both India and Pakistan built nuclear devices using an industrial
infrastructure built ostensibly for nuclear power. Taiwan and South Korea conducted weapons research under cover of
civil power programs but halted the work after being confronted by the United States.

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Neg Answers: Nuclear Energy  Global Warming


Nuclear smelting and fission contribute to greenhouse gasses and pollute the
air.

David Hughes, “Nuclear power - unsafe, dirty and expensive”, http://www.post-


gazette.com/forum/19990328edhughes7.asp, 1999

Nuclear power is not the clean energy its apologists claim. The smelting process used to make commercial grade fuel for
nuclear plants contributes to greenhouse gases. Secondly, in addition to the waste problem, nuclear plants pollute our air,
only you cannot see, smell or taste what they emit. Some of the most toxic gases known to man are by-products of the
fission process and are routinely vented from the "off gas" building at nuclear plants.

Extracting uranium, which is a necessary precondition of expanding nuclear


energy, has devastating environmental effects and emits greenhouse gasses.

Science Daily, “Questioning Nuclear Power's Ability To Forestall Global Warming”,


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080421123231.htm, April 22nd 2008

The study points out that supplies of high-grade uranium ore are declining, which may boost nuclear fuel's
environmental and economic costs, including increases in energy use, water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, newly discovered uranium deposits may be more difficult to extract in the future -- a further drain on
economic and environmental resources. "The extent of economically recoverable uranium, although somewhat
uncertain, is clearly linked to exploration effort, technology and economics but is inextricably linked to environmental
costs, such as energy, water, and chemicals consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and broader social issues," the
authors say. "These issues are critical to understand in the current debate over nuclear power, greenhouse gas emissions, and
climate change, especially with respect to ascribing sustainability to such activities as uranium milling and mining."

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Neg Answers: Nuclear Energy Unsafe


Nuclear power plants are not secure.

Beckett W. Sterner, news editor for The Tech, 8-14-05, “ABC says MIT’s nuclear reactor unsafe”, http://www-
tech.mit.edu/V125/N46/nukesafety.html, [CXia]
After a four-month investigation during which journalism interns traveled to the 25 reactors on college campuses across the
country, ABC reported finding “unmanned guard booths, a guard who appeared to be asleep, unlocked building doors
and, in a number of cases, guided tours that provided easy access to control rooms and reactor pools that hold
radioactive fuel.” The story also highlighted the issue that “many of the schools permit vehicles in close proximity to the
reactor buildings without inspection for explosives.” Whether or not an external explosion could release radioactive
material into the atmosphere depends on the design of the reactor. “A pretty big plane could fly into it and not damage it,”
Moncton said, referring to MIT’s reactor core. In the “worst case scenario, that building is going to implode, not explode,”
DiFava said. On the other hand, the televised investigation reported that the interns were able to walk up to another
college’s open water reactor with large tote bags that were not searched by staff. The two major concerns raised by the
investigation regarding MIT’s reactor in particular did not involve direct access to the reactor, but rather access to online
information and the ability to drive a truck to within 30 feet of the reactor building.

Nuclear reactors aren’t completely safe – France proves.

Henry Samuel, staff writer, 7-17-08, “France orders tests on all nuclear power stations after leak”,
“http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/2306113/France-orders-tests-on-all-nuclear-
power-stations-after-leak.html?service=print,
Fears over France's nuclear reactors have been raised as the government orders ground water tests at its 58 power
stations, after a uranium leak at one polluted local water supplies. The safety lapse at a plant in Provence run by French
nuclear giant Areva has raised questions over President Nicolas Sarkozy's drive to roll out reactors around the world – in
Britain but also in states with less stringent safety norms. "I don't want people to feel that we are hiding anything from them,"
said ecology minister Jean-Louis Borloo as he announced the blanket tests. Residents in Bollène in the Vaucluse, southern
France – a top tourist area – have been told not to drink water or eat fish from nearby rivers, after 74kg of liquid
uranium was spilled on July 7 at the Tricastin nuclear plant. Swimming and water sports were also banned along with
irrigating crops with the contaminated water, which reached two rivers. French authorities last week ordered the closure of a
nuclear treatment facility at the plant, which also has a nuclear reactor, after liquid was spilled during its transfer from
one container to another. The site is run by Socatri, a subsidiary of Areva, whose president, Anne Lauvergeon, is due to visit.
Areva aims to dominate the design and construction of at least eight new power stations which are to be fast-tracked in
England over the next decade. According to Gordon Brown, they are essential to reduce Britain's dependency on fossil fuels,
but environmentalists have already raised safety fears, saying the Areva reactor design is 'untried and untested'. Ben Ayliffe,
head of nuclear campaigns at Greenpeace, said: "Such unpredictable and nasty side effects are the risks you take with nuclear.
"We believe the leak in France resulted from human error. "Liquid uranium was accidentally poured onto the ground.
We're not talking about dishwater here. This is a dangerous radioactive material.

