1. Capital Costs are the most important single element in fixing electricity prices. The utility's original estimate of Waterford III's cost was $288 million3, but a recent Times-Picayune article4 placed the finished cost at overone billion dollars. Final construction costs are expected to exceed $1.2 billion. Will a fourfold increasej in construction costs and the added interest payments on this borrowed money make for cheap electricity?
2. The Operating Efficiency of light water reactors has fallen far short of predictions. A recent survey5 showed the "average capacity factor" (electrical generation as a percentage of design capacity) for 48 U.S. commercial nuclear power plants fell 57.5% in 1976. Of the four major manufacturers of LWR's,Combustion Engineering had the worst record of efficiency - 49% of planned capacity. Combustion Engineering is building the Waterford reactor. If Waterford III's reactor can manage no better than half speed, then this "cheap" electricity is going to cost twice as much as planned.
3. The Cost of Nuclear Fuel has increased 400% since LP&P planned this plant. When the application for Waterford III was submitted to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1970, the U3O8 "yellow cake" fuel cost $8 a pound6. The price of uranium yellow cake toaday is $42 a pound-over five times the original estimate.
4. The Cost of Decommissioning Waterford III at the end of its life has not even been considered in cost analyses. After 30 years of operation, the plant will be extremely radioactive. Current decommissioning technology calls for dismantling and burying of the reactor vessel and "entombment" (filling with cement) of the plant. If LP&P is held responsible for this, its customers will pay. If the federal government subsidizes decommissioning costs, all taxpayers will pay.
If Waterford III's construction costs quadruple and the operating costs increase 10 times (fuel up to five times, efficiency down 50%),how can LP&L hope to operate Waterford III profitably? Unfortunately, the utility is rewarded for its inefficiency. LP&L's annual profit is largely determined by the amount of money it invests in new plants, equipment, inventory, etc. (its "rate base"). In 1976 the utility earned a profit of 6.9% of its rate base. At this figure, an investment of $1.2 billion in Waterford III would earn LP&L an extra $82.8 million profit each year. This extra $82.8 million will come from LP&L customers in the form of rate increases.
LP&L says that Waterford III will create a lot of jobs. This is true only in the short run. LP&L has estimated that the construction phase would "require a maximum of 1200 employees7." More important to our area's economy is the number of people who will operate the plant over its 30-to-40 year life. A mere 60 people will run the Waterford III reactor8. LP&L is going to spend $1.2 billion of society's capital to create 60 jobs - or $20 million per job. Nuclear electrical generation is one of the most capital-intensive, least labor-intesive of all industries in America. It is an insignificant source of jobs.
The effects on human beings of high levels of radiation are nausea, vomiting, diarrrhea, ulcers, fever, insomnia, rapid weight loss, and death9. Low-level radiation damage is slower and more insidious, causing leukemia within four or five years and other cancers after a 10 to 20 yearlatency period. Perhaps most threatening to the human species is the genetic damage caused by radioactivity, which increases the occurence of many heredity-determined diseases and produces an unacceptable increase in chromosome damage and resulting genetic mutation to plague future generations10.
2. Accident at Plant: The worst possible accident at Waterford would be a fuel core meltdown, resulting in a release of a significant amount of the plant's high level radioactivity. A moderate westerly wind would bring the deadly radioactive cloud down on New Orleans in two to three hours. Evacuation would be impossible within this short time. Reports prepared for the Atomic Energy Commission on such an accident predicted an average of 90,000 people killed, 156,000 injured, and $17 billion in uninsurable property damages15. Following such a disaster, this section of Louisiana would be uninhabitable for thousanss of years.
3. Accident in Transport: Each year five truckloads of incoming fuel, 50 to 75 truckloads of spent fuel, and an undetermined number of shipments of "miscellaneous wastes"16 will come and go from Waterford III. Any one of these 100 or so truckloads of toxic materials could have an accident that would spread radioactive wastes over our area.
4. Storage: There is no known way to dispose of the millions of gallons of high-level radioactive materials we have already created in this country. One of them, plutonium 239, remains deadly for about 400,000 years. It is now being stored in steel containers lasting 30 years. A single pound if plutonium 239 has the potential to cause nine million cancer deaths17, and the Waterford reactor will produce about 650 pounds of the deadly element each year18. This plutonium - 17 pounds of which wil make an atom bomb - must be perfectly contained and perfectly guarded virtually forever. To create electric power for only 30 to 40 years, we will be strapping the next 20,000 generations of humans with the problem of guarding our deadly poisonous wastes.
Conservation take two forms. The first involves slight "social changes" such as car-pooling, smaller cars, mass transit, bicycles, walking, opening windows, dressing to suit the weather, and extensively recycling materials. The second, "technical fixes", include thermal insulation, heat pumps, more efficient furnaces and car engines, less overlighting and overventilation in commercial buildings, and recuperators for waste heat in industrial processes. The conservation mentality eliminates the need for nuclear plants by reducing our wasteful "need" for electricity.
In the case of Waterford III, it is important to understand who will be using the electricity produced. Already there are five huge electrical generating plants in teh Taft area: Waterford I and II,and Little Gypsy I, II, and III. Waterford III will be the sixth unit in a one-square-mile area. So many electrical plants in such a sparsely populated,heavily industrialized area suggests that Waterford III's electricity would benefit heavy industry. So the industries which have settled along our river must be made to conserve electricity. We must change our rate structure to charge industries a flat rate for electricity, rather than reward them for waste with rates which actually lower the price of electricity the more they use.
Great potential for industrial conservation lies in "congeneration" or generating electricity from the steam normally produced in many industries. A Dow Chemical Company study19 reports that by 1985 U.S. Industry could meet almost half its electrical needs (compared with about 1/7 today) by this means. With a real effort at conservation, there will be no need for Waterford III.
What if apathy, greed, or ignorance prevent citizen and industial conservation measures? Even if we "need" Waterford's electricity, we do not need nuclear power. The technology exists today to generate cheaper, more reliable,cleaner (plutonium can hardly be described as "clean") electricity by burning coal. Fluidized-bed boilers are avaliable which could burn America's abundant coal more cleanly than a nomal coal-fueled power station with the best modern scrubbers20.
Both coal and nuclear power are transitional technologies to stretch energy supplies until more benign sources can be found. The most promising of these "future" energy sources is the limitless power of the sun. Solar energy will inevitably become our greatest source of heat. Geothermal energy is also avaliable, both as heat beneath the earth's crust and as temperatuer differences in large, warm bodies of water (Gulf of Mexico). Wind energy has already powered pumps and produced electricity in this country for scores of years. Orgainc conservation is yet another potent source of energy. Agricultural, forestry, and urban wastes are easily convertible to methanol and other liquid and gaseous fuels. Brazil has begun a crash program to replace scarce and expensive gasoline with alcohol produced by simple fermentation. A new energy source with exciting potential is the recently reported discovery of significant quanities of natual gas (90% methane) dissolved in salty water beneath the Texas and Louisiana coasts. Scientists estimate enough energy from this source to supply U.S. needs for 1,250 years at present comsumption rates21.
The utility company would have us believe that all these are esoteric, "futuristic technologies that will take years and years to develop. If we turn our national will (and research dollars) to the task, we can develop these power resources in the next three or four years - before the Waterford III nuclear power station will even be completed.