Clean energy bill 'anti-nuclear?' If only...

Great news for people concerned that the proposed Clean Energy Jobs Act will open the door to more nuclear reactors in Wisconsin:

State Rep. Mike Huebsch, an Onalaska Republican who's been trying for years to repeal the state's so-called nuclear moratorium law, says the bill is "anti-nuclear" and "a wish-list penned by Madison’s environmental fringe," one that "obliges the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, CUB, Clean Wisconsin and others..."

That certainly comes as a surprising revelation to WNPJ and other members of a Carbon Free Nuclear Free coalition who have strong objections to the bill, which eliminates the requirement for a federal nuclear waste repository before new reactors can be built. WNPJ and its allies have been working for a year to try to keep the current, common sense law on the books.

The proposed new clean energy bill is a big step backward and will make it much easier to expand nuclear power in the state, which is why the nuclear industry and utilities and pushing so hard for it.

Huebsch sounded off on The Inside Scoop, a conservative website, in a column filled with inaccuracies and misstatements. Read it here. A sampling:

The Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice advocates a “carbon free, nuclear free” state but offers no plan for generating 100% of our electricity from renewables when in-state capacity is currently under 2% according to the most recent Public Service Commission Strategic Energy Assessment. The Networks’ members include the Citizens Utility Board (CUB) and Clean Wisconsin whose representatives served on the governor’s task force...

Politics, not science, is standing in the way of nuclear waste disposal. The safe storage of spent fuel pellets is possible with proven technology. Sixteen years ago, U.S. scientists were on the verge of perfecting technology that would use today’s nuclear waste as fuel, but President Clinton abruptly halted the project. Nuclear power is not part of Governor Doyle’s bill because the 174-page document is a wish-list penned by Madison’s environmental fringe....

Where to begin?

First of all, CUB and Clean Wisconsin are not members of WNPJ, although we would welcome them and other environmental groups. We have worked with them on nuclear issues, specifically in opposing Huebsch's attempt again this session to repeal the "moratorium" law. They support the Clean Energy Jobs Act in its current form; WNPJ wants the nuclear section of the bill taken out or at least strengthened.

There is indeed, a plan to use renewable energy to make the country, including Wisconsin, carbon free and nuclear free by 2050. It's Carbon Free Nuclear Free, a book by Dr. Arjun Makhijani, a blueprint for a 100% renewable energy policy. Huebsch no doubt knows that.

Despite what Huebsch and other nuclear advocates say, there is no safe, permanent way to dispose of high-level radioactive waste, which is deadly for hundreds of thousands of years.

The process he touts to "use today's nuclear waste as fuel" is known as reprocessing, and it does not solve the waste problem. What it does do is separate plutonium and uranium from other nuclear waste contained in spent nuclear fuel. The separated plutonium can be used to fuel reactors, but also to make nuclear weapons. Reprocessing would not reduce the need for storage and disposal of radioactive waste. Worse, reprocessing would make it easier for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons materials, and for nations to develop nuclear weapons programs. It's why we don't want Iran to have nuclear power reactors.The Union of Concerned Scientists calls reprocessing dangerous, dirty and expensive.

The Clean Energy Jobs Act is far from the anti-nuclear proposal Huebsch portrays. WNPJ wishes it were anti-nuclear, and will continue to push to make the protections for our citizens and environment as strong as possible.

-- Bill Christofferson

Steve Burns: Dutch pull their finger out of the dike

On Sunday, Jan Peter Balkenende, Prime Minister of the Netherlands, announced that his governing coalition had collapsed over the issue of the Dutch military presence in Afghanistan, a move that will almost certainly result in a complete withdrawal of 2000 Dutch soldiers this year. Balkenende's government had won office on promises of a troop withdrawal, but had come under strong pressure from the U.S. to reverse its position. At first, Balkenende buckled to U.S. pressure, attempting to craft a compromise that would allow a scaled-back military presence, but after a 16-hour-long cabinet meeting, Dutch Labor Party leaders announced that they would stick to the policies they had campaigned on, and pulled out of the governing coalition, forcing a new election.

