Nuclear fuel cycle — including the ‘peaceful atom’ and devastating weapons — continues to pose danger

It has always been hard to separate the so-called “peaceful atom” (commercial nuclear power) from the threat of nuclear weapons.

In the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which brought World War II to an end, South Dakota experienced the beginning and the end of the nuclear fuel cycle. Abandoned uranium mines (similar to the one at an abandoned Navajo Nation mine in the above photo from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) northwest of Edgemont in the southern Black Hills, and in the Cave Hills northwest of Buffalo, continue to spread nuclear contamination of our land and water, including Angostura reservoir.

In the 1980s, there was a serious proposal to build a huge nuclear waste dump near Edgemont, which was soundly rejected by South Dakota voters who passed a restrictive initiated measure in 1984. 

Currently, Russia threatens the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the southeast part of Ukraine, which does not have enough water to cool its reactors since a dam on the Dnipro River was destroyed in June. If that plant experiences a meltdown, the resulting catastrophe could be worse than the failure of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which spread radiation over much of Europe a generation ago. 

At the same time, most of the 1,550 nuclear warheads in America’s current arsenal are at least 50 years old. We plan to spend over $750 billion over the next decade to replace and modernize these weapons, which in turn may encourage Russia and China to revamp their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. 

Since the plutonium pits in our bombs have a half-life of 24,000 years, the old plutonium can be recycled into new pits, all of which are manufactured in the U.S. Energy Department lab in Los Alamos. At the same time, our Air Force is short-staffed, lacking enough technicians to properly maintain our nuclear arsenal. For one thing, their pay is not competitive. We appear to have become numb to the ongoing hazards caused by maintaining these weapons in perpetuity.

There seems to be a bipartisan majority in Congress that supports new subsidies for commercial nuclear power, which is portrayed as a national security issue. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) asserts that “Russia and China are using nuclear energy as a weapon to advance their national interests and threaten the world. … The United States must re-establish its historic global leadership in nuclear energy.”

This sentiment increases pressure to develop small modular nuclear reactors, that can connect to electrical grids. In his final days in office, after the Jan. 6, 2021, attempted insurrection, President Donald Trump signed an executive order which proclaimed that “the ability to use small modular reactors will help maintain and advance U.S. dominance and strategic leadership across the space and terrestrial domains.”

That lofty assertion ignores the possibility that a modular reactor might experience a meltdown, or be sabotaged by terrorists, leading to an environmental catastrophe. The Inflation Reduction Act, championed by the Biden administration, includes heavy subsidies for small nuclear reactors, in an apparent effort to combat climate change and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. 

Inevitably, the development and promotion of nuclear energy is hideously expensive. The plan to construct new reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in South Carolina was abandoned after costing ratepayers in that state $9 billion.

The current effort to build two new nuclear reactors at the Plant Vogtle in Georgia is now seven years behind schedule and $17 billion over budget. Environmental and safety concerns about these projects remain unanswered. 

As our commercial nuclear power plants become old and brittle, the danger of another meltdown like those at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima remains a serious threat. Meanwhile, no long-term storage facility for nuclear waste has been successfully constructed, and the raw material — uranium — will need to be mined somewhere.

From start to finish, the nuclear fuel cycle remains highly problematic. 

Jay Davis is a retired Rapid City attorney