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Neg Answers: Nuclear Energy Bad–Generic


Nuclear power is unsafe, expensive, and increases proliferation.

Dan Becker, Sierra Club Energy Program Director, no date given, “Nuclear Power: An Unsafe and Costly
Choice”, http://www.sierraclub.org/energysummer/4nuclear/becker_op_ed.asp, [CXia]
President Bush has made the mistake of proposing that the United States expand its nuclear energy industry. Generating
electricity from nuclear sources poses at least four insurmountable problems: the production of highly dangerous
radioactive waste, a prohibitively high cost, the potential for accidents and the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.
First, every nuclear reactor generates about 20 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel and additional low-level radioactive
waste per year. Radioactive waste is one of the most dangerous materials known to humankind-it can kill at high doses
and cause cancer and birth defects at low doses. Nuclear waste remains dangerous to humans for 200 thousand years.
Worse, we don't know what to do with this waste once it is generated. The nuclear industry and some in Congress propose
dumping nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, NV; however, the mountain is seismically active. An earthquake in the 1990's
caused over $1 million damage to a Department of Energy (DOE) facility at the site. In addition, a DOE panel of scientists has
found that the nuclear material may leak from the containment vessels over time and will contaminate groundwater. On its way
to Yucca Mountain, the waste will pass through thousands of cities and towns. There are serious concerns about the exposure
risks in transporting the waste from all over the country into Nevada. Second, nuclear power is the most expensive way ever
devised to generate electricity. The method is not anywhere near cost effective; nuclear plants in the states of Oregon, New
York, Maine, Illinois, and Connecticut have been shut down before the end of their planned lives because the owners found it
was too expensive to keep them going. American taxpayers are subsidizing the nuclear industry. According to the
Congressional Research Service, the industry has cost taxpayers $66 billion in research and development subsidies. When no
private insurer would underwrite the risks inherent to a nuclear plant, Congress passed the Price-Anderson law, which provides
billions in taxpayer subsidized insurance. While this insurance protects the insurance industry, it offers no guarantee that
victims of a nuclear accident would be fully compensated. Third is the danger of an accident. An accident at a coal plant is a
problem. An accident at a nuclear plant can be a disaster. Because human beings operate plants and drive the trucks that
transport nuclear waste, accidents can and will happen. The danger with nuclear power is that the stakes in accidents are
extremely high. Anyone exposed to radiation leaks or accidents will likely sicken or die from that exposure. Cleanup costs
will be in the billions. Public Citizen has found that more than 90 percent of the country's reactors have been in violation of
government safety regulations during the last three years, potentially increasing the risk of accidents. Finally, there is the risk
that nuclear material will fall into the wrong hands. President Bush has recommended that we consider "reprocessing" of spent
nuclear fuel, a method that consolidates waste into weapons-usable plutonium. The government has elaborate plants to prevent
rogue nations and terrorists from stealing the nuclear fuel or waste to make nuclear bombs. The more nuclear reactors, the
more risk of radioactive material being stolen to make bombs. Nuclear power is not a responsible choice. We can meet
our energy needs through energy efficiency, renewable energy like solar and wind power, and responsible additions to supply.
We can meet our energy needs and have a clean and healthy world without nuclear power. America deserves a safer, cleaner,
and cheaper energy future.

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Neg Answers: Radiation


Nuclear power plants are unsafe – lack of waste storage methods leads to
radiation and the potential for disaster.

David Hughes, “Nuclear power - unsafe, dirty and expensive”, http://www.post-


gazette.com/forum/19990328edhughes7.asp, 1999

It is well known that nuclear power production creates the deadliest and longest living wastes known to man. The
technology to safely dispose of this waste has yet to be developed and it is becoming increasingly clear that safe storage
is simply impossible to achieve .Nuclear plants only seem safe because government safety standards and Nuclear
Regulatory Commission oversight have been too lax. There are problems at U.S. nuclear plants just about every day,
ranging from incidental to serious. Some of these problems are close to home. At a plant in Perry, Ohio (near Cleveland),
partly owned by Duquesne Light, the zirconium tubes covering the uranium fuel pellets are perforating, causing
potentially dangerous radiation leaks within the reactor. The leaks are exposing plant workers to extra radiation and
increasing the likelihood that more radiation would be released into the atmosphere in case of a serious accident.

Radiation from nuclear waste causes public health issues, and is extremely
expensive.