Prime Minister Balkenende said that he expected Dutch troops to leave Afghanistan as planned, saying of the Dutch mission, "If nothing else will take its place, then it ends."

Using an appropriately Dutch hydraulic analogy, Julian Lindley-French, professor of defense strategy at the Netherlands Defense Academy in Breda, said, “If the Dutch go, which is the implication of all this, that could open the floodgates for other Europeans to say, ‘The Dutch are going, we can go, too.' "

U.S. leaders viewed this development - an elected government deciding to honor its promises to the voters - with grave concern. In a New York Times story headlined "Gates Calls European Mood a Danger to Peace," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was quoted as saying, “The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st."

But Gates' gripes extended beyond irritation at the tendency of Dutch politicians - unlike their American counterparts - to actually follow through on their campaign promises. NATO members, Gates complained, weren't spending a large enough share of their national income on the military. The U.S. had extracted a promise from NATO members to increase their military spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product, but only 5 of the 28 NATO members had reached this target. By comparison, the United States spends more than 4 percent of its GDP - and nearly half of the Federal budget - on the military.

Gates was also likely disappointed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel's announcement that Germany would be sending only 850 additional soldiers to Afghanistan, in a decision the New York Times called "a compromise between the pleas of the United States and other allies for a larger commitment of forces and the political realities of a deeply unpopular war at home." The Times reported that American officials had asked the German government for "roughly 2,000 more troops" and "hoped for at least 1,000, given the political constraints they knew the government was under." Antiwar sentiment among the German people spiked in September after a German-ordered airstrike on two hijacked fuel tankers near Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed at least 72 civilians, and the impending decision on additional troops had sparked demonstrations involving more than a thousand people in Berlin. A poll in February showed 85 percent of those surveyed opposed to sending German troops to southern Afghanistan, where the fighting is heaviest.

And if the "European mood" is a "danger to peace", what are we to make of the Canadian mood? This week, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper confirmed that Canada would stick to its plans to withdraw all Canadian forces from Afghanistan by 2011. "I don't think it's viable, knowing the history of Afghanistan, what we know about it, to believe that foreigners are going to be able to run Afghanistan or Afghan security on an ongoing basis," Harper said.

Of course, it wasn't supposed to be this way. Our new, charismatic President was supposed to win commitments of more troops from those recalcitrant Europeans (and Canadians). According to this theory, EuroCanadian reluctance to send more of their citizens to die in Afghanistan was not a legitimate reflection of public opinion, but rather a reflection of mere personal dislike of the arrogant George W. Bush. But charisma only gets you so far, it seems.

And Secretary Gates isn't the only one worried about this new, world-peace-threatening "mood" that seems to have infected Europe and our neighbor to the north. The supposedly liberal folks at National Public Radio also raised alarms. Although reporter David Westervelt couldn't find a single Dutch person who supported the withdrawal (a promised withdrawal, remember, that had sufficient public support to win an election for the governing coalition) he was able to find an "expert" who was appropriately concerned about this dangerous outbreak of democracy. "And now you see that one partner has always been regarded as a country able and willing to deliver is now pulling out, completely. That's really a worry to NATO. It's a worry to the United States, and of course, it's a worry to a lot of Dutch who think that our image will be negatively influenced by this," said Edwin Bakker, Senior fellow at the Netherlands Institute for International Relations.

Mr. Bakker didn't offer up the names of specific Dutch citizens that he'd be willing to sacrifice in order to maintain the Netherlands' reputation as "a country able and willing to deliver."

NPR reporter Westervelt closed his report with more expressions of anxiety, this time from unnamed "analysts", saying, "analysts here worry the Dutch political system is now in turmoil with no strong leadership and now clear way out of the crisis."

Of course, most Dutch voters might conclude that a government that was willing to stand up to the most powerful nation on Earth in order to stick to a promise it had made to the voters was exercising "strong leadership." Speaking as an American, this is the sort of "strong leadership" I want to see from my own government.

Steve Burns is Program Director of the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.

