Energy expert: New plants doomed
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By Susan Smallheer Herald Staff - Published: March 17, 2008
BRATTLEBORO — A nationally recognized nuclear energy expert told anti-nuclear activists Saturday that simple economics will doom new nuclear power construction, and he urged New Englanders to push for the development of solar and wind power.
Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Washington, also said that homes should be sold with an energy rating or inspection, much like safety standards for plumbing and wiring.
And he said that too much corn and wheat was being diverted from world food to making energy, a decision that wasn't efficient or clean.
"How stupid can you be? Turning food into fuel?" he said.
Makhijani was the keynote speaker at the 37th annual meeting of the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution, which attracted more than 100 people late Saturday afternoon to the Vermont Agricultural Business Education Center.
Makhijani urged the group to push all candidates for public office this year for their stands on all kinds of power issues, not just nuclear.
"We need the leadership of the people. The wind is you. You have to create the political wind," he said.
Makhijani, who holds a doctorate in nuclear fusion from the University of California, Berkeley, told the gathering that only government subsidies would make nuclear power economical, and that he doubted that Wall Street would fund such big projects otherwise.
He said two new nuclear reactors proposed for Florida would cost $14 billion, or about $7,000 per kilowatt hour, an astronomical figure.
"If there are no loan guarantees, Wall Street will not fund these economic dinosaurs," he said.
And he condemned the practice of carbon offsets, "paying someone to plant a tree" — when people should really conserve energy or become more efficient.
Makhijani, who joked that his wife kept their house at 50 degrees, said he had also learned how to wear a sweater in his family's effort to conserve energy.
"I'm an egghead, who's a ham," he confessed.
While Makhijani's talk was peppered with humor, he said that in the 1960s he wanted to write his doctoral dissertation on global warming, but it was rejected. Instead, he wrote about nuclear power.
But he said that the planet was "on life support" and that the rate of the ice melting at the Arctic Circle was accelerating at a frightening rate.
"We are in deep trouble. The climate is so serious a problem, we need to do dramatic things," said Makhijani.
The United States' dependence on imported oil has only grown, he said, noting that most of the recent wars were about oil. "Pearl Harbor was about oil, did you know that? And I think a lot of Sept. 11 was about oil," said Makhijani, who is a native of India.
"How did our oil get under their sand?" he said of the Middle East wars. "Now it is our sand."
Woody Guthrie's famous song, "This Land is Our Land," could easily be updated with the word sand, Makhijani said. "`This sand is our sand,'" he sang.
"We have to set a goal of zero CO2," said Makhijani, whose most recent book is "Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy."
He said the opposition to wind power comes down to aesthetics, which pales when compared to the serious threats to the planet.
Makhijani said that offshore wind power is extremely promisingly, noting that there is a strong wind resource just offshore, and that it was close to energy markets, thus keeping the need for new transmission lines to a minimum.
"Don't complain about the view," he said. "We have to get tough."
He said that activists should enlist retired television anchorman Walter Cronkite, once an adamant opponent to Cape Wind, the large-scale wind project planned for off the coast of Cape Cod, to become an equally well-known advocate.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
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