San Diego Union-Tribune
Foes keep distorting nuclear power's record
Twenty-nine years ago this month, the reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown, due to a combination of equipment problems, design flaws and worker mistakes. While the accident was scary, its actual negative effects were few – completely unlike the 1986 catastrophe at the Soviet nuclear power plant in Chernobyl. No one was killed at Three Mile Island, and the additional radiation exposure suffered by nearby residents was the equivalent of one-sixth of a typical chest X-ray.
The partial meltdown, however, did trigger many reforms in the U.S. nuclear power industry, with “never again” the driving philosophy. The Three Mile Island accident prompted “sweeping changes involving emergency response planning, reactor operator training, human factors engineering, radiation protection and many other areas of nuclear power plant operations,” according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as much more rigorous NRC regulation of nuclear plants.
These reforms also were adopted in the nations around the world that continued to see the promise of nuclear power. In the United States, however, between Three Mile Island and the decision of greens to depict nuclear power as immoral and unthinkable, nuclear power lost all favor. Even as Japan, France and other nations have proven nuclear plants to be a safe, reliable primary source of electricity, America's aversion has remained.
Thankfully, a far more rational view of nuclear power is on the ascent, driven both by national security concerns and fears of global warming. Whether we wish to reduce dependence on foreign energy suppliers or to reduce production of greenhouse gases, expanding clean-energy nuclear plants is an obvious decision. This is why not just most Republicans but such prominent Democrats as New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco have all said it is prudent to take a new look at nuclear power. At the state level, Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, has also taken such a stance.
Alas, as we saw this week, there are still some state Democrats stuck in the past, lawmakers who think “The China Syndrome” is in its third decade at the movieplex and that nuclear power is an unspeakable villain on a par with perverts who torture animals. After Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent declaration that nuclear power “has a great future,” Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, D-Woodland Hills, rushed to denounce the very idea as dangerous to mankind. “History cannot keep repeating itself on this one,” said the lawmaker best known for championing frivolous nanny-state legislation.
Levine, however, is the irresponsible pol stuck on repeat, not Schwarzenegger. When it comes to nuclear power, history appears to have stopped for him and too many of his fellow Democratic lawmakers in March 1979. Otherwise, they'd be aware that European greens now embrace nuclear power as key to fighting global warming. And that France now gets 87 percent of its electricity from nuclear power and has no problem dealing with spent fuel rods and waste, Levine's purported main concerns. And that Japan has a similarly strong record.
Memo to Lloyd: Take off the polyester leisure suit and turn off the disco strobe light. It's 2008, not 1979, and your formerly fashionable views look more outdated by the day.
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