"The Coming Revolt of the Guards" -- Thoughts from the Dane County jail

By Joshua Brollier

On entering the Dane County Jail, the first holding cell that Brian Terrell and I were placed in had only one other person. We previously saw this man outside the cell during our initial booking. He was a man with dark black skin and a full beard. I thought I heard one of the officers say he was from Gambia. When we entered the cell, the man was in mid-ritual in what appeared to be a Muslim’s midday prayer. A young white guard, who had the accent of a Midwesterner, looked disdainfully at the man and then somewhat positively at Brian and me. The guard said, “Just ignore that,” as if the man was insulting or threatening us by his peaceful act of prayer. To which I replied, “It’s fine with me.”

This experience was contrasted by the next encounter I had with another officer who made digital copies of my fingerprints and pictures. As this middle-aged man placed my hand on the machine, I made a remark that I was surprised that he did not already have my information handy. (This was the third time I was fingerprinted and pictured for this same charge.) He said, “Oh yeah? You arrested a lot? What are you in for?” I told him that I was arrested with a group who engaged in civil disobedience at Ft. McCoy. (Photo: Entering Ft. McCoy). Getting the sense that this man may have previously been in the armed services, I explained that we were not against the men and women in the military personally, but that our goals were to enter the base to talk to the rank and file soldiers about ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to make certain the soldiers were aware of their right to refuse illegal and immoral orders.

Before I could get all of this out of my mouth, the officer piped in abruptly and surprisingly, “I understand folks like you. I was in Vietnam, and this is the same shit happening today.” I said, “Oh yeah? What did they have you doing over there?” He replied, “Killing people and breaking shit, and this is just the same.” He gazed at me with a fierce intensity and honesty. I was now a bit nervous, feeling that I had asked too much too quickly. After a moment I said, “I’m sorry sir. I’m sorry they had you do that.” I continued, “Well, from my perspective, I don’t want any more young men and women to have to do what you did, nor to put themselves in harm’s way for a war that has no goals or objectives…” He cut me off. I was planning to finish my sentence with something like “…no goals other than bringing more profits to corporations and expanding the U.S. empire.” But he continued in an angry tone, “There was no goal then and there is no goal now. It’s all pointless.” I nodded my head in agreement.

A few more words were exchanged between us about the families being torn apart in the U.S., Iraq and Afghanistan. The disgruntled Vietnam Veteran, now turned law-enforcement officer, concluded taking my fingerprints. He then told me his name and again repeated something to the tune of “I can respect people like you.” After the unexpected bond of our short conversation, the feeling was mutual. Ironically, this same man sent me along the way to serve my jail sentence for speaking out against the crimes being committed by our government and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have now expanded to illegal drone strikes and extra-judicial killings in Pakistan and Yemen.

Until we build a culture that widely accepts that it is okay and necessary to resist war and injustice, I suppose that’s the way it will go. I don’t know when or if the day will come, but I look forward to the day of the “coming revolt of the guards” that our late brother Howard Zinn predicted; a day when veterans, soldiers, policemen and judges can stand together with civilians, workers and activists alike to put and end to any further senseless tragedies and atrocities.

Joshua Brollier is a Co-Coordinator with Voices for Creative Non-Violence in Chicago. He and Brian Terrell were released earlier this week from Dane Co. Jail in Madison, WI, after serving a 14 day sentence for non-payment of a fine which was imposed on them for trespassing at Ft. McCoy in the summer of 2008.

Nuclear 'tweaks' could be a deal-breaker

When is a "tweak" in a legislative bill a deal breaker?

Maybe, just maybe, when the change is to an already controversial section on nuclear power that's part of the proposed Clean Energy Jobs Bill for Wisconsin.

Many activists think the language agreed upon by the Governor's Task Force on Global Warming, which is the basis for the bill, already goes too far in relaxing state laws on nuclear reactors.

Now, at the request of utilities which want to be able to build new reactors, changes are being considered to make it even easier.

The utilities say it's just a little "tweak" in the language, and that the original draft may be unconstitutional. But some of the environmentalists and consumer advocates who have been supporting the bill are signaling that the changes could be a deal-breaker.

Environmentalists on the Task Force reluctantly agreed to swallow a compromise that removes the requirement that a federal nuclear waste repository be operating before a new reactor can be built in the state.