Susan Sargent, “Nuclear Power No Relief From Energy Woes”,


http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0519-04.htm, 2001
Nuclear reactors generate long-lived, highly radioactive wastes that need to be carefully isolated and stored. Some scientists
conclude that it is virtually impossible to assure that fission-reactor wastes would not pose unacceptable risks to current
and future generations. Utilities have not found one single safe site for storage, or a secure method to transport
radioactive waste. In the U.S., public acceptability considerations led Congress to choose the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada,
although it wasn't the optimal technical solution. Despite initial claims of "too cheap to meter," nuclear power in the
United States has become too expensive to afford. The nuclear industry has received over the years, 60 percent of all
federal energy research and development dollars. Yet customers of nuclear utilities still pay far higher prices than their
conventionally supplied counterparts. A 1993 Energy Information Agency study found the average bill from a nuclear utility
was more than two dollars per kilowatt hour higher and nearly $17 per month than from a conventional utility. Why the
disparity despite the huge government handout? Because utilities have been unable to control the costs of constructions,
retrofits, repairs, and maintenance, while storing waste pushed costs even higher. In France, the nation that made the
biggest investment in nuclear energy, the national utility, Electricite de France, is carrying a $30 billion debt, mostly because
of its nuclear investments.

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Neg Answers: Regulations don’t deter nuclear energy


“Over-restrictive” Regulations do not cause the reluctance to make new plants

Pietro S. Nivola, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Brookings. 09-04. “The Political Economy of Nuclear
Energy in the United States.” [Takumi Murayama]
Twenty years ago, the cost of building a nuclear power station in the United States averaged almost $3 billion (in 2002 dollars).
Years of technological refinements and potential cost-saving measures since then have not succeeded in significantly lowering
that price tag. The persistence of this enormous overhead, which accounts for two-thirds of the cost of nuclear-generated
electricity, is what puts it at a marked disadvantage against power from combined-cycle gas turbines or coal-burning plants.

Why capital costs are so prohibitive is a question much debated. We know that cost overruns have to do with delays in the
construction process. Before 1979, it took an average of seven years for plants to go on line. By 1990, the average lag from
groundbreaking to operation had reached twelve years. The delays, in turn, have been widely attributed to a ratcheting up of
regulatory requirements for health, safety, and environmental reasons following episodes such as the Three Mile Island (TMI)
accident in 1979. One estimate imputed to the post-TMI standards as much as 60 percent of capital costs for plants completed
after 1979.

There is little doubt that regulatory strictures have slowed construction time and added to expenses. But whether those
strictures have been overcautious—or, more precisely, out of line with consumer preferences and market demand—is not so
clear. Nor, more basically, is it clear that government regulation stalled nuclear projects more than did other factors. Energy
markets underwent a seismic shift after 1974. Earlier, electricity consumption had been increasing at nearly 7 percent annually.
At that pace, electric utilities could count on a doubling of demand for baseload capacity every ten years. Following the crisis
of 1974, the growth rate of consumption year-over-year settled to an average of around 3 percent. Perforce, in this new world
of softer demand, most utilities began rethinking commitments to big and costly capacity additions. New orders for nuclear
plants in particular started falling off sharply, and dozens of standing orders were cancelled, even before the Three Mile Island
disaster.

There is no question that Three Mile Island marked a watershed. After it, orders for nuclear facilities ceased. Interestingly,
however, the cessation occurred almost everywhere—throughout the United States but also in all but three other OECD
countries, irrespective of national regulatory systems. Was the collective retreat from nuclear investment attributable to an
international wave of public hysteria, and of government red tape? More plausibly, what happened was mostly the
culminating consequence of negative market trends that had commenced earlier, and that now were accentuated by
further loss of investor confidence and by heightened (and not wholly irrational) revealed preferences for supplemental
safety measures.

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Financial difficulties are what prevent new plants, not regulations


(The Government actually helps nuclear energy TREMENDOUSLY)

