On Nuclear Energy: The Hidden Costs

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Last week President Obama announced $8.33 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear construction projects in Georgia, after three decades of an ad hoc nuclear moratorium across the country. For all of the coverage last week, the media frenzy missed an important part of the story--the destructive processes at the front end of nuclear power.
 
Instead, the common tune has been that Obama is using the prospect of a job-producing nuclear renaissance to get Republicans on board for his larger climate initiative; environmentalists are worried about nuclear waste and meltdowns; and maybe nuclear is the lesser of evils because it has no CO2 emissions (not counting construction, mining and transporting uranium).
 
But the story on the havoc uranium mining wreaks on poor communities is conspicuously missing from the debate.
 
It’s a fairly under-covered narrative, despite being half a century old. In short, the leach-mining process completely contaminates ground water systems, and has resulted in skyrocketing cancer rates in places like western New Mexico.  So why isn't the mainstream media calling foul?
 
Even Sarah Palin put on her environmentalist hat and joined the conversation, pointing to holes in Obama’s plan. But she still failed to acknowledge the impact of uranium mining: "While the White House now touts the building of new nuclear power plants, its budget inexplicably calls for cutting funding to the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. A real nuclear energy plan requires a strategy for dealing with nuclear waste storage and recycling."
 
Time's Michael Grunwald took another media-friendly environmentalist tack when he wrote last week: “[F]or now plants have been storing their waste on-site without major problems. And the nuclear industry's safety record has improved dramatically in the 30 years since the Three Mile Island meltdown, although there are still occasional blips like the recent radioactive leak at a Vermont plant."
 
It’s not exactly surprising that no one’s including uranium mining in the pros-and-cons list of nuclear energy, since it's been overlooked for so long. And despite it all, nuclear power just might be necessary to get on track to slowing the escalation of global warming. Let’s just not kid ourselves about what the costs really are.
 
Read more from YPNation on the clean energy and climate change debate.
 
(Photo: Chemical forms of uranium during conversion)