What they got in return, supposedly, was protection against so-called "merchant plants" -- reactors built by non-Wisconsin companies to send power elsewhere in the country. (It solves a problem that seemingly has never been a problem, but that's another story.)

The draft of the bill now being considered by the legislature says this:

196.493 (2) (am) 4. For certifications made on or after the date specified in the notice published under sub. (3) (b), the entire output of electricity produced by the proposed nuclear power plant will be needed and used to meet the expected requirements for electricity of ratepayers or members of electric cooperatives in this state and the applicant demonstrates to the commission’s satisfaction that the output will be needed and used for this purpose.

Trading that language for lifting the requirement for a federal waste repository doesn't seem like a very good deal for those concerned about the effects of nuclear power on health, safety and the environment.

But a deal's a deal -- except when it isn't.

The ink was hardly dry on the bill draft when utilities began complaining that the language was probably unconstitutional. You can't restrict interstate commerce, they said. And you can't control where electrons go; they're bound to cross state lines.

What worries the utilties even more is a clause that says if one part of the nuclear section is thrown out by the court, the whole section is thrown out. If it weren't for that, they'd just as soon let the court take out the piece they don't like.

So they've been asking for both changes -- take out the requirement that you must use the nuclear power in Wisconsin, and get rid of that non-severability clause that says the whole section rises or falls together.

That change is what a Journal Sentinel story described as "tweaking" the bill's language, is being pushed hard by the utilities.

A representative of one environmental group says the "problem" language is what was agreed upon by the Task Force, and says the utilies are trying to renege on the deal. Katie Nekola, energy program director for Clean Wisconsin, says:

If the nuclear language in the global warming bill is unconstitutional, then why did the utilities and most other members of the Global Warming Task Force agree to it when the vote was taken last year?

The legality of the in-state requirement is not a new issue. It was discussed extensively within the Global Warming Task Force before a vote was taken, and many attorneys were consulted at that time. All members of the task force agreed to support modification of existing law with the condition that new reactors must be built to benefit Wisconsin customers, not to sell power out of state.

The statement that it’s impossible to ensure that power generated by nukes will serve Wisconsin customers because of the way electricity flows along transmission lines is simply absurd.

Utilities and merchant power plants have contracts to buy and sell power to municipal utilities and each other. Although it’s true that electrons can’t be directed along a particular path, those contracts ensure that energy reaches Wisconsin homes and businesses.

The language in the global warming bill requires that any new reactor built in Wisconsin must have a contract with Wisconsin utilities, so that if Wisconsin must bear the risks of radioactive waste storage and reactor accidents, at least we will have a supply of electricity to show for it.

Members of the Task Force entered into an agreement based on compromises, and no new information has emerged that should change that agreement. For utilities to now claim that what they agreed to is unworkable is the classic bait and switch. Lawmakers should stay true to the consensus agreement that was reached, and see this so-called “tweaking” for what it is: an attempt to renege on the agreement.

Other groups, including the Citizens Utility Board, have supported the Task Force language but have said repeatedly that if the nuclear language is changed significantly it will reevaluate its support of the bill. No doubt other environmental groups will do the same.

Meanwhile, a coalition of other groups -- the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Peace Action-Wisconsin, Nukewatch, Coulee Region Progressives and more -- believe the original bill is tilted too far in favor of the nuclear industry and have been pushing to have the entire package of nuclear changes removed from the bill and allow the existing state law to stand.

There are a lot of positive things about the bill, which moves Wisconsin away from reliance on fossil fuels and toward more renewable energy.

But it appears that partisanship will play a big role, and no Republicans are expected to vote for the bill. With tiny majorities in both houses, Wisconsin Democrats face much the same challenge Congressional Dems do in passing a health care bill -- they need almost every vote.

If pro-nuclear forces continue to push their agenda to change the bill, offering nothing in return -- such as further protections on nuclear waste disposal, for example -- the whole compromise could come undone.

Environmentalists don't want to walk away from the bill and its many positive provisions. But they've already had to swallow hard to accept the original version of the nuclear language. More changes may make it more than they can stomach.