Pietro S. Nivola, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Brookings. 09-04. “The Political Economy of Nuclear
Energy in the United States.” [Takumi Murayama]
The setbacks to nuclear building programs in the United States have not been for want of government support. In varying
degrees and stages, the entire nuclear food-chain, from research and development and fuel supply services to liability
insurance, waste disposal, and eventual decommissioning, has been backed in one way or another by government policies.
When the infant industry experienced growing pains—unanticipated difficulties such as environmental controversies, waste
management problems, or regulatory hardships—Congress was sometimes slow to lend a hand, but at the end of the day,
lawmakers did pitch in. True, the decision to provide a permanent underground repository for high-level waste (the Yucca
Mountain site in Nevada) is still wending its way through the courts. But in the end, if the storage plan goes ahead, it will be
the largest of its kind anywhere.
Proponents of nuclear power had long complained about cumbersome regulatory hurdles, most notably the need to
obtain from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) separate approvals for constructing and then operating a new
reactor. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 ended this two-step licensing procedure. Today, a utility, if granted a building
permit, knows that an operating license is assured. Following the 1992 law, moreover, the NRC has pre-certified three
technologies for application anywhere in the country. A builder opting for any one of them is all but guaranteed that safety
features, for example, will not be open to legal challenges during licensing proceedings. That no new plants have been
ordered despite these significant adjustments only furthers the impression that finances, more than regulations,
continue to pose the primary barrier.
It is true that, in America as elsewhere, there is less political consensus today than there once was on policies bolstering nuclear
power. Yet, under the energy legislation that Congress nearly passed in 2003—and that might eventually resurface—the U.S.
nuclear industry stood to gain a tax credit for electricity generated by newly constructed plants, $2.7 billion in additional
research and development subsidies over five years, $1.1 billion to build and run an experimental hydrogen-producing facility,
a twenty-year extension of liability caps in the Price-Anderson Act, plus tens of millions of dollars for various pilot programs
(to ease plant decommissioning, uranium mining, and more).

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Neg Answers: Reprocessing Bad


Reprocessing is bad for the environment

Frank N. von Hippel, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. 09-28-01.
“Plutonium and Reprocessing of Spent Nuclear Fuel,” Science Vol. 293. no. 5539, pp. 2397 – 2398.
[Takumi Murayama]
Commercial reprocessing continues on a large scale in Britain and France and, on a small scale, in Russia and Japan. The
principal foreign customers for British and French reprocessing services have been German and Japanese utilities. Domestic
political opposition to expanded at-reactor spent-fuel storage or central storage sites made shipment of spent fuel abroad for
reprocessing their only alternative to shutting down their reactors. Storage of spent fuel is cheaper, safer, and more
environmentally benign than reprocessing, which produces multiple types of radioactive waste that must be stored in
any case, but host communities require assurances that interim spent-fuel storage will not become permanent (11).
Last year, the German government agreed to allow extended spent-fuel storage at reactor sites if, by mid-2005, German nuclear
utilities end shipments of spent fuel abroad for reprocessing (12). Japan's utilities too are ending foreign reprocessing but are
completing a ¥2.4 trillion (about US$20 billion) reprocessing plant that was committed in 1980. Because of the large number
of high-paying jobs, the reprocessing plant is more acceptable to the local government than a stand-alone, interim, spent-
fuel storage pool (13, 14).
Given the loss of foreign customers, the continuation of the costly reprocessing of domestic spent fuel is being questioned in
both Britain and France. A French government study concluded that, if France stops reprocessing in 2010, it will save 28 to 39
billion francs (US$4 to 5 billion) over the remaining lifetime of its current fleet of power reactors (15).
With the indefinite postponement of commercial breeder reactors, the plutonium that has been separated by commercial
reprocessing has become a disposal problem. As of the end of 1999, this still-growing stockpile amounted to about
200,000 kg (the equivalent of 25,000 Nagasaki bombs) (16).

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Neg Answers: Reprocessing Not Cost-Effective


Mixed Oxide processing is not cost-effective

Frank N. von Hippel, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. 09-28-01.
“Plutonium and Reprocessing of Spent Nuclear Fuel,” Science Vol. 293. no. 5539, pp. 2397 – 2398.
[Takumi Murayama]
Some West European and Japanese utilities have launched programs to dispose of their stockpiles of separated plutonium
by fabrication into mixed-oxide (MOX) uranium-plutonium fuel. This fuel can be substituted for about one-third of the low-
enriched uranium fuel in most light water-reactor cores at a rate of about 400 kg plutonium/year in a 1000-megawatt (electric)
reactor. There is no economic incentive for such use, however. Even when reprocessing is treated as a sunk cost, the cost of
fabricating 200 tons of plutonium into MOX fuel would be billions of dollars more than the cost of the low-enriched fuel
that it replaces. Britain and Russia, which together account for almost half of the world's stockpile of separated civilian
plutonium, have not yet developed disposition policies. Additional disposition options are required (17).

