Tonight (Thursday), the Orange County Board of Commissioners are to examine the question of whether the county should intervene in the permitting and licensing process for expansion at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant in New Hill.
This would not be the first time the county has gotten involved with issues at the plant and, should the commissioners decide to do it, likely not the last.
Driving the decision-making process in Hillsborough is a confluence of facts on the ground in both New Hill and Capitol Hill.
In New Hill, these facts include findings that fire-safety materials at the existing plant are not sufficient and that federal safety regulators have known about the deficiency and allowed it to slide for 15 years. Also in New Hill are years of spent fuel rods stored long term through a method designed only for short term use in a facility that is not the kind of protection against natural and man-made disasters the public has long demanded of the nuclear industry.
On Capitol Hill, the powerful lobbying machines of the power and nuclear industries have won a handsome incentive to construct a so-called new generation of nukes. With that comes a Byzantine permitting and licensing process that has proven very beneficial for fast-tracking projects and shutting out public input. There has been insufficient time allotted to plow through the tens of thousands of pages in each application and offer an independent review.
Now comes word from the industry-friendly Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the new generation of nukes have not been as thoroughly reviewed as touted and may be much further away from full certification than we were led to believe.
A further sign of the lack of confidence in the nuke resurgence is that Wall Street won’t touch the projects without substantial guarantees.
Unfortunately, North and South Carolina have already given the power companies authorization to charge ratepayers $230 million for construction costs in advance of the nuclear expansion plans.
Dubious safety and financing and concerns about waste storage and the efficacy of new technologies should give the commissioners plenty of reason to raise serious objections not just to an expansion at New Hill but to the whole idea that nuclear energy is the answer to our energy problems and reliance on fossil fuels.
Conservation and alternative energy are the real answers to the fix we’re in. Let’s not delay efforts in those areas by pouring money and time into another nuclear boondoggle.