-- Bill Christofferson

Nuclear power risks: It's always something

Darn!

Just when the nuclear industry is doing such a great job of selling its "renaissance" as the way to fight climate change, along comes another irritating little problem.

As my mother used to say, there's always something to take the joy out of life.

This time it's a tritium leak at a Vermont plant -- something that's already happened in Wisconsin at Point Beach and Kewaunee, as noted in the map above. The AP reports:

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Radioactive tritium, a carcinogen discovered in potentially dangerous levels in groundwater at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, has now tainted at least 27 of the nation’s 104 nuclear reactors — raising concerns about how it is escaping from the aging nuclear plants...

Tritium, found in nature in tiny amounts and a product of nuclear fusion, has been linked to cancer if ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin in large amounts.

Is it anything to be concerned about? As is often the case when there's a lot of money at stake, it depends upon who you ask.

When tritium was found near the Kewaunee plant in August 2006, the Journal Sentinel soft-peddled it. This was the lede:

The release of tritium underneath the Kewaunee nuclear plant doesn't pose a health risk because the radioactive substance hasn't been found in drinking water, federal nuclear regulators said.

The radioactive isotope of hydrogen was found in four groundwater samples taken from narrow shafts underneath the nuclear plant, located in the Kewaunee County Town of Carlton, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report...

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Dominion Resources Inc., which owns Kewaunee, stressed that no unsafe levels of tritium have been detected at monitoring… Both Kewaunee and Point Beach do regular testing and have been in compliance with federal standards that permit tritium to be released at low levels.

Others don't treat it so lightly.The Burlington VT Free Press reports:

Nuclear industry advocates say worries about tritium leaks can be overblown. “It depends on the level and where it gets to,” said Steve Kerekes, a Washington, D.C., spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute. “If it’s isolated, it’s not going to be an issue. Not every operating issue rises to the level of being a safety issue."

Critics disagree. They note that tritium leaks are usually followed by the discovery of other, slower-moving but more dangerous radioactive agents like strontium-90 and cobalt-60, which have longer half-lives than tritium. Cobalt-60 was also found in the Vermont Yankee storage trench.

“It can cause damage for 120 years,” Gunter said of tritium. “If you ingest it or inhale it at close range, it can begin to saturate down to your DNA and cause cancer and birth defects.”

No radiation exposure is safe exposure, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research says:

Plant operators and the NRC initially dismissed public concerns about leaks,saying that tritium levels measured offsite by the plant operators were well below the EPA drinking water standard of 20,000 picocuries per liter4 and were "safe” even though all radiation protection regulations and the most recent report of the National Academies (commonly known as the BEIR VII report)concluded that the hypothesis that best fits the facts is that every exposure to radiation produces a corresponding cancer risk – low exposures produce low risk, and that risk increases with exposure. There is no threshold below which there is zero risk.

The EPA's method of expressing this reality is to set a Maximum Contaminant Level Goal (MCLG) which corresponds to zero health risk. The EPA value for MCLG for all radionuclides, including tritium, is zero.

Here's a Nukewatch report on the Wisconsin plants:

In 1975, Point Beach Unit 1 leaked approximately 10,000 gallons of radioactively-contaminated water after a steam tube ruptured. The water flowed into a retention pond and from the pond into groundwater. In 1997, another steam tube in the same reactor spilled another 10,000 gallons of radioactively-contaminated water that ran eventually into Lake Michigan. That year, Unit 2 had a leaking discharge pipe which also contaminated a stream and Lake Michigan.

In 2006, Kewaunee workers found tritium in the groundwater below the site. The NRC said the radiation had infiltrated narrow shafts beneath two buildings. The leak rate was thought to be one gallon every five minutes.

So, as a proposal to make it much easier to build a new nuclear reactor works moves along the greased skids of the Wisconsin Legislature, it's not too late to speak up. Details here.