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Neg Answers: Reprocessing  Proliferation


Reprocessing allows proliferation

Frank N. von Hippel, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. 09-28-01.
“Plutonium and Reprocessing of Spent Nuclear Fuel,” Science Vol. 293. no. 5539, pp. 2397 – 2398.
[Takumi Murayama]
The focus of U.S. Department of Energy reprocessing R&D during recent decades has been on "pyroprocessing" or
electrorefining in a molten salt electrolyte as an alternative to the "PUREX" nitric acid-dissolution, organic solvent-extraction
cycle used in current commercial reprocessing plants. Proponents say that, because pyroprocessing can be designed not to
separate plutonium cleanly from other transuranic elements, its product could be more proliferation-resistant than the pure
plutonium produced by conventional reprocessing. They also point out that it could be done at small-scale facilities. In fact,
pyroprocessing R&D was a part of the U.S. Integrated Fast Reactor development program, which proposed a reprocessing and
fuel-recycle plant be integrated into each reactor complex. This would result in a vast proliferation of facilities with remote
processing capabilities for highly radioactive fuel, requiring only the installation of a final clean-up stage to produce
separated plutonium that could be used for weapons.
It is difficult to imagine that any form of chemical reprocessing would be more proliferation-resistant in the short term
than not reprocessing at all and leaving the plutonium mixed with highly radioactive fission products in the solid fuel
matrix. Even 50 years after discharge, the radiation level from penetrating gamma rays a meter away from an assembly of
spent light water-reactor fuel rods is 5 to 10 Sieverts/hour--enough to assure a lethal dose in less than an hour (18). By
comparison, virtually all of the radiation from separated plutonium is short-range alpha particles (helium nuclei), which cannot
even penetrate human skin. If the plutonium is stored in a sealed container to protect against the hazard of the dispersal of
inhalable plutonium-oxide particles, it is easily portable (see figure below).
Proponents of reprocessing argue that burying plutonium-containing spent fuel creates an unacceptable long-term hazard, since
the half-life of the most important plutonium isotope, 239Pu, is 24,000 years. Over the millennia, some of this radioactivity
might find its way back to the surface environment. This has led to ambitious proposals (also mentioned favorably in the
Cheney report) for chemical separation and neutron transmutation of all nonuranium, long-lived radioactive isotopes in spent
fuel. However, such systems would greatly increase the cost of nuclear power. A National Academy of Sciences review
concluded that "none of the dose reductions seem large enough to warrant the expense and the additional operational risk of
transmutation" (19).
The Department of Energy has proposed that geological storage of spent fuel be kept open for possible retrieval for at least 100
years after emplacement begins (20). This would allow time for thorough examination of alternative approaches to final
disposition while the long-term future of nuclear power is clarified.
Thus, the Cheney report's recommendation of renewed U.S. government support of reprocessing R&D reflects a 1970's vision
of the near-term future of nuclear power. Today, it appears that both nonproliferation and the nuclear power
establishment would be best served by focusing on the basics during the coming decades and sticking to the simple,
economical "once-through" (i.e., nonreprocessing) fuel cycle.

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Plutonium separation is a problem for non-proliferation and the environment

Rodney C. Ewing, Department of Geological Sciences, Department of Materials Science & Engineering and
Department of Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences, The University of Michigan. 12-05. “The Nuclear
Fuel Cycle versus The Carbon Cycle,” The Canadian Mineralogist, v. 43, no. 6, p. 2099-2116.
[Takumi Murayama]
An equally important problem is the fate of plutonium separated from commercially generated nuclear fuel originally
destined for fabrication as a MOX (U + Pu) fuel. The largest inventories are in France (72 t, of which 33.6 t is foreign
owned) and Great Britain (60 t, of which 6.1 t is foreign owned). The USA has only 5 t of this so-called "civil" plutonium.
Japan has 5 t of Pu, but it has another 24.1 t held in other countries, mainly France (Albright et al. 1997). Global inventories at
the end of 2002 of this separated civil Pu were over 230 t (Albright & Kramer 2004), but it is now clear that not all of it will be
fabricated into a MOX fuel (Ewing 2001). France has approximately 200 t of civil Pu already fabricated into MOX fuel for its
20 LWRs, but the inventory of civil plutonium continues to grow. This is an extremely important proliferation and
environmental problem, as the bare critical mass of 239Pu is less than 10 kg (Mark 1993), and such small volumes could
be diverted to the production of a nuclear weapon. In addition, Pu can cause acute health effects (Sutcliffe et al. 1995),
and although these effects are often exaggerated in the press, this is inevitably a major public health concern.

Reprocessing leads to proliferation of weapons.

