Interview: Will the U.S. Ever Move Beyond Nuclear?

Below is a Q&A conducted by Change.org with Linda Pentz Gunter, who founded the group Beyond Nuclear in 2007 and is now its International Specialist and media and development director. Here, she discusses the nuclear situation in Japan and what it means for the anti-nuclear movement in the U.S.

Based in Takoma Park, Maryland, Beyond Nuclear is a group working for a world free of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. You can learn more about them and support their work by signing their campaign on Change.org here.

Change.org: Based on the information you have available right now, how bad is it at Fukushima?

Linda Gunter: This is a unique situation because there are problems at multiple reactors at the same time including one using especially deadly plutonium. There are potentially 6 reactors in crisis with no end in sight. Every time they struggle to get one aspect under control, another faces critical failures. So the picture is constantly changing – most of the time for the worse.

Obviously radioactivity has already gotten out—it’s difficult to tell how much because we can’t trust official estimates. What’s already released is extremely serious because there is no safe dose of radiation. Any additional unnecessary dose is harmful, especially for children and pregnant women.  You have to note that official “safe” dose estimates are based on doses for healthy men.

Without wanting to sound alarmist, I would say that it is definitely worse than we're being told. The government and Tokyo Electric are wrestling with something that is very hard to control. So their position has been, if you can’t control the reactor, control the information available. That’s what’s happening right now: They are in damage control mode.

Why did you start Beyond Nuclear in 2007?

It started as a project and a concept to bring new people into the movement. Nuclear energy is a dirty, dangerous, expensive and ultimately unnecessary way to boil water. We need to stop going down this path and shift gears immediately to deploying energy efficiency and renewable energy. Our mission is to educate and inform the public, media and decision-makers about these dangers and the safer, cheaper, cleaner alternatives.

We also make the connection between the risks of nuclear power and the risks of nuclear weapons. [ ] The reality is you enrich uranium to some degree to make fuel for a reactor, and you enrich it more to make nuclear weapons. The line between the two is blurry, as we’ve seen with Iran where most nations believe Iran really intends to use its program to make nuclear weapons, not nuclear energy.  That’s why we advocate to an abolition of both nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

The issues with nuclear power have always been a very challenging message to drive home. Unfortunately, it has taken this accident  to draw attention to the really catastrophic risks this technology represents.

Where is nuclear the riskiest in the U.S.?

Everybody’s at risk if they live near a nuclear power plant. However the plants are designed, the possibility of a loss of electricity, or human error, or terrorism, or a natural disaster—or those events combined—is always there. That's the fundamental risk that we all face.

That said, some reactor designs are more dangerous than others. In the U.S. the 23 GE Mark I reactors, of the same design as at Fukushima, are most vulnerable. These should be the first ones closed down.

There are other sites that are vulnerable because of their location. Indian Point, for example, was originally considered a target by the World Trade Center terrorists. [ ] If that had happened, that would have changed this discussion around nuclear drastically ten years ago. Diablo Canyon on the California coast sits on earthquake fault lines on a cliff-top.

What is your outlook on U.S. nuclear issues for the next few months?

We have been seeing huge demonstrations against nuclear in Germany which has taken the most dramatic steps to halt nuclear power. Other countries are stepping back.

Where is the response in the U.S.? Steven Chu [the Energy Secretary] has gone before Congress already saying it will be business-as-usual as far as new plants go. President Obama reiterated that position during his March 30 speech. It’s staggering the Obama administration isn't even pausing to take a breath.

We’ve also got a Congress that is not very sympathetic to our concerns, to say the least.  We have a regulator, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), that is way too cozy with the industry. No one is grilling the NRC the way the Minerals Management Service was grilled after the BP oil spill.  Sure, they will do a safety review. But what track record does the NRC have that shows it will do anything meaningful? This is a agency that has allowed many near misses in the last few years, including allowing the Davis-Besse reactor vessel [in Toledo, Ohio] to corrode within 3/8^th of an inch of carbon steel away from a radioactive leak. This is an agency that gets 90 percent of its budget from industry fees. There is also a revolving door between the NRC and the nuclear industry.

The next step for us is: What can people do beyond signing a petition or writing a letter? I honestly think that what needs to happen is a highly visible response from the public, as we’ve seen in many other countries. We are beginning with our partners in Washington and our allies in the grassroots to try and formulate a strong, vocal grassroots response. We need to do something that shows a groundswell of alarm within the mainstream, especially among the people who live near the 23 GE Mark I reactors in the U.S. Our elected officials need to hear that their constituents will not allow their lives and livelihoods to be gambled with any longer.

Please check out Beyond Nuclear's campaign on Change.org, asking the Obamas to commit to a nuclear free future today.

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Photo credit: takomabibelot via Flickr