--Bill Christofferson

Kathy Kelly: Decency and strength

By Kathy Kelly

February 2, 2010

Here in Colorado Springs, student and community organizers recently invited me to try and help promote their campaign against a proposed “No Camping” ordinance, a law to ban the homeless from sleeping on sidewalks or public lands within the city limits. The organizers insist it’s wrongful to criminalize the most desperate and endangered among us, that it instead seems quite criminal to persecute people already in need of far more care and compassion than we've been willing to offer, especially during these bitterly cold winter months. But others in the area are intent on eliminating the tent encampments near the Monument Creek and Shooks Run trails, complaining that the encampments mar natural beauty, deter tourists, create fire hazards, and degrade the environment by strewing heaps of trash and debris near the creek and even in it.


It seems important for both sides of the argument to acknowledge other local encampments that Colorado Springs is home to: Fort Carson Army base, both Peterson and Schriever (formerly Falcon) Air Force Bases, Norad and Cheyenne Air Force Stations, and the U.S. Air Force Academy. It's not lost on opponents of the "No Camping" ordinance that stop-loss policies prevent many of the young men and women at these institutions from returning to their homes, where many of them long to be after repeated tours of military duty outside the United States. For every soldier intent on strengthening his or her country's military option, how many more are taking a last-ditch option, signing up for the famed "poverty draft," to sustain themselves and their families through an economic crisis felt throughout the country and the world? Many, though not all, of these young people have been driven by poverty into their encampments as surely as the Monument Creek campers have been driven into theirs.

And these bases, whatever the intentions of their residents, can certainly be scrutinized for creating waste, destruction, fear, fires, massive casualties and environmental degradation. Whatever the soldiers' intentions, these bases are here, when called upon, to supply "shock and awe" wherever needed around the world. But, it’s highly unlikely that a No-Camping ordinance will appear before the City Council of Colorado Springs, or any other city in the United States, returning these young men and women to viable and secure lives back in their home communities.

President Obama, while freezing spending on nonmilitary programs in this desperate economic moment, just submitted a new budget asking an additional 708 billion dollars for the Department of Defense. Keeping one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan,for one year, costs one million dollars. All this to prevent Al Qaeda strongholds in the country even though mainstream news sources have noted that less than 100 militants of the Al Qaeda organization even live in Afghanistan. (Fox News, December 2nd, 2009). With our additional attacks against our supposed ally Pakistan, and our insistence that its government attack its own villages along the Afghan border, we have displaced at least 3 million more people, one million of whom still wait in tent encampments and inadequate shelters for their indefinitely postponed return to security and normal life, filling massive refugee camps that military observers repeatedly warn create ideal recruitment conditions for jihadist groups.

“In this new decade,” said President Obama, in his State of the Union address, “it's time the American people get a government that matches their decency; that embodies their strength.”

But where, with this addiction to war, this perverse use of resources that could house and feed our neighbors to instead destroy homes and villages abroad, --where can we find decency? Where can we find real strength? The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King famously insisted that "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." When asked, U.S. people are overwhelmingly in favor of reductions, not increases, of the military budget, and increases of aid to the needy, not reductions or freezes. Why does it seem so impossible to find a government that matches this decency and this strength?

Strength, in the sense of real security, comes from communities pulling together in compassion and cooperation. Strength comes from decency. We are made insecure by our criminal assaults on international security and our criminal neglect of the poor at home. Who will educate us to better understand that being seen as a menacing, frightful and destructive culture, internationally, jeapordizes our security? International law establishes that initiating war, as we did in Iraq and indeed in Afghanistan, is a crime; and in a fundamental sense, for those who wish to live in security, crime does not pay.

Our strength will not come from diversions of desperately needed resources into meaningless destruction and division. Individual Americans, without waiting for help from above, must act to correct these pathologies of American social and political life. We can support and learn from decent and kindly organizers, in Colorado Springs and other communities, who extend a hand of friendship to those all too often viewed, domestically, as expendables. We can donate from our own resources to fight poverty at home and thereby deny these resources as taxable income that our government can employ in causing more despair, poverty, and displacement abroad. And we can build bonds of community and shared purpose, organizing in our neighborhoods, our cities, our schools, churches, and workplaces, to build a world wherein no one is left out in the cold.


Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence, a WNPJ member group.