Michael A. Levi, Science and Technology Fellow @ the Brookings Institute, 11-24-03, “The Wrong Way to
Promote Nuclear Power”. http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2003/1124nuclearweapons_levi.aspx [Crystal
Xia]
Proponents also contend that new technology will allow reprocessing to be more proliferation-resistant. In a narrow
sense, they're right. New reprocessing technology would be less vulnerable to would-be-weaponeers than current reprocessing
technology if it were designed to produce slightly contaminated plutonium—useful for power generation, but not for nuclear
weapons. But it would still be far more dangerous than having no reprocessing at all, because the technology could be
quickly modified to produce clean, weapons-useable, plutonium. To move from our current approach to new reprocessing
technology on nonproliferation grounds would be like trading in a Ferrari for a Honda because the latter now has leather seats.
Of course at least two states—North Korea and Iran—are interested in reprocessing for more nefarious reasons. They
exemplify the core problem with plutonium reprocessing: It offers excellent civilian cover for nuclear weapons
development. Indeed, the Ford administration halted American reprocessing programs on the grounds that the United States
could more effectively argue that states' pursuit of reprocessing was illegitimate if it was not pursuing reprocessing itself.
Image a world where the United States actively developed plutonium reprocessing. Many states might conclude that, in
the interest of their own economic development, they should pursue plutonium reprocessing as well. Only a few of those
states would be using their programs to develop nuclear weapons, but how would the United States (and the rest of the
world) know who they were until it was too late?

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Neg Answers: Terrorism


Terrorists are targeting nuclear power plants.

Council on Foreign Relations, 1-06, “Targets for Terrorism: Nuclear Facilities”, http://www.cfr.
org/publication/10213/targets_for_terrorism.html, [Crystal Xia]
Yes. In his January 2002 State of the Union speech, President Bush said that U.S. forces “found diagrams of American
nuclear power plants” in al-Qaeda materials in Afghanistan. An al-Qaeda training manual lists nuclear plants as among
the best targets for spreading fear in the United States. The government is taking the threat seriously: in February 2002, the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued an advisory to the nation’s 103 nuclear power plants that terrorists might try to
fly hijacked planes into some of them. And eight governors have independently ordered the National Guard to protect nuclear
reactors in their states.

Terrorists are targeting nuclear plants.

Eben Kaplan, associate editor for the Council on Foreign Relations, 4-16-06, “Anti-terror measures at US
Nuclear Plants” http://www.cfr.org/publication/10450/antiterror_measures_at _us_nuclear_plants.html, [Crystal
Xia]
Most nuclear facilities are well fortified and difficult for terrorists to attack. But they remain attractive targets because
of the potential to inflict devastating damage. An attack on a nuclear plant could release a high level of radiation that
would gravely endanger public health. A 2004 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists says a successful attack on the
Indian Point nuclear facility thirty-five miles north of Manhattan could cause as many as 44,000 near-term casualties,
and 500,000 long-term deaths from cancer. The 9/11 Commission Report noted that both Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11
pilots, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the attacks, "considered targeting a nuclear facility." In
October 2001, U.S. officials shut down operations at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania for four hours and suspended
flights at nearby airports, citing a "credible threat" of terrorism. The alert turned out to be a false alarm.

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Nuclear power plants are not secure against aerial terrorist attacks, which Al Qaeda has empirically
planned. Such an attack would spark a meltdown and widespread radiation.

Mark Holt, “Nuclear Power Plants:


Vulnerability to Terrorist Attack”, http://interestingenergyfacts.blogspot.com/2008/06/nuclear-energy-
safety-report-for.html , 2005
Protection of nuclear power plants from land-based assaults, deliberate aircraft crashes, and other terrorist acts has
been a heightened national priority since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has
strengthened its regulations on nuclear reactor security, but critics contend that implementation by the industry has been too
slow and that further measures are needed. Several bills to increase nuclear reactor security measures and requirements
were introduced after the 9/11 attacks, along with provisions in an omnibus energy bill considered in the 108th Congress (H.R.
6). None of those measures were enacted, but further action on omnibus energy legislation is anticipated in the 109th
Congress. This report will be updated as events warrant. Nuclear power plants have long been recognized as potential
targets of terrorist attacks, and critics have long questioned the adequacy of the measures required of nuclear plant
operators to defend against such attacks. Nuclear power plants were designed to withstand hurricanes, earthquakes, and
other extreme events, but attacks by large airliners loaded with fuel, such as those that crashed into the World Trade Center
and Pentagon, were not contemplated when design requirements were determined. A taped interview shown September 10,
2002, on Arab TV station al-Jazeera, which contains a statement that Al Qaeda initially planned to include a nuclear plant
in its 2001 attack sites, intensified concern about aircraft crashes. In light of the possibility that an air attack might
penetrate the containment building of a nuclear plant, some interest groups have suggested that such an event could be
followed by a meltdown and widespread radiation exposure.

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Plants aren’t safe in the event of a terrorist attack.

