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On August 8th "President" Bush signed into law the Energy Policy Act of 2005, more commonly known as "The Energy Bill." Early reports in the U.S. press on the signing of the 1,724-page bill were remarkably uniform, with most noting, as the New York Times did, that it "will send billions of dollars in tax subsidies to energy companies," but "will do little to alleviate the high prices of gasoline at the pump for most Americans."
Reading the corporate press, one could be forgiven for not considering that the energy bill - since it has to do with the cars we drive and the fuels we use, among other things - will also have a huge impact on the environment. But, while the "President" announced that this is an "economic bill," and a "national security bill," he never said it was an "environmental bill." And it's not (at least, not in any positive sense). As the bill was being negotiated in Congress in July, a spokesman for the conservative Heritage Foundation told the London Observer, "This is an energy bill. If it is morphed into an environment bill, that will not be good."
He needn't have worried. The best evidence that the bill that emerged from this process is not an "environmental bill" is the effort it makes to fulfill the ominous prophecy of "President" Bush, who said as he signed the bill, "We will start building nuclear power plants again by the end of this decade." The official transcript shows that this comment was met with applause, which isn't too surprising since the "bill-signing ceremony" was held at the Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, a major nuclear research facility.
Cringing As We Fill Up Our SUVs
The political context in which these words were uttered was neatly summarized by The Resource Investor, a newsletter serving the "mining, drilling and piping sectors" of the U.S. economy. In their June 25th edition they pointed out that "Without the high energy costs currently affecting the American population, it's likely that the topic of nuclear power generation wouldn't even come up in discussion. But with Americans cringing every time they fill up their SUVs or pay their sky-high utility bills, it was really only a matter of time before the politicians sought to protect their incumbency with a broad-based plan for energy relief. When rolled together with post-9/11 jingoistic flag-waving about developing domestic energy sources, the perfect political storm for nuclear power may be brewing."
I don't agree with The Resource Investor that this bill is a "broad-based plan for energy relief" (unless you count the relief from regulation that the energy corporations will get), but it certainly looks like the storm is done brewing now, and the de facto nuclear energy policy of three decades duration has been discarded.
The Business Press didn't even try to hide their glee upon passage of this bill. John Kane, senior vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, was moved to tell the Wall Street Journal, "This is a great bill." Curt Hebert Jr., executive vice president of Entergy Corporation, chimed in, "Congress is to be congratulated." Had he been interested in accuracy, he would have said that Congress is to be thanked. It is he, and his class, who should be congratulated.
If you look at the bill you'll see what they're so excited about. It's loaded with a hefty package of subsidies, loan guarantees, taxpayer-funded insurance, and other incentives that have the effect of socializing the costs and risks associated with this dangerous technology, while leaving untouched the potential profits. And that's the name of the game for so-called Free Marketeers: Private profit, public risk.
Adding to the unanimous chorus in the Business press, the Wall Street Journal led off their July 28th story with the words, "The energy bill nearing passage in Congress could be the best news the nuclear-power industry has seen in many years."
The Journal claimed that the final "package took months of lobbying, including last-minute intervention by President Bush." That's probably true, but the phenomenally corrupt and convoluted process goes farther back than that. Although it's largely dropped out of the news now, the infamous and largely secret Energy Task Force, headed by Vice President Cheney, began the formal planning for this bill in 2001. (More on "phenomenally corrupt" in next week's issue of Nygaard Notes.)
"Far Safer Than Ever Before?"
There are many problems associated with nuclear power, among them the production of highly-toxic radioactive waste, the "spent" fuel that is a byproduct of the process. The Nuclear Information Resource Service reminds us that "Certain radioactive elements ... in 'spent' fuel will remain hazardous to humans and other living beings for hundreds of thousands of years. Other radioisotopes will remain hazardous for millions of years." No permanent storage area has been found for the currently-existing 49,000 metric tons of this stuff. That's equal to 108 million pounds of the poison, which is projected to increase to over 232 million pounds by 2035.
Mr. Bush, upon signing the Energy Bill, said that "nuclear plants are far safer than ever before." That should be a controversial statement, although the media didn't treat it as such. For example, the media largely ignored it when, just six weeks ago, on June 29th, the National Academy of Sciences put out a report saying that "A preponderance of scientific evidence shows that even low doses of ionizing radiation...are likely to pose some risk of adverse health effects [such as] cancer," and that "working around radioactive materials" is one of the "factors that could increase exposure."
And who is it that works "around radioactive materials?" Well, most mining and milling of uranium ore is done on the lands of indigenous peoples: Hopi and Navajo lands in the Southwest United States, Cree land in Northern Canada, Aboriginal lands in Australia, and Tribal Homelands in South Africa. So, any "revival of the nuclear power sector" will involve increased needs for uranium gathered from indigenous lands.
As Winona LaDuke reported in the May edition of Nuclear-Free News, "In communities such as Cove, Arizona, at least one member of every Navajo family is thought to have died from cancer or other diseases resulting from uranium mining." And the Navajo Nation Council passed the Dine Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005 in May, which bans uranium mining and processing anywhere in Navajo Indian Country. LaDuke reports that the Navajo community has "vowed to build opposition to federal energy bill provisions" that will inevitably target Navajo lands.
The promised nuclear energy revival will also result in the generation of more highly-toxic nuclear waste which, if current plans prevail, will end up on Native lands. (See this week's "Quote" of the Week for more on this.)
And, finally, the enriching, handling, storing, transporting, and disposal of nuclear materials presents dangers all along the way of accidents, sabotage, theft, nuclear terrorism, and so on and so forth.
In summary, the signing of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 this week by "President" Bush, signals the reversal of a 30-year course on nuclear policy that appears to endanger the public health, intensify environmental racism, and increase the threat of nuclear terrorism. This merits serious debate, but we haven't seen - and apparently won't see - that debate in the pages of the Mainstream Corporate For-Profit Agenda-Setting Bound Media. The tragic result is that many people won't even notice this major change in nuclear policy until - in one way or another - it hits them.
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