Eben Kaplan, associate editor for the Council on Foreign Relations, 4-16-06, “Anti-terror measures at US
Nuclear Plants” http://www.cfr.org/publication/10450/antiterror_measures_at _us_nuclear_plants.html, [Crystal
Xia]
Are security measures sufficient? Experts disagree. At an April 4 hearing of the House Committee on Government Reform,
the Government Accountability Office (GAO) submitted a report saying recent revisions to the DBT appeared to be "based
on what the industry considered reasonable and feasible to defend against rather than on what an assessment of the
terrorist threat called for." "One of the critiques is that the DBT does not encompass a 9/11-scale threat," says CFR Science
and Technology Fellow Charles Ferguson. While the specifics of the DBT are classified, experts in the field say nuclear
plants are only required to withstand an attack by a handful of well-armed terrorists, possibly working with one or two
insiders. Critics say plants should be able to withstand an attack by at least nineteen terrorists, the number of men who
carried out the 9/11 attacks. Another point of contention is that the DBT does not require security personnel to prepare for
terrorists armed with rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) or .50 caliber sniper rifles with armor-piercing rounds. Such sniper
rifles are legally sold in many states, and RPGs can easily be found on the black market. In their defense, nuclear industry
officials claim the cost of defending against a more robust DBT is too great. Testifying at the House hearing, Marvin Fertel,
vice-president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, acknowledged that the current DBT does not represent the full spectrum of
threats, but said, "Nuclear power plants are the most secure commercially owned facilities in the country." But not all plants
have passed their inspections when audited under the current DBT standards. The authors of the GAO report observed
one inspection in which a plant's security "was at best questionable in its ability to defend against the DBT."

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Neg Answers: Tradeoff–Renewable Energy


Nuclear power trades off with other renewable and is incredibly unsafe.

Haider Rizvi, staff writer, 7-17-07, “Nuclear Power No Panacea, Critics Say”, IPS, http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?
idnews=38575, [CXia]
Former environment ministers from European countries, including Russia, sent a letter to the former U.N. chief Kofi
Annan urging him to reform the mandate of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "Nuclear power is no longer
necessary," they said in the letter. "We have now numerous renewable technologies available to guarantee the right to safe,
clean, and cheap energy." Greenpeace's Beranek echoed the same message Monday. "Nuclear power undermines real
solutions to climate change, by diverting resources away from the massive development of clean energy sources the world
urgently needs," he said. "What's more," he added, "climate change will increase natural disasters, in turn posing a greater
risk to nuclear power plants, and to our safety." But this line of reasoning has failed to win over many of the world's most
powerful nations. In July last year, when leaders of the world's most industrialised countries, known as the Group of Eight,
gathered in St. Petersburg, Russia, they signed a joint statement saying that nuclear energy is one way to address climate
change. Many environmentalists see nuclear reactors as dangerous because in addition to natural disasters they are also
vulnerable to unintentional human error. "Energy conservation and wind and solar power are cleaner and safer than
nuclear power," said Dean. "They are a better way to fight global warming."

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Neg Answers: Water


Nuclear plants leak radiation into local water supplies and causes drought.

Vicki Wolf, Writer for Clean energy, “The Dirt on Nuclear Power
“,http://www.cleanhouston.org/energy/features/nuclear2008.htm, 2008

People living in Goliad County, Texas know first hand the problems uranium mining can bring. Families living near the
uranium mining areas in Goliad County, Texas have been unable to get the companies to clean up mining sites. The Railroad
Commission, responsible for setting rules for mining and enforcing them, has been lax in both areas. According to Cyrus Reed,
Lone Star Sierra Club conservation director, some wells down-flow of the mining have high levels of radioactivity and
some are contaminated with a sludge that contains metallic deposits. At least one family has stopped using their well water
and now imports water. While uranium mining poisons ground water, nuclear plant operations use millions of gallons of
water per minute, sending it back to its source lifeless. Tennessee Valley Authority plants in Alabama and Tennessee have
been shut down because of drought, and others in the Southeast may be shut down if the drought continues.

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Neg Answers: Yucca Mountain bad


There is general consensus that deep geological disposal is preferred

Paul P. Craig, University of California, Davis. 11/99. “HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE: The Status of
Yucca Mountain,” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, Vol. 24: 461-486.
[Takumi Murayama]
Currently no nation has an operating high-level waste repository. Within the scientific and technical communities, there is
general consensus that deep geologic disposal is the preferred option for disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high-level
waste. Outside the United States there appears to be a growing trend toward going slow and reexamining options.
The United States is alone in its focus on disposing of waste in the unsaturated zone above the water table. Other nations
are exploring a variety of saturated zone environments. These environments include granite, crystalline rock, sedimentary rock,
and clay. In every environment analyzed in detail it appears that the potential for radiation doses to the exposed public
is low. In this context “low” means below standards suggested by international groups. [See Section 4 below and the discussion
and references to reports of the International Commission on Radiological Protection found in the TYMS report (10).] Whether
this general statement applies in specific cases can be known only after detailed site-specific analysis.

On-site storage is perfectly safe

Paul P. Craig, University of California, Davis. 11/99. “HIGH-LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE: The Status of
Yucca Mountain,” Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, Vol. 24: 461-486.
[Takumi Murayama]
Storage can be either wet (in spent storage pools) or dry. Under present shutdown schedules and absent a facility for final
disposal, additional spent fuel storage requirements are expected to be 2300 tonnes in 2000; 17,000 tonnes in 2015; and 25,000
tonnes in 2039, when the last license expires (41). Thus, at-reactor storage capability now exists for 70% of the spent fuel
that will ultimately be produced. Much of this capacity is in spent storage pools and is expensive to maintain, particularly at
shut-down reactors.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has reviewed spent-fuel storage technology and has concluded that spent storage
will be safe for 100 years (42). Thus, there appears to be no technical urgency to develop centralized long-term storage.
Economic and institutional urgency is another matter, as the utility lawsuits demonstrate.

Yucca Mountain bad–falsified evidence

Jim Dawson, Science Editor, American Institute of Physics. 05/05. “Yucca Mountain E-mails Indicate Data
Were Falsified,” Physics Today, p.32. http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_58/iss_5/32_1.shtml
[Takumi Murayama]
The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, already behind schedule and mired in controversy, suffered
another setback in March when Department of Energy lawyers discovered a series of e-mails indicating that some scientific
data relating to the long-term environmental safety of the site had been falsified. The e-mails, between US Geological
Survey (USGS) scientists developing and running modeling programs for the project, are rife with comments about sloppy
work and made-up data.

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We can’t do the plan – Yucca Mountain is still unsafe.

AP (Associated Press), 2-19-04, “Nuclear scientist: Yucca Mountain is unsafe”,


http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,111946,00.html, [CXia]
The nation's nuclear waste dump proposed for Nevada is poorly designed and could leak highly radioactive waste, a scientist
who recently resigned from a federal panel of experts on Yucca Mountain (search) told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Paul Craig, a physicist and engineering professor at the University of California-Davis, said he quit the panel last month
so he could speak more freely about the waste dump's dangers. Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is
planned to begin receiving waste in 2010. Some 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at commercial and military sites in 39
states would be stored in metal canisters underground in tunnels. "The science is very clear," Craig told the AP in an interview
before his first public speech about the Energy Department's design for the canisters. "If we get high-temperature liquids,
the metal would corrode and that would eventually lead to leakage of nuclear waste," Craig said.
"Therefore, it is a bad design. And that is very, very bad news for the Department of Energy because they are committed to
that design," he said. Craig, who was appointed to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (search) by President Clinton
in 1997, spoke to about 100 people later Wednesday night at a community forum in Reno sponsored by the Sierra Club. "I
would never say Yucca Mountain won't work. What I would say is the design they have won't work," he said Wednesday
night. He said he's convinced the Energy Department will have to postpone the project and adopt a different design.

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Links–Securitization
Increased Nuclear Power Development leads to securitization of uranium

Stratfor, world’s leading online publisher of geopolitical intelligence. 04/16/07. [Takumi Murayama]
"In the long term, geopolitical struggles for uranium supplies could emerge, with Central Asian countries and Russia
becoming increasingly important players in world energy markets."
Stratfor contends that other factors will generate increased support for U.S. nuclear energy including: a younger generation--
too young to recall nuclear disasters-concerned about the impacts of climate change; the growing popularity of energy
independence with politicians and the general public; and support by some environmentalists for nuclear energy.
Internationally, industrial nations currently dependant on nuclear power now seek to secure uranium supplies in the face
of growing global demand, particularly from developing countries such as China and India. While Stratfor acknowledged the
possibility of future short-term uranium supply shortages, "the longer trend of rising uranium prices [as much as 57% this
year] will not abate."

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Solvency–Efficiency CP
A renewed commitment to efficiency solves better than nuclear power.

David Hughes, “Nuclear power - unsafe, dirty and expensive”, http://www.post-


gazette.com/forum/19990328edhughes7.asp, 1999

Nuclear power proponents argue that the United States cannot afford to phase out nuclear power. Studies by the Rocky Mountain
Institute show that we could significantly reduce our electricity demand by using energy more efficiently. A concerted national
effort, a "war against wasting energy," combined with increased use of new, safe and clean energy technologies would enable
the phase out of nuclear power. It is time for our political leaders to recognize that nuclear power is not worth further investment.
As we head into the 21st century, Americans should demand increased utilization of 21st-century energy technologies.

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